New ad-venture for Brand Dhoni

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Mahendra Singh Dhoni is a brand magnet for a reason, and his saleability goes beyond what he can (or cannot) achieve on the field. Just hours after returning home from a wretched tour of England that spanned 66 days of abject and — more gallingly — win-less cricket from his side, he’s back on the telly wooing his missus and saving the day.
Dhoni and Sakshi appear in a new bike advert that shows the skipper re-erecting an imposing effigy of Ravan using a rope harness for support and the bike providing the power. It’s the first time the couple is appearing on TV together, although Dhoni himself has been shot in a number of ads of TVS bikes.
The commercial had been directed by US-based Indian filmmakers Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK in Hyderabad, just after India’s World Cup win earlier this year.
“He was quite excited when I approached him with the idea of casting Sakshi in an ad with him,” says Dhoni’s good friend and representative Arun Pandey. “TVS has been associated with Mahi for six years now.”
Dhoni has been a TVS ambassador even before the Jharkhand lad had made a Test debut, and the move had been somewhat surprising then given that TVS already had another cricketer endorsing its bikes — Sachin Tendulkar. TVS let the Sachin deal run its course, and soon revealed Dhoni as the company’s face.
So will Sakshi become a regular feature in future ads? No-one’s willing to say for sure.
“It is the first time they have been cast together in any advertisement,” TVS Motor Company president (marketing) H.S. Goindi says. “We’ll see,” adds Pandey.
But don’t bet against it. As long as Brand Dhoni sells, Brand Sakshi will sell too.