How This Adarsh Gaurav-Zahan Kapoor Ad Is Reminding Us Of The Iconic Jaaved Jaafrey-Pankaj Kapoor Maggie Advertisements

Back in the 1990s, TV ads weren’t what they have become now — just endless short segments skipping from one celebrity endorsing a brand to another. There were ads that one would look forward to watching, and some of the most memorable ones from that era were the Maggi Hot & Sweet Sauce advertisements starring Jaaved Jaafrey, many a time alongside Pankaj Kapur, which became famous due to their quirky humour and catchphrase, “It’s Different!”

The ads were a great mix of slapstick comedy, witty scripts, and eccentric character work. Consider some of these popular ones — Jaaved as a mafia boss, inspired by Ajit’s Bollywood villain Lion, and Pankaj playing the henchman, Michael. And, of course, Lilly was there too. After the ads had become a rage, a follow-up one featured both of them on a tennis court debating what was different about the sauce. In fact, the concept was also brought back later, with Jaaved having Manoj Pahwa and later Nawazuddin Siddiqui alongside him in them.

Over the last few weeks, a new, younger pair of actors have caught our attention, appearing in quirky ads for Amazon Now, which debuted during the IPL. The campaign is built around the proposition, ‘Fast Now. Fayda Now.’, highlighting Amazon Now’s promise of speed while positioning convenience and everyday value as key benefits for customers. But what caught everyone’s attention were two of India’s youngest and best actors, Adarsh Gourav and Zahan Kapoor, in their hatke avatar.

Take, for example, the one where both of them are being dressed up by their nieces and having make-up applied to them while wanting to order face wash. Then there’s the one with both of them modelled as 1980s-style bodybuilding freaks with very realistic bulging biceps, wanting to order fruits for their smoothie. It’s also an apt example of AI being used well, as Adarsh told The Free Press Journal, “The biceps are AI-generated.”

Adarsh, who had just returned after a shoot in London, said that the casting was entirely done by the brand, and the director was Shakun Batra, someone he has been a great admirer of. We asked adman Prahlad Kakkar, who had directed the Maggi ads, about his thoughts, and also how the iconic Maggi ad idea came to be.

“Zahan is such a good-looking boy, and they’ve made him into such a caricature! But anyway, for the Maggie ads, we had envisioned it as a homage to a scene from the movie Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), which, in this case, was to be Shah vs. Shah, as we were to cast Naseeruddin Shah and Satish Shah in them. Dennis Joseph had originally written the scripts, but we needed a Hindi touch, so we got Jaaved to write them, drawing inspiration from Bollywood movies and their humour. We shot the rough scratches with Jaaved and another boy from my office. However, the clients did not like the idea, as there was no jingle, no shots of sauce pouring, and it didn’t fit the conventional mode of advertising at that time. Luckily for us, however, the Nestlé Managing Director was passing by, stepped into the room, saw what we had done, and loved it! He wanted them shot as of yesterday. However, after a week, we went back to him to inform him that Naseer and Satish were demanding too much money. He advised us to use Jaaved and Pankaj Kapur, who, at that time, was known for his role as a detective in the TV series Karamchand (1985).”

Just imagine, one of the most memorable ad campaigns that made its way into popular culture was simply a series of accidents that almost got thrown out of the window. Sometimes, it just depends on who’s listening to the pitch!