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Vintage-ish print ad to launch new product
Society Tea prepares to launch a new product in an old style; we take a closer look at the effort...
Stealing those savoury sweet or sour goodies (the flavour depended on the ingredients) from grandma's carefully stashed jars or a neighbour's rooftop/garden and getting caught red-handed, is not a memory one tends to forget. But thanks to the slow disintegration of the joint family system in the last decade and the emergence of nuclear families, children often miss out on their fair share of such (mis)adventures... and sometimes, the goodies too.
And the place it all begins is, of course, the kitchen. Which is what these very vintage-looking creatives by Society Tea (the retail tea brand of Mumbai-based Hashmukh Rai & Co.) appear to be reminding us of. The images, in an ad for the brand's new range of chutneys and pickles - Spice Secrets - appeared in Thursday's Mumbai Mirror and caught our attention with their classic, old-fashioned styling.
The Spice Secrets creative is paired with the tagline - The Secret Ingredient is Tradition. We catch up with Karan Shah, director, Society Tea, to find out what the idea behind this new print ad was. The new range of products has been available in the market since March.
Karan Shah
Shah says that the main idea was to take consumers down memory lane whilst they relish the delicious tang of Society's new chutneys and pickles. The brand solely wanted to paint a nostalgic picture for viewers by keeping the ad in tandem with how chutneys and pickles were made in our grandparents' time. "Since most of the recipes used are our grandmother's, the creative also highlights bringing back the art of making chutneys and pickles' in households," he explains.
Society Tea, being a well-known tea brand, piqued our curiosity with this product line. Naturally, we wanted to know what inspired the venture into this segment, at this juncture.
Shah believes that the expansion is in line with Society Tea's goal to bring back the taste of tradition. "Both products bring together an array of gustatory bliss, keeping in mind the flavour preferences of consumers. Being a household brand, we realised we could do justice to this line up of products and provide better value to our core consumers," he states.
Sukumar Menon, founder and creative head, Black Swan Life, a Mumbai-based advertising agency which has been handling Society Tea's creative duties for the past 4 years now, shares. "As pickles have such legacy, we wanted to capture it in the earliest form of photographic documentation. With a Mother and Daughter in the kitchen.We are sincerely hoping that it would rekindle that bygone taste of pickles in the mind first. And then find that joy when actually tasting it."
But is this back-to-roots direction really going to revive our interest in long-forgotten grandmother's secret recipes?
It's too soon to say if this style of advertising will indeed make us reach for that bottle of Spice Secrets if we spot it during our monthly grocery run.
The creatives (below) are conceptualised by Black Swan Life, a Mumbai-based advertising agency which has been handling Society Tea's creative duties for several years now.
Click on the above images to enlarge