Sign up for afaqs! Newsletters
The latest spot from the auto brand looks and sounds like an extract from a wildlife documentary and it's built around 'Peace of Mind'.
The latest ad from auto brand Skoda features snow monkeys relaxing in hot springs and is something straight out of BBC's 'Life' documentaries. The first ad from Skoda's 'Peace of Mind' series highlights the brand's 'Shield Plus' package, an initiative that offers a 6-year warranty, 6-year roadside assistance and 4-year maintenance, in one go.
The ad features snow monkeys from Japan peacefully bathing in a hot water spring followed by visuals of a driver relaxing in a Skoda SUV. But that's just the visual element of the ad. What's really enticing is the husky voice-over. The voice is reminiscent of Sir David Frederick Attenborough's, an English broadcaster and natural historian best known for his work with the BBC Natural History unit. Attenborough has also narrated for 'Our Planet', a British nature documentary available on Netflix.
The film has been conceptualised by Publicis Ambience, produced by Prodigious (Publicis production house) and was directed by Lloyd Baptista.
Ramakrishnan Hariharan, head of creative at Publicis Ambience, confirms our notion and mentions that it was a conscious decision to give the ad an Attenborough-esque touch. "Such visuals are accustomed to a certain type of voice. So, we didn't want to use a different voice because that would defeat the purpose. Mimicry wasn't the intention. With such a combination, viewers are immediately reminded of such documentaries. The footage was bought and we later worked on it. We had various footage and we had to pick the right one to make it look seamless in terms of the background and there was a lot of CGI work involved," Hariharan says.
Now, here's an original Attenborough clip about snow monkeys -
Credits:
Agency: Publicis India
MD: Srija Chatterjee
CCO: Ajay Gahlaut
CSO: Neeraj Bassi
COO: Paritosh Srivastava
Head of Creative: Ramakrishnan Hariharan
ECD: Nishant Jethi
Creative Director: Neh Rathi, Avinash Jakhalekar
Creative Team: Sneha Agarwal, Ajay Jhadav, Rakesh Samal
Account Management: Nikhil Kumar, Punit Bhatt, Fouzia Bukhari, Sunaina Parmar
Account Planning: Disha Pinge, Kanupriya Mahajan
Films Head: Jignesh Maru
Production House: Prodigious
Director: Lloyd Baptista
Executive Producer [Head of Prodigious]: Varun Shah
Producer: Rudra Mawani