Grey Grad

Grey Grad

Statutory Warning: Ads Contain Messages Beyond Your Understanding!!

Advertisements or Adverse-treatments!!!

It's the occasion every Indian has been waiting for… the master blaster Sachin Tendulkar is just 2 runs away from scoring the legendary & the first ever 200 hundred runs in an ODI (which isn't against a puny team Zimbabwe but the Proteas themselves). Watching that on TV is like watching the live coverage of Neil Armstrong landing on moon, who plants the tricolor instead of the USA flag. Well, that could have been possible, after all Neil kinda looked a bit duh, and what's the point of planting a flag on the moon, considering it doesn't even have a habitable environment…duhhh!!!.

Back to the point!! So Tendli is just 2 runs away from the creating history, emergency vehicle's around the country are all set to deploy for the million of cardiac arrest cases just incase he gets out on 199!!! All set as Sachin is on strike for the next over and booooooooom!!! AN ADVERTISMENT!!! YES…. its about some real cool mobile phone with a QWERTY keypad, where the kid crossing the road while using it is so engrossed, that he gets run over by a vehicle….Wah, excellent!!! A product that kills its (maybe only) consumer, we get the message loud and clear!!! So it's nice to conclude the debacle with a point that the mobile phone sales might just drop down a zillion notches considering the bad timing and of course the fact that the product is your direct gateway to heaven (I don't say it, the ad does!!!)

Well, considering the media planning, and the occasion and the viewership, the bad timing can be understood, forgotten & forgiven, but the message conveyed by the ad and the communication strategy is entirely different scenario…that's just pure blasphemy!! After all, what age are we living in? A deodorant isn't marketed for its ability to keep you fresh and smell great but its effort to seduce women (and in some cases family members, gross!!!). A men's inner wear will be sold not by its comfort factor when worn but the point that it will help you beat the bad guys while skimpily dressed females gawk at you (and how many of us flaunt our baniyan as it's a Armani suit???). A fairness cream is directly endorsed as something that makes you the star overnight or in 7 days with no mention for the need of talent and the cream doesn't even help you turn grey from black, leave the fairness quotient alone (From personal experiences, hence the angst!!!)

The list is endless and to come up with such examples I don't have to do an extensive research but just flip 20 channels for the next 30 seconds and they are all there… no wonder a survey says that 75% of ads are rarely watched by consumers. It's not that all advertisements endorse idiocy, there are intelligent and witty ones to but then they are soon becoming a myth. Companies pay through their noses for these ads, get all the famous Kumars and Khans of the world to endorse it and end up showing their consumer that consuming a particular soft drink will help do stunts, which by the way are shown with a standard warning that they are done by professionals (not the celebs, why????) and shouldn't be done at home…thumbs up for dumbness!!! SO WHAT'S THE POINT OF SHOWING IT THEN??

Well I get it, advertisements are hyped to fascinate and the examples shown are metaphors for what the products can achieve for the consumer on a superficial level. That isn't wrong at all and that's something which all advertisement courses and communication schools teach...entertain to retain. But then a metaphor should just be a metaphor and not end up becoming a hyperbole. In simple words a mindless exaggeration of aesthetic visuals, good-looking faces, creative artwork and lavish exhibition of the money shouldn't completely sidelining the message you were suppose to deliver in the first place. For that is the reason why the money, the visuals, the artwork, the celebrity and not to mention the creativity has been assembled, to get the message across.

Most of the ad companies would never admit to their mistakes but the fact of the matter is that an exaggerated message convinces a buyer much more than an exaggerated nonsense convincingly mouthed by a famous Bollywood superstar. Take a popular adhesive brand's advertisement for instance, for ages they have come up with ads that are witty & extremely exaggerated (with no popular faces endorsing them) and yet they connect due to the sheer brilliance of the message saying it's an adhesive and it does job so well that anything that they show seems possible… and their ads audience ke saath aise jod lagaye ki ache se acha na tod paye!!

As a humble request I would request all the so called creative minds in the famed ad business to be a bit more morally and socially responsible/sensible & please please pleeeeeease don't interrupt moments like Tendulkar's double ton, and post that just post a message congratulating him (even if he doesn't endorse your product!!!) and you will increase your customer base by at least one person…Me!!! Well for all the future ad gurus and entrepreneurs of the ad world & current academics of great communication schools all that a poor soul like me can suggest is, "stick to the message" and "don't think that your audience is dumb" because Rajesh Khana a.k.a KAKA had once very rightly said "Yeh public hai, yeh sab jaanti hai, yeh public hai!!!"

Source: http://diariesofdecisions.wordpress.com

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