There comes a time in the evolution of every market when it witnesses a tectonic shift in its attitude towards categories that were traditionally never spoken about. One look at the supplement section of any newspaper and you know fitness and health is a permanent feature that just refuses to vanish from the sights of us comfortably lazy folks.
Some brands lure your with a promise and some by scaring you and then comes a brand that just insults you into action. The last one has seldom been seen in India. That is until a day or so ago when the brand “Muscle Blaze” stepped out of the closet to declare itself unabashedly as a supplement for body building. It dropped the pretense of nutrition and proteins and health to focus solely on what the job of the product is – Help build a better looking body.
Check out the campaign : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG9Ii3MyOzw
Laced with multiple obnoxiously good looking bodies, the brand attempts to name and shame the consumer into action and for this, one must give credit. An extremely bold move in a country where we insist on nodding our heads when we mean to say ‘NO’
Kudos to the marketing brains behind this campaign and more so to the organization and its vision to pull this category out and take the entire Chinese whispers phenomenon around it head on. Apparently, one of the best selling brands online, Muscle Blaze may just be responsible for accelerating the growth of this category to unimaginable levels.
There is very little information available on the organization brand or the creative agency behind the campaign. Either the PR is yet to begin or it is a missed opportunity given how impactful the campaign is.
For years now India has witnessed the mushrooming of gyms and health clubs and dieticians and yet no brand displayed the courage to call out what it was. Vanity is the single biggest driver of physical activity. Health is a close seconds. A subtle but crucial difference lies in the fact that “health” is something that we Indians gladly compromise on for our own selves. We only care about the health of our loved ones. Hence the scare mongering. From Saffola’s innumerable attempts to tell housewives that their husbands are about to choke on a Parantha to the concept of “shuddh aata” in India, health as a platform works only when you talk to a loved one of a consumer rather than a consumer.
Vanity, however, is a different story. It is linked to self esteem and at a deeper level to potential sexual conquests. Perhaps a reason most brands in India have been careful not to tread the path.
Muscle Blaze has very nonchalantly treated vanity as an acceptable trait. This in a county that is still in flux between a joint and nuclear family and people are just discovering the merits of living life according by a personal choice. The campaign is in-time to capitalize on an evolving change in the social fabric.
Looks like the stage is ready to set a blaze.
The Brand Bytch 