The latest Airtel ad campaign got me thinking about all the Airtel ads. As far as I remember all of them have been able to touch a chord with the audience airtel users or not.

The one I very clearly remember is the one with A R Rahman, where he is trying to make a cranky kid feel good by playing ‘harmonica’. He then calls his recordist and plays the tune, he says its nice, want to add something more? He meets some musicians one playing a flute another some kind of a drum, then he passes by a concert. All the while he transmits the music to the recording studios through airtel. I don’t think music has ever been used so beautifully in an ad Campaign.

Another one was the game thing with Sachin and Shahrukh, not something I would care for, but cannot over look the fact that lots of research must have backed the decision to make this ad. What with movies and cricket being nothing less than religion in India.

Or the campaign before the latest one, where a phone rings and everybody around checks to see if it’s theirs. But in each one of the ads in this series, it’s always somebody who is not expected to own a phone that gets the call. Says a lot for our economy in general and also drives home the point that airtel is so affordable anybody can use it.

I do not remember all of their ads, but the latest one is my favourite. Their campaigns have always been people centric but this one takes the cake. ‘Dil ki baat zubaan par laakar toh dekho’. How simple is that. Have always loved the Hutch campaign too, but don’t seem to have watched any lately. Watching TV is sometimes interesting thanks to such campaigns.