In India, widowed and divorced women have historically been treated as outcasts. This ad wonderfully rejected that repression, celebrating a woman’s second marriage to a man who treats her and her daughter with love and respect.
The Tanishq remarriage ad wins the fourth place in Adweek’s list of ‘The 7 most inspiring ad campaigns for women in 2013’. Tanishq competed with brands like Pantene, Dove, HelloFlo, among others to secure its place with 11% votes. Interestingly, India’s largest retail jewellery brand Tanishq is also the only Indian brand to be featured in the list.
The 7 ads touched upon various subjects that sought to empower women – gender stereotypes, sexism, cultural repression, encouraged women to be kinder to themselves, got girls to celebrate their own strength, and one that showed the truth about periods to young girls.
The television commercial was created by Lowe Lintas with the idea to showcase one of the many new age weddings in the form of a remarriage, while promoting the new-age contemporary wedding jewellery by Tanishq.
The ad features a bride who is a mother to a young daughter, while dressing up for her second wedding. The excited daughter expresses her wish to be a part of the pheras (the part in a Hindu wedding ceremony where the bride and groom walk around a fire seven times, while taking their vows). While the elders try to dissuade her, her would-be step-dad picks her up in his arms and carries on with the pheras, much to the bride’s contentment.
Back in October, the Adweek had described the theme of the ad as “not only revolutionary. It is crazy bold”, while the whole of India praised the brand for breaking stereotypes. Most Indian and International publications carried it on their headlines with adjectives like ‘taboo-breaking’, ‘fantastic’,‘outstanding’ and ‘progressive’. The ad also managed to create a stir in the online world while being shared across social networks. Minister Naveen Jindal had congratulated Tanishq on Twitter, joined by a bunch of congratulatory tweets by popular people in the media.
While the ad won all the accolades for its path-breaking concept, it is not a first in the Indian media space. A re-marriage ad was explored by Femina, the magazine for the woman of substance, quite a few years back.