AD Nauseam: Part - XVI

And so another Financial Year has come to pass, bringing with it the stirring notes of the bugle sounded by the Tax Collector as he cries 'Tally Ho!' and rolls down upon us for new sessions of "squeezing and squashing the honest taxpayer into the mud".

And while we ponder our fate and the sums we will have to pay our CA’s and other sundry troops to fight these annual battles, one’s thoughts inevitably turn from this battlefront towards the advertising battlefront of the past year and the abiding (and sometimes bloody) memories it leaves strewn on its battlefields.

Undoubtedly the star of the year behind has been Havell’s. It’s a lonely star, one of very few in a dark, dark sky, but perhaps it shines the brighter for that.

To my mind, the first tremulous twinkling of light from this fledgling star was visible a couple of years ago with the "chulah under the flyover" and the "hair-raising" snippets we saw. Though not the finished article then, at least they were trying to be different and consistently so.

The true coming-of-age happens, to my mind, when the humour becomes less banana-peel and more subtle, more tongue-in-cheek rather than in-your-face and when the storyline is more metaphoric and suggestive rather than straightforward (much like the famed Fevicol oeuvre after the initial ‘carrying pots on the head’ stories). The witty one-liner is way ahead of the full-blown comedy sequence. And their latest offering, when the child uses a Havell’s wire as the flagpole of the Indian tricolour is capped by the child asking "Ab koi aur cartoon dekhen?" in response to the caricature of a politician fulminating on the TV about who will save the country from the many fires raging within.

Superb. Integrates the brand promise ("aag se bachaye") indelibly with the storyline and resonates with our feelings as Indians. What more could one want?

Add to this their latest "Hawaa badlegi" series. What a wonderful contrast to the other ponderous "air in every corner" yawns we’ve been seeing as nauseam (!!) as well as the pompous ones from Usha (almost wrote Bajaj, which just shows) which depict scientists playing with a beachball in a lab. Really. And made the worse when one of the aforesaid scientists is recognizable a professional model. All balls, I say. Ask any consumer if he knows the difference between PSPO and BULL****.

But capture this same consumer’s imagination and you’re home free. How many times have you looked longingly at your fan? The interaction between this durable and the consumer is limited to flicking on a switch, unlike a fridge or a TV. Once installed, it’s largely the silent Jeeves in our lives. And while we might change our TV’s a few times, our mobiles ever so often, fans stay for years. So best capture your customers with incisive wit and get them to at least consider the brand…all accomplished brilliantly by Havell’s.

And this is now followed by the "Hawaa badlegi" series, each a gem in itself. Whether it’s the man who’ll take his wife’s surname after marriage, or the couple who’ll adopt an old couple, or the maid who’s asked to join the family at the dinner table, each is superb in its conception and in its understated execution. Congrats to the agency and the client for resisting any thoughts of pushing in a shot of the fan at the table/registrar’s office etc.

There is no way that the brand will ever be mistaken for another. That is the acid test of memorability and image-creation.

Another brand that has, more often than not, been consistently unusual in projecting its brand image, is Idea Mobile. The "what an idea, sir-ji" is usually conveyed in a manner that is engaging and relevant to the brand proposition. After all, mobile telephony is mobile telephony, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.

So in the cacophony that is people connecting with others in all conceivable situations, across geographies, and all as clear as bells (though your experience will surely evoke cracked bells, if not ghostly echoes and versions of "hello, can you hear me?"), the Idea body of work is a refreshing change (mostly). The latest "telephone exchange" is a wonderful example of simple everyday situations being brought out in sharp focus with empathy and a realness that others sorely lack, so much so that I’m willing to even forgive the trite "main chai banatee hoon" ending.

So those are two of my favourites for the past year.

However, can an Ad Nauseam article be complete without the nausea? Of course not!

So my peeve this time is on the stuff we hear on the radio.

Have you heard those wonderful dialogues between husbands and wives, or fathers and sons, all of which suggest that they do not actually live together, or if they do, they never communicate except in radio spots? The one where the wife tells the hubby that she showed the flat for rent to prospective tenants is a classic. Obviously they do not discuss mere items like renting out their premises. So when the wife proudly says she showed the flat upstairs to prospective tenants, the husband asks if she asked them for ID, to which she replies "why on earth for?" as they looked respectable and would give a good rental. Good lord! Even some of our politicians would qualify on this account. And you know what that means!

And then there’s the Airtel "balance top up" spot, in which the oldish teenage son calls up his dad (!) to help him top up his phone balance. Dad dutifully does so through some app on his phone. Chuckles as he tells his son that he’s done it on the fly and that he’s ‘with it’. Son duly astonished. So am I. You mean dad has the app and the son is tenth failed in Gajraula? Oh, come on.

But the one that really gets my goat is the mealy-mouthed one from some govt dept in which a man and a woman maunder on and on in a plaintive and surly sort of defensive way about how proud we should be of ourselves as Indians because we introduced the "Zero" to the world and also have the largest railway network, not to mention Sanskrit being the language without which computers apparently can’t function.

Ho hum. When will we ever learn to stop living in the past? The largest railway network is also the filthiest, slowest and antiquated-est (!). ‘Zero’ is exactly what citizens get in the form of governance. And perhaps we should speak only in Sanskrit. That’ll at least keep the shouting matches in Parliament at bay.

There’s a wonderful letter to the Editor in The Economist dated April 13-19 (page 16) serially debunking India’s pipe dream of being a global power. It clearly lifts the ragged veil from the suppurating disaster area we are slowly but surely becoming as a country, but try and hide it through the banal stuff the govt trumpets in the radio spot. Besides the fact that it uses our tax money to air this antediluvian twaddle, it is an example of the Emperor with no clothes.

One fact in the Economist letter is perhaps the most sobering: "…according to a Thompson Reuters poll, India is one of the worst places to be a woman (below even Saudi Arabia)…!"

In my last article, I had written this:

"Lack of grace, tastelessness and strident jingoism define us a brand now.

Remember what brought the Nazis in."

It is interesting that the eminent economist Raghuram Rajan has been quoted recently as saying much the same in a newspaper article.

Voila!