I was planning to write a blog on
the amazing world of Indian TV advertisement for a long time. I find it
fascinating because of the sheer brilliance of some of the ads as well as the
utter dumbness of many! Before I start let
me accept that some of the ideas in this post are taken from few Facebook
shared posts which I have seen in recent times. Obviously I have added a few
and give some more details of some of those ads mentioned in that post.
In last 30 odd years the Indian
TV ads have moved a long way from ‘Hamara Bajaj’ to ‘Ohh Yes! Abhi!’ through ‘Shuddh Dhara’, ‘Nothing Official
about it’ and ‘Vodafone Zoozoos’. Here I would like to point out some of the
advertising clichés used by these ad-makers to sell a particular type of
product!
The Womanizer
If you go through some of the
recent ads for body spray for men you would feel that the only way a girl can be impressed is by the heavenly aroma coming out from different parts of male human
body. They don’t bother about the bank balance, intelligence or good looks! The
only thing they care for is the smell of his body which is enough for them to
turn on and get wet! The trend which started with Axe is now copied shamelessly
by everyone and hence almost all the body spray ads show skimpy clad women
throwing themselves on guys who are using some particular brand of body spray.
And apparently some of the guys like Ranbir Kapoor knows it and roams around
with a counter to count number of girls he could impress with the fragrance of
his body! The Faking News people had caught this as early as 2009 and had a
hilarious piece on this topic!
Confusion on State of Matter
This is another body spray ads
stereotype people use where they try to convince you that the deodorants you
were using till now had nothing but some kind of gas sans any liquid content and
hence you are not getting true value of money which only there new body spray
will give you.
The Jumping Jacks
So you are a millionaire film
star, you earn 100 crores while acting in master classes like ‘Kambakkht Ishq’
or ‘Ek Tha Tiger’ but when it comes to get your soft drinks you are always out
of stock and needs to jump out of your window from the twentieth floor or run
above a train or slide through a moving truck. I never fathom why they don’t
just buy one from the road side pan-shop near the corner. But they know better
and hence Can make a ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ to get their bottle
of Cola!
The other variation is the dare
devil ones who just need a sip of their soft drink to turn into superman and
perform extra ordinary stunts like making Fardeen Khan act (Okay… that’s
not possible even by Sir Jadeja) jumping to the Ocean from a cliff!!
The Circus
You are a young student who wants
a mode of communication to go to college and tuition and also to impress a few
girls in your college. You hope that your dad will buy you a motorbike and you
want to convince him by showing some motorbike TV ads. But let me tell you
guys, do not make this mistake! I can assure you that if you show him a single
TV ad for bikes he would never buy you one. Why? Because in each of these TV
ads the bikers are not human, they are some super stuntmen coming from Mars who
only ride their bike in uneven mountain roads and can perform almost every
single trick which can be performed by the man who rides his motorcycle through
fire in the circus. It is almost like the first thing you are going to do is to
ride your bike with the front wheel on the air or jump to river or drive
through a jungle.
The Jack of All trades
Now days everyone has a mobile
phone, some of us has more than one. With the growing importance of mobile
phone the ads have increased and now at this phase of mobile phone evolution
all these ads focus on apps and other advantages! Hence in most of the
mobile phone ads all they talk about are camera specifications, alarm
ringtones, and applications, in short apps. Random apps like news paper
application, Geeta Path application, How to Copy in Exam application, how to
flirt with girls application and what not! The mobile phone ads now days do not
talk about simple things like talking and texting, they all are presented as
the greatest device human kind have put their hand on to. A device which could
have turned Ravana to compete for Nobel Peace Prize with Mother Teresa!
Offers and Plans
Along with the handsets even the
mobile service providers also have some typical ads. Vodafone generally comes
up with decent ads but if you think about their main competitor well they are a
treat. From the ads showing idiotic friendship clichés to the ads of taxi
driver showing Karina Kapoor videos in exchange of change, they reach new low
of nonsense ads with their every new offer. The last one specially has created
quite a few jokes in Facebook including Arsene Wenger offering to show the
Kareena Video along with 40 million Euros in order to make his bid 40 million
plus which was the minimum bidding price!!
The Common Man
Ohh… this one is the most
interesting one for me. Here I am talking about ads for Banks, Insurance
Company or other financial organizations. Now, by nature Indians are a little
sceptic about any private financial organizations and generally are not big
risk takers. Hence the people from our previous generation have accounts mostly
in SBI or other government banks and have policies with LIC.
All the private banks and
Insurance companies captured that pretty early and hence decide to target the
higher income population group at the beginning. But they had to focus on the
huge Indian middle class population and hence all of them started designing ads
targeting the middle class. And what best to show which can attract the common
man? To them the answer to that question was common man. Hence in almost all the ads
for these private financial companies you will see common men, men and women
like you and me using their services and making best of it. This is a simple
example for advertising clichés targeting a vast customer base!
Racism – Very Bad, Whitening Cream - Very Good
As Indians we all remember the
stories of racism faced by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa. We also show our
displeasure and hatred towards racism whenever any stories of racism come from
any part of the world.
But back home we the biggest
hypocrites when it comes to women and men’s face cream. 90% of these cream advertisement
talks about the glowing fairness it is going to give to your skin and how by
applying their cream for 2 weeks you would turn into a Stuart Broad from your
earlier avatar of Vinod Kambli!
The Toppers
This is a very specific ads which
I have only seen in Bengali TV channels and not much in national television.
The ads about tuition centres and academic guidebooks!
The Bengalis are generally very
studious group of people who let their five year olds carry bags of more than
their own weight to school. They are also sent to various coaching centres and
to tutions from their middle school to be prepared for the great 10th
Standard examination which is followed by HS, Joint entrance, IIT entrance etc.
Hence, there are quite a few
coaching centres that are making good money by enrolling hundreds of students
for their private classes. And the best way for them to attract the parents of
potential enrolments are nothing but give example of previous year’s toppers.
So, even if the Topper of those examinations stays in the villages of Purulia
or in the hills of Darjiling he shows his face and recites how these coaching
centres in Kolkata have helped him to achieve his grand success!
The other one is this famous
publications house of textbooks and guidebooks who sales their product like the
way a newlywed Indian girl has to take pictures in her reception- with every
random person present! So either you are a retired sportsman, aged poet,
budding film star or celebrity for no apparent reason, you can come to their
ad, praise their textbooks and feel sad for not having those books in your
school days like in the following picture!
From Facebook |
A Few Good Men
After talking about all these
advertising clichés let me write about one series of ads which I truly like.
These are the ads for Imperial Blue for their ‘Men will be Men’ series. Even
those ads are also very typical but they are presented in such a witty manner
that I find then quite amusing. The one which is my favourite is the one where
I guys goes to a jewellery shop to buy a diamond ring for his anniversary. The
salesman found it quite comical that the guy is looking for costly rings for
his tenth anniversary till it was revealed that the anniversary was on previous
day which he happily forgot!! You can see the ad from 1:51 in the following
video. The ads shown before and after that one are also quite funny and cheer
my mood any time.
The television advertisements are
source of entertainment from a long time and what I found is that the quality
of TV ads does not vary significantly from country to country. In fact in my
opinion the ads I had seen in abroad are pretty much similar to Indian ads if
not of inferior class.
Before I finish, let me tell you
that this is my list but dear reader you are welcome and encouraged to add more
such advertising clichés from Indian television.
It's surprising to see that Sprite or Fevicol have not received a mention. Sprite had somehow stopped advertising but Fevicol has not. For me these two are the best.
ReplyDeleteBhalo hoyeche ... Din din tor lekhar style r o pokto hochhe ... Raavan Mother Teresa upoma was luvly though Kambli Broad r ta amar bhalo lageni ... Onek likhechis but tui research korte parish there could be a part two also ... For eg. Alta sindur er ads ... Health drinks er ads etc ... Nevertheless chalie ja ... Quite a good read from u ....
ReplyDeleteAnuradha
Thanks... hna... aro koyekta add niye lekha jeto... ar Kambli-Broad er reference tai to recism dekhanor janyo... Ar Rai ta je tui ami jani!
ReplyDelete