Campaign: SpiceMax and Hot Meals
Brand: SpiceJet
Company: SpiceJet
Agency: Publicis Capital

Rating: ***

Shinmin.Bali@expressindia.com
The Campaign

SpiceJet’s new campaign comprises four digital films which will be aired on TV soon. Through cheeky situations, the services highlighted in the ads include hot meals, priority check-in, extra legroom, baggage delivery and complimentary meals and beverages.

Our Take

With this campaign, SpiceJet has ended its mainstream communication silence after a period of at least four years. The tone of the campaign is light and humourous, highlighting the airline’s services under SpiceMax — a premium product.

The campaign looks uncluttered, thankfully. It does not try to go all guns blazing to make up for the lull period in its communication. The films address consumer pain points and service offerings in the most obvious fashion, thus cutting out the communication fluff.

The Hot Meals films depict scenarios when frustration with a product quality is expressed but not necessarily resolved. One of the films shows a dissatisfied consumer wanting to meet the chef at a five-star restaurant on
being served cold food. He backs down, however, when he sees the chef is a pretty lady. Another film is an interaction between a boss and two employees, where one employee over-enthusiastically appreciates the homemade cold food the boss just offered, whereas the other colleague honestly says the food is cold, only to backtrack later for fear of annoying the boss.

The connection? Sometimes it’s okay to accept less than hot food, but not on a SpiceJet flight where you are guaranteed hot meals, thus emphasising that no situational excuse warrants a cold meal.

The two ads for SpiceMax target the consumer set that flies for work trips. The first film shows a young woman who reconsiders queuing up in a bank on noticing an attractive man in line. The other film shows a man wearing a neck brace who sacrifices his need for personal space in a hotel elevator when it gets occupied by international models making their way to compete in a swimsuit round. The films emphasise on how queuing is not the norm and that one can expect more legroom in a SpiceJet flight, respectively.

The four films are entertaining only once the connection with the brand hits in. Debojo Maharshi, CMO, SpiceJet, says, “The idea was to do something that would lead to revenues and give a push to the brand.” The current campaign spend is not over R3 crore.

The template of the campaign comes through here — that of targeting young urbans with a humourous undertone.

The brand’s earlier campaign, in fact, saw a much broader demographic. A deviation from that, as seen in the current campaign, is perhaps because the brand is focussed on promoting a more premium offering.

@shinminbali