Saifeena, Madhavan, and Priyamani bid tata to the Sky in a series of 'play'ful ads

Many moons ago, my school friend Harsh changed his name to Rudra. He informed the school authorities, our class teacher, other subject teachers, and us. But, the rest of the world, except his family, were clueless about this rebrand. Even today, some call him Harsh, some Rudra; the duality must annoy him to the sky.

Thank the skies and the heavens for DTH giant Tata Sky’s rebrand to Tata Play will never face this issue of unawareness. Centuries ago, the brand would’ve hired drummers to go from village to village to spread the word. Today, it has Ogilvy and Saifeena (Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor) and Madhavan and Priyamani to do the same.

The two pairs announce not only the rebrand but tout the features of the brand in a series of short ads; Ogilvy’s brainchild.

We (afaqs!) were intrigued with what Tata Play must have asked of the agency before the rebrand. Turns out it was one simple sentence as per Sukesh Nayak, chief creative officer, Ogilvy India: “The brand stands for entertainment and we must entertain as we go through this rebrand exercise.”

A rebrand is a tough exercise. It becomes tougher when the same agency was behind the brand’s iconic Aamir Khan double-role-single-body ad and the campaign featuring him and actress Gul Panang. It is kind of hard to top that but Nayak brushed it off and told us “more than comparison, we wanted to continue the fun. And this idea is just that. Carries the entertainment over to the next chapter.”

And entertaining it was indeed. Saifeena for me to be honest. The couple is either a hit or miss when it comes to ad campaigns and for Tata Play, the duo hit it out of the park. But, you know what, the duo did endorse Tata Play’s rival Airtel quite a few years ago. We all love Messi but not from PSG, we love the Argentinian from his days at Barcelona FC; brand recall gone wrong should worry folks.

The CCO tells “we believe in our idea and we felt Saif and Kareena were the perfect actors to enact the idea on the table. We are glad they also loved the idea when it was narrated. If I recall correctly, it was one of the shortest narration I have done and they both smiled right through it,” he reveals.

While the two smiled, they must have wondered how many takes they've to go through because there are a lot of short clips for this rebrand. Why not just wrap it up on one big ad?

Says Nayak, “The idea is to entertain consumers with three different roles. Very well thought through roles. And in each role, there is a big part of work on rebranding and then some more on feature lead work too.”

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