What's your take on: Peugeot's spot for 'personalised car horns'

‘What’s Your Take On’ is the first of a weekly feature, where we ask adland for their take on campaigns from across the globe. We trust you’ll enjoy the read; should you wish to give us your two cents on a commercial, mail us on mukta.lad@web18.in and we’ll holler the moment we have an ad for you!

Peugeot recently released a video promoting what seems like a shocking feature for cars - personalised horns. Of course, it was an April Fool’s joke, and of course, we had to ask around what adland’s youth thought about the gag!

We spoke to Shreyas Shevade, Creative Partner, Rediffusion Y&R; Rachel Pilaka, Senior Copywriter, Setu Advertising and Ankita Chemburkar, Senior Copywriter, iContract India to know their views.

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But before we get to them, here’s the commercial.

What is your take on the video? Yay or nay?

Shreyas: It would be extremely harsh and unfair on the copywriter if we judge this as an ad. It’s not. It’s an audio-visual announcement, and I think it was written and conceived with that brief in mind. And now that we have that cleared, I can say that it’s an extremely bad AV. Nay. No. Nada. Thumbs down. Pick your own personal negative response.

Rachel: Not wow, surely, but nicely done.

Ankita: Top notch! Watched the ad when I had four people around me, and they fell off their chairs in awe. A commonly heard phrase was ‘Kya innovation hai!’

[caption id=“attachment_81108” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Shreyas Shevade, left; Rachel Pilaka, top right; Ankita Chemburkar, bottom right[/caption]

The best thing about the ad…

Shreyas: The film craft. Not in a standalone sense, but only when you compare it with other elements of the ad.

Rachel: Personalising your horn!

Ankita: The personalised horn sounds, of course.

…and the worst?

Shreyas: The first 96 seconds.

Rachel: Very vague in the beginning. I bet it won’t hold your attention for long. I watched this because I was asked to.

Ankita: That it’s not real. Or is it…?

If you had to describe this ad to someone in a line, what would you say?

Shreyas: Something along the lines of “Hey! Have you watched this? Looks like Peugeot needs a new agency!”

Rachel: The Peugeot ‘get your own honk’ ad.

Ankita: “Slow on the build-up, but the end is worth it. No, really.”

What do you think would happen if Indians were allowed ‘personalised horns’ for their cars?

Shreyas: Obviously this was a lame April Fool’s prank, but the idea of personalised horns - however illegal and unrealistic - is quite cool as a concept. What would personalised horns in India be like? The obvious guess is swear words of local flavour, but I think we already hear those over horns anyway. So all it’ll do is save your vocal chords some strain.

Rachel: Noise pollution, chaos, confusion and irritating driver syndrome will rise to new levels.

Ankita: It’s enough that people honk so much in the first place. Can you imagine what would happen in a honk-happy country like ours? I shudder imagining angry people honking ‘Oyyye’ and teenaged-girls (the ones legally allowed to drive, of course) going ‘Oh my gawd, you just DID NOT cut in front of me’.

If you had to choose a personalized horn for your car, what would it be?

Shreyas: The beep-beep-poof of the roadrunner running away from Wile E. Coyote.

Rachel: Something to do with Coldplay, Scrappy Doo’s trademark ‘Puppy Power!’ or a train’s honk.

Ankita: The Mogambo laugh from Mr. India.