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The Masala Wars

Following the ramazan bandwagon and the much hyped recent advertisement of Shan the creative minds at National could not sit tight and got to their feet. Their recent advertisement depicts a mini bait bazi contest where the actors try to connect the dots to National's portfolio of products.

In all honesty it was a good but a poorly executed effort. In times like these when people switch TV channels or drift off to their cell phones the minute they get the slight feeling of being bored, no one would sit and watch a 3 minute 50 second long ad. I somehow failed to connect with it,maybe it was because of the actors not fully engaging me in their experience, or the fact that the tradition of bait bazi stands dead in today's digitized era or maybe  the  fact that this very theme of celebrating Eid and Ramazan with pardesis  has been explored and exploited by our very dear competitor,Shan.

Shan did a wonderful job of communicating the Eid in Pardes feeling last year when it brought the two brothers together in Turkey celebrating Eid away from home. Although even that advertisement spanned over 3 minutes it somehow made us connect to it.

My two cents to National is that next time maybe it will be a better idea to recruit some good actors to establish that spark with the audience and really make them live the National experience.

Sadaf Taimoor


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