Surf Excel says dirt is good, righteously

Surf Excel is back with a new film and message tied to its 'Daag achche hain' (Dirt is good) philosophy. The new campaign highlights the virtue of righteousness, while keeping stains at the heart of the plot.

The film, created by Lowe Lintas, shows two sets of school kids playing cricket in a playground, one a little older than the other. A row breaks between two kids, one from each group, as is common when cricketing groups share a ground. The older kid bullies one of the juniors, and pushes another into a pool of mud when he attempts  to ease the situation. The younger kid gets upset. But then, he starts applying mud over his clothes and asks his seniors to call truce and hug him. As one would expect, the older bunch tries to distance itself from the muddy kid. Other members of the younger team emulate their mate, and within minutes the bullying senior team vacates the playground.

On the creative execution, Arun Iyer, national creative director, Lowe Lintas, said, "In sync with the 'Daag achche hain' philosophy, this year we wanted to build on the aspect of righteousness (badhappan). We wanted to showcase that taking the wrong route is easy but righteousness can teach you how to handle a situation without getting violent. These kids demonstrate the idea very well."

Iyer added that the campaign will comprise of the TVC and point of purchase activities.

Unplugged moments:
Iyer and team were supposed to finish the shoot over two days on location in Pune, but the schedule got stretched to three thanks to the monsoons. And the three-day shoot wasn't without funny anecdotes. Iyer recalled, "One of the kids was really, really excited out about his part in the story. At one point he actually ran to his mother sreaming that he was going to jump in the muddle.”

Yet another caused a small delay in the shoot too. Iyer said, "Another kid (the slightly stout junior school boy) asked us to stop rolling the camera right amidst the shoot because he had to attend nature's call."

Credits:

Client: HUL, Surf Excel
Agency: Lowe Lintas
Creative: Arun Iyer, Ramkrishna Gopi Yadav, AP Zeth, Aarti Srinivasan, Sushant Joshi
Business: Virat Tandon, Tarannum Romani, Suchana Sarkar, Haripriya Mishra
Planning: Saji Abraham, Mani KB
Films: Riddhi Mehta
Production house: Footcandles Films
Director: Vinil Mathews
Media agency: Mindshare