Ogilvy India's newest commercial is all about 'two spoonfuls of dal'

Very rarely do we come across a commercial that should come with a spoiler alert, just like in whodunit movies. How often does one encounter an ad where the viewer can’t guess the product right until the end, but once he knows, he realizes that it was the simplest connect in the world?

Ogilvy India’s latest ad for Fortune Oil is one such. Clocking 4.40 minutes, to say it is long would be an understatement.

The film begins with an old woman slowly climbing a long flight of stairs. Cut to the scene where a nurse is trying to feed some food to a male patient, at which point the old lady walks into the room. The man is very weak, but looks at the lady and almost smiles; the nurse stiffens at the lady’s presence.

The lady, the man’s grandmother, tells the nurse he hasn’t eaten for three days. She goes on to insist that the hospital’s dal isn’t going to do anything for him and just two spoonfuls of home-made dal would do him good. The nurse is annoyed and tells the grandmother, “Even I have been insisting for three days that no outside food is allowed to a patient.” The grandmother insists that it isn’t ‘outside’ food, but completely home-made. The nurse gives her a look and the grandmother is now crestfallen. She walks out dejected.

Cut to the next day, where the grandmother enters the room again, cheerfully, dabba in tow. She tries new ways of convincing the nurse to feed her grandson the dal. She relives an anecdote about him devouring six cupfuls of dal in his childhood in one go, and ends with her requesting the nurse to let him be fed the dal. Again, the nurse refuses politely.

This routine continues for many days, where the lady tries different ways - politeness, friendliness, flattery, anger - to just get the nurse to allow her grandson two spoonfuls of dal. Once, she even spills the dal all over the floor by mistake, where the nurse helps her clean up out of pity. Finally, the nurse has had enough of the grandmother and loses her temper at her one day, leaving the grandmother visibly distressed.

However, she turns up again the next day, this time with two dabbas! She tells the nurse the big dabba is for her, while leaving unsaid who the other one is for. The nurse refuses to allow the man to be fed. Later, in private, the nurse eats the food that the grandmother has made for her.

The day after, she greets the grandmother of her own accord, surprising the latter. Again, the lady begins her plea to feed her grandson two spoonfuls of dal and this time, the nurse agrees. The grandmother cannot believe her ears, and fumbles to feed the two spoonfuls before the nurse changes her mind. The grandson swallows the food without resisting for the first time, and soon guzzles down more dal on his own. The lady is very glad and touched, and kisses him on the forehead.

The end slate for Fortune Oil comes in, bearing the slogan “Ghar ka khaana, ghar ka khaana hota hai” (Home-cooked food is after all, home-cooked food).

The commercial is sure to tug at the heartstrings, mostly because the love of home-cooked food is so relatable for most people. The little details - like the insights for the grandmother’s ‘innovative’ ways to convince the nurse and the nurse’s consequent exasperation for instance, are what make the film endearing. Lastly, the actors playing the nurse and the grandmother do a great job in their roles, bringing the commercial’s script alive.

Over four minutes, you say? Well, you’ll hardly notice.

Watch Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and creative director, Ogilvy & Mather India and South Asia, speak about the commercial in a conversation with Storyboard: