Campaign: Daag achhe hai

Brand: Surf Excel

Company: Hindustan Unilever

Agency: Lowe Lintas

The Campaign

The ad opens on a school playground where some senior students walk into the playground and order their juniors to abandon their cricket match in the middle of their session. As the leader of the older boys and the bowler enter into a war of words, the younger boy?s friend tries to pacify his senior by explaining politely that there are only two overs left for the match to be over. The older boy refuses to reconsider and pushes the boy into a pool of dirt. The small boy then adopts an unique path – he cheekily offers to make peace with the older students by offering them a muddy hug! The senior warns him to stay away as he is in no mood to get dirty. But as the juniors move towards them, the seniors run away from the playground and the juniors celebrate by playing in the pool of dirt. The voice-over says: Daag achhe hai (stains are good).

Our Take

Surf Excel has been speaking to consumers through kids for long time now. By turning around the significance of dirt with the tag line Daag achhe hai in 2005, the brand has manged to cut through the clutter in the detergent category. While most of the players in this segment have been toying with communication that harps on the ideas of how to deal with ?stains? and get shining ?whiteness?, Surf Excel achieved instant recall by coming up with this unique take on ?stains?. The first film of this new wave of communication saw a cute chubby girl being cheered up by her brother after she falls into a pool of dirt. The second ad showed two children staging a fight to stop their fathers from fighting. Then came the ?Rozy Miss? ad in which a student cheers up her grieving teacher by acting like her dog who?s no more. While the ad was praised for its insight, it had to face a lot of criticism as some viewers found it distasteful. The ?sack race? film where a junior student saves his seniors by covering up his ragging got preachy at some level in the process of conveying moral values such as ?harmony? and ?forgiveness?. This was followed by the ?1 minute? film which displayed the high level of understanding between a grandmother and her grandson as both of them rescue each other in the hour of need.

The latest film is yet another addition to the ?Daag achhe hai? campaign. The Munnabhai style neo-Gandhian philosophy followed by the younger boy has a message for the current times when people use their fists at the slightest provocation. The small boy manages to turn the tables on the older boys with his ?forgiving? attitude. More importantly, the tongue-in-cheek response of the small boy, and the way it is able to get quick results, does make the viewer chuckle, and also understand that some battles are won not by arguments but smart thinking. The young actors do full justice to their roles. Full marks to the cute chubby junior who gets into the argument with his senior. Just one request, perhaps it?s time for the brand and its agency to push the envelope, and set a new benchmark. After all, daag achche hai.