AD Nauseam: Part - XII

So 'tis come to this...our dough-ty cricketing chappies, after the booze disguised as music and the drinks disguised as feeding bottles, are now down to fighting the good fight as in the latest epic on our TV screens titled "Milawat se Jung".

Now, while I'm all for putting a pox on all those who do the "milawati" sort of dirty, I'm a trifle bewildered as to whom our noble warriors are targetting. When they exhort us with their call to arms, with whom exactly are we supposed to thrust and parry? Since the ads are on TV, and TV is watched by the many-headed, who presumably don't really care for "milawat" themselves, what are they actually supposed to do? Who do they skewer? Do they burst into the godowns of the "milawatis" a la Shashi Kapoor in Deewaar and do the gun-in-the-pocket routine?

Rather passé, what?

Or should they send everything they buy to an IOC fuel station for the adulteration check? Tell me, hand on steering wheel, how many of us have done that ever? Ever?

And as for the "milawatis", will they shed a silent tear and resolve to mend their dastardly ways when they see our men in some-sickly-shade-of-grey give them a collective beady-eyed look?

Somehow I doubt it.

So this call to arms is very Don Quixote, if not actually Shakespearian…and I dare say it is not to be.

Which brings me to another call of action that we're witness to these days: the BB icon.

I must say up front that I think BB have latched onto a good thing. The red star is ummissable and unputdownable. I dare anyone who has a BB to ignore that little red beacon of temptation when it twinkles on the screen telling us of perhaps some wonderful surprise which awaits when we click on it. I know I can't. It's like the blinking neon sign atop a bar that seduces and inveigles and draws us silently in to a world full of promise.

So they've hit the right button, as it were.

However, though well begun is half done, what now?

Having hit upon a mnemonic that is unique to itself, where does BB go from here? How can and must they develop and expand the "call to action" insight so that it comes to life and moves on from a mnemonic to a metaphor for life?

Ay, there's the rub…if we must continue with our Shakespearian theme.

And we shall see.

After this call to action, can action itself be but a short step away?

I refer to the various types of hurly-burly we see in the internet dongle ads.

The tragic (and will tell you why 'tragic' in a moment) part of most of these ads is that while 'speed' might be the raison d'etre of these thing-thangs, our noble internet service providers take it far too literally.

Example: (yawn) The Reliance thing-thang in the 'Case of the Speeding Train'.

Scenario: (yawn) Speeding train about to knock chappie's socks off in a few seconds if he's unable to undo some complex rope knot that's tied up his hands. Chappie sees train coming, plugs thing-thang into USB slot with teeth, boots up, searches, gets to page with solution for knotty problem, uses teeth to untie knot, and nonchalantly hops out of train's way. Train fumes by probably saying "drat!"

Reaction: Double yawn. Bollywood does it better and that's sayin' somethin'. But even more damning is the literal eyewash that the ad provides. Because, unless the train was in a different city from the chappie, there was no way in a zillion nano seconds that said chappie wouldn't be rail-kill. How long does it take you to boot up your thing-thang (the internet one, I mean)? Knot me up and hope to fly if it takes less than a minute, then search, then find the solution, then…God help us.

It amazes me that big advertisers spend big bucks (there are others on this type of burning train too, such as the MTS Mblaze one which actually depicts actual download speeds set to a driving beat…all the pulsating excitement of watching algebra turned into a rock video) because presumably they still think we're still weaning and will gurgle when we see such (daft) excitement on the screen. "Look mama, bad train not hit nice boy" or "funny gleen lines and led lines mama" is what I guess they want us to say.

Is there no other way? What about trying metaphor?

Oops, sorry, that's a big word. Or then back, maybe, to the Bard: "Speed. O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple!" Or if that's too obscure, then the trusted "when the hurly burly's done, when the battle's lost and won…" should do, because this type of hurly-burly has only one outcome, and it ain't what the internet doctore ordered!

Sometimes we look too much at the obvious and forget that our audience sees through that simplistic stuff only too well.

And lastly, one tear for Cadbury's Bournville. The tear that the poor little cocoa bean in Ghana sheds when it's not selected by the bean counter (ha ha).

A resounding thumbs down to anything that makes babies weep for selfish, pecuniary gains.

Bad man, go get run over by train.

So there.