Idea Cellular has been a wannabe cellular network provider for a long time in India. They are perennially the ones lagging far behind in the market share race and for good reason – every Idea mobile subscriber will tell you tales how they don’t get any reception unless they stick their head out of a window at a particular angle when taking phone calls.
The sensible thing to do would have been to invest in more mobile towers – real, tangible stuff that would make a difference. Instead, Idea Cellular went for a strategy Microsoft has adopted for years (before Windows 7 happened) – sink lots of money into retarded advertising campaigns. Over the past few years, using Idea Cellular mobile phones has solved various challenging problems such as illiteracy, caste riots, and obesity.
Emboldened by having tackled such grave issues, Idea has now moved on to saving trees, I hear. They have a new campaign called Use Mobile. Save Paper.
Notice something there? Many of the people trying to save trees are doing so by shifting their reading to iPhones! This is a classic case of the left hand not knowing the fact that the right hand is currently busy jacking off. Somebody forgot to tell Lowe Lintas (the agency which created this ad campaign) that Idea doesn’t sell the iPhone on their network.
I’m not sure whether Lowe Lintas was the agency behind the other commercials, but it seems that their creative team is permanently high from smelling their own farts. Unless, what they actually wanted to say was “Want to save trees? Why sure, just go and buy a highly overpriced device from two of our biggest competitors!”
One of these days, they’ll come out with a commercial saying something along the lines of ‘using Idea Cellular solves the AIDS problem’. The Nobel committee will then say “What an idea, sirji” and give Abhishek Bachchan a Nobel Peace Prize for being a fucking saint and solving every social issue possible using mobile phones.
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22 replies on “What a retarded ad, sirji!”
Curse you! I had a post in my draft-box about the same thing! I had even talked about the iPhone thingy to my cousin. Now I have to delete the draft 🙁
Curse you once again.
Well, you can still go ahead and write about it from your perspective. Admit it, you’ll always be a step behind the Father of the Internet. 😉
:X I admit. I will be behind the Father of the Internet.
you are right, but this very ad has recently got a ‘best ad’ award(i don’t quite remember who has given the awards!) the ad connects quite well with the problems in india, but it fails to deliver its own motive-advertising for idea cellular. Ask anyone who has an idea phone and u’ll get a frustrated reply; as u have very rightly mentioned!
Nice blog, btw! 🙂
Agreed. And the latest one shows a girl using an iPhone app in which shes shakes it to throw a piece of paper into the dustbin.
To satisfy your natural paper-wasting desires? =S
Haven’t seen that one… :s
I’ve seen it. Its not worth seeing. Its pretty rubbish, actually. Why do you throw papers in the bin? To discard a failed idea. Not for the fun it it. Imagine writing an “idea” on an Idea iPhone and throwing the phone into the bin…
I too agree,they should open their eyes and learn something from ad makers of Bingo and Fevicol.A study once indicated that such adds with a simple concept and lots of humour are more appreciated even though they don’t spend crores on a celebrity brand ambassador.
I think the funniest ads so far have been the ones from Indiabulls! 😀
Fevicol and Bingo ads are certainly good. I loved the Fevicol ad where the kid kept on running away, and stayed put when he was tied to a Fevicol bucket!
I liked Bingo’s Godzilla ads.
Lol. You’re in touch with the latest ads here, I see. 😛
In any case, trees? You can plant more. Metal resources (and the other stuff that’s used to produce a single phone)? You cannot.
So its like saving paper, but depleting the world’s mineral ore reserves. 😐
I sense a disturbance in the force when something as retarded comes along. (Actually, no, I’m just interested in advertising and follow ad-related blogs.)
I quite like the idea of digital distribution, and will do an article soon on that. It’s not such a bad idea. However, saying ‘Idea = saving trees’ is a bad idea for selling Idea.
what’s with using the word retarded? if you’re looking for hipster points, you’ve got none.
No, I wasn’t looking for ‘hipster’ points. It’s to do with the ad discussed.
While i agree with you, the idea prepaid/postpaid cracks me up.
Idea cracks you up quite literally doesn’t it? Whenever you call to/from an Idea mobile, your voice cracks up.
I saw a banner of Idea in my city which said:
USE MObile , SAVE paper.
while the whole banner was made up of paer.
what the crap is this…
that was really funny!!!
http://jugaadworld.info
“Walk and talk” … and then don’t see where you’re walking so that you can have an accident. Sheesh 😛
Guess what? Advertising Standards Council of India said exactly the same thing! 😉
Haha really? I didn’t know that. Though I was surprised at that time when I didn’t hear anyone else saying something like this :/
Idea came with an overall different idea of ‘walk and talk’. Siddharth keep buzzing a person talking on phone(connection seemed to be of Idea’s, he kept puking out his neck out of car) in the well-stationed car.. Man hassled so much that at last he had to drive while talking..