We already had Rafale, the pan masala

As India welcomes the first batch of its new fighter aircraft, Rafale pan masala is also enjoying its moment of fame.

On Wednesday (July 29,2020), most if not all news channels were focused on one single piece of news – the arrival of the Rafale fighter jets. The Indian government had placed an order for 36 jets for Rs 58,000 crore and the first batch of five fighters landed at the Ambala airbase in Haryana.

But, social media was quick to catch on to the scent of a product called Rafale pan masala. Yes, you read it right and doing the rounds of Twitterverse were its website snapshots and a video too.

What a strike!! Rafale pan masala. 🤦‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/dRfQTWlzdW

— Lloyd Mathias (@LloydMathias) July 28, 2020

Lloyd Mathias, business strategist, and former Asia-Pacific marketing head of HP Inc tweeted about this brand of pan masala and it set the ball rolling for many of us. We went ahead to check and turns out Rafale pan masala has a website up and running too; it claims to be a 'no tobacco, no nicotine' pan masala.

And if that's not all, there's a 12-second ad too which prominently features fighter aircrafts. A point to note here is that the YouTube video is nine months old. Turns out, this brand had made headlines in 2019 too for a short period.

Well, this does not have the statutory warning statement as mandated by @fssaiindia Is this an official advertisement ?

— ASCI 77100 12345 (@ascionline) July 29, 2020

ASCI too joined in when it inquired if it was an official advertisement because it didn't have the statutory warning as mandated by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FASSAI).

While Rafale pan masala hasn't responded, could someone have asked for better organic moment marketing than this?