Bengaluru: Focus on the quality of your product, not your customers. Change your product to suit your customers, their families and ethos, instead of trying to change your customers to suit your revolutionary ideas.
This is the lesson social media users seem to be communicating to Tanishq brand managers. And it all is free too.
Tanishq has issued a statement in response to the outrage over its controversial advertisement video. It seems Tanishq’s half-hearted and tongue-twisting statement has not been accepted by most of the SM users. Even the statement ruffled more feathers than the company executives would have foreseen.
Tanishq in its statement said: “The idea behind the Ekatvam campaign is to celebrate the coming together of people from different walks of life, local communities and families during these challenging times and celebrate the beauty of oneness. This film has stimulated divergent and severe reactions, contrary to its very objective. We are deeply saddened with the inadvertent stirring of emotions and withdraw this film keeping in mind the hurt sentiments and well being of our employees, partners and store staff.”
This one episode and the outrage over a video advertisement should one day make it as a case to the management schools on how not to write an apology or a statement after a fiasco. Going by the social media reactions, it seems Tanishq has executives who have no idea about the ground realities of India.
Dimple Kaul points out the brazen attempt to ‘blame the people’ instead of own mistake.
No apology!
— Dimple Kaul (@iamdimplekaul) October 13, 2020
Insinuation about threat to well being of your stakeholders.
For your well being & ours, we shall stay away forever.?
All you had to do is LISTEN and COMPREHEND WHAT was being said and WHY? Brand TATA & Tanishq,you have failed.
No PR monitor will show you that!
Other SM users too have reacted to the statement scathingly.
Your such ads are not some creative ideas but it’s result of prejudice.
— Arvind Kumar?? (@ArvindMishraIND) October 13, 2020
You should check with your media brand manager Mansoor Khan. We have seen multiple ads showing same pattern in recent few years.
We will welcome your campaign if you will relaunch add with reverse people. pic.twitter.com/bTFxjFQGc3
Ritu Rahatur too is unsparing.
Pls stop your oneness propaganda when the TRUTH & hard realities of life are totally different#tanishq ad showed “Samuday visesh’ families as secular!
— Ritu (सत्यसाधक) #EqualRightsForHindus (@RituRathaur) October 13, 2020
Is that true?
NO!
Fact is most hindu girls go thru extreme pain & hardships on marrying namazis
Don’t destroy more life’s?? pic.twitter.com/kZ6PDc2oY6
Your such ads are not some creative ideas but it’s result of prejudice.
— Arvind Kumar?? (@ArvindMishraIND) October 13, 2020
You should check with your media brand manager Mansoor Khan. We have seen multiple ads showing same pattern in recent few years.
We will welcome your campaign if you will relaunch add with reverse people. pic.twitter.com/bTFxjFQGc3
These are some lessons Tanishq must be drawing from social media reactions over its now ‘highly controversial’ video advertisement.
The social media users believe that their outrage has had a big impact and they hope that it would have sent a message to the brand promoters and across the industry.
Tanishq video ad is now precipitating creation of a plethora of videos in response too. Enterprising social media users have inundated social media channels with counter videos and counter responses. Some are humorous, some scathing and some satirical too.
There is one hard-hitting video produced by Ajeet Bharti too, which takes a satirical shot at Tanishq advertisement in Hindi.
Shashi Tharoor in his own well-known style has criticised “Hindu bigots” for a boycott of Tanishq saying that it was a beautiful ad.
However, he is questioned immediately by hundreds of SM users. And Rahul Roshan wonders whether a series should be made on how she (the heroine of the ad) brings idols of goddesses at home too. He even takes a potshot at Tharoor mentioning about checking in Hotel Leela to discuss the issue.
Some sense of humour here too. Read and smile.
Writer Chetan Bhagat has a habit of expressing his opinion on all things under the Sun. He brings in pet all-season-great-man Gandhi.
He is quickly rebuffed by a witty Prasanna Vishwanan.
I wonder what Gandhi would have said about coronavirus vaccines. He said
— Prasanna Viswanathan (@prasannavishy) October 14, 2020
“Vaccination a barbarous practice and one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time.”
Time to abandon the moronic method of guilt-tripping Indians by invoking “What would Gandhi …” https://t.co/EnHmWDXkUu
And some free advice to Tanishq and Tata Group from Social Media users too: Learn from @HP how to make a good soul-touching advertisement without attempting social engineering in the houses, families and lives of your customers.
And there is one advertisement video from Tata Group company Titan too that the netizens are loving. They say this is the type of ads they would like to see. Some hint for Tanishq marketers.
This is the ad I was talking about pic.twitter.com/JZ41TXT1o7
— ??????? (@pathaspati) October 15, 2020