Mozzarella

A look at most of the ads on television and one really wonders how much time the ad-makers invested into making them. Most advertisements range from bad to worse to plain disastrous. There is of course the rare good ‘un that makes you sit up or maybe even laugh out loud, but in general ads nowadays are nothing remarkable, to say the least. And then of course there are a few which make you laugh out loud at how incredibly ridiculous they are and make you wonder how many pegs it took for the ad-maker to reach that zen-like state where trash looks like gold.

Worthy of mention is the ad for this deo / perfume that goes by the name of ‘Zatak Gold’. First of all, it takes real talent to even come up with this ‘catchy’ name (whose mention evokes memories of kids running around with toy guns and zapping each other). Rest assured that even your average smelly middle-aged Joe would think twice about the merits of body odour before buying a deo that goes by the name of (pause) Zatak. So with this background, the ad-makers must’ve really had their task cut out for them. The ad shows this guy dressed in a casual suit walking into a pyramid (ostensibly with the deo on him). Hmm – tacky, innovative. Can’t remember the last ad I saw with an Egyptian motif. Oh, wait – that must be because such ads have always sucked! Anyway, once inside the pyramid he walks deeper and deeper without a care in the world. Lo! The golden statues inside the pyramid have started coming to life! And as is the norm, they have to all be nubile twenty somethings with orgasmic sighs on their faces. They start strutting towards him in a walk that can only be described as a duck walk crossed with the ketchup dance (remember Aserje-whatever and the tomato ketchup company that tried to make a quick buck off it? But that’s another story). Back to the ad, our hero finally realizes that they are all closing in and quite inexplicably, he starts spinning rapidly. In a flash, he disappears leaving behind a pile of gold dust on the floor. The product name is announced. Oh, and did I mention the faux-Egyptian background music and a female voice singing, “Zata-aa-aa-k Gold! Zata-aa-aa-k Gold!”?

Ad-making is a funny business if you ask me. First of all, it’s ridden with cliches and yet nobody seems to care. Common cliches and stereotypes include:

1. The dirty kid who wears white, sprawls around in the mud and sees it fit to come back home caked with it and an oh-so-lovable smile. The beaming mother after an expression of mock-disapproval takes the white shirt and dumps it into a bucket. Surf Excel / Ariel / Henko Stain Champion / Tide hai na! This is if of course followed by this enlightening animation depicting the T-shirt fibres and how the ‘molecules’ of the detergent swirl about completely eradicating the dirt. I have indeed lost count of how many times this tripe has been shoved down our throats!

2. Another cliché becoming increasingly popular nowadays is the hyper-smart kid who is able to perform calculations faster than the billing machine at supermarkets etc all thanks to him consuming Horlicks / Bournvita / Kelloggs or whatever. Can you imagine the amount of pressure this puts on children! I can literally see mothers in their houses going, “See! You have to be like that boy they show on TV. Just look at how smart he is!” I personally feel like torturing those smart-alec kids till they finally confess on television that they don’t really give a damn about supermarket bills and all they really care about is getting back home on time to watch the latest episode of Beyblade or whatever. But hey, that’s just me.

3. The laboratory cliché was also something that emerged in the late nineties (I think). Usually ads for shampoo / toothpaste they depict this International Hair Institute (in France or USA) where scientists in lab coats are breaking their backs working on the next generation cutting-edge shampoo. Then of course, computer graphics of the hair are shown with the shampoo destroying all the dandruff and whatnot while miraculously increasing the hair strength by 3 times. It’s been proven in labs, dammit! You had better believe it.

I could list out several other cliches, but you get the idea. Cliché after cliché and yet nobody seems to care. In a world where 33-40% (hey, I can cook up numbers too) of all television is advertising, isn’t it strange that there exists no ad-critic (much like movie critics)? Well, maybe they do, but I haven’t really heard of anybody coming out with reviews of these ads.

But then again, I suppose (with a horrible feeling in my stomach) that most of these ads, actually work. Otherwise, they wouldn’t keep persisting with all these hackneyed reruns would they? Or maybe the people are buying the products, in spite of the ads rather than because of the ads? How does one go about finding how effective these ads really are?

On the positive side, advertisements do have their funny moments now and then. The legendary ‘one-black-coffee’ ad for the Sony-Ericsson mobile phone when it was first introduced in the latter half of the nineties is one of those which is still impinged upon most minds of my generation. And of course, almost any Fevicol ad till now has been a masterpiece. More recently, the Bingo Chips advertisements have trodden off the beaten path with their humourous, not-so-subtle spoofs of telemarketing, Tamil culture and so on. The sudden twist in the end when you realize that they are actually marketing chips is very satisfying. Sometimes the humour in ads is unintentional too. For instance, there was this ad for some savings / mutual funds where this chap acts as a responsible father teaching his little son the value of money. And funnily enough, the very next ad they showed after this had the same chap acting as this guy who gets seduced into bed by a female colleague, because she wanted to flick his watch. Talk about a reversal of roles.

Ads. Love ‘em or hate ‘em. You just can’t ignore ‘em. And at the end of the day, I guess that’s what every ad-maker wants.