Dettol launched a new range of bath soap and handwash recently, called ‘Dettol Co-Created with Moms’. Yes, quite a mouthful 🙂
The ads (by McCann) were on air during the India vs. Pakistan match too.
It looked remarkably non-Dettol’ish and significantly more Dove’ish, with the kind of models (‘moms’) chosen, the close-up shots of their surprised expression, them speaking to the camera like it is an intimate friend, white’ish soap bar and so on.
Given the surprised expression worn by the model-moms, that perhaps is the very idea. To keep this new Dettol away from the parent brand, despite the name. Dettol hasn’t uploaded this ad in the ; instead, it chose to keep it in a .
The use of ‘surprise’ as an element (feigned by the models in the ad, in a way to frame that surprise onto us, audiences, too) immediately reminded me of Bata’s #SurprisinglyBata campaign (by Contract Advertising India).
In the Dettol ad, the models are surprised that the new range has ‘0% parabens, 0% talc and 0% dyes’. Question is: does it mean the normal Dettol has all of these that we should be worried about?
Similarly, for the Bata ad series, Kriti Sanon says, ‘Bata invited me to visit their store. I was like Bata? Isn’t that school shoes? Then I thought let me shop for mom’. In another ad, she drags Sushant Singh Rajput to a Bata store to buy shoes, to which he exclaims, ‘Bata? We’re going for a party. Not office’. I do understand that there’s a payoff at the end of the ad where they break the notion expressed by the stars, on behalf of us, the audiences, but consider the fact that Bata, itself, using its own money, is reiterating a painfully outdated notion about the brand.
In Bata, the brand is revealed at the start, the actors are cynical, and then pleasantly surprised. In Dettol, the brand is hidden (as they are pleased with it), and then revealed, to have them surprised (pleasantly… because that’s not what they expected from THAT brand).
Pretty bold strategy by both brands, since they are supremely confident that the surprise at the end will erase the earlier opinions (Bata is not cool enough, and Dettol is harsh/chemical-laden)… enough to buy the product or walk into the showroom. The damage to the parent Dettol brand is still a moot point, though.