Ad Craft

A quirky tack on the perils of smoking tobacco

A public awareness ad created by Scarecrow Communications and Business of Ideas, is a spoof that shows how life could prove to be shorter than even a dying man’s expectation. A star cast of Sunny Leone, Deepak Dobriyal and Alok Nath urge viewers to quit smoking

BestMediaInfo Bureau March 01, 2016

A quirky tack on the perils of smoking tobacco

A public awareness ad created by Scarecrow Communications and Business of Ideas, is a spoof that shows how life could prove to be shorter than even a dying man’s expectation. A star cast of Sunny Leone, Deepak Dobriyal and Alok Nath urge viewers to quit smoking

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | March 1, 2016

Click on the image to watch the TVC.

An anti - smoking advertisement, featuring an array of cine stars, has of late created a buzz on social media. Created by Scarecrow Communications and Business of Ideas, the commercial features actors Sunny Leone, Deepak Dobriyal and Alok Nath, who resort to humour to spread a message about the perils of smoking.

The trio are seen together for the first time in a digital public service advertisement. The ad was recently launched with much fanfare, with Sunny Leone and Deepak Dobriyal on centre stage. The commercial focuses on a regular smoker who was now on his death bed.

In the commercial, the protagonist (Deepak Dobriyal) is dying. His father (Alok Nath) is advised that the light of his son’s life may ebb at any moment and that it was time the family fulfilled his last wish. Family members offer the dying man his favourite drink, toys, his favourite mouth organ, but he shows no interest. Finally, he holds up a picture of a girl on a tablet.

The bride (Sunny Leone) arrives, decked in all her bridal splendour and offers the dying man the ritualistic glass of milk. He is still drinking from the glass and being waited on by his new bride, when he slumps forward and dies. A message on the screen then reads that every cigarette costs eleven minutes of human life and that life could end even before a man had been able to fulfil his last wish.

Both Sunny Leone and Deepak Dobriyal then speak of the perils of smoking and urge viewers to stay away from tobacco. Leone said that she was happy to be associated with the commercial, to create awareness of tobacco as a health hazard and to be able to encourage people to quit smoking. She said the urge to quit smoking had to come from within and that no one could force an individual to quit smoking. Manish Bhatt, Founder Director, Scarecrow Communications Ltd., provided more insights into the making of the ad.

“My professional acquaintance Aditya Bhatt who is the founder of Business of Ideas, approached me with the script for this ad for music but later we also worked on the creative aspect, including how we can take this communication ahead,” he said. “It was not planned with a clear focus in mind. We were talking about it and we realized it is a good way to create something which is engaging and interesting,” Bhatt added.

“The biggest challenge was to execute the ad in the given time. The time in hand was little and we had to execute this ad in that short span of time. The ad had to be decent and yet, it had to have something that was different and could make viewers understand how bad smoking is," he went on to say.

Sharing his experience of working on the ad, Director Vibhu Puri, said, “It was a great experience working on this ad. As soon as I heard the script I was excited to work on it. I found it really a potential script hence I really wanted it to come out well. The challenge was actually time, but the response made us feel so good. The moment it went online it created a buzz, which was very encouraging for our entire team.”

“Casting and production (both post and pre-production) were also some challenges that we faced. We had some production constraints but in the end we managed to bring out something that caught a lot of attention on social media," Puri said.

Dileep Nair, Producer of the commercial, said, "We wanted to create something that had never been done before. With all the production constraints that came our way we managed to create something that was humorous, different and yet, impactful."

Asked about the unusual casting of the ad film, Bhatt said, "When Aditya Bhatt approached me I felt, well, the cast was fun! With such a cast and concept, I somehow knew it would do well. The response that we received was so overwhelming that we all felt, yes we did something really good. The credit goes to our entire team as we all gave our day and night to make this ad happen."