#BlastFromThePast: DDB Mudra’s Nitin Pradhan picks his all-time favourite ads
Nitin Pradhan, creative head, DDB Mudra, writes about ads that inspired him to pursue advertising as a career.
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#BlastFromThePast is Storyboard18’s weekly column where we ask young creative professionals to pick old ads that they replay time and again, spots that give them writing inspiration, and commercials that never get old. This week, Nitin Pradhan, creative head, DDB Mudra shared the ads that always trickle his creative nerves and make him fall in love with advertising again.
Foxsports.com
I discovered this during the early days of my career. ‘Mock serious’ is one of the most under-utilised and memorable formats of storytelling in advertising. This is one piece that exemplifies that. Starts off as a public service ad, misleading you to a cheeky end with a sports-obsessed young father.
Which must have been the target audience, I guess. But I’m sure even moms laughed just as hard after watching this.
VW Beetle
No feature talk, no highfalutin (pretentious, fancy) philosophy, this one belongs to the 60s. The economy of lines, the freshness of the setup and the unexpected connection is what pulls me to this one. Driving pride of ownership in those who had one and a sense of aspiration in those who didn’t, this one captures the mindset of a smart Beetle owner.
Captain Cook Salt
This has been one of my biggest inspirations that drew me to advertising as a career, much before I actually finished college. Written by Prasoon Pandey in his Lintas days and directed by Ram Madhvani (pardon me, if I didn’t get the history right), I still wonder how this one got sold back in the day, considering it ran down the product it was advertising, spoke highly of the competition and was just a single boring shot, all through.
Also, the choice of the voiceover artist (Javed Jaffrey) was a clincher, that makes Sushmita Mukherjee’s performance shine even more.
Smart writing that just refused to spoon feed the otherwise underrated intelligence of the Indian viewer.
(PS: It also forced the market leader to respond with a reactionary ad which wasn’t half as funny!)
