"How's the Josh?" asks Bajaj Allianz in Uri-inspired ads: too opportunistic? Too soon?

The brand tweaked its outdoor LED installations yesterday after news about the Indian Air Force's retaliatory strike broke.

Yesterday, India woke up to news about the retaliatory strike on terror camps by the Indian Air Force, in the wake of the tragic Pulwama attack. Beating news-based advertising factory Amul, Bajaj Allianz - the life insurance brand, mere hours after news about the attack broke, tweaked its traffic-facing LED-installations at their office premises to read: 'How's the Josh?' followed by 'Jai Hind'. All this against the backdrop of a tiranga.

LED installations at the Bajaj Allianz office premises

By now, even if you haven't seen the film 'Uri: The Surgical Strike', you've probably heard chatter around a line Vicky Kaushal's character uses to motivate his team of army men - 'How's the Josh?' Evidently, Bajaj Allianz has created this set of ads keeping the popularity of that line in mind.

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United as one! How’s the Josh? 🇮🇳 . . . #SurgicalStrike2 #IndianAirForce #IndiaStrikesBack #JaiHind

A post shared by Bajaj Allianz Life (@bajajallianzlifeinsurance) on Feb 26, 2019 at 1:34am PST

How did the team buy outdoor ad space this fast? Well, as it turns out, these outdoor spaces are owned by the company and thus, the effort was done without the involvement of any agency, our sources confirm.

United as one!
How’s the Josh? 🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/dqrjl3Q3bx

— Bajaj Allianz Life (@BajajAllianzLIC) 26 February 2019

"We developed suitable messaging by 11.00 am and immediately made it live simultaneously through our LED boards installed across our key offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, and Jaipur," shares Chandramohan Mehra, chief marketing officer, Bajaj Allianz Life.

Besides outdoor, the brand is also pushing this opportunistic content on social media. We wonder whether this sort of move is too opportunistic, too daring and too risky for comfort.