Ad-spotting: The five worst brand placements in Hindi films

By Rajyasree Sen

If you got to drive around the beautiful Spanish countryside with your best buddies what would you rather be sipping - some lovely Moscatel or sangria or gallons of Mountain Dew? Apparently if you are the boys in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, the answer is Mountain Dew. They could have been innovative like Delhi Belly and made up a cold drink brand like the aptly named orange juice brand, Suntara. But that wouldn’t be product placement, would it?

Hrithik Roshan’s newest film is just the latest in a long chain of films that are starting to feel like 3 hour ad reels. In this case, it’s for Mountain Dew and Land Rover Discovery 4, their car of choice and of course for Spanish tourism.

It’s bad enough that you sit down at the theatre these days and even before the movie or the trailers starts, you are told by Bipasha that she doesn’t need to buy a house on the French Riviera, because she’s buying one in Gurgaon instead - and so should you. And then the ad is spooled repeatedly, because the advertisers bought two minutes of ad time and want most of the ad for their buck.

Once the film begins, there’s one brand endorsement after another.

[caption id=“attachment_43420” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A poster cut-out of the lead stars of ZNMD. Sam Panthaky/AFP”] [/caption]

Not all brand placement is horrible. There’s the good brand placement which is done subtly. And then there’s the really bad brand placement which hits you over the head with a sledge-hammer. Repeatedly.

Here’s my pet peeve list of the five worst brand placements in Hindi films.

Yaadein

I don’t know how many of you remember Yaadein but it was not just the swan song film of the Kareena and Hrithik pairing and their star-crossed love affair, it was also a murder of the senses by Subhash Ghai. Maybe knowing that there’d be no moolah coming in from ticket sales, Ghai decided to get endorsements from Coke and Pass Pass. And since subtlety is his fort, he not only went for repeated Coke banners in the background, he had Jackie da Shroff flaunting a key chain with the Coke logo. A key chain which kept being twiddled in front of the camera in every other frame the Jackster was in. And everyone kept offering each other Pass Pass in the film. I don’t know if Ghai realised that a male actor offering the female one some mouth freshener after a cycle race is not charming, it’s just insulting.

Taal

Yaadein wasn’t Ghai’s only flirtation with bad brand placement in his films. There was his magnum opus Taal, with junior Mrs B and a fast-balding Akshaye Khanna. This time though you couldn’t blame Ghai so much as the company which must have paid him big money to advertise their product in his film. There was an entire 10-second song segment around a Coke bottle. So along with a lilting background score, you had Akshaye Khanna looking at the bottle of Coke more lovingly than he was looking at Ash, and then proceeding to offer it to her as if it was a solitaire! Strange are the ways of Mr Ghai.

Continue reading on the next page

Kaal

Okay, I’m a huge fan of National Geographic Channel and this hurt me more than it hurt others. Karan Johar’s first overture of love to John Abraham was Kaal - a.k.a. the desi Blair Witch project with Ajay Devgan as the Blair Witch. The less said about the film the better - all it ended up being was a strange showreel for Nat Geo. John Abraham, in a sheer stroke of genius by KJo and Soham, was cast as a Nat Geo tiger expert called Krish Thapar. I don’t think Valmik Thapar took this as a compliment, but how clever and well-informed K-Jo and Soham are. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the entire film, but I do remember Nat Geo branding everywhere, and John Abraham fighting and overpowering an anaconda in the film, because that’s what Nat Geo explorers do in their free time. Also, supposedly when Nat Geo explorers go out into the field, they take along the missus and their not-so-bright friends, all dressed up as if they’re just about to hit the neighbourhood nightclub. Groovy.

Ta Ra Rum Pum

The movie which was like one big showreel for a bunch of brands with no film to write home about was Ta Ra Rum Pum. Remember this one? It had Saif as a F1 driver and a badly-wigged Rani Mukherjee as his loving wife. When they weren’t zooming in on Rani’s wig, you got close-ups of various auto brands from Castrol to Goodyear to Chevrolet. Wise move again for the producers, because the film didn’t make any audiences skip to its beat.

Koi Mil Gaya

Last but not least, let’s not forget Rakesh Roshan’s ode to E.T. with Koi Mil Gaya and the powder blue alien dressed like Yoda and Hrithik disco dancing with Preity Zinta when he wasn’t leaping from tree to tree. I remember the only saving grace of the film was Rekha shooting Bournvita down Hrithik Roshan’s gullet. That Bournvita will result in you becoming a primate and adopting a fantasy Jedi friend was not the messaging Bournvita wanted to send out, methinks. Hrithik also suddenly displays mental prowess akin to Koko the gorilla, and chooses Bournvita over coffee, tea or Preity, while saying ‘Main toh sirf Bournvita peeta hoon’.

[caption id=“attachment_43290” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“So along with a lilting background score, you had Akshaye Khanna looking at the bottle ofCokemore lovingly than he was looking at Ash.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images”] [/caption]

And just in case you hadn’t got your fill of Coke ads in other films, the last scene has Hrithik swig a can of Coke before being jettisoned off into the night sky with Zinta riding pillion on his Hero Honda bike. Dhak dhak!

Sadly this didn’t do for Hero Honda what Bobby did for Rajdoot bikes.

The best ads from the viewer’s perspective are the ones the companies never paid for. Like the re-jigged Santro in Delhi Belly which the company isn’t too thrilled about. My favourite one is the pro bono PR work Wake up Sid did for Time Out magazine, when they showed Konkona working for a magazine which looked strikingly similar to Time Out Mumbai. And which had a very “intern-friendly” Rahul Khanna as its editor. Thanks to Wake up Sid, Time Out must have suddenly got a flood of applications from nubile young journalists waiting to work under a Khanna-esque boss.

If we must suffer ad after ad in films, could they at least be fun and a tad believable? Like Meryl Streep editing Vogue in Devil Wears Prada. Instead of requiring a willing suspension of disbelief as when Piggy chops aka Priyanka Chopra plays a journalist at Verve in Dostana. Meanwhile let’s see if Zindagi will do for the Land Rover boys what Break ke Baad did for Volkswagen.

Rajyasree Sen is a restaurateur, TV connoisseur and unsolicited opinion-giver. You can read about her adventures with food and life in Delhi on her blog or follow her at @rajyasree.