Shah Rukh Khan looks completely out of place in the latest i10 ad. What a waste!
Campaign: Simply Irresistible
Brand: i10
Company : Hyundai
Ideation: Innocean
The Campaign
The film opens with Shah Rukh Khan playing an ordinary office executive, who after a day at work, sits behind thw wheel of his i10. The car shows its magic by emitting positive vibes to the actor. He bumps into his old girlfriend and both of them hit the road for a romantic long drive that ends on a beach where the couple fall in love with each other, once again.
Our Take
Advertising in the passenger vehicles segment may not have been path-breaking in India, but that?s no excuse for the agency to come up with lousy ideas for selling a star product like i10 from the Hyundai stable. The ad is certainly no great follow-up to the older Next Gen i10 ad launched in 2010 in which Shah Rukh Khan steps out of his private jet to test drive a hatchback (read i10) along with a leggy sales girl. The then tag line was ?Catch the i?. While Khan?s character in that ad was modelled on his real life persona, the new ad portrays him as a commoner whose life transforms with the magic of his car. However, there?s hardly a difference in the camera angles of the last commercial and the new one.
The most inexplicable part of the commercial is a mysterious larger than life hand that?s calling all the shots. A scroller explaining the symbolism of this mysterious hand would have helped. Well, the mystery was unfolded by a video on the making of this commercial on YouTube (probably posted by Hyundai or the agency) which declares that it?s ?the benevolent hand of god? that?s setting things right for Khan?s character in the ad. Confused? So are we.
Ratings
*****