nchors and journalists have grabbed a prominent role in advertising during the last five years. From 2000 till now, at least 79 TVCs (according to figures from TV Ad Indx, a tracking agency) have represented a news room set-up (or showed an anchor or a reporter) in their communication. And almost all these have been top-notch brands. To name a few, Ariel, Whisper, Fair and Lovely, Bajaj, Bharti Enterprises, Birla Insurance, Brooke Bond, Dabur Vatika Oil, Dettol Soap, Horlicks, Maruti, MRF, Opel, Pepsi, Reliance, Relaxo, Tata Indicom, Lux Cozi and Sprite.

So why is the media person becoming such a popular advertising model? Take, for example, Tata Indicom's case. It used Kajol and Ajay Devgan to promote its Non-stop life scheme. Ajay Devgan appears as an anchor for a news channel while Kajol acts as a reporter. The interaction between the anchor and the reporter forms the theme of the communication. Why did Tata Indicom go with this theme? Says Abdul Khan, vice-president and head (marketing), Tata Indicom, "We settled for a news format because we felt that there was something new and we should reinforce the fact. We felt we could interestingly use the medium and the message. In the first phase, when we broke this ad, it was broken only on news channels during prime time and later they were broadcast on other channels. We saw this as genuine news and communicated the same in an interesting manner." ... more