Saturday 25 August 2012

Really interesting Hari Raya commercials!

This week, I've seen some Hari Raya Aidilfitri commercials on local TV.

Not all commercials I've seen are good, many of them are cliches, reusing the same Hari Raya songs, same Hari Raya feeling, especially for public service announcements. This may because of the lack of directors who can do such commercials like how the late Yasmin Ahmad did with her festive Petronas commercials. But I think several ones that I saw are interesting and creative. And they're also available on Youtube for those who want watch on the internet or going overseas. That's why I decided to add links to these videos to accompany the commercials that I'm talking about.

The first one is one of the commercials by TV3 for Hari Raya. This commercial is part of TV3's Hari Raya branding which is called "Terbaik Raya" where characters from local 3D action animated series Boboiboy come in. Yaya from Boboiboy reminds viewers to lock your doors when leaving for "balik kampung". Before going out, Yaya met Ling and reminded the same. When Yaya's family are on the highway, Ling calls her every time and keep reminding that Yaya's house is safe. What a creative way to make a commercial!


The second one is a commercial by Maxis. The commercial uses shots of people celebrating Hari Raya from different places in Malaysia including one from Melbourne, Australia. Their lips are synched to a cover of "Suasana Hari Raya" by Anuar Zain accompanied by a woman called Atilia, a voice talent who had also made a theme song for Radio 24, Bernama's radio station during its launch in September 2007. This also interestingly includes a shot of people from Bukit Jalil (in Astro's headquarters, because Maxis owns Astro) with a rather fake Hari Raya-themed news set in the studio designed for the commercial! Here is the full version uploaded to Youtube.

The third one is rather interesting. TM uses social media elements for this commercial. These teenagers use Facebook to convey their feelings about Hari Raya while they're talking about Asri who furthers their education in Australia and worried about his life there. The background music is from a song by Sheila Majid with a 1980's feel that I've never heard, maybe. At the end, viewers are reminded to choose the definite ending for the commercial by visiting http://www.everyoneconnects.net. Reminds me of how Bunkface (an indie band) made a song called "Through My Window" for TM's social media campaign called "Everyone Connects" with the collaboration of social media users and made a flash mob of the song near Pavilion Kuala Lumpur which was later shown on a TV commercial. That was in 2009.


The last one is by PNB (Permodalan Nasional Berhad). Rather unique because not many commercials are shot in remote places far away from Peninsular Malaysia and other races are rarely shown. This commercial was shot in Ba'kelalan, Sarawak. This commercial is about Mail who is a Bumiputra Muslim who wore a red baju melayu and a Bumiputra non-Muslim boy named Agan who lives in the deep jungle. They are good friends. He wants to give his Hari Raya feeling to Mail because he was always suffering from going to school and doing work very often. The last part is also interesting where Agan's father showed off many of the PNB account books.



More blogposts soon!

PS: I've just updated this blogpost by going to the HTML section where I embeded Youtube links. I've also edited some sentences in this blogpost. I'm planning to make a blogpost about social media later.

Correction on August 30: The late film director that I mentioned was Yasmin Ahmad, not Yasmin Yusuf as I thought. Also made some corrections about the TM commercial. Sincere apologies.



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