Bournvita revives tayyari jeet ki; tackles failure instead of celebrating success in new ad

The ad talks about failure acting as an important stepping stone for success.

Bournvita has brought back one of its old taglines - ‘Tayyari Jeet Ki’ - for its latest campaign. The campaign takes on a different theme - failure. The tagline first made an appearance in the 1990s.

The ad unfolds in the form of a story - we see two siblings who are badminton players. The duo - a girl and a boy - have been defeated. The girl goes back and starts practicing again, whereas the boy is frustrated at having lost the match.

Akshay Seth, ECD and copywriter at Ogilvy India, points out that the tagline wasn’t dropped entirely - but it felt relevant for the team to bring it back for this campaign.

“Our campaign deals with failure and the tagline ‘Tayyari Jeet Ki’ played into that conversation. We wanted to show that failure is a key part of the ‘tayyari’ (preparation) for a person’s ‘jeet’ (victory).”

Seth adds that Bournvita has always been about progressive parenting and the agency wants to maintain this theme across all the communication created for the brand.

“There’s so much fierce competition these days, and children are in that race too. In today’s day and age, kids are likely to face a lot more failure, before they taste success. Essentially, that’s where the thought came from. Failure is paradoxical, because it’s an important ingredient for success.”

Competition between children is a topic that Bournvita's ads have covered in the past. Bournvita's ads have also covered 'Andar ki taakat' in the past, as well as using the 'Tayyari jeet ki' tagline in different contexts.

Seth also says that this is a conversation that many parents don’t have with their children. It’s necessary to put this in perspective for children and this is what the agency has tried to bring out with the communication.

The 360-degree campaign has shorter edits that will be running on TV. The longer three-minute version will run on digital platforms.

Interestingly, throughout the ad, the product itself doesn’t make an appearance, neither is there a suggestion that this product can help you succeed.

During the COVID pandemic, when adults and children alike were locked indoors, Bournvita created a campaign that encouraged parents and children to have conversations around mental health. These ads also didn’t see the product being mentioned and focussed more on delivering the message, instead.

“Kids were affected during the first (COVID-induced) lockdown and mental health became a silent pandemic. We heard people talk about kids being cooped up, but the conversation would end there. We wanted to nudge parents to go a step further. From a brand POV, we’ve been focussed on both ‘Tann’ (body) and ‘Mann’ (mind) Ki Shakti, and balancing the two is a reality that needs to be spoken about,” mentions Seth.

‘Tann Ki Shakti, Mann Ki Shakti’ was a tagline that the brand used in one of its ads in the 1990s.

Also, the tayyari tagline was used in an ad that was aired when schools reopened in different parts of the country.

The same ad was also repurposed when people were concerned about boosting their immunity in a bid to fight the coronavirus.

Seth says that in the past, the lensing has been more on the ‘tayyari’ than the ‘jeet’ itself. “Failure is an important part of success and it’s about time we spoke about it.”

Ads on Bournvita’s YouTube channel show the tagline being used in an ad from 2011 – which, indeed, focussed more on consistency, practice and encouraged young athletes not to give up.

Seth agrees that parenting styles have changed with access to information. “We wanted to portray failure as the fuel needed to succeed. We don’t want to say, ‘it’s okay to fail’. When children fail, we noticed that the parents tend to mollycoddle them. We don’t want to sugarcoat it for the kids. We want to look at failure in an inspirational light.”

When it comes to the visual treatment of the ad, Seth says, the agency had intentionally shown the two children as having two distinct attitudes. Faced with the same failure, they handle it differently - the girl continues to practice and try again, but the boy wants to quit.

“We wanted to portray the spectrum of attitudes that children have when they are faced with failure.”

Credit list

CCOs India: Kainaz Karmakar, Harshad Rajadhyaksha, Sukesh Nayak

ECD & copywriter: Akshay Seth

GCD: Chinmay Raut

Creative team: Qainat Mansoor, Nikhil Choudhary, Anupam Menon, Yash Narvekar

Account management: Hirol Gandhi, Prakash Nair, Mayuri Shukla, Nikita Agarwal, Apoorva Gupta, Hastee Gosaliya

Brand planning: Ganapathy Balagopalan, Russell John, Shiksha Singh

Production house: Good Morning Films

Director: Bob (Shahank Chaturvedi)

Producer: Vikram Kalra, Robin D'Cruz