If you are wondering what that title means… persist. You would get your answer at the end of this post 🙂
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I say ‘Surf Excel and Doordarshan’? Chances are, it is likely to be ‘Lalita Ji’… right?
While the famous ad was built around other things like the woman’s value-conscious behavior as a mirror to the potential buyers’ attitude, the hook was her name – Lalita.
Surf went on to use that hook to create a series where the name played a crucial role in the recall of the product and the ad.
Names can be interesting and powerful creative devices in advertising.
Remember Frooti’s Digen Verma (the Digen Verma campaign case study) campaign from February 2001 (agency: Everest)?
The entire campaign was built around that name! Of course, you could argue that we remember that name even today not because it was unique, but because it was hammered into our consciousness using a lot of media budget.
On a similar note, Lowe Lintas unleashed another name in November 2002 nationally using advertising – Balbir Pasha. ‘Kya Balbir Pasha ko AIDS hoga kya?’ was a catchphrase with the popularity of ‘Why did Kattappa kill Baahubali?’ back in those days.
(Did you notice a very young Nawazuddin Siddiqui in one of the Balbir Pasha ads?)
The Southern version of this campaign did not go with the same name. Instead, they used the name ‘PuLLi Raja’, and it was incredibly ‘viral’ back then. It was so popular that a real person with that name had a miserable time!
One of the industry segments that use names very frequently in advertising almost as a throwaway detail (and not as a well-planned hook) is the credit cards business. Whenever they showcase a credit card, it usually carries some name.
Many brands choose to not add a name at all and use the template – ‘Cardholder Name’. This Mobikwik ad is a good example (though this is not a credit card ad, of course).
But many other brands choose to use generic, common, or popular names that don’t refer to anyone specific. Here’s a series from American Express.
See the names used? ‘Kumar Saurabh’, ‘Rahul Raj’, ‘Sachi Gupta’, ‘Mohit Chaudhary’. Generic, forgettable, common. Unless you happen to know someone by those names in your life and are close to them 🙂
Or take this SBI card ad. The name? ‘Ankit Chopra’. Completely common.
How about this Visa ad?
‘Eisha Khanna’. Ok, that’s reasonably more unusual than Rahul Raj or Ankit Chopra.
But something interesting is happening recently. Take a look at this Slice ad from late 2021.
The name? ‘Bruce Wayne’ 🙂
That’s not a one-off random idea, though. Consider this January 2022 ad from Slice.
The name? A play on ‘Mona Lisa’ – ‘Money Lisa’ 🙂
Even more interesting? See this Uni card ad from November 2021.
‘Byomkesh Bakshi’!! Completely out of the blue! They could have chosen a generic ‘Aman Varma’ or something, but they had to choose the name of a famous fictional character, one that was made nationally popular through a famous Doordarshan series.
Is someone at the agency handling Slice and Uni having fun? Sure looks like that.
But my favorite name from an ad is not even in a credit card ad. It’s from an ad for Godrej safety lockers, all the way from May 2015. Take a look!
How can you not grant your attention to a name like that? ‘Lubdhika Wyutpanne’? I thought it sounded very Sri Lankan, for an Indian ad! And why this name? Who in the agency even conceived this name? And how?
The agency is Sixty Fifth Communications, by the way. The idea was to create curiosity around a specific feature in the Godrej Ritz safety lockers – a secret/hidden compartment inside the safe!! The agency had even created an audio version of this ad meant to be played before the movie starts in a cinema theater. Listen to this:
If you listen to this, you may perhaps not register the unique name, but in a print ad, it is mighty intriguing as a hook. In fact, there’s nothing more alluring than that name in the ad. The name is the hook that lures you in to read more!
You realize how unique a name like ‘Lubdhika Wyutpanne’ really is when you Google the name and find no search results at all! Zero results!
Yes, after this blog post goes live, there is bound to be at least one result 🙂
But just imagine – something as tiny and seemingly inconsequential as a name can make a piece of communication stand out and grab attention (that is, if you are not building the entire idea around a name)!
If you think the name is just an incidental detail, you would choose a generic, harmless name. But if you think of the name as a creative device, the opportunity is limited only by your imagination.
Of course, your piece of communication won’t go viral like Digen Verma or Balbir Pasha. But you are adding one more layer in the communication for people to remember the ad by. That’s always a useful addition, particularly when it doesn’t require a lot of money or time to think.
Chances are, that incidental, throwaway name could add a layer of virality, particularly in these days of social media virality.