Denim & More

THE setting is a 1960s American high school. The music playing in the background is hip-hop. An 11-year-old schoolboy gets into a lift carrying a pile of books. In the lift, he sees the hand of a beautiful young woman come up from behind him, and 'lingeringly' slip a note into the front pocket of a jeans-clad 'cool and sexy' older student. On exiting the lift, the older student has the look of a contented cat that has just tasted cream. And once inside his classroom, it dawns on the 11-year-old that the female hand belongs to his teacher.

 Cool? Sexy? Sensuous? Or disgusting and outrageous? Certainly the first three, thinks Levi Strauss (India) about its new Asia-specific television commercial to be aired this week. Disgusting and outrageous? No way. But secretly, they're hoping the commercial will stir up a controversy and bring to the brand top-of-the-mind recall.

 Not that they'll admit it. "It's all about sexy and cool being the basic values of young people all over the world, though the commercial is set in the US," explains Vivek Raju, marketing services manager, Levi's (India). "The relationship between the student and the teacher is left to the imagination of viewers. We've never done anything controversial just for controversy's sake."

Yet, there's an unmistakable tone of anxiety tinged with hope for controversy that might help the premium jeans brand up its share of the Indian jeans market. Of the 30 million pairs sold annually in India, premium brands account for less than a million.

"Our commercials have always been different and the most copied," adds Raju. "We're not into traditional ads." Indeed, the earlier two commercials of Levi's, one featured the 'Clayman' rescuing a damsel from a building on fire; and another, two handcuffed convicts escaping from jail. Both were touted as different and attention-worthy by the ad industry.

School, however, may provoke attention for reasons other than those Levi's has in mind. Last month, Mary LeTourneau, 35, a class six teacher in Kent, on the US west coast, was jailed for six months for having an affair with her 13-year-old student and giving birth to his baby, her fifth. As per Chris Norred of the Eastside Journal, each year, 10 to 15 teachers in Washington state alone lose their teaching licenses for sexual misconduct with students while another 50 are investigated for the same offence.

"Female teachers will become a standing joke and be subjected to snide remarks by students," a 'very liberal' mother of two boys,told Outlook on condition of anonymity. Admitting that students do hero-worship their teachers, and some even harbour crushes, she added that ultimately everybody outgrows such feelings. "But a teacher propositioning a student or vice versa is gross. It's like telling young people that smoking, drinking, promiscuity are all cool and sexy things to do," she adds.

While that does sound like the distant rumbling of an approaching cloudburst, the Levi's hope for controversy is focused on the commercial/marketing sense of the ad. "Whether a controversial ad works or not depends on what the issue is all about," says Nikhil Nehru, chief operating officer, McCann Erickson (India), which handles the Levi's account. "If it proves a point about competition, it works."

But previous experiences like the MR Coffee and Tuff shoes ads, which used sex-appeal to sell unrelated products, show that it's a strategy fraught with risk. There's little evidence to show that they had Nestle or Action or Phoenix trembling in their boots. If Levi's follows suit, the company may need to go back to school to study Indian consumer trends.