Iconic Ads: Close Up – Kya Aap Close Up Karte Hain

In 2003, HLL decided to revive their 30-year-old gel toothpaste brand Close-Up. Close-Up had little attention and sales were stagnating.

This was also the time when advertising for toothpaste had become staid and boring. Most kinds of toothpaste showed dentists, germs attacking teeth and talked to mothers.

O&M was brought in to give the brand a fresh perspective

And they positioned the brand differently with a new set of creatives. They decided to target youngsters between 20 – 30 years old. And used freshness as the proposition.

The new creatives had a simple message. Close-Up would give freshness which in turn would give them the confidence to get close to others (read opposite sex). It was a new execution of the regular girl-boy story created by Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar and Pushpinder Singh.

The Chetan Shashital sung jingle was in a nasal tone and had the semblance of a Bollywood song from the CH Atma/ KL Saigal eras.

Kya Aap Close Up Karte Hain talked about the positives of using Close Up and the negatives of not using it.

The whole commercial (also radio) tickled the interest of the audience because of its unusual jingle, although in pre advertising research the song was rated, only average. However, O&M was insistent and later, the jingle became extremely popular.

Prasoon Pandey shot the film.

There is another twist. At Ogilvy, Suresh Mullick had mandated earlier that a) Should not create music and lyrics that take the brief literally b) Never force music onto the consumer. c) Not use brand names in the jingle.

However, in this case, since the brand name Close Up means getting close to someone, it was not a proper noun but a verb, hence, the brand name was allowed to be used many times too.

And that’s how Close Up became a great brand.