Campaign: Independence Day
Brand: Manyavar
Company : Vedant Fashions Pvt Ltd
Agency: Shreyansh Innovations, Kolkata
The Ad
The film opens on a little boy looking forward to Independence Day. He keeps on reminding his father about this special day again and again, and the necessity to wear ‘paramparik besh bhusha’. Finally on Independence Day, he wakes up early in the morning, gets dressed in his white kurta-pajama and even gets his father to don traditional attire. The ad ends with the message: Our kids are more patriotic than we know.
Our Take
When was the last time you celebrated Independence Day? After 68 years of freedom, August 15 is today more of a much needed holiday in the middle of a busy week, rather an occasion which ignites patriotism and nudges us to celebrate the country’s freedom. It’s a day that has been hijacked by politicians with the ordinary Indian relegated to the role of a bystander. Perhaps, it is only children who enthusiastically celebrate Independence Day as they dress up inwhite kurta-pajamas and hold aloft the tricolour. And it is this insight that the brand has worked on to wake us up from our stupor to celebrate Independence Day. As Ravi Modi, founder and MD, Manyavar, says, “We have all grown up mugging and reciting Hindi essays that highlight the importance of this day. The child’s cuteness and irrefutable argument in favour of wearing a kurta seals the deal for the father; and in turn, for every father, husband, uncle, brother, grandfather and kid watching the ad.”
More importantly, Manyavar, which is seen as a men’s wedding attire brand, has used the occasion to tell a telling tale — that every festival is an excuse to bring out our traditional clothes. The ethnic menswear category is a miniscule part of the overall ethnic wear market — in 2013 the ethnic wear market stood at $13,100
million of which attire for men accounted for just 3%. That is because ethnic menswear has largely been confined to wedding wear, unlike traditional wear for women which are worn round the year. The biggest challenge for men’s ethnic wear brands today is their diminishing relevance in every-day dressing. Fusion wear and mix-n-match concepts are gaining currency, thus relegating traditional ethnic wear to special occasions only. That is what this campaign of Manyavar is trying to change as it attempts to extend its reach beyond weddings and become relevant for every festive occasion, exemplified by its tagline “celebration wear”.
As Modi says, the brief was to take Manyavar out of the “just a wedding wear” space and make it an “every occasion wear”. Till now, its advertising has focused on wedding wear—its last television commercial in 2014 was around a Christian-Hindu wedding—but now it’s trying to change that. “There is a huge traditional wear space which Manyavar can tap with effective advertising.
So, how we see it is- any happy occasion = festival = traditional wear = Manyavar,” says Modi. That’s a smart move to play with the festive season, every marketer’s favourite season, just around the corner. Manyavar already has the first mover advantage; it is perhaps the only pan-India men’s ethnic wear brand other than Fabindia and NDTV’s Indianroots which also have a presence in this category. And this ad could just help them expand the category.
RATINGS: ***
