Zen Mobile's first brush up with Amitabh Bachchan in the new TVC of M-25

The tag line of the advertisement is ' "Start a following" which explains that M25, with its aggressive features is very appealing and useful at the same time. The brief given to the creative agency Bates 141 was to make a relevant but interesting campaign featuring Mr. Amitabh Bachchan, targeting the Tier 2 & Tier 3 towns, as these being Zen's major markets. They were asked to position M 25 as a mini theatre with extensive battery back-up and excellent full video application and MP4 feature.

Speaking exclusively to Adgully, Smarth Bansal, National Marketing Head, Zen Mobile, said, "We wanted a TVC that would target the consumers in the B and C category. The target audience has been such because our new phone has a longer battery life and consumers in the rural market look for this specific feature. Moreover, they look for entertainment in the form of music and videos and which also requires a long battery life. Moreover with Amitabh Bachchan on board we want to attract the emotional connect he commands across the country."

This is probably the first time people would get to experience a mobile with such a long battery back up and experience quality entertainment in its big OVGA screen with excellent sound quality. The most significant insight is that unlike the "conventional' mobiles, M25 has a battery back-up with 1728 hours on standby mode and a mammoth 16 hours (approx.) of talk time and application usage.

Through this advertisement, Zen Mobile is trying to reach out to its target customer and evoke interest, curiosity, and surface expectations from product experience. The idea behind developing the advertisement was to generate mental engagement with the brand and desirable brand association by bringing experience of a mobile like M25 to the forefront.

The scene is filmed at night and Amitabh Bachchan plays the perfect host for the evening by being the protagonist of the ad with villagers beside him ready for the screening of Dhoom. Amitabh Bachchan is seen counting money from the show's collections while the villagers are busy watching the movie. The music from Dhoom is playing in the background. In the following scene, the villagers are frowning as the projector goes off bringing in a collective sigh of disappointment. Everybody started asking their money back and Amitabh tries to appease them in the next scene. Amitabh Bachchan then asks everyone to stop screaming and shows them the M 25 mobile phone and everyone is dumb-struck and watches it in amazement. On their query, Amitabh says that it is a Zen Mobile mini-theatre. The succeeding scenes portray the confusion of the villagers to which Amitabh shows them the magic of the phone. He puts on the movie, Dhoom with the song Dhoom Machale to which the crowd grooves and excitedly sits through.

The next clip reveals the cause of their action which is the new Zen M25 Mobile. The functions of this mobile gives the user the theatre experience with its big OVGA screen with excellent sound quality. Infact it has 72 days battery standby time which shows in the next scene. Coming back to Amitabh, in the concluding scenes, he sees two women standing behind him. When asked, the women shyly say if they could see another film to which Amitabh, as the protagonist jubilantly agrees. He concludes by saying that M 25 has the unfathomable quality of not one, but showcasing atleast ten films. This is then, followed by the branding slate, "Zen Mobile-Start a following.

There were certain aspects which were observed in the designing of the advertisement like: 1) Distinctive creative. For instance, various situations and characters have been used creatively to convey the two best qualities of the mobile. 2) The scene rests in a village domain to bring a idiosyncratic appeal of the surrounding, thus showcasing the best way to promote its message in simple words. For example, by keeping a village scene, Zen Mobile has creatively portrayed its strong presence in the rural areas. 3) The commercial has the element of rationality, emotions and personal relevance which is requisite to evoke positive response.

The creative agency for the ad is Bates 141. The director's name is Mr. Shoojit Sircar who is renowned for making the film on Gujarat Tourism. The TVC was shot in Filmistan Studio, Mumbai and duration of the TVC was one day. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]