Cadbury Bournvita seems to be on an offline activation spree. I shared a video from them (on LinkedIn) that they had shared on March 14th, called ‘The Exam Collection’.
As I had mentioned, it was clearly and way-too-obviously gimmicky, but well-intentioned with the point it was trying to make.
A week before this, Bournvita had shared another video, for Women’s Day. This one:
This one was even more gimmicky, but yet again, well-intentioned in the point it was making. But what specifically annoyed me in both the videos is the sweepingly uniform and similar reaction that people showcase.
In the Women’s Day video, every single woman, without any exception, seems baffled that she hasn’t bought anything for her own health. This flies completely against the increasing awareness among women that their health matters a LOT too. In fact, Horlicks has been hammering this point for years, with their Women’s Horlicks range that they launched in 2008!!
I get it – this is a video by Bournvita, and they are trying to make a point. And we viewers are mighty cynical these days that we almost know in the back of our hearts that such videos are mostly scripted, staged and enacted. Yet, we go with the flow because of the point being made.
But, would it be too much to include just one woman who assertively says, “Oh I know! But I didn’t tell you about the badam I bought! That’s specially for my health that I soak every night and eat, skin peeled off, in the morning!”.
For this, the lady manning the fake-counter need not look baffled, but take it in the right spirit and simply say, “You’re just the kind of person we were looking for, in this exercise! Why don’t you also include our product in your roster for your own health? It has X, Y and Z!”.
Adding one such counter-example could at least fake some reality into the already adequately-fake video.
Or, consider this Hasbro video.
Every single kid featured here says his/her parents don’t play with them… *at all*! There is no middle ground, no exception… complete sweep of one side of the story that makes it oh-so-fake. If just one child jubilantly says, ‘Oh yeah, I play with my papa! We love playing hide and seek inside the house’, will that diminish the impact somehow? I’d think the opposite – it’d bring some balance to the narrative to show that not every parent is like that (which is a fact). Hasbro could easily suggest to that kid (later, when the reveal has happened), ‘Next time, you can add this Hasbro game to the list of things you can play with your papa!’.
Let me showcase a parallel to this line of thought from another category that peddles ‘germ removal’ in their advertising.
Take a look 🙂
I’m sure (so-called candid) activation video script writers could take a clue from these brands and infuse a degree of reality in their so-obviously fake videos 🙂