A timeline, to begin with:
August 20, 27 – Lux Cozi launches its new ad featuring Varun Dhawan
September 6 – Amul Macho complaints to ASCI Lux Cozi plagiarized its 2007 (banned!) ad’s concept
September 8 – Lux Cozi advertorial celebrating the success of the ad
September 24 – Amul Macho relaunches Toing for the sub-brand Sporto
September 26 – ASCI dismisses Amul Macho claims
September 28 – Lux Cozi advertorial celebrating the dismissal of Amul Macho’s plagiarism complaint, by ASCI
Possibly because I’m not the target audience, I had not heard about (or seen) the new ad by Lux Cozi featuring Varun Dhawan until Amul Macho complained to the ASCI that Lux Cozi had copied Amul Macho’s 14-year-old ‘Toing’ ad.
Interestingly, the new Varun Dhawan ad, on the date of the complaint making news, was unavailable on the official Lux Cozi YouTube page, though someone had re-uploaded the deleted video on a Varun Dhawan fan page on YouTube.
The ad, dated August 20, 2021, as per the card shown in the beginning, was conceived by the agency Yellow Beetle.
The same ad was uploaded on Lux Cozi’s official YouTube channel on September 25, 2021,, but with the date August 27, 2021, mentioned at the start.
The most visibly common element between both ads was that they had a woman, one purportedly from a tier-2/3 city (that image created due to the surroundings and set-up of the ads – a river bed where women come to wash clothes, in the old Toing ad; terrace that typically symbolizes a smaller/tier-2 town, in the Varun Dhawan ad), demonstrating that she is having her say. JG Hosiery, the company behind Amul Macho, lists a few more narrative elements as being similar and it makes for an amusing read 🙂
The way the woman holds up the underwear
The color of the underwear
The shape of the underwear
Specific expressions of the supporting cast when they see the underwear
The music theme
The setting is that of a small town and including washing/drying clothes
Here is the 2007 ‘Toing’ ad featuring Sana Khan washing her man’s underwear. The ad was conceived by the agency Saints & Warriors.
If you see the list, and then see the ads, it does look like Amul Macho has a point (though ASCI does not agree – see more at the end of this post). But more than this being plagiarism, it plays out more like a homage where a rival brand is so impressed with Amul Macho’s idea that it decided to emulate its own variant.
Even as Amul Macho complained to the ASCI, Lux Cozi went on an overdrive to showcase that its new ad was a huge hit. How can that be demonstrated if there were no online metrics like Likes, Shares, or Comments when the ad was not even available online? Remember that people can only watch the ad on TV, they cannot Like it the way they do online 🙂
Simple!
Lux Cozi took to the city supplements of The Times of India where everything is paid for because the entire supplement is an advertorial paper.
So Lux Cozi went to town two days after Amul Macho’s ASCI complaint about how popular its ad was using paid advertorials in all the city supplements of The Times of India.
Last week, Amul Macho launched its new ‘Toing’ ad, featuring Rashmika Mandanna and Vicky Kaushal, made by the agency Leo Burnett. Except for the background setting (tier-2 city to an ultra-modern Yoga studio), the direction was similar – women having their say. Sana Khan, in the decade-old Toing ad had her say with her man’s underwear (and not the man himself) while Rashmika has her say directly aimed at Vicky Kaushal.
Now, in hindsight, it probably makes sense why Amul Macho went to ASCI against a decade-old ad being imitated by Lux Cozi! All the three ads—Amul Macho’s 2010 ad featuring Sana Khan, Lux Cozi’s Varun Dhawan ad, and the new Macho Sporto ad featuring Rashmika—had scripts that purportedly had women expressing their desires/feelings in bawdy or direct ways.
It looks like Amul Macho’s plan of relaunching their Toing under the Sporto label this year was preempted by Lux Cozi’s Varun Dhawan ad even though the background setting in the new ad couldn’t have been more different.
But, from a PR point of view, I’d say that Lux Cozi played its cards much more intelligently. Amul Macho took the old-world approach of earning attention by going to ASCI and making news about the complaint.
In response, Lux Cozi spoke to people using a media vehicle that gives them direct control of what they say, without media’s cross-questioning.
On September 26th, ASCI delivered its verdict in favor of Lux Cozi. And much like their earlier salvo, Lux Cozi took up paid advertorials to celebrate the verdict, once again outdoing Amul Macho’s earned media approach which made news for not-so-flattering reasons now.
Ironically, when the first Toing ad was launched, it was 2007 and the ad was being primarily consumed through television.
There were complaints about the ad that it was obscene, and that an obscene ad was being shown during prime time on TV. ASCI had dismissed the complaint initially, but the Information & Broadcasting Ministry had banned the ad eventually!
But Amul Macho’s was not the only ad that was banned by the I&B Ministry that year! A Lux Cozi ad too was banned for being vulgar along with the Amul Macho Toing ad! This one:
Amul Macho had even launched a sequel featuring Sana Khan and a group of Orangutans, later in 2007, once again made by the agency Saints & Warriors!
That Amul Macho chose to defend a now-banned ad, in 2021 and raking up memories of the brand’s communication being banned says something. But what they truly seemed to be defending is the new Sporto Toing ad that is a spirit-sequel to the 2007 Toing ad (and not a direct sequel).
In 2021, most of these ads are not consumed via television, and regardless of age, everyone has access to all this and a LOT more via personal devices that they can use to search and consume endlessly. In this day and age, merely placing ads on TV does not guarantee visibility – brands need to draw attention towards the ads if the ads don’t do that job themselves (and lead people to become the ads’ media vehicles by sharing them actively between themselves). So this to-and-fro with ASCI probably worked as a good opportunity for both Amul Macho and Lux Cozi to draw people’s attention towards their respective new campaigns.
Even as Lux Cozi was able to reach more audiences and control the narrative, Amul Macho probably was more efficient in the use of media – they used news organically to be heard and seen (bringing a fresh bout of interest for the ‘Toing’ platform that is now way too old), while Lux Cozi paid news to be heard and seen.
And that’s how interconnected brand marketing is, these days. It’s a mesh of advertising, PR (earned media), advertorial (paid news), and celebrities!
When you look at the larger picture, it looks like both brands have stayed true to their core narratives: Amul Macho continued to not show a man in his bare essentials (that is, their product) and it was always shown from a woman’s perspective in the Toing series – earlier, Sana Khan’s, and now Rashmika’s (while the man was not shown at all in the former—the sequel’s male orangutan does not count—Vicky Kaushal is fully clothed in the latter, with only a glimpse of the branded waistband). After getting banned, the Toing slogan was changed to ‘Bade Aaram Se’, featuring actors like Saif Ali Khan.
In comparison, Lux Cozi seems to be always aiming lower (pun intentional) – if you look at their banned ad from 2007, and the new one featuring Varun Dhawan, things are a lot more pronounced (I’d stop short of using the word ‘explicit’) – a man has to be shown in his bare essentials (that is, their product), there has to be a close-up shot of the product and the woman has to be shown gawking at it.
Amul Macho was perhaps better off not comparing their ads to Lux Cozi’s, either through a complaint, or any other method.