| Hum a few bars of this jingle and chances are, someone will join you in the chorus. Broadcast on Doordarshan "" the only television channel in India back then "" Bajaj Electricals television commercial of 1984 was an instant advertising classic. |
| More than 20 years and innumerable other campaigns later, the ad for lightbulbs has been recreated and is back on TV. Only, this time the 30-second commercial is being aired on close to 20 channels. |
| The basic theme of the film remains unchanged, although it's been brought up to speed with the 21st century. The original 40-second ad, which was created by Heros Publicity, began with a voiceover question to an old man: which bulb do you use? |
| The reply came as a longish jingle: Jab main chhota ladka tha, badi shararat karta tha, meri chori pakdi jaati, jab roshan hota Bajaj. Kya rangeen jawani thi, ek raja aur ek rani thi, raja rani sharma jate, jab roshini deta Bajaj. Ab main bilkul boodha hoon, goli khaakar jeeta hoon, lekin aaj bhi ghar ke andar, roshni deta Bajaj. |
| The jingle hasn't changed, but the imagery has. The schoolboy reading comics under the covers with a torch has been replaced with a boy painting his sister's face. She wakes up and throws a toy at him as he runs out of the room. |
| Similarly, while the old ad had a young couple caught cuddling by the boy's parents, the new one has a young woman walking in on her cheating boyfriend. The last scene is of an old man dancing with his wife when the grandchildren turn up unexpectedly. |
| Again, that's different from last time, which showed an old man caught sneaking out a midnight snack from the fridge. The tagline's changed, too: the earlier "Roshni ki duniya ka sartaj. Bajaj" is now "hamesha aapke saath. |
| Why remake an old ad? "People always spoke of that old ad," says Shekhar Bajaj, chairman and managing director, Bajaj Electricals. That was underlined in 2004, when the company solicited in-house feedback on a new campaign, and the most frequent comment was that while the new ad was good, it couldn't match up to the 1980s one. |
| In fact, none of Bajaj Electricals' other campaigns over the years have come close to achieving that kind of recall. Bajaj himself agrees: "Even I don't remember the earlier campaigns." This is just a tried and tested way of increasing brand recall. |
| Once the decision to revive the old ad was taken in January, the next step was to make it relevant to the present day. For this, the company turned to its agency of nearly five years, Leo Burnett. |
| Says Leo Burnett National Creative Head K Sridhar, "It was easy since the brand promise remains the same: we last the longest. We have only tried to look younger and modern." |
| For that, the company is forking out over Rs 2 crore, compared to the Rs 40 lakh it spent over four years during the ad's first avatar. The new film was shot by Sanjay Shetty from Opticus over seven weeks at Filmcity Studios in Mumbai. |
| Slots have been booked on news channels like Aaj Tak and NDTV as well as movie and general entertainment channels such as SetMax, Zee TV and Zee Cinema. |
| As is the company's usual practice, the Bajaj Electricals ad will run in short bursts until the last week of October and then again in December. An addition with this campaign is radio spots: the jingle will play on about eight spots a day across eight cities for eight weeks. |
| That's quite a change from the last time this ad was made, when it was recorded onto video cassettes of more than 100 films. |
| Both the agency and the company vehemently disagree that remaking an old ad smacks of creative laziness. |
| "Marlboro stuck to its cowboy for nearly 60 years just because people liked it. We, too, have only tried to revive something people liked," says Sridhar. He should know. Sridhar's earlier worked on the remake of another Bajaj group ad, the Hamara Bajaj campaign for Bajaj Auto. |
| First aired in the late 1980s, the campaign showcased Bajaj as the only Indian-made scooter. When motorcycles became more popular and Bajaj became your father's scooter, the company brought back the ad, and the response was immediate. |
| Bajaj isn't the only company that works by the "if it worked well once, it will work just as well again" principle. Consumer electronics brand Onida was (in?)famous in the 1980s for its devil mascot. The forked-tail brand ambassador went underground for over six years before Onida dug him up again for his strong brand recognition. |
| "Bringing back old favourites are shortcuts to consumer memories. It worked for us," declares Vivek Sharma, vice president, marketing, Onida. |
| The company claims that while it grew at around 15 per cent a year between 1998 and 2003 (the non-devil years), sales are now growing at close to 40 per cent. And although the devil was associated with televisions, sales of other white goods from Onida have benefited, too. |
| Sharma has a word of caution, though: "You have to ensure that the core message you gave then is still relevant to the consumer." |
| WHO DID WHAT |
| Client: Bajaj Electricals Agency: Leo Burnett Creative: Russel Barrot Client servicing: Sandeep Patakh |
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