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Parle Hide & Seek moved from O&M to Everest Brand Solutions in January 2006. In the process, the brand has been transformed from a classical romance brand to a cool, suave and even playful one
It’s hard to miss Hrithik Roshan’s suave moves on television these days ever since he took to the dance floor in Parle Hide & Seek’s latest commercial, created by Everest Brand Solutions. This is the first time that Parle Hide & Seek has roped in a celebrity to endorse the brand since its launch in 1998.
Parle Hide & Seek entered the market with a premium positioning, being virtually the only biscuit in its category (namely, the chocolate chip biscuit category, which has only one other well-known player, Britannia Good Day). “Today, Hide & Seek has a market share of about 70 per cent in its category,” claims Shalin Desai, brand manager, Parle Hide & Seek.
In January 2006, the creative duties for Parle Hide & Seek were reviewed. The incumbent agency, O&M, and Everest Brand Solutions made presentations to the client, after which it was decided to award the business to Everest. Everest handles around 80 per cent of Parle Agro’s biscuit portfolio already – all its brands, except Parle Krackjack and Parle Funcenter.
“Since Everest handled most of our biscuit portfolio, it was only fair that we gave them a chance to present a thematic campaign idea on Hide & Seek. They came up with an idea that could take our brand a step further,” says Desai.
What he means is that while so far, Parle Hide & Seek has always based its creative idea around classical romance and temptation, now it was time to add an element of sophistication and suaveness to the brand by increasing its ‘cool’ quotient. The Parle officials were also clear that this time, a celebrity who reflected the core brand values – mild romance, naughtiness, temptation and a hint of flirtation – would be roped in.
“Hrithik Roshan is the perfect fit because he has the young, suave, lover boy image,” says Vijay Lalwani, creative director, Everest Brand Solutions, who created the commercial along with Samir Chonkar and Makrand Patil. (In fact, Lalwani had worked on this brand earlier, too, while he was at O&M).
Everest had a clear task at hand: While the brand’s romantic positioning was in place, it was time to make it funky and contemporary. The TG remained the same: SEC AB, 15-24 year olds. “But there’s a large untapped market within our TG base,” says Desai of Parle Hide & Seek. “In a sense, the new communication aspires to increase consumption within the target audience base.”
Everest’s biggest challenge was to make sure that the celebrity was not used in an indiscriminate manner, as is often done in advertising. “We brainstormed on what Hrithik Roshan was most admired for, apart from his acting skills, and the answer was ‘dancing’!” says Lalwani. However, since Roshan has already ‘danced’ his way through ads such as Home Trade, Coca-Cola and Tamarind Shirts in the past, it was quite a risk for Everest to adopt the same route. “Yes, but then, while working on the dance idea, it was decided that the product pack would be woven into the whole sequence,” Lalwani explains.
For those who haven’t seen it yet, the commercial shows Hrithik Roshan and Isha Sharvani sitting on a couch at a pub. Roshan invites Sharvani to dance, to which she says, “I can’t.” Roshan then tempts her with a pack of Parle Hide & Seek, leading her all the way to the dance floor. With the pack in hand, he performs some suave dance moves, trying to escape her attempts at grabbing the biscuit pack. In her quest to get the pack of biscuits, she follows Roshan’s dance steps and ends up dancing. She finally manages to pry the pack away, and coyly asks Roshan, “Wanna dance?” He quips right back, “I can’t!”
An interesting point here is the presence of a product such as biscuit in an environment like a pub. “Yes, it was a risk, but it was necessary to bring out the cool quotient in this way,” Lalwani says. “And we think our risk has paid off.”
Hasn’t the girl-boy romance theme been done to death by biscuit brands? “That is where this one is different,” says Lalwani. “With this ad, Parle Hide & Seek has dropped its classical romance image and moved on to a cooler, naughty, tempting kind of mild romance.”
The film was shot at Purple Haze, Mumbai, and directed by Vishal Mangalorkar of @infiniti Films. The dance moves were choreographed by Flexi Stewart from UK, and the music is by Vishal-Shekhar.
Parle officials state that since the campaign went on air only around 20 days ago, it’s too early to be counting the returns. However, they expect this communication to garner an at least 20-25 per cent increase in the sales of the premium biscuit.
© 2006 agencyfaqs!