Tale of Nirma and the Obidient Puddle!

Tale of Nirma and the Obidient Puddle!

Nirma- the brand popular in middle-class homes of the country, launched the "Obedient Puddle " Ad.  In the recent past the brand made the not so impactful - 'underwater' commercial, which showed dancers moving with flowing fabric - a metaphor for clothes being washed in a bucket.  An important point in the ad was that it did not use the iconic Nirma jingle. This was a first since 1982, when the first Nirma ad was made.

The current Ad on air talks about the dirt tackling properties of the detergent, as well as use the legendary 'Washing powder Nirma' jingle, composed by Vedpal.The ad opens on the shot of a vehicle rolling into a puddle. A large amount of slush is about to fall onto a woman who is passing by. But just as the slush is ready to land on the woman, she sternly turns towards the puddle. Pointing her index finger at the slush, she says, "Nirma. Washing powder."

The slush pauses, surprised at the woman's words. She continues with the words of the jingle, in a firm tone and without any music, and the slush begins to feel threatened. Finally, she walks away untouched by the slush, which plops back into the puddle, much to the surprise of the onlookers.

The special effects of the puddle was  created by a Singapore based VFX artist. The film was shot in Pushkar, Rajasthan and the puddle was added later.

The puddle was first created of a wire frame. However, in order to create the wire mesh, water balloons hanging from a rod were burst with nails and studied, so that the correct mesh could be made. Given that water doesn't have shape or form, it was more difficult to animate water; and the process took about a month.