What's your take on: Ubisoft's 'Amazing Street Hack'

(‘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 onmukta.lad@web18.inand we’ll holler the moment we have an ad for you!)

This week at Firstbiz, we had Ubisoft’s ‘Amazing Street Hack’ up for review. Watch the video below:

We wanted to know what adland thought about this ‘hack’, so we spoke to Lester Fernandes, copy supervisor, Ogilvy & Mather;Eshwari Pandit, copywriter, Interactive Avenues and Yohan Daver, brand partner, BBH India for their opinion. Here is what they had to say about it:

What did you think of the hack? Yay or nay?

Lester: Yay. With two thumbs up.

Eshwari: Aye. Pretty useful thing, this.I wonder if you could use to zap other people’s phones into silence - I’d be all over that.

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Yohan: Seems a little too staged. But still ‘Yay’.

What did you think would happen in the end when you saw it for the first time?

Lester: The phone tech guy would install a call/text surveillance app that would send juicy conversation details back to the NSA who’d have a laugh about it.

Eshwari: Terrorist plan to take over Manhattan. What? Isn’t that how 90% of Hollywood movies with a brown guy go?

Yohan: I figured the stereotypical Indian would eventually break into song. Like all good stereotypical Indians.

[caption id=“attachment_86138” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] From L to R: Lester, Eshwari, Yohan[/caption]

What about the hack appealed to you the most?

Lester: I loved the real-world setting to demonstrate what it would be like to be in the video game.

Eshwari: It was rather clever, I’ll admit. Nicely done. Although, I wish the reveal were a bit more impressive than just showing the customer a phone screen.

Yohan: The scale of it. Also, car crashes are always nice to watch.

What did you like about it the least?

Lester: The waaaaayyy over-the-top Indian (Asian?) accent. Stereotyping much?

Eshwari: I was half expecting the shopkeeper to end his sentences with, “Oooh Krishna!” I mean, what is that accent?

Yohan: The ‘Apu’ accent.

What would you say the client brief was on this one?

Lester: Client: “Guys, we need to advertise our superbadasstrickedoutawesometechgasmic new game, with like, you know, a kickass video that will go viral.”

Creative: “Dude, we should like totally make this video about this phone app, that’s kinda like the phone in the game, and like totally go nuts with it on the street.”

Client: “Yass!” *insert Take All My Money meme*

Eshwari: “Show me what’s going to happen when the geeks finally inherit the earth.”

Yohan: Make a “viral”.

If you were the unsuspecting customer in the ad, what would you have done when the cops arrived on the scene?

Lester: I’d use the app to turn the cop cars off and keep them locked in.

Eshwari: Channeled my inner Apu and given the shopkeeper a run for his money. Probably would have asked the officers to, ’thank you come again.’

Yohan: Slip them a fifty.

If you had to make an ad to promote a game / app, what would it be and what would the ad be like?

Lester: I’d probably take a similar route, with a lot of theatricality and action, taking the usually personal experience out into the much larger scale of the real world. So for a game like Call Of Duty or Battlefield, I’d create a real world war scenario with ordinary people in their day jobs firing up RPGs. Everyone can be the hero of the day.

Eshwari: Probably a booth to give people a 4D demo at every Comic Con in the country in exchange for tweets and posts. Maybe like 5 minutes of gameplay for every tweet about WatchDogs. I rather like the idea of social media as currency.

Yohan: It would be awesome.