Ambuja Cement says it best, by saying nothing at all

At most times, children are the world’s best philosophers. How many times have we come across a child utter a simple, obvious truth and marveled at the deeper meaning behind it?

Ambuja Cement’s latest TV commercial by Publicis Worldwide effectively leverages this quality in a child. Here, the film opens in a classroom, where a Hindi class is in progress. The teacher is expecting the students to turn in an essay on ‘walls’. She catches a young boy, Arjun, talking in class and picks on him to read out his essay before the class. Arjun falters and it is obvious that he hasn’t written it. He begins speaking about walls in general - good and bad. The entire class laughs at him and the teacher begins to get impatient.

She asks Arjun to elaborate, and suddenly, he starts talking about his friend Iqbal who is a great cricket player. Iqbal doesn’t play cricket with him anymore, because apparently there has appeared a wall between them. Arjun says he cannot see any such wall. Everyone in the room goes silent and the teacher is stunned. Amitabh Bachchan’s VO says comes into play and says we should break all walls that create differences between us, while walls made of brick, mortar and water must be built only with Ambuja Cement.

Catch the commercial here:

The ad is minimal, no-frills and subtle, which is perhaps what works in its favour. With just a flying mention of ‘Iqbal’, the ad gives away so much about the needless communal tension that we build up, without any external help. Of course in a child’s eyes it doesn’t make sense. The question is, why does it make sense even when we are adults?

Just so little said, but so much is implied. If that isn’t the mark of a good ad, I don’t know what is!

Credits:

Client: Ambuja Cement

Creative agency: Publicis Worldwide

Chief creative officer: Bobby Pawar

Chief strategy officer: Partha Sinha

ECDs: Amod Dani, Timsy Gupta

Copywriters: Amod Dani, Partha Sinha

Creative director and art director: Umesh Rawool

Account management: Paritosh Srivastava, Chandan Jha

Client team: Vivek Deshpande, Vilesh Parab

Production house: Nirvana

Director: Prakash Varma

Executive producer: Sneha Iype