I remember seeing the Quaker Oats TV commercials on Indian television on and off. Don’t remember what they said since it’s all lost behind the haze of health commercials. I think today’s full page ad in The Times of India did more good for the brand than all the TVC’s put together. The sharp focus on Healthy Heart and the tie ups with Apollo Hospitals and Times of India is a disruptive effort. It propels Quaker Oats into the consideration set immediately and nicely ties it up with a pressing concern among Indians.
The ad points to the Good Morning Heart website, where one can assess one’s ‘heart health’. The site’s execution has some rough edges: when one submits a form, a strange ‘Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error’ greets you. The commenting system doesn’t filter spam, the links to the Twitter page doesn’t seem to work and there are some glaring spelling errors (Do you think you ill suffer from cardiac arrest in the future?). Such issues aside, I think it’s a great idea to associate a relatively unknown brand in India, with a big, going-for-the-stars kind of issue like healthy heart. Quaker is also attempting to modify eating habits – which in itself is a huge task for the brand. So instead of a 30-sec ad extolling the virtues of the brand, such an initiative does wonders. It’s early days yet since the efficacy of the program will be tested in execution. But I thought the concept was great.
