Interview with Nandita Chalam, J

Julien Cayla (Australian School of Business) Interviews Nandita Chalam, Senior Creative Director, J. Walter Thompson, India Julien Cayla Julien Cayla: Can you please tell us something about yourself before we start? Nandita Chalam: I have always been in the field of advertising. I have worked with almost all the top agencies in India: for instance, JWT, Ogilvy and Mather and Lintas. I have worked in Africa too. I have worked in Kenya and Zambia while I was with McCann. I have worked on many multinational brands. I have worked with Unilever brands. I have worked on their soaps, Lux being one of them, detergents, cooking oil, etc. etc. Somehow, being a woman you tend to be given the household products. So, I used to cry for one of those macho brands. I used to say, “I want a macho brand, I want a bike.” In a way it is good, because there are lots of mainstream brands like soaps, cooking oil and detergents in any agency. I also won awards for my work for Unilever while working for some of these mainstream brands. I still haven’t won an international award, say, something like a Cannes Lion, but I hope to win it someday. So, all in all, you can say that I love and worship advertising. Julien: Tell me something about the history of Lux in India. Nandita Chalam: Actually Lux is 75 years old in India. And strangely enough, JWT is also 75 years old in India. And the two brands have always worked together. So, the histories of JWT and Lux run parallel in a way. Lux has always used film stars to do endorsements. It is very interesting because in the early days of Lux, I am told, there were no ad filmmakers. So the Unilever guys used to get the film directors to shoot the Lux ads. And then of course, over the years Lux came into the JWT stable. The first Lux star ever was a lady called Leela Chitnis.1 And of course, Aishwarya is the ambassador now and we have Priyanka Chopra as well.2 So, traditionally Lux has always used the top stars of that era. All the Lux stars, when they are offered Lux, consider it like they have arrived. When Lux turned 75, they rigged up a campaign, it was actually a promotional campaign to celebrate 75 years of Lux and the actual promotion was something very small. Nothing very big. But we had created a special edition range for the 75 years using stars of all ages. It would have been expensive to use all of them in too many commercials. So we used four of these iconic stars who have endorsed Lux for a longer period. But still, when the client briefed us, I was particularly feeling that, this is 75 years man! I mean it doesn’t happen every day, so let’s do something different. It should be something that people would remember. Shah Rukh Khan was at the height of his popularity at that point of time.3 Our model coordinator told me that Juhi Chawla would tell Shah Rukh about the Lux campaign.4 Juhi and Shah Rukh are very good friends. And Shah Rukh would jokingly say to Juhi, “You know, you guys have all the fun, you get to soak in the tub the whole day. Why don’t you offer me Lux? I will do it.” 1 So, she came and told me this. I remember, I thought why not ask him, because he himself has said that he would love to do it. Then we actually went and met him. We were not sure whether he would do it. I wrote a script especially for him; it was a little tongue in cheek: he is in a tub (where normally the girls are), and the girls are all around him. And he is trying to be a superstar. “Lux is now 75 years old; to celebrate 75 years we need a superstar. So, who else could they think of but me?” And then, the girls dunk him into the tub. That is the gist of the film. But he starts doing the thing that all stars of Lux do in the tub. They say: “Lux is the secret of my beauty.” It was very cute of Shah Rukh to say that. Everybody knows that Lux does not use that slogan any more. But for fifty years if there has been a memorable line in Indian advertising; it’s one of the lines that is remembered. And of course we couldn’t do away with our big stars. So we put the same four stars on the packaging for the soap. Video 1. Lux spot with Shah Rukh Khan. Julien: It was very playful in a sense. Nandita Chalam: Yes, it was very playful and though he had said it in jest we didn’t know whether he would really do it. Therefore I went personally to his house. Of course I am a big Shah Rukh fan myself and just needed an excuse to go to his house. I was very surprised when he said yes. He said, “Of course I will do it, why wouldn’t I do it?” And after that it was just a matter of money, but this is not his regular endorsement. It was going to be a one- off. Little Shah Rukh forever. He especially liked the idea of himself being the only male star surrounded by four beautiful women [of all ages]. Julien: One of the interesting things is that he was playing with his image. Nandita Chalam: Yes, he was playing with his image. I wouldn’t say it was a risk, but to be seen endorsing a very feminine brand—you know, Lux has always been associated with women and feminine beauty—he was playing with his image. Then again, Shah Rukh is very sharp. He realised the true power of the concept. That’s why he jumped at it. That’s the reason why even I wanted to do it. Because I know it was different from any other Lux ad that I had done. Julien: Basically the target consumer for this product is women? Nandita Chalam: Yes, Lux is always targeted at women. It is not like men don’t use it but somehow it’s never considered to be targeted at men. Julien: Is there any social class which uses Lux the most? 2 Nandita Chalam: Lux is actually a very mass brand. Today, Lux has got products like Body Wash which is targeted at the upper crust and younger girls. But by and large LUX is bought by the middle class India, mostly in the north. It’s a family soap, so mothers, daughters everybody uses it. Surprisingly enough, unlike in the west where people are a little sceptical about star endorsements, in India people actually believe that stars use these products. That if you use this product you will become as beautiful as Hema Malini.5 Even I was surprised when I started working on it but that is how it is. When I meet consumers they say that they truly believe that the stars use these products and that’s why they talk about it. That way, you can say that in India we are not a cynical bunch as yet. One strange though is that before Shah Rukh, Lux used to appeal to slightly older women. Post the Shah Rukh ad, it has started connecting with younger people as well. They saw the humor of it. In fact, some of the older Lux audience didn’t like the idea of Shah Rukh endorsing Lux. It’s not like Shah Rukh ad was universally liked. Lots of people hated it. But the brand started looking younger, more irreverent, funnier in fact. In fact, it started connecting with younger people. When I used to go to meet Lux users, sometimes even in the same family, between the mother and the daughter, the mother would swear by Lux but the daughter would be trying something else. This is when we realized that some thing is getting dated about the brand. We needed to do something. So, there were many reasons why we did the Shah Rukh ad. One was the 75 years anniversary of the brand, another was that we needed to connect with younger people. We would never have been able to do it without the support of the client. Especially Ashok Venkataramani. You could imagine there would be a lot of fear of doing such a campaign, especially for a client like Unilever. They didn’t want to tamper with something on which they had worked for years and we were worried, are we spoofing our own brand, are we laughing at ourselves. I mean, unlike the British, we don’t laugh at ourselves. We don’t make fun of ourselves. So they were worried that maybe we were ridiculing ourselves. Especially by using the line “khoobsurati ki raaz” [a thing of beauty] in the ad with Shah Rukh, which is like using advertising history. Julien: You said that lots of people did not like the ad. How did you get to know about this? Nandita Chalam: After this commercial came on air, there was so much that was written about it. There was so much extra publicity which we never thought we would get. Most of it was terrific. People said that it was Lux turning out to be a metrosexual brand. Video 2.

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