Advertising Opinions

The Aquaguard ‘Paani Ka Doctor’ TV commercial (TVC) is a clever concept aimed at reinforcing the brand. Aquaguard (from Eureka Forbes) from its inception has been has claimed to be an expert in water purification. In all Aquaguard TVCs, as far as I can remember, features a character who is supposed to be a representative from Eureka Forbes, he visits a home and educates the household regarding dangers of drinking unpurified water and explains benefits of using Aquaguard. When Aquaguard was first introduced the consumers did not have much of a choice; they could either buy tap filters or the storage type filters which only filtered the water and did not do anything else, the filter pores actually became breeding ground for harmful bacteria. The other alternative for people was to use Ion Exchange’s Zero B or filter the water and then boil it. Since Aquaguard was the first purifier in the consumer segment to use sophisticated technology the product/brand proposition was very clear: We a...

These days we have become accustomed to the concept of brand ambassadors to promote products and services, even some states of India have brand ambassadors, this is relatively a new trend, but a brand ambassador for a Durga Puja is not what one would normally expect. In this year’s Durga Puja the organizers of Sarbojanik Durga Puja, D.N. Nagar, Link Road, Andheri West, Mumbai appointed Rituparna Sengupta, a well-known actress of Bengali cinema, as brand ambassador. The first thought that came to my mind was, where is the brand? This puja does not even have a logo and this is only their second year. Advertising at the puja venues are common but having a brand ambassador is new to me. It was reported in The Times of India (Mumbai edition) dated October 13, 2010 that the organizers chose Rituparna Sengupta for the “connect she forges between Bengali and non-Bengali audiences”. Although I did not see a single banner of the actress inside the pandal, there ...