Whats wrong with them?

For the past several days, you must have seen the promotional campaigns of TATA Docomo and Idea 3G. I have been wondering that why these advertisements have failed to leave any impression on the viewer. They both have a popular celebrity on their side, then why? The reason is very simple. The advertisements have gone from being insipid to irksome. Forget promotion, it has almost started hurting the brand value of both the brands.

Idea had started well with very interesting ads. Who can forget the ad wherein the problem of communication was resolved by "Idea" and we find out that Abhishek Bachchan was dumb in the whole act. Another TVC that caught everyone's eyeballs was the "speaking tree" wherein the man is asking if the tree is "post-paid or pre-paid". But then in came the 3G promotion. Abhishek Bachchan looks quiet a half-wit in all of the weakly written scripts. Hence, the three Bachchans only make his presence exasperating in the ad. Be it the three Bachchans on the treadmill or waiting at the bus stop, the whole script can't get more adrift. The brand personality of Idea is of a sincere brand and hence may be making funny and snazzy ads is not an option. But it does not give you the right to make such banal and trite ads which have the ability of boring the viewers to death!

The other culprit for the "most grotesque ads" is of course Tata Docomo. Its tagline says "keep it simple silly" lifted from Kelly Johnson's famous acronym KISS replacing 'stupid' with 'silly'. But their ads have encapsulated both the elements; utter stupidity and stark silliness. With the most tasteless jokes being told by Ranbir Kanpoor in a stand-up act he naturally fails to deliver.  All the TVCs have a similar problem to Idea's - lack of good script. In Tata Docomo's ads though, the whole campaign on television has been mishandled. Firstly, Ranbir Kanpoor has the personality of a lively and gracious choclate boy actor. Why would you tell him to wear a suit and perform in a lone act with the laugh tracks and fake applause? When launched in 2009 its tagline was "Do the new" and tried to woo the customers with 1p/sec tariff. It obviously had to get out of that brand personality. Ahemm, with this?

I wonder if more than hurting the brand personality of Tata Docomo and Idea, it has done harm to Ranbir Kanpoor and Abhishek Bachchan's image respectively; or vice-versa. Whatever the consensus might be, both the campaigns shall go down as the two of the most inglorious campaigns in the history of cellular advertisements.