This is a story of sensational advertisement created by India’s ADGURU Alyque Padamsee. Gautham Singhani of the JK Chemicals assigned him to study about the Condom market to help him launch a very good quality condom with Korean technology in India. The idea of creating advertising for a condom caused a bit of giggle in his agency, Alyque writes in his biography ‘a double life’. Even his team members expressed doubts, he thought “Iam from the theatre , any project that sounds exciting , no matter how small it may be, makes me say, Let’s go it for it ‘. His team started investigating about NIRODH and other brands.
Investigation done with Hundread percent male using Nirodh and most other brands revealed that these users are unhappy.
In those days people thought of condom as some kind of protection from sexual diseases. Users found that most of the current brands are distasteful. ‘A condom by its very nature is an irksome thing and has to be used at an inconvenient movement’. …’It was a product designed to go against the very activity for which it was devised. You can’t wear a condom unless you have an erection and as as you think of NIRODH, you loose erection.So they thought of having a pleasurable Condom. ‘When the user hears the brand name, he says, ‘Wow . Its a turn on Not a turn off.’
A condom should be sexy, it should be almost like an aphrodiasiac(sex stimulant). After meditating about the sex route for promoting condom, instead of unpalatable Padamsee team understood the problem. ‘unless you wear a condom, you’ll get AIDS and die’ route is a rotten idea. So they thought of innnovative packaging , look of the ads, the feel of the campaign, everthing a big exercise.
Naming the condom even big exercise. Team played around the names like Tiger, Panther and Macho.. all representing male virility’ These names ignored female completely.;After brainstorming we came up with the name of Kama Sutra. What could be better in India than the word Kama Sutra? Everybody knew it. Its universal for sensual pleasure. It meant sex without saying the forbidden word, S-E-X. It was culturally acceptable. It had the right status connotations. Keeping in peoples hesitation for asking Kama Sutra they coined a phrase ;Just ask ‘ KS’ . On campus Girls would whisper to each other , Do you think he’s KS guy? Sexy I mean.
Meanwhile Gautam Singhania proposed Kabir Bedi’s daughter Pooja Bedi for this ad. “Pooja Bedi was an aspiring starlet who symbolised sexiness at that time. A tall girl, with a ripe figure and flashing eyes, and a delicious pout, she had been seen more in movie gossip magazines than on silver screen. She wore miniskirts which were considered daring, and plunging necklines. She was known to have a wild tongue, and sh’d say anything she wanted off the top of her head- ‘What wrong in having an affair?.
FOR THE PLEASURE OF MAKING LOVE SLOGAN
Her eyes closed , lips parted. Her expression turned people on, as it gave them the impression that she was having an orgasm. Pooja soon became Sharon Stone of India. The floodgates opened and she was offered every sexy role possible on the Hindi screen -its a different story.
One of the media innovations was to book all the ad space in a single issue of Debonair.’ We bought the whole damn thing which caused quite a commotion and really rocked the boat. ..Alyque Padamsee memorised. They also pasted a condom-free in the centre spread of the magazine.
What is badluck in this story is the producer expected modest sales and his predictions were way off the mark. He ran out of stocks within first two months. Sales figures have gone through the roof, but they could’t distribute the product. Alyque padmase concludes in his remarks”However good the advertising campaign, however good the product, if its not available when you want it, forget it. Nobody will say I’ll wait till next week to get Kama Sutra.
