Can ‘Maaza’ really replace mangoes?

A TV ad promoting a mango drink – Maaza – is also impeding the importance of real mangoes. An advertisement should promote a commercial product but that must not end up disadvantaging use of a product that is an important part of our ecosystem.

COCA COLA, in its new communication for its mango drink - Maaza, talks about the experience of tasting a mango, without its seed. The buzz theme in the advertisement is ‘Bina guthli wala aam’ (ie seedless mango), which is on air on various TV networks.

Maaza, the ‘Bina guthli wala aam’ has Satish Shah in the lead playing a mango expert. In the ad, a child questions Shah, ‘the mango expert’, for a seedless mango. Shah, in an attempt to look for seedless mango, dwells into books, travels, but all in vain and in turn, end up learning from the kid that the ‘Bina guthli wala aam’ is nothing but ‘Maaza’ – the Coca Cola drink. At the end of the ad, he starts offering his clients two kinds of mangoes – with and without seeds.

Not undermining the importance and with full advantage of creativity to Leo Burnett and Coca Cola, I hope this ad does not, in any way, play a role in undermining importance of mango seeds within evolving young minds that watch and consume this drink.

Mangoes can be grown from seeds, though better and commercially are grafted or budded onto seedling rootstocks. In addition to it, mango seeds indeed have its importance. These are quite valuable in diarrhea. Seeds collected, dried in the shade and powdered can be used as a medicine. Mango seeds are considered useful in certain disorders connected with women’s reproductive organs. Also, spongy tissue in Alphonso mango - one of the widely known and considered as the ‘king of the mangoes’ – was traced to its seed, which due to its recalcitrant nature, switches over to germination mode during fruit ripening phase drawing nutrients from the mesocarp.

In any case, if we don’t have mango seeds, may be we will also not have on earth the ‘mango seed weevil’ (sternochetus mangiferae). It is, though, a pest species, but breeds only in mango seeds and cannot survive in other fruits.

So, we can have an advertisement to promote a commercial product but that must not end up disadvantaging the use of a product that is needed and is an important part of our ecosystem. The advertisement also shows kid with no interest in mango but in Maaza, probably something, which should not be promoted. Maaza can, in no way, replace the real mangoes. Mango is Mango, and is not Maaza.

Contributed by anil