Blinkit’s new outdoor ad campaign must’ve caught your attention — on public transport vehicles or billboards.
It’s not the craft of the lines that will blow you away. Blinkit grabs your attention by presenting you with lines you know by heart. And it’s in this simplicity where lies its brilliance.
In a series of ads, Blinkit uses lyrics of popular Bollywood songs that have amassed a cult following and associates them with craving, the functionality, or attraction of a certain product, which you can order on the app.
Some lines go as follows: ‘Anda ye bindaas hai, anda ye bindaas hai’ — a clever take on the 2001 KK and Anu Malik song Banda yeh bindaas hai; ‘Basanti Naaaaach-os’ from Sholay (1975) for Cornitos. They’re tied to a simple call to action: Blinkit delivers more than 5,000 products within minutes. This is a step-up from their YouTube pre-rolls, which were really quite random.
What also works about these ads is that they don’t add anything to the product they’re selling or make false promises.
In this way, they sidestep talking about ‘speed delivery’, Blinkit’s USP, which received a lot of flak for being insensitive to delivery partners. Despite not advertising its main service offering, Blinkit has managed to catch users’ attention. These ads could be the best remix of Bollywood songs we have come across.
Other ads also mostly relied on puns: ‘Apna lime aayega’ advertises lemons, while ‘Chakna mereya mereya’ promotes Lays.
Other brands like Cornitos Nacho Chips, MTR, and Lays must’ve also been very happy with the campaign since they get free billboard time, thanks to Blinkit.
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Not a fresh idea
Blinkit hasn’t come up with an original idea. In 2016, Zomato too used wordplay on popular Hindi songs, dialogues, movie titles to promote their service. ‘Kya pata call ho na ho’ read one ad; ‘Stop dialling for delivery, order food online on Zomato’ was the call to action.
But the wordplay that advertising giant Ogilvy attempted didn’t really land. They were a bit lazy too — ‘Doodh maango doodh denge, kheer mangoge kheer denge’ was another careless attempt to make a controversial line on the Kashmir issue funny: “Doodh mangoge toh kheer denge, Kashmir mangoge cheer denge.”
So the campaign is not so new, keeping in mind that Zomato acquired Blinkit.
The glorious days of print ads are certainly over; there’s no mincing the words. Ads like Volkswagen’s ‘Think Small’ are perhaps not making a comeback. I say this while acknowledging the brilliance of the 2014 Duracell ads by GreyIndia.
Independent ad agency The Minimalist’s Instagram ads are also a good example of deploying creativity with simplicity to market your products.
These one-line zingers by Blinkit might not win awards, but they’ll definitely win hearts.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)