name: that girl in pink
location: Somewhere, India
my complete profile
Friday, February 24, 2006
Ad Nausea
It’s said that those who don’t make it in their chosen fields become critics. I guess the same stands true of out of work copywriters.
Lately, between sleeping, reading, rearranging the furniture in my drawing room and attempting to figure out what I want to do with my life I’ve also been watching a lot of TV. And since all the channels I watch have conspired to time their ad breaks with each other, I’m forced to watch the ads as well. Now, as an avid, if somewhat reluctant, ads watcher; I believe I have a right to give my opinion on what I want to see. Well, what I really want to see is no more ads. But since that option is impossible and highly self detrimental I’ll just stick with bitching, oops! critiquing, the ads currently on Indian television.
The following is a list of some specific commercials that make me want to issue death threats, as well as some general categories of commercials that I’d like banned.
# The ICICI 12 hour banking commercial – If there ever was a woman who made violence towards women acceptable and somewhat necessary, she’s the one! From the beginning to the end of the ad, she does nothing but sulk and bitch. There are just so many things about her that make me want to sock her in her grumpy face. From the way she keeps saying “babuji babuji” to her pissed off expression to her body language to her stupid face…man, I wanna slap her! No wonder her husband works late. If I were married to her I’d stay in office late too. And when no one was looking I’d stick my finger into an electrical socket and kill myself.
# Loreal Hair Colour and Mascara – Someone save me, I’m dying of an Aishwarya Rai overdose. Sure she’s gorgeous and a thing of beauty is a joy forever and all that but enough already. I’ll buy the damn hair colour if it’s purple and yes yes we are shocked by the scaffolding effect of the mascara, just please go off air now. Or at least reduce your frequency to a slight more reasonable once in 15 seconds. Seriously, how many mascaras do they plan to sell to ever make up for all that media spend?
# McDowells No. 1 – Ironic isn’t it? An ad with the word “life” in it 85 times makes you want to take your own. Does anyone know what that ad means? In all honesty I can’t even say I hate it ‘cause frankly, I just don’t get it. The finger, the glow, the song, the professor…what’s going on here? Somewhere, there’s a Martian watching that ad and asking, “Earth pe intelligent life hai professor?”
# Maggi Soups – Stupid idiotic bunch of nimrods fussing over a stupid idiotic soup. Wholesome goodness my ass! Stop getting excited over a soup you’re too lazy to make from scratch yourself, and get a life!
# Airtel lifetime free ad – Hats off to Shahrukh Khan, he managed to fool us into thinking he could act for quite a long time. His masquerade as an actor should go down in the hall of fame of the greatest hoaxes ever. But now, the gig is up. In the Airtel ad he proves that he can act about as well as I can grow a penis.
Shahrukh baby, you should be called King Con. Take my advice, add a few more rooms to your mansion, put together a buffet menu and you’ll have yourself a thriving lodging and restaurant business. You can even make little clay statuettes of yourself bended on one knee, with arms outstretched and eyebrows in a puzzled expression. Call the statuette “My Career” and give one free to every customer.
# Ads with the word “twacha” in it – Excuse me, I just threw up a little typing that word. Seriously, every time I hear that word on TV (that would be every other second), my skin visibly crawls (no pun intended). Let’s face it, some people are just born with luminous skin and some of us have run out of excuses for mysterious break outs they promised would stop with adulthood. Watching women balance loving husbands, singing children and hectic careers while keeping their twachas looking perfect just doesn’t cut it for me anymore. Quit selling us creams with vitamins B5 and Z9, we all know about the 10 hours of make up and airbrushing the models go through.
# The promise of “salon like” hair – This set of ads really insults my intelligence. What the hell is salon like hair anyway? Is it like when you sit in a salon and three women descend on your head with hair dryers, irons, curlers and tons of hair product? Are they saying that washing my hair with their shampoo will magically make my hair curl at the bottom in large raphaeleque curls? Arrrgghh!! I get so wild when I see these ads that my hair starts curling just with anger. Maybe that’s what they were getting at in the first place…
# Happy families who sing – Who in their lives have ever gotten up after a meal and broken out into a song praising the masala the food was cooked in? Or had a family theme song to sing each time they showered with a particular brand of soap? Who started this urban myth and why has it been allowed to perpetuate? I thought popular culture was a mirror to reality. Whose reality is this?
Ah! The list is long. And frankly, quite painful. I guess ads are a necessary evil and if nothing else, at least they provide employment. And for that we should all be thankful. And when they get too much to bear we always have pirated DVDs to turn to. No ads, no trailers, just the satisfaction of watching something before it’s officially out. (That’s right Z café and Star World; we’ve all seen Friends Season 10 so quit advertising about it and get some new shows already. At least that’ll make the exercise of watching all those ads somewhat more fruitful.)
Posted by that girl in pink
| 12:44 am
|
21 comments
said...Lovely, lovely, lovely!
And as a copywriter from an agency responsible for some of the 'twacha' and 'salon like hair' commercials I say that again...Lovely!
And guess what's next. A sunscreen lotion without which you will continue looking as ugly as you do. A couple of twachas thrown in there for good measure.
AND a kids' paint you must buy to 'bribe your kids into obedience'.
Yeeeeech. End of the road for me, like I was saying to you earlier.
nm
DiTtY said...Agree totally with all the ones that you've mentioned! :) I have one more to add to this list... The Knorr Soups ad!!! The one where the girl is singing happily and fixing a romantic-soup-dinner-for-two!!! I mean, hello?!!!! Has Levers bloody lost it?!!! Since when did ready-to-eat become romantic??!! RTE= convenience.. and nothing else. Ever. Ever.
:)
There! I feel better already!!!
that girl in pink said...nm, we might hate them. that doesn't mean we have to stop making them.
now if only we could come up with another word for "twacha"!
gutterspace: i had the pleasure of seeing the two cows do their thing in a movie hall. the bigger, the scarier!
and did you know what that baldie at the piano is singing? "chumma chanta chumma chanta!" can u imagine??!?
ditty: "romantic-soup-dinner-for-two." ha ha ha! seriously, at least have the decency to order in if u're trying to impress your beau!
Rajavel said...that was a good rant !!! felt good reading that !!! lol !!!
DK said...Hehe..we live in a "Branded" World endorsed by 'sold-out' celebrities, fabricated by capitalism and fed by confused consumers (read the institute called the urban middle-class). And all of us make our living in between these things.
ninetieschild said...lol...i say ban amitabh bachan, aishwarya rai, shahrukhkhan n saif ali khan from making ads for like a year or two..serious OD man..in the same vein i love ads, id love to make some, i love watching them..has anyone seen the merc ad wt janis joplin singing in the background: "oh lord wont u buy me a mercedes benz?" ..pure cool..old ad i think..american ..
SwB said...lmao @ the Shahrukh bit. Too much!! How I wish I was somewhere in the vicinity when that ad was being shot - I would have kicked the bugger so hard in the ass, he'd need a lifetime supply of painkillers to take care of the soreness in his bum!
shub said...I soooo agree with u bout the damn khan! and I'm soooooo glad I wasn't in India when his rose-petals-bath-tub ad got released! I would've thrown up if I'd seen one more act from that i-love-orange-listick khan!
a s a said...hilarious. i don't watch tv. when i watch it, it's only the ads i do watch. and when the show comes back on, i flip to some other channel with ads!
knorr, cafecino, cinthol deo (with the two hands in the bathtub, run twice coz it's too short for a single slot)..
but some of them are fun. (arree dhutuh, ee toh humra puraana bush-shirt hai! <-- remember tide?!)
but yeah. there are always ads you can yeeeech about!! and it's fun!
RT said...Oh and I hate all those garnier ads.. Specially the anti wrinkle cream one with a highly wrinkled dog and a lady with boxing gloves... I, for a while i wondered which was the dog there..;-)
And all those silly saas bahu sabun-tikiya ads..
GhostOfTomJoad said...Funny thing is that the guys who come up with the worst ads also have the most ad spend budget, which they ram down our throats more often than others. But, can anyone HONESTLY say that, at any given time, there're more than 1-2 decent ads on air? I mean through the history of Indian advertising?
S said...i can barely sit...i'm laughing my ass off!
that girl in pink said...cheti: thanks! i'm beginning to realise that bitching is what i do best. :|
dk: true.
icy highs: haven't seen the janis joplin ad you're talking about. but yeah, you're right, all said & done, ads are fun.
saltwater blues: if rumours are to be believed, he probably is using something for soreness in his bum...
shub: that lux ad. yup, that's where the downfall really began.
methinks: absolutely. there are some gems out there. makes it all worthwhile.
rt: ban all cosmetic ads i say! or at least put a disclaimer that says "this is all bullshit. buy at your risk."
ghostoftomjoad: well there all kinds. but on the whole, i do think indian ads are really good. especially the ones steeped in the indian idiom.
sayantani: :-)
Vijayeta said...My two bits: The Colgate Ad with Saif Ali Khan in it. And all the thousands of various Tele Shopping Ads that crowd the channels late nights and afternoons too sometimes! Hilarious, yes, but only to a point. You cant laugh at Roop Amrit after the fifth time!
:D
P.S. Thanks for shaking me out of my laziness. Fable 14 is up! :)
GhostOfTomJoad said...I don't agree that Indian ads are generally good. However, I do think the advertising industry is years ahead of the feature film and television industries in India, especially in terms of how they compare with the standards abroad, and I don’t mean only the US/Hollywood. The look is getting better and the production values are higher but the content, I’m afraid, is not anywhere near as good as it can and should be. You've mentioned the one thing that I think is most wrong with Indian advertising...not enough of it is steeped in the Indian milieu. Some of the ones that are, however, are really good.
n.g. said...how could you possiby forget fair and handsome? if ever there was a razzie to be given away for advertising, hands down winner without any discussion. but you know what, crap advertising transcends all geographies. when i was in singapore the ads i saw made the above listed spots look like one show winners. why singapore, in london, which is supposed to be the land of all things creative, i woke up to day-damaging advertising on tv every morning.
the only positive thing about crap advertising is that it constantly keeps reminding me that i did the right thing by ending my copywriting career when i did.
that girl in pink said...ghost: maybe the best indian ads are not as good as good as the best european or south american ads, but if seen as a whole (the good, bad and pukeworthy) i do feel indian advertising is pretty damn good.
dee: sleaze hasn't hit our ads yet but u should see the music videos on air nowdays. oh man!
i love the doodh doodh ad too.
nish: am curious. what are u doing now that i've quit being a copy writer. your profile says u're a professional vagabond. would u say that pays well? :-)
n.g. said...by pay you mean strictly tangible or intangible? tangible, not so much. intangible, fantasimo.
Achtlandia said...Brilliant…lol…would love to read ur take on the good ads too tho…
Deliciously Alive said...Lol @ the 'twacha' bit, the whole piece was super, tho!!!:)))))))))))
said...This is very interesting site... » »