Devina Joshi
Advertising

Tata Sky: Narrating an animated story

A new film for Tata Sky explores the world of animation to drive home its point

After Hrithik Roshan, it’s time for some animation. For DTH operator Tata Sky, brand building has just taken an interesting turn.

Tata Sky established itself on the ‘Isko Laga Daala Toh Life Jhingalala’ platform in 2006 – a line that made ‘fun’ and ‘variety’ two main attributes of the brand. Shortly thereafter, Roshan was roped in as its endorser, and one soon saw him go gaga about its DVD-quality picture and value-adds. Now, Tata Sky is out with an animated TVC (its first), that’s both a thematic brand one, as well as a festive promotion.

Tata Sky: Narrating an animated story
A 'pehelwaan' with no moustache
Tata Sky: Narrating an animated story
A monkey with no tail
Tata Sky: Narrating an animated story
A Sholay with no Gabbar
Tata Sky: Narrating an animated story
A family happy with a
Tata Sky enabled TV set
According to Ashish Khazanchi, currently NCD, Publicis Ambience (earlier ECD with Rediffusion where he worked on Tata Sky), the idea was to portray that a television without Tata Sky is unthinkable, or in other words, a Tata Sky experience is incomparable. “Actually, I was inspired by Narayan Shi’s ‘The Freedom Song’, an animated short film, and always wanted to try my hand at animation,” says Khazanchi. In Tata Sky, he found his opportunity.

The film poses situations which seem unimaginable, such as an Indian wrestler without a moustache, a monkey without a tail, a ‘Sholay’ without its famous villain Gabbar, a lion (‘sher’ in Hindi) without the prefix ‘Babbar’, and even a fish which isn’t fried and served on the table. The film then shows a family watching television without Tata Sky (and ‘dull’ picture quality as a result), just as the voiceover concludes that a TV set without Tata Sky is unthinkable, just like the other situations (Shot of the now happy family, enjoying TV with Tata Sky). Further, a promotional offer is shown where in if a person buys a large TV set, he stands to get a greater discount on his Tata Sky package). The film ends with the trademark ‘Jhingalala’ tagline.

“We thought of animation while drafting the idea, simply because it would hardly have the same impact if we showed a real monkey without a tail!” quips Khazanchi. Further, the tongue-in-cheek humour required an animated backdrop.

The film has been animated and directed by E Suresh, creative head, Famous House of Animation, over a period of two weeks. “We had to make the film essentially Indian in character,” says Suresh. He and his team found inspiration in Indian paintings, particularly Madhubani ones, which have a typical Indian style to them, with their simplistic strokes. “Something Indian would also help us achieve mass appeal and make it relatable even to villages and small towns,” he adds. To make things even simpler, an explanatory sound track (sung by Suresh himself) was added, wherein the visuals are actually, quite literally, punctuated with words explaining them.

Apart from Suresh, Debanjan Nandy, Arun Rane, Sharath Shankar and Shailesh from Famous House of Animation have worked on it.

For the record, Famous House of Animation is ‘famous’ for its other animated pieces including work for Amaron Car Batteries, ICICI Prudential (‘Chintamani’), Levi’s Slim Jeans and DTC (‘History of the World’).

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