Saturday, October 13, 2007

Gorgeous v/s Beautiful

The last few months have seen some hair-softening advertising. One was Marico's 'Gorgeous Hamesha' campaign for Parachute Advansed Hair Oil. The other, Unilever's 'Beautiful Hair' campaign for its Zero Damage range of shampoos, conditioners and treatments.

'Gorgeous Hamesha' is about this jingle / song with simple vocals and soft strumming that resulted in a CD of the song. The slice-of-women's-life TVC / video shows women in different situations and essentially uses Deepika Padukone, the feminine beauty and emotional strength of women as a support for showing good-looking hair. Subtly, it gives the message that women go through a lot of emotions - happy and not; light and heavy - and it is their hair that makes them look gorgeous in whatever situation they maybe.

'Beautiful' is about the hoarding / print ad with ladies' hairstyles arranged in a way that spell out the alphabets B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L. It is a lot cleverer and classier than most ads and is a brilliant combination of idea and execution.

What i like more, is the Dove website that allows sharing of notes on hair-care, information on products, activities, etc. Parachute Advansed's website, though, has much less 'community stuff'.

Both these brands may not competing directly, but are defnitely fighting for Share-of-Hair (sounds quite scary). I feel they have both managed to hit bulls-eye in making a connect with their TGs, which i think, are different too.

But where i think Beautiful loses and Gorgeous wins, is the word 'Zero Damage'. It automatically triggers a theraupatic mindset - which may work instantly for those facing hair problems, but may be repelled by those with normal hair.

Either ways, Gorgeous or Beautiful - i love both!