What's your take on: Steinlager Pure's 'Born to defy'

(‘What’s Your Take On’ is 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 opinion on a commercial, mail us on**mukta.lad@web18.in**and we’ll holler the moment we have an ad for you!)

This week, we have Steinlager Pure’s ‘Born to Defy’ up for a review. We expected a beer commercial, like most, to be humorous and fun, but we were mistaken. Check out the commercial here:

We sent the ad to Tripta Bhatia, copywriter, Grey Digital;Shasvathi Siva, copywriter, 22feet Tribal Worldwide and Sofia Ashraf, copy supervisor, Ogilvy & Mather, to find out whether they liked it or not. Here’s what they had to say…

Did you think the ad was ‘yay’ or ‘meh’?

Tripta: Woah! I think it is pretty kickass especially when you find out he’s a world champion free diver.

Shasvathi: The first time I viewed it, I had mixed feelings. But I guess I’ll go with yay.

Sofia: Yaay with a side order of damn!

What appealed the most to you?

Tripta: Eerie voices paired with the stunning visuals. It gave me the heebeegeebees!

Shasvathi: I’m very passionate about swimming. I took an instant like to the visuals, so aesthetically shot. The music gelled along pretty well too.

Sofia: The simple and chilling visual of a man go down a dark, cavernous abyss. Hmmmm, sounds like last night.

Is there anything you didn’t like about the commercial?

Tripta: It made me think, “People out there are doing crazy things. What the hell am I doing with my life?” It’s not a great thought for your advertising career.

Shasvathi: The voice over could have been better.

Sofia: The writing could have been better. It was slightly dated.

What do you think the insight was?

Tripta: I think the insight is ‘Beer makes you do things that would otherwise seem impossible’. I know it’s true because that’s happened a lot to me.

Shasvathi: We are exclusive, and high class. Show the impossible. Our beer is only for those who have broken world records. Not for the generic ‘janata’.

Sofia: The insight was that the director just bought an expensive underwater camera.

If you had to make a funny commercial with ‘born to defy’, how would you go about it?

Tripta: A typical Indian girl of marriageable age is shown ‘rishtas’and she melodramatically turns her head around 14 times and says no to all of them.

Shasvathi: I’d probably work around stereotypes. And break them. For example, take the CEO of some big company and show the two different sides of him. One is his serious outlook at work, giving his best. The second, when he’s out with his friends drinking on aFridaynight, how he chugs down a glass of Steinlager.

Sofia: I wouldn’t! Coz I was born to defy!