All that's funny, sells!

TRENDS 2006/ 2007

ADVERTISING: Lots of humour, some promise, younger ambassadors and local perspective, this year the ad world had its hands full.

Lagey Raho Munnabhai left a deep impact. Not only on the minds of movie buffs, critics and the common man but also on advertisers and marketers. The affable goon Munna and his wisecrack sidekick Circuit were used for selling almost everything "" from biscuits to TVs, cell phones and even cars.

"It was something which was expected when the movie came out, but it definitely went overboard." says Jayshree Sunder, executive vice president, Leo Burnett.

The traditional cola war in advertising had a silent year this time. It could be attributed to the pesticides issue, which once again raised its head but failed to create the furore.

But then both Pepsi and Coca Cola ran similar looking ads telling people how safe their beverages are. If Pepsi had their CEO, Rajiv Bakshi, taking rounds of a Pepsi factory, then Coke used Aamir Khan and television's extremely popular bahu (or is that saas now?)

Smriti Irani assuring people that they would never ask anyone to drink something which their own families would not like to consume.

Traditionally, it used to be the MNCs which tried to make their ads look as local as possible, but this time it was the other way round. More and more Indian company ads adopted the "Think global, look global" philosophy. Be it Bajaj for its bikes, Raymond for its clothes or Tata for its cars, they had more global looking ads.

One sector (or category) which saw the use of a vastly different approach for its advertising was financial services. It all started with Ogilvy and Mather's (O&M's) innovative and funny ads for SBI, a brand considered to be boring. Humour ruled the roost in a boring category. Be it for insurance or for credit cards, more marketers tried to tickle the funny bone for serious products.

Says Pratap Suthan, national creative director, Grey India, "These products may not be exciting but they are important. So it is necessary to communicate the message to people in the best possible way and that was refreshing to see."

Adds Suthan, "Anything involving money is serious business and the customer needs something extra to relate with the services. Humorous ads provided that."

The fag end of the year also saw the return of a few old ad icons and campaigns. The famous dog for Hutch made its re-entry while Maggi had its old campaign and ambassador Javed Jaffrey saying "It's different".

Says Emmanuel Upputuru, senior creative director, O&M, "It's simple "" why break a winning combination? We knew that the dog campaign did wonders the first time, so why not have it again but in a better way."

The surname Bachchan dominated once again among the brand ambassadors, but for a change it was not Big B but Junior B. Abhishek Bachchan was the popular choice for brand ambassador and companies like Ford, American Express, LG and Big 92.7 used him effectively for their campaigns.

The other favourite seemed to be Saif Ali Khan who added quite a few brands to his endorsement kitty.

What of 2007? "It is always difficult to predict as far as advertising is concerned, but online and other non-traditional mediums look to grow big in the next year," says Sunder of Leo Burnett.

Agrees Suthan: "I think people will look at other mediums such as outdoor and radio in a big way." Sure, we will be watching it with interest.