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<ul><li>In our series, BTS with Insiders, we take a walk down memory lane, and give you an insider's view of some of the most iconic Indian ads.</li><li>This week <keyword id="1112320" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="KV-Sridhar">KV Sridhar</keyword>, Global Chief Creative Officer of Nihilent Hypercollective takes us back in time and tells us some brilliant stories from the sets of Taj Mahal Tea's Waah Taj, Saint Gobain's Invisible Glass while he also talks about the <keyword id="9297051" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Fevicol-bus-ad">Fevicol Bus ad</keyword> that he considers to be one of his most favorite campaigns. </li></ul> KV Sridhar aka Pops has been a part of the Indian ad industry for about 42 years now. Unsurprisingly, he is a chronicler of all things advertising in India. With his book 30 Second Thrillers that he launched a few years back, Pops took us behind-the-scenes of some of the most iconic ads our country has seen. We tried to do something similar on our show BTS with Insiders. Currently the Global Chief Creative Officer of Nihilent Hypercollective, Sridhar is a treasure-trove of anecdotes from the fascinating world of advertising and he regaled us with some stories during our conversation too. <div type="javascript" title="Facebook" contenttype="Video"><cdata><![CDATA[]]></cdata></div> Taj Mahal Tea’s Waah Taj In the latter half of the 80’s, Brooke Bond’s Taj Mahal Tea was facing a slowdown in terms of growth. The brand’s advertising, like most other brands during those days, was completely westernized. The task at hand for the brand at that time was to make the brand more Indian, and therefore more relevant and appealing to a far wider set of audience. KS Chakravarthy who the ad world lovingly calls Chax, has been Pops’ long-term partner. So the two of them along with account planner Dhiren Chadda used to work on the brand. Chadda had, time and again, told Pops that there was a need to attune the brand to middle-class Indian sentiments. And he used to say, “It should be fine and refined like a Chiffon saree.” However, Pops shares that his idea of Indianness was very different. “I wanted it to be like a cotton or a jute saree, which is the fabric of India,” he explained. The agency wanted to Indianize the brand as well as make a statement that its quality is impeccable. And that is where <keyword id="8925" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Zakir-Hussain">Zakir Hussain</keyword> came into the picture. Pops added that Hussain and his tabla were an analogy for the perfectionism that goes behind making the perfect tea, and the critical role of a tea-taster. And while not many people knew what Zakir Hussain looked like (since TV was just making an entry into Indian homes and most people had heard the maestro on the radio till then), Pops said that he was completely Indian in the way he looked, smiled or when it came to his music. Pops also shared some treasured moments from the time they filmed the ad, when Hussain played ‘Happy Birthday to you’ on the tabla for Chax whose birthday fell during the shoot days. “Those days, it took us a lot more time to finish work on films. But at the end of the day, if we enjoy doing it, people will enjoy watching it. Even today, Zakir Hussain says people use <keyword id="9297050" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="waah-ustad">Waah Ustad</keyword> when he performs and he secretly cherishes being called that,” shared Pops. Saint Gobain’s Invisible Glass This was an ad that Saint Gobain did in around 2000. At that time, Pops was a part of Lintas. On a trip to their Chennai office, he discovered that the creative team there had spent all the money that the client had given them on the announcement of a factory inauguration on double spread newspaper ads. And the remaining money was then used on newspaper campaigns announcing a visit by the French ambassador. “That’s when I realized they had used up their 2 years’ budget in 2 days. I felt very bad and asked the team to take me to the client. Lintas is the most audacious agency I’ve ever worked with. I went to the client. B Santhanam was the Managing Director of the brand. And I apologized to him. I told him we had wasted the money and this is not the way we use available funds. I told him we needed to build the brand and make sure the right people know about your brand. There was a need to tell people about the products they were making, it was our job to turn those products into brands. So I told him, tell me what money you have and we will try and make up for the silliness we have done,” shared Pops. That’s how one of the brand’s most well-known campaigns in India came about. “We did this commercial at a time when the average cost of each commercial used to be between Rs 30-60 lakh. However, I produced this commercial for 6 lakh with one of the best directors we have, <keyword id="271660" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ram-Madhvani">Ram Madhvani</keyword>. We shot the ad in Renaissance Hotel in Powai. The woman in the ad was actually a carpet exporter with a permit to work. She did the film almost for free. The two men in the ad are actually cooks in roadside carts. We virtually spent nothing on the ad, we had actors, we created an original music track. Suzanne Caplan Merwanji, who is one of the most well-known production stylists in Bollywood styled the film for us. Everybody did it because I said there was no money, and they wanted to do it for me. Ram used to call it a Pops Relief Fund,” added he with a laugh. The strategy was to own a generic benefit and talk about what they are good at. The strategy worked, and did wonders for the brand. “We shot the ad in less than 8 hours but it went on to make them one of the most successful brands in the company. We wanted to make it look international because it was the first time a brand came to India and said it wanted to look international. Otherwise most brands would say they wanted to sound and look Indian. But we had to desperately do this because a lot of dealers used to think that its an Indian company and they used to think the name of the company was Sant Gobin and that it was a Ludhiana-based company. So we added that international touch and the ads that followed also had a bit of an international look and feel,” added Pops. On <keyword id="6375200" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="PIYUSH-PANDEY">Piyush Pandey</keyword>’s Fevicol Bus ad While every episode creators talk about three ads they have worked on, Pops said he also wanted to talk about one of his most favorite ads of all times. And that’s how we got talking about Fevicol’s Bus ad, that has to be one of the most iconic ads created by Piyush and <keyword id="1397913" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Prasoon-Pandey">Prasoon Pandey</keyword> for brand Fevicol. “I love advertising and I consider myself belonging to the family of Indian advertising. This is one ad I have loved because of the craft of it. All Fevicol ads are brilliant but this craftsmanship is flawless. That year when this campaign was released, I was a part of a lot of international juries and I had spoken about the culture of India and why this was so relevant and I defended the ad at a lot of juries,” he reminisced. About what he found unmatched about this ad, Pops said, “Apart from the colourful world that the ad creates, there are a few more things I like about the ad. The ad was shot in Pushkar which is a favorite place of both Piyush and Prasoon because its half the coloufulness of Rajasthan and half desert. But there were a lot of stories. There were close to 120 people sitting on that bus, with animals as well. But it wasn’t just about getting people, it was also about placing people where they were placed. The bus needed to sway to make the entire thing more beautiful. They could only shoot for 3-4 hours in the day to get the perfect light. So to get the sway, they dug the road, but it did not exactly sway. They then put speed breakers but even that did not make the bus sway the way Prasoon wanted it. Then they went and created ditches on alternate sides, leaving some gap. And that’s what made the bus sway the way it did in the film.” The effort which went into making the campaign made it what it is, and even today Fevicol’s Bus ad is one of the most iconic gems to come out of Indian advertising.

#BTSwithInsiders: When KV Sridhar spoke to us about the ads closest to his heart

<ul><li><keyword id="270001" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Surf-Excel">Surf Excel</keyword>'s 'Daag Acche Hain' was a unique proposition from a detergent brand back in 2005 when all other brands were simply talking about how to get rid of 'ziddi daag'.</li><li>The first 'Daag Acche Hain' ad featuring two siblings was conceptualized by <keyword id="274876" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Lowe-Lintas">Lowe Lintas</keyword> and aimed at presenting a different proposition, in an attempt to stand out in the category.</li><li><keyword id="185767" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Arun-Iyer">Arun Iyer</keyword>, the brain behind the ad, shares some heart-warming anecdotes from the making of the campaign. </li></ul>Over the years, Surf Excel has evolved its communication with changing times. While in the eighties, it was the iconic Lalitaji educating people about the perks of buying the detergent with ‘Surf ki khreedari mein hai samajhdaari’, the brand later came up with ads like ‘Dhundhte reh jaoge’ and ‘Surf Excel hai na’, that spoke about what made the brand special and most effective. It was in 2005 that we were introduced to the cute siblings, one of who slips on a puddle, and the other, who then punishes the puddle for hurting his sister. That’s when Surf Excel’s ‘Daag Acche Hain’ came into being. The brand already had a campaign ‘Dirt is good’ running globally, and ‘Daag Acche Hain’ was an extension of this proposition, while Indianizing it. In India, the campaign was conceptualized by Lowe Lintas. We spoke to Arun Iyer, the brain behind the campaign on our latest episode of #BTSwithInsiders, to unearth some never-heard-before stories behind the ad and he did not disappoint. While the campaign was launched in 2005, the groundwork had been done in 2004, shares Iyer, who was working on Surf Excel since 2003. “At that point of time, we were trying out a bunch of things because the brand’s growth had stagnated. The competition was coming down heavily, Ariel was doubling down on India and there was a lot of stuff happening in the category at that point in time. At the same time, ‘Dirt is Good’ had been launched in Brazil and there were attempts to bring it to India in various forms but it didn’t really resonate with people here because in India, dirt isn’t necessarily a good thing,” he shares. In 2004-2005, <keyword id="521074" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Gopal-Vittal">Gopal Vittal</keyword>, who is now the CEO of Airtel, along with <keyword id="1557780" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sudhir-Sitapati">Sudhir Sitapati</keyword>, Executive Director, Foods &amp; Refreshment, Hindustan Unilever Limited, were a part of the brand. It was Vittal who said that talking about values could work because mothers want to instill values in children. “It is also during this time that children stop sharing what’s going on in their lives with their mothers.When they come back home, the stories are actually carried by the stains. You can make out what’s transpired through the stains. We realized that behind every stain there’s a beautiful story and that was the starting point,” says Iyer. However, it still took the team sometime to come up with the perfect story. “We came up with alot of stories until one day, it was around 8 pm when Preeti Nair, <keyword id="72976" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="R-Balki">R Balki</keyword> and I were sitting together in Balki’s office and there was this moment. Its classical, how we hit a table if I kid gets hurt by it. We reassure a child saying we will punish the table for what it has done to him. It’s a very innocent thing that people do and that was the behavioral insight we picked up. We thought why don’t we do this with stains? So this is how the story panned out,” he revealed. Once the idea struck, the creative team decided to share it almost immediately with the brand. “It was at 10:30 at night and Gopal was at a dinner with his team at Olive in Bandra. And Balki and I called him and told him we are coming there. The meeting was supposed to happen the next morning at 8 am but we drove down to Bandra at night and shared the script with him. Then Sudhir came over, we did a bit of research and that’s how the campaign saw the light of the day,” added Iyer. The film was directed by <keyword id="1874192" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="abhinay-dev">Abhinay Dev</keyword> and was shot by Hemant Chaturvedi in Ooty, and there was a reason for choosing the venue too. “In India, too much dirt is considered a bad thing. Too much interaction with dirt can lead to illnesses and that’s not something mothers are generally comfortable with. So we said it should be a place where even if you get dirty, it feels clean. A very innocent thought was, where was the place where if you dropped a chocolate, you could simply pick it up and eat it. That’s when Ooty came to our mind,” shared Iyer. However, in Ooty, for a child to play with a puddle full of water in the cold weather was a big challenge. The team had to think around this problem and they came up with an innovative solution. “While we were shooting there, it was really cold, muggy and was even raining a little. The shoot kept getting interrupted. And this was for the first time that the boy was acting in anything, and since it was really cold, he couldn’t take it after a point. So we devised a strategy and put hot water in the puddle. What happened after that was quite fascinating. After that, he just did not want to come out of the puddle because it was so warm and cozy in there,” laughs Iyer. It was perhaps this ad that helped the brand stand out in the category because while every other player was talking about how to get rid of stains, here was a brand saying something quite the opposite, that stains are good. And it has worked well for the brand as that still remains the brand’s core proposition and we have seen many more gems from the brand’s stable on similar lines over the years.

#BTSwithInsiders: Arun Iyer on how Surf Excel’s ‘Daag Acche Hain’ came into being

<ul><li>In our series, BTS with Insiders, we take a walk down memory lane, and give you an insider's view of some of the most iconic Indian ads.</li><li>This week <keyword id="269997" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Amer-Jaleel">Amer Jaleel</keyword>, Group CCO and Chairman of <keyword id="3391368" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="MullenLowe-Lintas">MullenLowe Lintas</keyword> Group tells us some engrossing stories about campaigns he's done for <keyword id="46021" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Tata-tea">Tata Tea</keyword>, <keyword id="6616182" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Lifebuoy">Lifebuoy</keyword> and <keyword id="47860" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="ICICI-Prudential">ICICI Prudential</keyword>.</li></ul> Nostalgia is a powerful tool, as we have witnessed in the last month and a half of lockdown. It was primarily this insight that made us start BTS with Insiders, a series that takes a walk down memory lane, and talks about some of the most <keyword id="3814561" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Iconic-Ads">iconic ads</keyword> that have helped build brands and tell wonderful stories. Last week, we spoke to Amer Jaleel, Group CCO and Chairman of MullenLowe Lintas Group, who has been instrumental in creating seminal work for a lot of brands. Over the years, he has created some award-winning work for brands Google, OLX, Maruti Suzuki, ICICI Prudential and Bajaj, amongst many others. Jaleel gave us an Insider’s view into a few campaigns he holds close to his heart. <div type="javascript" title="Facebook" contenttype="Video"><cdata><![CDATA[]]></cdata></div> Tata Tea’s Jaago Re Tea brands, for the longest time, sold on the refreshing proposition of its product. However, it all changed in 2008 when Tata Tea came up with Jaago Re, a campaign that wanted people not just to wake up but to awaken. What had started as a campaign to encourage people to go vote in the 2009 elections has now broadened its appeal and today talks about a lot of other issues too. It was perhaps one of the first campaigns in India that asked consumers to act, giving birth to citizen activism. “What is the most important thing about Jaago Re is that it sparked off the trend of socially responsible work. And this is something that we at Lintas really take pride in, making brands participate in social improvement. We were noticed all around the world for this work and many people have emulated this,” shared Jaleel. R Balki was also a prominent part of the campaign, shared Jaleel, who helped strengthen the idea of the campaign by adding a strong logic to the thought. Once they discussed the idea, Balki said to Jaleel, “You know, you have got this business because it is impossible for anybody to deny this,” he remembered. “It was one of those memorable moments of my life,” he added with a smile. “The funny part is, we cracked the idea for a tea ad sitting in a coffee shop,” he laughed. The first ad also featured actor Pankaj Tripathy, who was just starting out at that point of time. While there had been many auditions, Jaleel remembers being blown away by Tripathy’s audition. “In Pankaj’s audition, when he acted the line ‘Hum aapka vote maange aaye hain,’ he says he has come to request for people’s votes but with his hand, he made a gesture that would denote he is here to grab your votes. That struck me and I told our director Amit Sharma that we should use this in the ad. And that’s how we got Pankaj on board. I am sure he would have reached where he is today even without this ad, because he is extremely talented, but I am glad we were on to him pretty early,” shared Jaleel. The campaign went on to create wonders for the brand and is till today considered to be a game-changer. Lifebuoy’s Help A Child Reach 5 - Gondappa Over the years, Lifebuoy has been doing a lot in terms of spreading awareness around the importance of hygiene and washing hands, not just in India but across the world. And it wanted to come up with a campaign to showcase some of the on-ground work it had been doing. Thesgora, a small village in Madhya Pradesh was infamous for having one of the highest rates of child diarrhoea cases in India. The idea behind the campaign was to bring to light how a simple act of convincing people to wash their hands had a massive impact. “Lifebuoy told us that they’ve been doing this amazing work but people don’t really know of this work. They wanted something that would celebrate the work they were doing while also helping them promote the idea further. The objective itself was so inspirational that we had to do something really special,” shared Jaleel. Sagar Kapoor, the current Chief Creative Officer at <keyword id="274876" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Lowe-Lintas">Lowe Lintas</keyword>, told Jaleel that he had thought of an idea that wasn’t like the regular Lifebuoy ads that they did. He told Jaleel about something called ‘maanta’ which is something that people do if their wish comes true. Kapoor shared many examples of people fasting or rolling on the ground while on their way to temples. He was thinking of what would a person who’s child turned 5 do to celebrate the fact. “That’s when Sagar said that someone like him could say that he would walk on his hands to reach the temple and thank him for this gift. And the idea of walking on hands and Lifebuoy and hand-washing and the importance of that just struck like a rocket in my head. And I told Sagar that he had cracked something so special that his career was made,” shared Jaleel. The shoot was carried out in a place somewhere near Hubli in Karnataka, in scorching sunlight. The team had to select 2 actors, one who featured in the film, and another one on standby, considering how difficult it was for anyone to walk on his hands for long distances. The crew had to go to the spot thrice to complete the shoot as the first time the actor gave up as he couldn’t keep walking on his hands and the second time the shoot was brought to a halt by rains. The song used with the film was a Tamil song which wasn’t translated into any other languages and was yet able to cut through language barriers. The team had once gone to China where the film was showcased and the video moved many Chinese women to tears. ICICI Prudential’s Bande Acche Hain ICICI Prudential’s Bande Acche Hain, came at a time when men’s image across the world had taken a serious beating, shared Jaleel. “However, while we read about men doing heinous crimes or watched about them on TV, we realized we don’t know any such man and that inspired us to think about men in this way. We wanted to show that men are also glorious in their own ways. The most important thing that touches you in this ad is that men who do these beautiful things don’t really want it to be acknowledged,” explained Jaleel. And that is exactly what helped strike a chord with the audience with many people immediately identifying with many of the scenarios that have been showcased in the ad. The music of the campaign, composed by music director Shantanu Moitra and beautifully penned by lyricist Swanand Kirkire also added to the magic. “What is special about the ad is that it is a woman singing about a men but the men aren’t exactly looking for any appreciation. They were just going about doing the acts of care that they would anyway do, without anybody coming to know. When it comes to the song, I had a very different idea because Bande Acche Hain sounded a little Punjabi and in my head, the song was something more boisterous. However when I reached the studio and heard what Shantanu had created, it just melted me. I don’t know anybody who hasn’t got affected by the music at the first hearing,” said Jaleel. What also made the film special were the everyday instances that the situations drew from, making it very relatable and possibly the reason why it found so much love from the audience.

#BTSwithInsiders: Amer Jaleel on Tata Tea’s Jaago Re, Lifebuoy’s Gonduppa and ICICI Prudential’s Bande Acche Hain

<ul><li>In a Pride Month special, we invited <keyword id="9445997" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="vicks-mom">Vicks Mom</keyword> Gauri Sawant and Ajay Vikram, CCO- Global Clients, Publicis Singapore for a #BTSwithInsider chat. </li><li>Vikram walked us through the ideation process, execution and Sawant, on the other hand, shared her experience of becoming a star overnight. </li></ul>Since it is June, the most colourful month of the year, for last week’s episode of BTSwithInsiders, we decided to look back at an advertisement that changed the definition of motherhood in India and made us relook at our ideologies -- Vick’s Touch of Care. Normalising trans motherhood in India, Vicks initiated a conversation everyone else was afraid to have. It highlighted how motherhood goes beyond biological ties with transgender activist Gauri Sawant, who also runs an NGO called Sakhi Char Chowghi. It showcased her real life story of bringing up a girl. Conceptualised by Publicis Singapore for Procter &amp; Gamble, the video shows how Gayatri, at the age of 6, loses her biological mother, a sex worker, to HIV AIDS. It ends with Gayatri vowing to become a lawyer so that she can fight for equal human rights and build an equal environment for her foster mother. Ajay Vikram, CCO- Global Clients, Publicis Singapore walked us through the ideation process, execution and Sawant, on the other hand Vicks Mom Gauri Sawant shared her experience of becoming a star overnight. Here is what they said: <div type="twitter" handle="admediainsider" handlename="Advertising and Media Insider India" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1268418343238635521/lelrmGKf_normal.jpg" favoritecount="3" retweetcount="3" status="#BTSwithInsiders | Ajay Vikram (@aj3v), CCO- Global Clients, @PublicisWW &amp; @PublicisIndia along with Transgender Ac… https://t.co/tq9crO8365" createdat="1592562459000" id="1273925403824893952"></div>

How starring in an ad helped Vicks’ mom Gauri Sawant gain overnight stardom

<ul><li>When we say, ‘Jaago Re,’ do you also hum the entire tune? </li><li>Here is the saga behind one of the most loved social-led campaigns of our country that Sushant Dash, President, Beverages– India &amp; Middle East, TATA Consumer Products, Amer Jaleel, Group CCO and Chairman, <keyword id="3222480" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="MullenLowe-Lintas-Group">MullenLowe Lintas Group</keyword> and Puneet Das – SVP, Marketing - Beverages, TATA Consumer Products walk us through.</li></ul>Tata Tea, for more than a decade, has remained synonymous with brand-led activism because of its campaign Jaago re. Over the years, Jaago Re has nudged us towards social awakening. The brand has used this property to catalyse change around important issues like women safety, representation of women, voting, corruption, etc. It was born in 2008 when Tata Tea decided to onboard MullenLowe Lintas as its agency on record for the brand. The campaign was launched at a time when Indian brands were still trying to understand the idea of brand activism and advertising in the tea category was limited to functional aspects of refreshment. Tata Tea started the trend of looking beyond the obvious by offering a tea that doesn’t just help you wake up, but also awakens you by focusing on self-actualization, increased civic consciousness and political awareness. We reached out to the team (Sushant Dash, President, Beverages– India &amp; Middle East, TATA Consumer Products, Amer Jaleel, Group CCO and Chairman, MullenLowe Lintas Group and Puneet Das – SVP, Marketing - Beverages, TATA Consumer Products) behind this initiative to pick their brains about this much talked-about campaign that continues to stay relevant even after all these years. <div type="Video" msid="80884312" hostid="261" title="How Tata Tea's communication has evolved from brand-led activism to hyperlocalisation" dataSource="BUSINESSINSIDER" thumbUrl="https://denmark.timesinternet.in/cmslite/api/app/images.jpg?msid=80884312"></div> Jaago Re helped a newly-launched premium brand become synonymous to the category. In the age of digital marketing, agency Lintas and Client Tata Tea Premium share one of the longest relationships in our industry. We also asked them to share a few tips of sustaining the relationship between client and agency, how to evolve with changing times and they didn’t disappoint. The beginning of Jaago Re The partnership of Lintas and Tata Tea started much before Jaago Re. It was in 2003 that the brand decided to foray into the premium segment by launching Tata Tea Gold. Back then, Lintas wasn’t in the picture. Tata Tea had a couple of agencies for its roaster but Dash, who Jaleel refers to as the ‘Architect of the brand,’ told us that they were looking to weave a story and build it on an insight this time, not just sell tea. The brand decided to go out and call a few more agencies in for a pitch. R Balki and Jaleel presented the ‘Na kahoge toh pachtaoge’ idea on a phone call to Dash, which he says, is his favourite till date. Even then, Lintas was handling communication for Tata Tea Gold, not Tata Tea Premium. Rival tea brands with a variety of products had different campaigns for each but Dash decided to market only the mother brand. It had four sub-brands Gold, Premium, Agni and Life. “From a marketing point of view, it was a risky decision and obviously came under a lot of debate. But at that time, the main reason from a business point of view was also that we needed to save our media monies. It was also very difficult to sustain and grow all four brands and put the kind of media monies that were required. So, the idea was that you create the mother brand, and then put more money behind the mother brand, advertising and campaign. The idea in the brief was that it should help each of the individual brands. It also said that we need to create a mother brand, which needs to connect at an emotional level and needs to cut through all the variants,” recalled Dash. It also had to carve a niche for itself and beat the likes of HUL’s Brooke Bond Red Label and Taj Mahal, which had a strong recall for its ads, thanks to the famous Waah Taj ad featuring tabla maestro Zakir Hussain. However, the brief didn’t mention anything about cause marketing or a social campaign. It was divided into three main objectives: establish the mother brand, cut across different verticals and get coffee-loving millennials to be loyal to tea. Walking us through the brief and sharing the challenge that the agency had to face in terms of drafting a campaign for a diverse audience, Dash said, “The challenge for the creative agency was to find a cause that appeals to someone in a South Bombay or a South Delhi who uses Tata Tea Gold brand and at the same time, appeal to someone in a Pratapgarh who uses Tata Tea Agni brand because that was our width. We cut through urban and rural. So the third part of the brief was that when we talk and when we come out with this campaign, at least in terms of storytelling and in terms of the language that we use, it should appeal to the youth, because till that point Tea was seen as appealing only to the housewife, not so much to the youth or to men.” At that time, coffee drinkers were considered ‘cool’ because tea was preferred by mid-age audience. As per the brief, Jaleel and his team had to reverse the image and also position tea drinkers as young and cool. The agency was right to think that the coming generation would actively participate in building an inclusive and woke society. Recounting how the thinking came into place and how a tea brand chose a purpose-led brand building approach, Jaleel said, “Somewhere, this thought entered our mind that whenever you have a tea, you discuss various things, and you're young, and you want to change the world. And therefore, if tea is associated with changing the world like that, if it can bring about some kind of awareness, that would be a good strategic direction for tea and that's how we landed on the idea of Jaago Re.” The client was looking for an idea that would bind different strata of society together and Lintas’ pitch ticked all the right boxes. “I still remember when we first heard the line, 'Har subah sirf utho mat, Jaago Re.' It in some ways redefined and gave us that stature, because every tea brand and including us, we used to talk a lot about rejuvenation. But this was actually taking it in a sense philosophically a step ahead, which was not just about waking up, but awakening. So in some ways, it was very strongly ingrained in terms of what the category stood for, but took your brand to a higher plane,” shared Dash. Taking the message ahead The first ad under the campaign was about political awareness, voting the right candidate and asking questions. It featured Pankaj Tripathi, who wasn’t as well known then, but immediately won the audience over. <div type="Youtube" id="99a-dHXmw2I" title="Pankaj Tripathi Tata Tea Ad" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/99a-dHXmw2I/mqdefault.jpg"></div> The second campaign was about a young guy who urges people to not use Voting Day as a holiday and nudge them from their sleep. <div type="Youtube" id="NkMnM2dznuU" title="Tata Tea Voting" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NkMnM2dznuU/mqdefault.jpg"></div> Jaago Re wasn’t just a campaign anymore. The brand knew how to walk the talk as the initiative was backed with a website <a href="http://www.jaagore.com/">jaagore.com.</a> Before the 2009 election, Tata Tea launched this website to help first-time voters to create IDs, register themselves as voters and find the nearest voting booth. The Jaago Re campaign had become a big hit by 2010 and Lintas had to come up with a cause that would surpass the previous ads by creating something bigger. So, the third campaign was about corruption, which Dash said, was the most difficult to crack because they had to tread the line between being edgy and preachy. <div type="Youtube" id="wyOCF8Vfsrg" title="Mudit Nayar (Commercial): Award Winning Tata Tea adv against corruption [Jaago Re!]" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wyOCF8Vfsrg/mqdefault.jpg"></div> In 2017, Tata Tea made a comeback with Jaago Re Version 2.0. Like always, it gave us goosebumps and made us question everything that was happening around us. It was a comment on arm-chair activism. It urged people to act before it is too late in a hard-hitting manner and it continues to stay relevant today. <div type="Youtube" id="gRA4wYsqA5c" title="Tata Tea Official 2017 Ad - Alarm Bajne Se Pehle Jaago Re!" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gRA4wYsqA5c/mqdefault.jpg"></div> Das said reviving a property of this stature wasn’t an easy task. “Jaago Re is not just a marketing campaign for us, it's almost a clarion call for representing the right issues. The tenants of Jaago Re are so well set -- there has been a lot of consistency in the thought which has come across, which is about finding the right thing, inspiring people to make that change and walk the talk. In 2006, nobody had heard the word cause advertising and all this brand purpose is just flavor of the day. But at that time, for us, it was clutter breaking. Over the 10 years, many brands jumped into the bandwagon. More importantly, the entire new generation has also grown up expecting this now from brands. So it was no longer about armchair activism. So the idea was, how do you still stay consistent with the thought, but taking to the next level? Then this thought came about is that the key shift is from activism to pre-activism. Don't let things become issues. The real way to solve for them is to actually nip them in the bud and that shift in thinking is what we call Jaago Re 2.0,” said he. Jaago Re and its perfect casting Tata Tea’s Jaago Re was much ahead of its time. It shed various gender filters and brought a much-needed campaign that represented women in politics and sports. Lintas also had a good eye for budding talent. It featured Pankaj Tripathi, Swara Bhaskar, Mohammad Zeeshan Ayub, Anand Tiwari, to name a few, much before they had become names to reckon with in the industry. <div type="Youtube" id="hAEV1K8JuV4" title="Tata Tea Premium -- Badi Duty, Choti Duty" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hAEV1K8JuV4/mqdefault.jpg"></div> Telling us the filter agency used for casting these actors, Jaleel said, “I think it's a coincidence that some of the great choices that we made also turned out to be great actors. But you can also say that it's no coincidence, and I'll tell you why it is that look. The approach that we always had about Jaago Re was always about realism. And if you notice, there is a wave of realism happening, you can almost track it back to the time Jaago Re started. Even in cinema, starism is going down and realism is coming in. We always had that thing about Jaago Re that we will pick up real people because we owe it to the subject that we are talking about. We looked for that realism in the auditions like that.” In our episode of BTSWithInsiders, Jaleel had further shared the thought behind selecting Tripathi as their first protagonist, which can be found below: <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="75806882" title="#BTSwithInsiders: Amer Jaleel on Tata Tea’s Jaago Re, Lifebuoy’s Gonduppa and ICICI Prudential’s Bande Acche Hain" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div> Shifting focus to hyperlocalisation and connecting with consumers at a deeper level Tata Tea has been successfully championing the style of brand-led activism. In the recent ads done by Mullen Lintas, there’s a visible shift in communication and Tata Tea is talking more about the features of its tea rather than the social angle. It is about taking pride in our regional culture and diversity. <div type="Youtube" id="0tff1lATgDM" title="TATA Tea Premium - Dumdaar Uttar Pradesh" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0tff1lATgDM/mqdefault.jpg"></div> <div type="Youtube" id="oV4IX7QX5m8" title="TATA Tea Premium | Odisha" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/oV4IX7QX5m8/mqdefault.jpg"></div> So, at a time when rivals Red Label and Wagh Bakri are also talking about social change, what led to this shift? Das answered, “Jaago Re has been a campaign for the mother brand and this hyper localization campaign that we have been doing is actually on the flagship brand Tata Tea Premium. What we are bringing out to consumers is something that is seeming like localization for them, but actually that has been one of the success DNA of the brand in the sense in a in a country where tastes and preferences especially when it comes to food etc, pretty much changes district by district -- it is very important for a beverage brand and a mass brand to understand these preferences, and and that has actually been always what already premium has been doing. It has blend across different states, which cater to the local tastes, preferences, etc. So, the idea was, how do you leverage your knowledge and your national stature as a brand, but at the same time connect and reinforce your regional expertise that has made you the brand it is.” It has also launched packaging that is customised to different states of India and seen a good response from the consumers. “In every market that we have been able to execute it so far, we have seen a big jump in terms of consumer connect, and it's also reflecting in the market shares, etc, which, at the end is also a proof of what the consumer has responded to, but yes, the shift is, is more to the consumers,” shared Das. The Jaago Re campaign went on to create wonders for the brand and is still fresh in our minds like it was launched yesterday. And now, on connecting with its consumers on a local level and instilling regional pride, the brand is just getting started.

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