Grande re-entry: Tata Sumo’s second coming

I may be in the minority, but I quite liked the looks of the first edition Tata Sumo Grande. The ad for the first edition was a let down though. Now the brand is back in a new avatar, as Grande Mark II. I happened to see the ad for Grande Mark II on TV (couldn’t find the ad on YouTube or the brand website) which carries forward the ‘more than meets the eye’ platform. It showed a guy who looks like a thug appearing at the scene of a traffic jam. By his demeanour one would think he is going to create more trouble. But he goes about resolving the situation by controlling the traffic. The ad then goes on to show a book vendor at a signal taking what looks like a 50o-buck note. Just when you think he is going to vamoose with the money, he returns to give the change. You get the drift – the ad talks about how we form perceptions based on what we see but there is ‘more than meets the eye’. The voice over, notably, was in Hindi.

The issue I have is that while ‘more than meets the eye’ has a positive tone to it (you get a lot more than what you bargained for) the execution has a defensive, apologetic tone. It borders on the ‘we are not as bad as you think we are and we deserve a second look’ – in a manner of speaking. Am I the only one feeling this way?