Much has been said and enough hair split on the timing of the Birla Sun Life Insurance commercial starring cricketer Yuvraj Singh. Inquisitions about the timing and date of the shoot, the change in the copy and the subsequent revelations of Yuvraj’s illness have made the advertisement a favourite with controversy-junkies.
Here’s my two bits about it. I like the ad. I have liked the campaign since it started, about a year after I quit JWT, the agency that created it.
I do not remember a stronger insight into modern sport in general and Indian cricket in particular since insurance was invented. Sport is unpredictable, life, even more. This is the broad territory in which the campaign operates.
Would I sleep with a clear conscience if I had done it? I think I would. Here’s why. Yuvraj has been a brand ambassador for Birla Sun Life some time now, even before the world cup, in fact. This is the campaign line and positioning since day one. (And I know from experience that this kind of production could not have been rigged up at short notice.)
So everything staying the same, just because my campaign begins to resonate more due to the way circumstances have transpired, should I pull it off? And if a campaign resonates less due to circumstances - a heavy defeat, lack of form, negative public disposition toward a celebrity - then I have to take it off anyway. So basically, the safest thing to do is to have a campaign that doesn’t resonate too well at all.
Here’s what would have been unethical to my mind even though sound marketing logic would dictate precisely this at most times. The marketing team sits down and figures out a POA. Let’s wait and see if he recovers. If he does, we go to town with him. If he doesn’t, we slink away and sit tight. And by the way, do not renew his contract till we have confirmed news about where his health is headed.
Instead, the brand decides to stick by its ambassador through a rough time. And by all available reports, goes ahead only with what Yuvraj is comfortable with. The point here is this. It is a call that only Yuvraj can take and it will differ from individual to individual.
Some of us celebrate our mortality. Some fear it. Some fight it. Some plan for it. And some even mourn it. Who are we to judge how Yuvraj wants to approach his life and his ailment?
And while marketing and branding will liberally borrow off the lives of Martin Luther King Jr., Che Guevara, Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon and Michael Jackson and more, who is to say they would have enjoyed the same marketable potential were their lives not cut short prematurely? And what about that biggest sporting brand ever built on the fear of human mortality - Lance Armstrong.
The point is this. We all draw our own lines. Yuvraj has drawn his and is proud of the fact that he is going to fight his illness every step of the way.
What we need to do is to find better things to fight about.
The author is co-founder and chief creative officer, Taproot India
