Borderless - one of the best Ads ever

If I were to rate Airtel as a mobile communication service provider, I could fill a page with my rantings.

Their network seems to fail suddenly and as has happened with me, it happens just when you need it the most. Your ring tone is changed without your approval, which means that you are charged without your approval as well!!! You get a bill which seems inflated and you don’t remember making so many calls and the call centre rep always passes it on in a daymare replay of a Catch 22 situation. And just when you are planning to pay online a day before last date, their website develops glitches. As is very apparent, that’s about a 360 degree circle complaints as far as Airtel is concerned. Maybe i stick to it only because the other service providers are even worse!!!!

However, one thing that no one can take away from them is the fact that they make some of the best ads on TV...quite thought provoking and quite attention arresting. To tap into the human need of communication and turn that need into some of the most beautiful ads, Airtel according to me, can attribute a good part of goodwill that people have about them to their ads that touch a place deeper than a certain cute dog ever can.

Their latest ad is a case in point.



This can be easily termed as one of those 'ads with a social message', which it is and it’s a great marketing tool at that, which is one way to look at it. But...

If we just look at the ad from a purely aesthetic point of view, it’s fantastic in its ideation and execution. The ad obviously points to border between the Palestine and Israel but the way it has been shot, it can just be any place - from Kashmir to Cyprus.

And what is amazing about the ad is that it has packed all the subtleties in about a minute and a half. The way that the older boy cajoles the other way to pass on the wall using sign language, the way that the other boy is hesitant at first because obviously he has been taught to suspect the other side, the way that innocence wins out in the end and the glee on the faces on both the boys when the ball is kicked back.

And then the coup of the ad.

The spontaneous movement towards the fence and how when the smaller boy gets stuck in the barb wire, the elder boy lends a helping hand. The expression on their faces when they actually stand defiant of the barb wire, small rebels who just want to play with each other, is simply overwhelming. And the voice over says “There’s no wall, no barrier that can keep us apart, if only we talk to each other”. At that moment you want to forget that it’s a marketing ad. It becomes a classic in its own sense.

To the tune of the Airtel tune, composed by A R Rehman, the camera starts panning out, moving upwards, the two boys start playing football in the no-man’s land, between the barb wires, as if creating a small peaceful country of their own.

You realize after seeing a few times that a lot of thought has gone into making this ad. A point in fact is that football is taken to be the sport which has a much more of a global language than cricket, a sport that an Indian marketer might have been tempted to take as a theme. But taking football made it universal.

It’s these small things that make this Airtel ad possibly one of the best ads ever.

Hats off, Airtel!!!