New Fanta Ad: Battle of the Oranges

 

First of all a disclaimer, I have never been an admirer of 'Fanta' Advertisements, its main competitor 'Mirinda' are even worse in this department. Sometimes it feels like there is a competition going on between these two, however not to capture more market share, but to look ridiculous. On the name of 'Pagalpanti bhi jaroori hai' the production team of 'Mirinda' conveniently distances itself from any decent thought they might have for making a sensible commercial and 'Fanta' on the other hand has been relying on animation based advertising where every character likes making high jumps for no apparent reason. Maybe the target group for both the companies is kids because only they can get amused by these concepts.

There is apparently no problem with targeting the children but maybe they need to revisit their positioning strategy. Rather than children, maybe students and young executives will be a better target group due to their spending potential and because they are more likely to make a purchase decision than children where parents are more likely to decide which beverage their children should drink. Not to forget that in many cases parents will restrict their children from taking an aerated drink.

However the latest commercial of 'Fanta' is a better attempt in a lot of respects. First of all the animated characters in this commercial are not jumping, so it is a big relief, secondly it plays with the mentality of the viewer, how? Well in the commercial 4 children are sitting around a dinner table, filling up their glasses with 'Fanta', however by the time the Fanta bottle reaches the last kid, the bottle has become empty, now I expected the other kids to contribute some portion of their drink with the last kid, (that's how an Indian thinks), but to my surprise we see mommy dearest arriving out of kitchen coming to the rescue of the kid with a fully filled up bottle of 'Fanta'.

So that how, on a subconscious level the advertiser tells you consume more rather than share what you already have, rather than going for more customers the strategy is to increase per capita consumption, not bad, but what the advertisers may be missing is the fact that Indian's as a lot love to share even with strangers (Please travel in trains for more clarification) and here we are taking of family and friends and secondly you will hardly find two bottles of the same cold drink in an Indian middle class refrigerator. So Best of Luck.