Coke – Open Happiness – ‘Bike’ & ‘Chess’

Creative Agency – McCann Erickson, India





These two new commercials seen recently on Television from Coke seem to be a disappointment. Both commercials have Aamir in the cast but frankly, he is a waste. The ad per say is a new positioning of ‘Open Happiness’ but I think the makers confused us audiences somewhere in between.

The settings looks old, the ads lacks freshness in the quality of the film and Aamir is introduced all of a sudden in both commercials. I do agree that Aamir is more in the background – as a narrator of events and as a messenger of the Happiness story but do we need him to appraise us of the message – he is not bigger than the brand – I would much rather hear Coke’s take in the commercial than Aamir’s.

The message “Aap Muskurayenge, Bulbuley Gungunayenge” is a classic Prasoon line and can be figured from the way its spoken – but frankly it doesn’t do much for me. There is no hook – its not a line I will remember from the ad (which I believe is the intention of the makers).

The commercial has no relevance to its earlier ad or to current times. The only thing working for this campaign is that it’s a Coke campaign and Coke as a brand has no dearth of money for media buying because frequency is the only thing which saves this campaign from being ‘forgettable’.

I do hear that there are another 5 commercials in the same series to be released within due course of time – Lets hope there is some “happiness” about the coming ads at least!