Your Shot: Mango Frooti with Shahrukh Khan

So, possibly the most popular star in Bollywood, Shahrukh Khan, is present and you need a bunch of idolising kids to sit still and pull perfect faces. How to do it? Well, it's a tough task but there’s only one answer: sweets and chocolate… sweets and chocolate. Founder of Creativeland Asia Sajan RaJ Kurup discusses putting that technique into practice and ensuring an idea isn’t overrun by star presence. 

 

 

LBB> What was the brief from the client and what were your initial thoughts when you saw it?

 

SRK> One of the key tasks presented to us in the brief was to capture the feel of drinking a bottle of Mango Frooti. My initial thoughts read more like ‘oh no, not again’. The challenge that I gave myself while writing the script was to try and attempt it without the clichés of mouth-watering mango shots and juice splashes. I wanted to create ‘drool value’ purely through human emotions, reactions and expressions. Suddenly the brief looked more exciting than ever. I’m particularly glad to have been able to create this drool factor and still retain the quirkiness and edginess that we’ve consistently pushed with Mango Frooti over the years.

 

LBB> What was it like working with Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan? He’s arguably the most popular man in the industry!

 

SRK> Working with Shahrukh was incredibly humbling. For starters, he turned up to the shoot on time, which is not a usual feat for a Bollywood star! He diligently gave his takes, drank about five bottles of Mango Frooti, played a bit football and left. 

 

The main challenge, when working with a star of his stature was to ensure that his presence didn’t hijack the idea. We took great care – from the way we styled him to how we opened the film – to ensure that he was understated and not larger than the script. I think it did as much justice to his presence as it did to the largeness of the idea.

 

LBB> So…how did you do it? What was the casting process and how did you make that many children sit still for so long? How did you coax them into giving the correct performance and facial expressions? 

 

SRK> Casting took a very long time. The production team had to find kids and adults that looked alike and had similar facial structures. We had to hair-style them interestingly to leave efficient clues through the spot. It was tough to get the parents to agree to a mohawk for one of the kids! We told all of the children that we would only start shooting with them after their favourite superstar Shahrukh Khan arrived. Until then they just had to sit and enjoy the itinerary planned for them. We had magic shows and illusion acts to capture their curiosity. Popcorn and candyfloss making shows were on hand to capture their imagination and work up an appetite. They were told stories about chocolates and chocolate fountains – we even had the crew feed Jell-O and ice cream to one of the kids to capture the envy in their eyes! The cameras were obviously rolling, hidden behind black tents. We just kept shifting the kids composition, position and pose. 

 

The music was created from scratch – it’s a mix of Mediterranean languages, muddled together to create lyrics that are gibberish. We wanted the visuals to guide the viewers. A soothing repetitive tune with inexplicable lyrics added to the quirkiness of the experience. 

 

LBB> What was the shoot like? What were the key challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?

 

SRK> The uncertainty of dealing with the kids' expressions to managing the huge fan-following around who is arguably the most popular Bollywood-star, amongst other things, made the shoot quite intense. We shot across two days. The unpredictability of what we would get from the kids really was the biggest challenge – we had to shoot them on day one, review their expressions and compositions in the form of a rough edit overnight and remarriage the grown-up versions in similar compositions on the next day of shoot. While we all did our best and worked very hard on every little detail, I don’t think we could have pulled it off without a spot of magic and divine intervention. 

 

LBB> Strategically, what do you think this spot will achieve for the brand?

 

SRK> Before I answer that question, there are a couple of facts that I must familiarise you with. Firstly, Mango-Frooti created the mango drink category in India and, while it is a brand that is almost three decades old, the last seven years have seen it multiply in size by five. What this spot will achieve will be to, perhaps, reiterate its stature in the minds of the consumers. I think that being as differentiated as it is will help tremendously in terms of its equity in the market. In less than three days, the spot has become hugely popular and received about 20000 views on YouTube. It has also been consistently trending on Twitter for over 5 days. And not just in India, but in many parts of the world where there is a large Indian population.

 

Prakash Varma of Nirvana Films directed the film.