The Healthy Binge Builds Its First Brand Film Around The Sound Umm

The Healthy Binge has released its first brand film, Taste Ka Naya Language, made in collaboration with tmrw Factory by Wit & Chai Group, and built on the idea that the sound "Umm" is a universal response to something tasting good.

Brand: The Healthy Binge
Creative: tmrw Factory by Wit & Chai Group
Film: Taste Ka Naya Language, the brand's first
Portfolio: baked, palm-oil-free and gluten-free snacks made with jowar, ragi, amaranth, chickpeas and quinoa
Spokespeople: Karan Korke, co-founder and chief marketing officer, The Healthy Binge

How The Film Works

A young man on his way to a job interview notices that everyone around him has stopped using words. His mother answers his questions with an "Umm". The conversations at the office run on the same sound in different tones. He eventually asks, out loud, what is going on.

Then he eats, produces an "Umm" of his own, and the joke resolves: the language everyone is speaking is the language of taste.

The Problem The Healthy Binge Has To Solve

Healthy snacking has a structural disadvantage in advertising, which is that its ingredient list is also its apology. Jowar, ragi, amaranth, chickpeas, quinoa, baked not fried, no palm oil, gluten-free. Every one of those is a reason to trust the product and a reason to suspect it will taste like a compromise.

Lead with the ingredients and you confirm the suspicion. The film's solution is to refuse to argue the point and simply show the involuntary noise people make when something is good, leaving the ingredient list to the pack.

Why The Sound Rather Than A Line

Korke put the reasoning on universality:

"'Umm' is an instinctive response to something that tastes genuinely good, and that made it the perfect foundation for the campaign."

A sound also travels in a way a tagline does not. India is a market where a national campaign has to survive several languages, and a first film from a young brand cannot afford to be dubbed into relevance. A noise is understood everywhere and needs no translation budget, which for a direct-to-consumer brand making its first real spend is a practical consideration as much as a creative one.

What To Watch

Running a whole film on one sound is a device, and devices are fragile at length. It holds here because the film keeps the confusion genuine and lets the payoff land late rather than winking at the audience throughout.

The harder test is what a second film does. A gag that works once becomes a property only if the brand can repeat it without the audience feeling it has already had the joke.