It Is Time
This post is long over-due but theses TVCs were made available on YouTube only recently.
This is with reference to the new television campaign for Hindustan Times, which I found quite refreshing. Perhaps few campaigns for a media house managed to be as much an advertising landmark as the “Lead India ” campaign in recent years. This campaign, however, is not on par with the “Lead India” campaign. You won’t find it all over the front page, third page, seventh page and back page of your newspaper, positioning itself as more important than the news itself (even though it probably was). And no… it won’t tug at your heart-strings 0r send you on a guilt-trip either. But what calls for a little humble appreciation is how it is quite simply to-the-point. Not surprising considering each spot is barely 20 seconds long.
Here are two of the TVCs:
There are a bunch of others, including one swine flu and one on cynicism. I have often been accused of being a little cynical myself but the ad still made perfect sense to me, without pissing me off. Which is quite honestly very difficult to do when you do venture into the space of public interest advertising with socio-political messaging.
But I guess Lowe Lintas has had enough practice in this sphere with its more-than-successful run with “Jaago Re” for Tata Tea and and also successful (though, not as much) “What an idea, Sir ji” campaign for Idea Cellular. Which is why I wasn’t surprised to know that they were the agency behind this campaign. Also appreciated its attempt at being “young” without stereotyping our kind with arbit, “cool” sounding messaging like, “It’s in my DNA” or whatever.
If there was something I had to change about the campaign, though, it would be the pay-off. Perhaps it’s just the cynic in me who’s talking, but somehow saying “It is time” in my mind always conjures the image of Rajnikanth saying it after blowing the smoke off his revolver. Or worse still, being said by one of those horrid rip-offs of him, as in “Quick Gun Murugun”.
But all in all, a very likeable campaign. I just hope it doesn’t go unnoticed.
