Marico’s Zatak Deo

Ad Agency: Taproot India

Almost all of us have heard about the lawsuit a consumer filed against a certain brand of deodorants which have perennially shown in their ads that through the usage of their product, the fairer sex will get attracted even to the most ordinary looking men! The consumer claimed that no such thing had happened in the entire span of so many years when he had used the product! Talk about taking the ad too seriously, but that has been the trend that almost all deodorant companies have used since time immemorial!

Forget deos, everything now uses seduction, desire and sex to sell itself. From watches, underwear, apparels, fruit drinks and even chocolate! Finally and ever so finally, Marico’s Zatak Deo has broken the trend and has now come out with the refreshingly new, “Har attack ka jawaab Zatak!” campaign. This campaign was strategically rolled out during the latter half of the IPL season, almost at the end, as the viewership reaches an all time high in that phase. I have seen only a couple of ads from this campaign and was impressed by this courageous attempt.

These ads are not the kinds that will leave you in awe and in fact they are not even logically possible, but they bring out a new set of attribute that the user can associate with: Confidence! This product is probably targeted to a young Indian man who wants to achieve something in life and make a name for him! Whether it is in an office setting or auditioning for a reality show, confidence is something that an aspirational young man is looking for. Despite the fact that our country is the homecoming for “Diljale aashiq”, the youth of today has more in mind than just running after girls or make girls run after them.

Anant Dutt Bharadwaj, an Accenture employee feels that the attempt to break the age long theme is bold but is a very feeble one. He says, “The ads seem immature and the attempt at humor is lost on the viewer! The tagline is catchy though and maybe the next campaign would be a stronger one!”

One thing that this campaign doesn’t do is show woman and her character in bad light. Most of the deo ads show women as super horny creatures who can be sexually aroused simply by smelling good, thus giving men a false pretence that a woman can be easily readied for sexual pleasure; that a woman loses control and is ready to break all boundaries just to be with a guy who smells good! Sounds utterly rubbish, doesn’t it? Yet the ads have been on these lines for ages!

Ajeytaa Agarwal, management trainee at HUL says, “Ever since Axe released its campaign, the entire category communication has been on similar lines. So such ads like that of Zatak are indeed refreshing when they speak a different language. However, I feel the execution could have been better! As a matter of fact, I get irritated as soon as the monologue starts and feel like switching the channel!”

Zatak has planned to launch the deodorant in this campaign in four variants – Striker, Challenger, Gambler and Avenger! The names, as you can see, seem to be reflecting the ideology that the brand is planning to follow. I do not know how successful this campaign has been or will be for Zatak but it surely brings a completely new dimension that the deo brands can foray into. Hopefully the other brands will follow suit and show us more meaningful ads with less seduction. :P

Here are a few ads from this campaign:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwwVS5lGl18-Zatak Talent Hunt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yl9wTGKkZ0– Zatak Office

Ad: Tata Docomo

Telecom is one sector which is known to produce some of the best marketing and communication plans across all industries. Whether it be the “ZooZoos” of Vodafone, “What an Idea Sirjee!” for Idea, Stand-up comedy of Ranbir Kapoor for Tata Docomo or the legendary “Har ek Friend Zaroori Hota hai” of Airtel; each is well known and recalled by all. Where Airtel moved on to “Jo tera hai wo mera hai”, Idea to “Honey Bunny” and Vodafone to “Zumi Zumi”, Tata Docomo decided to enter into a different strategy for selling their products. I am talking about the, “When doing this, think of us because leading xyz companies use our network, do you?” ads.

I believe that these ads are inclined at increasing the B2C (Business to Consumer) customer base of the company by leveraging on their B2B (Business to Business) clients. So instead of using the usual formula of getting a brand ambassador as the trust factor for the product, the company thought of making better use of what they already have: the known brand names that people associate with!

Divya Sreenivas, a trainee at Tata Administrative Services currently with the Teleservices department concurs with this and says, “These ads help in generating top of mind recall by building associations with things that people look upon as favorable like pizzas or trustworthy as banks… Since people don’t connect emotionally with a network, you remind them of the things they

like or trust!”

If we look at the typical ad in this campaign, it has got many things right: the all too familiar Docomo soundtrack, regular looking common people for better association, a trust factor in the form of the known brand names and to-the-point message communication. Yet I feel that somewhere this campaign does not hit the bull’s eye. These ads are not in the usual foray of the telecom ads, the ones which either makes you hum the tunes or bring a smile to your face as you get impressed by what you just saw. Also, personally as a customer, I don’t really get affected if Pizza Hut or India TV uses Docomo or not (unless I am a huge fan of India TV!) and this is the reason why Telecom ads seldom sell their products and often sell the brand association; something which is not very connectable in this case. In the words of Barney Stintson, “It does not contain the right amount of Awesome!” :P

I do not know whether these ads have actually worked for the company or not but I feel that this B2B to B2C brand association may not be that effective and that they need to come up with something better and bigger if they want to stay afloat in this market where change is the only constant. I remember Tata Docomo took the industry by storm when it entered and was the only thing people talked about in those days! Hope to see a much improved campaign from them!

A few Ads from the current campaign:

Home Delivery TVC

Pizza Delivery TVC

News TVC 

Next Ad under scrutiny: The “Har attack ka jawaab Zatak!” ad campaign from Zatak.