Idea's 'Telephone Exchange' – Ek doosre ko samajhne ke liye!
Conceptualised by Lowe Lintas, the latest campaign aptly brings alive the core insight with an easily relatable marital situation
BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | February 26, 2013
Idea Cellular has always highlighted the role of simple telephony answers in solving large social problems. 'An Idea can change your life' has been the fundamental plank on which the brand has been built. However, in its latest campaign, the brand addresses not so much a societal issue but an endearingly “closer to my life” story that impacts a very large part of society. The latest campaign is based on the insight of “Ek doosre ko samajhne ke liye telephone exchange, what an Idea!” The widely appreciated commercial has been conceptualised by Lowe Lintas & Partners.
So far the brand championed socio-cultural anxieties like caste war, democracy, language barrier, saving paper from afar, from imaginary worlds rather than worlds that consumers regularly encounter in their daily lives. The brand viewed people holistically, seeking to understand every single time what gives their life meaning, rather than customers of category benefits.
The new story is about a husband and wife in a normal household having a heated argument in a typical busy-morning situation, and sarcastically poking each other to put themselves in the other person's shoes to know how stressed their lives are. Their young son who is witnessing this argument gets an idea to exchange his parent's mobile phones, so that unknowingly his mom and dad get “to put themselves in the other person's shoes”. What follows next is that both the husband and the wife receive a string of calls during the course of the day which were actually meant for the other person. Husband receives wife's calls and vice-versa! Be it the wife receiving the boss's call meant for her husband to convey the news of sales dropping or the maid calling up the husband to report that she won't be coming for the next 2-3 days, it's all stress-filled news built through the day for both of them. By end of the day both the husband and wife acknowledge and appreciate the fact that “her husband / his wife” has an equally stressful daily routine and empathise with one another.
Commenting on the concept, Arun Iyer, National Creative Director, Lowe Lintas, said, “If we look around, we all are leading extremely stressful lives that impact and strain our personal and professional relationships. It is becoming increasingly difficult to appreciate, empathise and respond to relationship demands that seem to snap at the smallest provocation. In today's context, our mobile phone is a true reflection of us and what's going on in our life. The next story plays off the age-old pearl of wisdom, that the best way to appreciate/understand other's life is to live it yourself. This leads to empathy. Empathy is always created out of the tension between the sound of the voice and an intended silence. And empathy by nature is a feeling which gets best demonstrated/heightened in a personal relationship.”
Iyer further informed that the commercial would be promoted mainly through television supported by outdoor, print and digital.
When asked what he thought of the campaign, Prathap Suthan, Co-Founder, Bang in The Middle, commented, “The TVC has been conceptualised extremely well and comes with a great idea which happens in every home. Couples will know exactly how this happens and the concept is something people can relate to. It is a bang on commercial as it is not an artificial situation but a real scenario of situations in every household. Additionally, they have shown the child caught up between the fight and used him as an instrument when the exchange happens, which is very interesting to watch.”
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