So, what are we selling today?!

TV commercials play an enormous role in the life of an average Indian.. maybe an average anyone anywhere in the world, just that I am not very familiar with too many average 'anyones' across the globe to comment on what their lives are propelled by. TV commercials are as integral to the Indian living room as the soaps that they sponsor. Just as sindoor and keeping up with a philandering husband has come to define the pious Indian woman,our commercials also have come to influence the way we think, feel or react to issues and events around us. They are also a mirror to our psyche, of how we define the world around us, how we perceive an alien or a foreigner... most importantly, ourselves.

Having grown up with the idiot box booming in my house at all times, I cultivated a special interest in advertisements. As a child, even as a teenager I believed all of those wonderful lies that used to be aired and as an adult, things changed slightly. I just tried to pretend I was wiser and yet ended up buying a host of products that were honestly remote to what the commercials promised. Over the years Indian advertising has come a long way from models with ghastly lipstick and "Vicco Turmeric.. nahi cosmetic!" Some have acquired the status of a piece of art, while some have been consistent in their drollery. Here are some of my favourite commercials and some of those that were never made to sell the product, rather to show how stoned the Admaker was while conceptualising it!
Fair and Lovely: The funniest advertisements of all times have off course been the ones for fairness products. That also reflects the eternal quest of life to acquire what you have not been blessed with. Races with darker skin tone aspire to lighten it and races with lighter skin tones tan themselves to darken it. We cannot blame the Indian psyche to associate beauty with a light skin tone. What amuses me however, as we move on from one inane commercial to another is the brave attempt to lure low profile dark skinned girls to believe that rubbing Fair and lovely cream twice a day will not only win them prospective husbands (which is understandable enough) but also lucrative jobs. I have always had a golden brown skin and have never been refused any job so far, though I do not even know what that cream smells like! :)

Milano Cookies: Sex sells.. that is an all time business secret in the entertainment industry. There is a bit of a voyeur in all of us. However it gets disastrous when you are trying to sell something as naive as cookies. The tagline says: "There's a secret behind every Milano" and much to the horror of the audience the secret happens to be a raunchy night with an attractive woman in the bakery. You neednt pay any attention to the dough or its composition. You just got to put the damn thing inside the oven, never bother to see whether it bakes or burns.. but you must just go to bed with a woman and Milano cookies will be ready for you! That is the secret behind every Milano. And if that is the secret behind every Milano, who is going to ensure that what comes out of the oven and is distributed in the market does not taste like shit?! An obviously stunned me wonders which nymphomaniac thought of the concept!

Parachute Jasmine and most hair oil commercials: Prospective husbands might be a very important goal in many women's lives, but perhaps all the basic grooming activities of a woman are not directed to that end. I cannot stop laughing when the Parachute Jasmine Ad is aired. A girl receives an abundance of marriage proposals because her hair is lustrous and smells of jasmine. The quintessential question remains: What is one going to do with an abundance of marriage proposals? Ultimately a woman will marry only one man. My hair or the hair of most happily married women I know does not smell of jasmine and were yet lucky enough to have got married :)

All male products: The icing of the cake however must go to the commercials for any and every male product. I had once asked a male friend in desperation if he had any other business in life other than procuring a mate for himself. He offered me an ice bag, sympathised with my dementia and answered, "Off course not!" Yet the ultimate message sent out through the advertisements of any exclusive male product is: If you use this, all attractive women on earth will be ready to get into bed with you! It begins with the morning toothpaste... a man needs to have fresh breath so that any woman on the street should be ready to kiss him. He must dress smartly, wear a Louis Phillipe or a Upper Crest shirt so that pretty women notice him.. not because he needs to look good at office. He must use a deodorant not as a gesture of noble service to all around him, but specifically to have women stop elevators midway and take off his clothes. He must then wear a particular brand of glasses or lenses for much the same reason, female attention. He must use only that credit card that will enable him to spend lavishly on taking a woman out to dinner. He must drive only those cars or ride those bikes that women like, not those that will give him better mileage or value for money. This also raises another observation, the Admakers definitely need to look up the dictionary to know the difference between the words 'woman' and 'whore'!

And then there are those that melt your heart, make your eyes moist, in some instances those that make you weep and the ultimate ones that make you stand up in applause when they are aired uncut, unedited for the very first time.
Idea Cellular: An idea can change your life... and indeed all Idea commercials try to talk about that. They talk about ideas that can not only change one but many lives. The one that touched me most was the concept of reaching out to remote villages and educating children where schools are still a luxury. An old villager brings his grandchild for admission in a school which is already filled to capacity and the Principal has no option but to turn him out. He then seeks a solution in his prayers, when the idea of open air classrooms through Idea's network, dawns on him. This enables him to reach out to many such children in remote villages and educate them. At the end of the year, the same child who was refused admission in school wins a 'best student' award. The other remarkable advertisement was the one made on the idea of saving trees. Done up with a pinch of humour it is indeed an amazing idea in a world of depleting forest reserves and global warming.

Surf Excel: The "daag acche hain" tagline is very movingly potrayed in most commercials of this detergent. If you buy Surf Excel, it will be easy for you to wash off any kind of stain, but what the commercial also stresses on is the fact that if your clothes get stained in an attempt to do a kind deed, then that is a 'good' stain. The recent version shows a child enquiring why his "Rosy Miss" has not turned up in school and is informed that she has just lost her dog. This child runs home to his teacher, notices an untied leash beside her and immediately dives in the mud engages in all kinds of canine activities. Rosy Miss relives all her memories with her dog and her face lights up with a smile. The child's clothes are stained and muddy, but it helped to bring a smile on his teacher's face.

However the award winning commercials of all times have been those aired for Airtel. There have been a series of them so far but the two most memorable campaigns have been "That is the power of human expression" and the "dil ki baat batakar toh dekho" campaign.
"That is the power of human expression": It begins with a shot from the Quit India Movement: "Two words can bring down an empire".Then it cuts to Martin Luther King Jr’s famous “I have a dream” speech. The caption with the shot this time: "One dream can change the world." The next frame shows David Shepherd declaring Tendulkar as OUT and Tendulkar glancing at the heavens. Caption: "One raised finger can break a billion hearts." Winston Churchill appears in the frame, addressing a huge gathering during the War. and the caption continues from the previous image "... and two can win a war!" The images that follow (if you are lucky to view the full version of this advertisement) are of:
Dalai Lama – A whisper can inspire hope…
Mother Teresa – One touch can instill faith…
Lata Mangeshkar – Some voices can move a nation…
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan – Yet some others can dissolve boundaries…
The demolition of the Berlin Wall – One act of defiance can spark a revolution… and finally, a huge gathering of people holding candles – one hundred thousand candles can end a war… Throughout the commercial,A. R. Rahman's signature Airtel tune plays in the background, as the words "That is the power of human expression" appear on screen… The first time I saw this, I had tears in my eyes!

"Dil ki baat batakar toh dekho": It begins with two little girls, one from the well-off families, the representative face of the haves, and the other a little girl from the have-nots. The interaction is splendid. It symbolises how the haves and the have-nots can come together, speak out, hear each other out and make this place so much better to live. That they can live like equals, sharing the same pleasures, on an equal footing, and not in the perennially unstable relationship of a giver and a taker. This is a paradigm shift.

Then comes the old man and woman by the garden path. It’s not just about the old man reminiscing about his youth and romance. It’s a lot about how we can all build relationships with each other, which don’t need to weaken or subdue with time. We can all be passionately in love with each other forever. Our bonds don’t need to be weakened. Our bonds can defy time, instead of having to forever adjusting to it. Imagine! And to follow this, the scene of the deaf boy relating his happy dreams through his language of signs. If the idea is beautiful, it must be spoken. The scene suggests just that. Then let it be spoken in words, in signs or in action. And let it be from anyone. It is an idea. Not a negotiable instrument. If it is beautiful, show it, flaunt it, propagate it ferociously till its beauty brings something good for the world. Won’t it be wonderful? Think! Then the shy boy who plucks his courage to kiss his lady love. Why do we hide our feelings? Why should we keep our thoughts concealed under layers of social norms? Why should we have to be so perfectly purposeful, so horribly sophisticated? We don’t need it. We don’t need to hide our feelings. We express what we feel. We lighten our hearts. We clarify ourselves. We remain happy. Don’t we?

And it finally ends with the evergreen idea of perseverance. The little girl who tries and tries and tries till she gets her gymnastics right. This world is changing, technologically, economically, culturally and politically. The changes aren’t always the best for everyone. But we can keep trying. We can keep trying till we’ve ironed everything out and gotten rid of all bottlenecks. Why not? This Ad is about speaking. About speaking loud and clear. About speaking everything. It’s about forgetting old norms, about throwing away traditionalist inhibitions and coming out, being brave and speaking.

I wish the maker of the Milano Ad would understand that cookies sell when you tell the buyer that its made from the finest dough and the best ingredients, not when you play love games in the bakery. If one wanted to be a voyeur, he would just go buy himself a 'Playboy' and not a packet of Milano!