Having beautiful women as arm-candy is nothing new for Marina. The orangutan, who is seen with sultry model Sana in the underwear ad, had earlier shared screen with Hollywood actor Catherine Zeta-Jones for another TV ad. She has made a fan in ad-filmmaker Bauddhayan Mukherji as well. “Marina is a pleasure to direct. I observed her for three days before finally shooting with her,” says Mukherji who has shot the commercial. “Though Marina and the orangutans are all over in the advertisement, the underwear is the real hero,” he says, whose last Amul Macho TV commercial created a lot of controversy resulting in its ban by the government.

The commercial, on air regularly since February 20, has employed two trained female orangutans. It opens with an orangutan stealing underwear from a honeymooning couple. The wife follows it outside only to find more orangutans doing all sort of pranks with her makeup items stolen from the room. Amidst the cacophony, the male orangutan wears the underwear and succeeds in grabbing the attention of all the females of its species. But he soon loses it and subsequently falls from grace.

But why this monkey business? According to Pushpinder Singh, copywriter and chairman of Saints and Warriors, the agency that conceptualised the ad, one of the reasons of using orangutans was because they wanted to circumvent issues that might have arose out of an ad of underwear featuring humans. Sandeep Seksaria, executive director, Amul Group, says the feedback has been successful. “After the last ad Amul Macho has registered a growth of 110 per cent. We are satisfied with the outcome of both the commercials,” he adds.

However, not everyone echoes his words. While city-based filmmaker Anup Das finds it refreshing, model-actor Kiran Janjani doesn’t. Nataraja Subramanian, cinematographer of Black Friday, Jab We Met, Parineeta and other films, though says that the commercial is nicely shot, adds that he didn’t find the concept interesting. And Delhi-based independent filmmaker Spandan Banerjee says, “This is not one of the best ads of Bauddhayan. It works as a clutter-breaker but I’m not sure about the communication part of it.”