MAM
How Durex got folks in the wrong mood at IIT Mumbai’s Mood Indigo
MUMBAI: Humour in advertising can really strike a funny bone and have us doubling over in laughter! It can be a great conversation starter, leader and silence breaker. And a great ad re-caller. However, it all depends on where the humorous advertising is being placed.
The Indian Institutes of Technology are known to be filled with the super intelligent young folk, actually young adults, but they are also the places where the most amount of things that should not happen, happen. Especially after studying and assignment time are over.
Fun, gags, leg pulling, and several other un-mentionable things take place as some of the mild engineering students in the day turn into evil Hydes late in the evening. Surely, they will know how to take a joke, right?
Wrong! As the condom brand Durex from the Reckitt Benckiser stable discovered.
Durex chose to sponsor the very famous IIT Moodi Indigo festival in Mumbai in a bid to create awareness about safe sex with protection. (During Mood I fest really, where smoking up is pretty common and you find folks cozying up in hidden nooks and crannies, at least it was the case at one time – the professors and the dean would never guess!).
Durex decided to take the ‘pun’ning route to educate the young ‘adult AI, ML, LLM-obsessed students, many of whom are culturing and nurturing unicorn start up ideas in their heads.
The Durex standees had tongue in cheek (pun intended again) slogans: “Always up for a good screw,” “Mood U and I. Play with Durex,” “Here the Feelings are always real! We don’t fake around!,””Here because we found the Jee spot. Play with Durex,””Tonight Won’t Come Twice,””I am always a late-comer” and so on.
Guess the slogans were, and are worth a laugh.
Or at least a giggle.
Not for some students though. They rose up as a crowd and voiced their complaints against the so called “vulgar” jokes.
And guess what?
While Durex condoms offer protection, no one came forward to protect Durex. The standees had to be prematurely withdrawn and stacked up in a corner hidden from sight.
The joke really backfired on Durex.
So did Durex go wrong?
Some like experienced marketer and brand custodian Arpita Yadav think so.
“Everyone, including me loves the quirk that Durex brings on to their social media, even ads. But not sure if I have ever seen it in an outdoor setting, let alone on a college campus. I am all in for educating kids, but don’t think campus authorities could have ever approved this. Imagine the backlash from parents, teachers, and some students. I am actually on the fence about this one: humour might be the best way for spreading awareness, but is it?,” posted Yadav on Linkedin. (Her post on Linkedin has started quite a discussion on whether Durex was right or wrong; the scales seemed to be weighted in favour of wrong place, at the time of writing.)
So agency executives and brand managers, hope you will learn from this. It’s different strokes for different folks. (once again, pun intended).
(A big thank you to Arpita Yadav for the pictures as well. No copyright infringement is intended)
Brands
Reserve Bank of India cancels Paytm Payments Bank licence
Central bank cites compliance failures; curbs tighten as wind-up looms
MUMBAI: India’s banking watchdog delivered its sharpest blow yet to Paytm Payments Bank, cancelling its licence and effectively ending its ability to operate as a bank under the law.
The Reserve Bank of India said the entity can no longer conduct banking business under the Banking Regulation Act, citing concerns that its affairs were not being run in the interest of depositors or the public and that it had failed to meet licence conditions.
The move escalates a crackdown that has been building for months. The bank had already been barred from onboarding new customers since March 11, 2022, and later faced restrictions on deposits, credit and wallet top-ups. In January 2024, the central bank ordered it to stop accepting fresh deposits, pointing to persistent non-compliance, including lapses in customer due diligence, use of funds and technology systems.
Operationally, the bank is now on a tight leash. It may process withdrawals of existing deposits and facilitate loan referrals through banking correspondents, but it cannot take fresh deposits.
The central bank said it would apply to the high court to wind up the bank.
Paytm sought to ringfence the fallout. In a regulatory filing, it said the licence cancellation applies to Paytm Payments Bank Limited, a separate entity, and should not be attributed to One 97 Communications. It added that there is no exposure or material business arrangement with the bank and that it operates independently, without Paytm’s board or management involvement.
“As informed earlier, Paytm (One 97 Communications Limited) and its services, which have been operating without interruption, will continue to operate uninterrupted. These include the Paytm app, Paytm UPI, Paytm Gold and all other services offered by its subsidiaries and associated companies,” the company said.
The distinction may reassure users of the app ecosystem, but the regulator’s verdict is unequivocal. After years of warnings, caps and curbs, the payments bank experiment at Paytm is being shut down—decisively, and with little room left to manoeuvre.
