Apr 26, 2006 10:21 PM
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(Updated Apr 26, 2006 10:31 PM)
At the time Mentos was launched in India, there were not many good mints around with the sole exception of Polo, which was not doing too badly.
Mentos is a soft chewy mint produced by the Dutch Confectionery Company – Van Melle, but Van Melle was taken over by the Italian giant Perfetti.
Even before the take over, Van Melle had an aggressive campaign pushing its pet product Mentos in Holland. Mentos was almost like a sacred cow in a continent known for its mint consumption.
One must understand that India is not a land of mint munchers, Indians are more noted for their pan chewing be it the betel leaves, or the infamous gutkaa. In this context, creating a brand image of a mundane mint was all the more difficult.
Perfetti Van Melle needed an aggressive strategy to build a brand name that the country’s youth could easily identify it with. The fact that they chose the age group of 18 to 34 years clearly proves that. The policy makers at Perfetti were wise enough to grasp the point that there’s only so much one can harp on the qualities of a mint and that’s not going to build a brand name.
Having understood that, they embarked upon a theme that described very little about the product itself but simulated situations in which the Mentos consumer was shown to be having greater presence of mind and that was indirectly attributed to consuming Mentos mints.
Most ads in this category generally talked about fresh breath or the more tongue in cheek suggestion that mints help a guy attract a girl. That’s where the Mentos ad deviated from the other ads in this category. “Mentos doesn’t talk about the functional benefit at all – it works on a psychological level, where people associate the brand with the imagery of ‘smartness’.”
Perfetti India’s association with the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, the people behind the ‘Center Fresh’, ‘Center Shock’, ‘Alpenliebe’ commercials, is perhaps the best thing that happened to both. O & M’s expertise has helped Perfetti develop a brand name in mints which many were sceptical about. They conceptualised a theme, which didn’t need the product to be shown, but delivered a strong message about the product.
The commercial opens showing a college boy who is late for the class running and at same time trying to tuck his shirt in. The class is already in progress and the lecturer is busy scribbling something on the board. As the boy enters the class he attracts the attention of the rather stern lecturer who consults his watch and hollers at him “‘Ab aa rahe ho’? Get out! (Is this the time to come to class? Get out!)” The boy leaves the class while his classmates look on sympathetically. You have a male voiceover uttering: “‘Yeh hain aam zindagi’ (This is ordinary life.)”
The ad then switches to the next scene where the same boy is again shown scampering to the class, obviously late again. Here is the crux of the whole commercial. The boy instead of entering as usual decides to make a smart move. The lecturer is once again shown busy writing something on the board. The boy taking advantage of the the situation starts walking backwards towards his seat. When the lecturer turns around the boy is halfway through the hall but appears to the lecturer as though he is about to sneak out under his very nose. Irritated, the lecturer barks, “‘Kahaan ja rahe ho’? Sit down! (Where do you think you’re going? Sit down!)”
Mission accomplished, the ‘smart’ boy casually takes his seat, while a girl sitting next to him smiles, admiringly. The voiceover makes a telling statement, “‘Yeh hain Mentos zindagi’. (This is the Mentos life.)”
The boy acknowledges the girl’s appreciation by placing an empty wrapper of Mentos on the desk, with the voiceover giving the final message: “Mentos… ‘Dimaag ki batti jala de’. (Mentos… Makes one think fresh.)”
If you care to observe, nowhere the consumption of Mentos is shown, yet the ad sends a strong message across about the product.
The Group Creative Director is Abhijit Avasthi of O & M and the brain behind the concept. Execution was done by Rajesh Krishnan of ad filmmaker, Footcandles. It is interesting to note what Krishnan has to say, “I found the Mentos script so interesting, all it required was simple execution. The only thing that mattered was that the idea, that is the clever joke, should come through at the end of it. When other ads shout so much, we kept the execution simple. We thought of taking a different approach in the belief that ‘Silence speaks louder than words’.''
This particular ad has been so successful that it has been decided to dub in various languages and shown across Asia and other European countries. That's a feather in the cap of Perfetti India.
There have been other ads of Mentos recently, but this particular one takes the cake because it features a young college student, which many of the country’s youth identify with.
Mentos maybe a breath freshener, but the message the brand image conveys is ‘think fresh’.
MBFarookh.
