Tongue tied: Intex Mobile's latest ad fails to make a mark like Nescafe's stuttering act last year

Maybe the long tail of inspiration for the new Intex ad stretches all the way back to last year when Nescafe scored a viral success with a film about a young standup comic with a speech impediment who uses coffee as a quick pick me up. But we are guessing a lot was lost in translation. And so in Intex's latest, we have cool dude Bhaskar, the college heartthrob, who when reminded that he stammers, haltingly stutters out the words "Main atakta hoon, mera Intex Aqua Speed nahin" (I stammer but not my Intex Aqua Speed mobile). The commercial ends with a voiceover: "Now do multitasking without hanging."
Except by some accounts, a hanging seems in order, considering the film has ruffled more than a few feathers. The brand is being knocked for insensitivity to people with speech disorders. Smart? Well, it's probably what the third-largest smartphone maker in India thought when it came up with the idea of using stammering as a tool to grab attention. Its website cheekily proclaims: "We are the talk of the town, check it out for yourself (with the new ad)."

But is being the talk of the town a worthwhile goal when people don't have very many positive things to say?

"It's disgusting," says Abraham Koshy, professor of marketing at IIM Ahmedabad. The advertisement is the creation of a sick mind and the agency has peddled it as a creative work, he fumes. "Anybody making fun of physical deficiency is not acceptable at all. And any brand doing this is doomed," he warns.

The commercial has drawn ire of Bollywood celebrity, Hrithik Roshan, who's had a well documented struggle to overcome stammering. Roshan tweeted: "An intex ad using a handicap - a boy wth a stutter 2 enhance d fluency of its product. Irresponsible. Insensitive. Want 2 ban sumthing ban dis." The charitable view of Roshan's outburst is it's a natural reaction to an issue that the actor is quite close to; while the cynics believe his rage is at least in part strategic considering he is brand ambassador for Oppo, Intex's rival in the smartphone space.

When contacted, Intex declined to comment. Sources close to the project will only say that the original draft of the ad which was apparently a brainchild of the client and not the agency was a lot more offensive. It's finally left to Honey Makhani, the model who played the role of Bhaskar in the commercial to defend the ad. It is not meant to hurt the sentiments of those who stammer, he says. "It was not provocative and there is nothing bad about it. As an actor I was just doing my job."

The actor however also posted a comment on his Facebook page saying: "I don't stammer; this is just for a commercial." Makhani goes on to argue that the advertisement, in fact, empowers those who stammer by portraying them as confident people.

Advertising and marketing experts, however, are not amused.

"How could they even imagine that consumers would like the brand which makes ‘fun' of them?" says Ashita Aggarwal Sharma, professor of marketing at SP Jain Institute of Management & Research. It's important for brands to behave responsibly while dealing with such issues. "Brands should communicate for a purpose of engaging with the consumers and not alienating them."

Marketing experts also contrast the way stammering was handled by Nescafe. "Rather than using stammering as a negative attribute, Nescafe brought about the humour and emotion beautifully in the commercial," says Sharma. A social message was embedded into a coffee ad without being too preachy.

It's a wake up call to marketers that are dabbling with disabilities at an unprecedented rate, trying to score an elusive heartwarming story. But one misstep and a brand could find itself crippled, furiously trying to come up with a convincing explanation.