Advertising will
always remain a very powerful tool for a person who has a solution to the
problems of the world. Or rather if a person has a solution for one of the
problems of the world, Advertising is a boon. In any other case it's a bane, a
pain in the rear.
When I was a kid there was a plethora of
advertisements that made sense because they discussed the USP's of the product
apart from their quirky one-liners and funny jingles. It was easy to understand
a product and know why precisely it was to be used. Check Nirma, Vicco, Bajaj
etc.. for example.
But in today's day the ads do not make
sense at all. They are interested in sensationalizing the concept of owning a
product. Nobody is interested or even knows the uses of the product anymore.
I'd be harsh to say that nothing good is happening, but then like Dettol or
lifebouy puts it, 99.99% of the ads are stupid.
I could give examples of Ads that hit the
television that deal with cosmetics- Fair n Lovely, Olay, Fair n Handsome, Axe,
Wild stone, Lux, Fiama di Wills; automobiles- karizma, pulsar and the other 100
and 125 cc models; telecom providers- Idea, Docomo, Airtel; insurance provides;
bankers; Soft drinks- Mountain Dew, Thumbs up; etc.. these all bull shit our
minds into owning these just for the heck of it.
Recently I saw Ultratech
cement's new ad, they show beautiful models who were scantily clad as the
masons of a building, now this ad actually gave me an existential crisis. Then
there is IIN that tends to piss me off every time I watch any of its ads. I
understand it helps people to use the internet, but at what cost? Isn't it too
much, to claim to own the internet? How can someone put their name against the
free services provided by the internet. I'm shocked why people in power aren't
even reacting to this ad, cause its a mass deceit, they are cheating on a very
higher order. Then there are these fairness ads that claim an Indian fairness
cream won the competition as the world's best fairness cream, it helps you
become two tones fairer. What kind of a joke is this? And literally how much is
two tones fairer? Are we bound to use a fairness meter they provide to gain
approval of ourselves? And then there are these tooth paste and detergent ads
which arrive with scientists, they come with numbers, '9 out of 10 dentists
recommend Oral-B', for someone who has an intermediate knowledge of
mathematics, would know that this statistic is useless if the sample set is
unknown, what if Oral-B paid and asked only 10 dentists and came to this
conclusion.
Truth is, ads reflect the IQ of the
country. A dumb nation requires dumb ads because ads that make sense are hardly
understandable, or maybe a few very over smart people with bloated ego assume
that the nation is dumb and provide us with this crap of a behemoth. This false
assumption has lead to a population of dumb consumers, yes like America. We
have finally become America, I had to travel all the way to tosh to find a few
Indians who live the Indian way. Rest all of us live in an all American
shopping mall. Where we decide on which restaurant will provide us better food
just by looking at the LEDs that lights it's name. And who is responsible? Indeed
us, we never spoke out.
For me, I consider these ads to be
offensive to my sparse intellect. And I'm offended even more because I am
amidst a legion of fellow consumers. And because of my fellow consumers I am
subjected to non-sense(just because it's in!) I don't want. We as a generation
will have at least a few ads on TV that did their job well, but my worry is
about the next coming one. I've seen a pattern with kids, of age 1-6, they love
advertisements more than the shows that are run on the television. Imagine
these kids absorbing in all the stupid, sensationalized info that is passed
through the ad. He/ she will be the next generation consumer who has been
dumbed down to such a level that he wouldn't stop and rationally think if the
product is actually useful or not.
A new wave of advertising is required, for
all mediums, above sensationalism and encouraging fake pride in ownership of a
product. Advertising that'll make you think. Advertising that'll actually solve
problems of the world. Things we ignore today will surely be problems of
tomorrow, and with such ads our future is bleak.
