I call this piece "Advertising"

Do you remember Television advertisements from the 1990s? All they sold back then was Lifebuoy soap, Annapurna Atta, Tata salt, Bajaj Chetak, Meera shampoo (featuring a homely looking housewife who had trouble managing her daughter’s long mane), Parachute Coconut Oil, and Chandana Brothers sarees, “suitings and shirtings for mens!” (Yes, suitings and shirtings, that is exactly what they used to say)

I am personally embarrassed that these were the coolest things we Indians consumed back then.

Thanks to two decades of neo-liberalization during which India first shone and later grew, the nature of advertising significantly changed. Look at the prime time ads. Only things like Volkswagen cars, Luxury holiday resorts, L’Oreal products, smart phones, Reid n’ Taylor suits, credit cards, mutual funds, frozen idlis (unfortunately, they exist) and luxury paints are sold.

Cars, insurance plans, lifestyle products, housing loans and electronic gadgets. Who do you think they are selling this desi version of the American dream to? The middle class can’t afford Volkswagens and 3D TVs. The rich people probably already have them. It’s us – the upper middle class. The real product being sold is a culture of passive consumption where everything is on sale and everyone is sold out. And wow, how proudly we’re buying ourselves into it!

A Tale of two templates

It is not just the portfolio of products. The ads themselves look quite “international” if you notice. "International" in this context means that every model from that little girl in the Rasna ad to the dusky A-list Bollywood celebrity look almost Caucasian and act hyper-sexual over things like coffee, mango juice, second hand cars, bathroom tiles, cement, switch boards, new cable connection etc. If aliens are watching us through a telescope, they would think that our women have thing for plumbing and electrical outlets!

So what kind of a mind does it take to come up with ads like these? Again a lot of guesswork is involved here but I think every copywriter on his/her first day at office is taken into a dark room and is given a crash course on what I call The Copywriter's Model of the Human Brain. According to this model, the human brain has four major areas of activity:

This model dictates that the best way to sell anything is to equate it with sex. That way the guys will not complain and it is easier for the copywriters too. The feminists may rant about it on the internet but who cares about them?

In the unlikely event that they don’t want to use sex to sell, there is another strategy. I call it The Abstract Jingle. This is how a typical ad looks like:

A bunch of rural looking school boys rush towards a sandy open place in the evening. They throw their slippers in the air and run barefooted and divide themselves into teams. One boy tosses a coin to decide who bats first. A soulful jingle in Hindi plays in the background...  

The kids are completely immersed in their game invoking a nostalgic bliss of simple joys from  simpler times. A kid hits the ball and another kid takes a great catch diving to his left in slow motion. The soulful jingle continues… 

And while all this is happening, the viewer has no idea what the ad is trying to sell. This can be an ad for anything. That is the beauty of the Abstract Jingle. There is no way for the viewer to know until the last frame, what the product is. It is this suspense that keeps him hooked!

In the last frame of the ad, if one of the boys grow up to be Dhoni, it is an ad for Reebok. If the kids wear a Team India shirt, they’re promoting Nike. If they are refreshed by a sip of pure water from a nearby lake – it is either Kinley or Hero Honda or if Tendulkar appears holding a bottle of Coke... See, the Abstract Jingle is simple yet versatile and it is completely recyclable.

The Internationals and the Abstract Jingle, these are the only templates for ads there are today. I didn't complain all these days because I don’t watch TV but the same ads started streaming on Youtube and I can’t even skip them. So now, it’s personal!

Image courtesy:  http://www.polyp.org.uk/cartoons.html which has an amazing collection of editorial cartoons

P.S: Why is it that an ad always streams faster than the actual video?

World Cup Celebrations

The most popular format of the game

They (experts, critics, Siddhu etc.) said that this was the most crucial world cup ever because commercial success or failure of this world cup determines the future of the 50 over format. There was also a debate on the most popular format of cricket (Test cricket being the ultimate). Going by the way this world cup went, I am guessing these questions won’t be raised for some time to come.

In my first year at IIT, I have seen the “decline” of the ODI format beginning with the 2007 world cup. I also saw the rise of T20 with the inaugural T20 world cup. Misbah-ul-Haq scooped the last ball and once the camera zoomed into Sreesanth taking the catch, the hundred odd people in our hostel TV room started jumping, dancing, swirling shirts around yelling war cries along with other displays of genuine testosterone based badass-ery. The celebrations lasted for half an hour and then people ate dinner at the canteen and went back to their rooms.

A year later we were the number one ranked team in Tests. People read it in the newspapers, thought to themselves, “Oh, that’s cool” and moved on with their day. The really wild celebrations of the 2011 world cup that went out throughout the night and into the next Monday just showed that ODI is still the real deal and really matters to the crowds.

The Celebrations

Just after the presentation ceremony, hundreds of IITians marched out of their hostels, walking towards the main gate. Some wanted to go to Wankhede, while others yelled Marine Drive but no one knew where they were heading. They just walked (like lively Zombies) yelling “Indyaa, India” or “Sacheen, Sachin”. There wasn’t much difference between the two chants then. There was a general awareness that this is a once-in-a-generation thing. How often does one-sixth of the world’s population feel the same way at the same time?

Image courtesy: I don't know, I stole it from Google Buzz

Most of them walked out of the main gate towards Hiranandani. The atmosphere was amazing. For most people on the road, that was the first time India won the world cup after they were born. Fireworks lit the sky like it was Diwali. Down on the ground, people with painted faces stood on traffic islands, fountains, cars, trucks and everything ‘climb’able to wave flags, shirts and everything ‘wave’able. Sure there was a traffic jam but it was because the drivers got out of their cars and danced with the rest of the crowd!

Funny moment

There was this tall, huge probably drunk white guy who blocked the traffic by dancing shirtless in the middle of the road in front of a car waving his shirt and chanting “Sacheeeen, Sachin” while his expatriate friends looked amazed, worried and sort of embarrassed. The driver of the car instead of getting irritated with the unexpected roadblock simply waved his in hands Bhangra style in sync with the dancing! That sort of summed up the moment for me.

And so the revelry went on for more than an hour after which middle-aged policemen who probably behaved in the same way 28 years ago came to clear up the traffic. Thus the thousands returned back to their nests with the yelling and the chanting and the waving intact.

From our Vizag Bureau

The funniest world cup final story so far comes from a small middle class neighborhood in Vishakapatnam. After Sachin got out, a decent middle-aged gentleman got so pissed that he plugged the TV out of its place, ripped the wires clinging to it and threw the damn thing out from his second floor balcony. This fit of rage rendered his family not just speechless but also TV-less! An hour later, he realized that we were after all winning, so the family went to catch the rest of the match at their neighbor’s. I bet the neighbor spent some nervous moments after Kohli got out!

His wife, clearly shell shocked from her husband’s Neanderthal display, took the kids and ran away to her parents’ home the very next morning. We hear she is not keen on returning back till the gentleman sorts out his rage problem. Our sympathies lie with the middle aged gentleman. After all, “He did for Sachin” ;)

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The Ads must be Crazy

I know I haven’t updated in a month. It is mostly because I was on a 6-week holiday (yes, for 6 weeks!) mostly at home with my brother working on a secret project. The holiday was awesome and the secret project is now scrapped... so happy new year!

The first NRI thing my brother did after coming to India was to get all psyched up about cricket. He made me watch a test match on TV! The cricket was awesome but the broadcast... well let me sum it up for you. Watching cricket on TV in the IPL era (2008 onwards) makes me feel like a loser. Here’s why…

Ads between overs

First of all, we have to watch the same ads over and over and over again! As a kid I used to do it all the time without getting tired or irritated. I wonder how I did it back then. I must be pretty dumb as a kid to not question that practice!

As If watching an ad for 50 times is not annoying enough, Akshay Kumar features in every other ad selling everything from gold loans to cheap mobile phones! It’s the price we all have to pay for being cricket fans I guess!

Have you noticed that soft drinks are not advertised during cricket matches anymore? I wonder why. Have they reached market saturation or are they being outbid by the insurance companies? I really want to know because cola fights were much more fun compared to people asking you to buy insurance, cars, cheap mobiles and paint.

Speaking of paint – why do they have to sell so much paint on TV? Since when is painting your home the most romantic thing in the world? It’s is a horrible activity that involves squeezing the furniture of one room into the rest of the house and then repeat the exercise for each room. Also fresh paint stinks!

In the pre-IPL era ads were shown strictly between overs. In the IPL era, it is the cricket that is strictly between the ads.

Sabotage

The simple joy of watching cricket on TV is now sabotaged by these corporations who are selling the middle class viewers an Indian version of the American dream where everything is for sale and everyone is sold out...

The broadcasters of the gentleman’s game are like gaudy, tasteless pimps and cricket is their bitch!

You Can't Win

The worst thing about this kind of exploitation is that there isn’t much we can do to fight it. We can’t hit the streets to protest. It would look ridiculous! Besides, the editorial columnists will remind us that there are far more important things to worry about.

This is it folks, there is nothing we can do to stop them from insulting us. There is nothing we can do to make them treat us with a little respect. We may blog the hell out of the issue but I am sure the corporations will continue showing the middle finger in the middle of the over and there is nothing we can do! And that is why watching cricket makes me feel like a loser.

P.S: Cartoons courtesy: Satwik... You should totally check out his comic strip on cricket, Taking Guard - @ http://takingguard.wordpress.com/

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IPL: Perspective and English Lessons

Chapter 1: The Indian Purists League

Now that the IPL is over everyone is going to miss it not because it was better than the previous editions; not because of the exciting run chases not because of the cheer leaders or the IPL party nights but because it is better than anything else on TV!

Now that the IPL is over, everyone is going to miss it, especially the ones who hate it. Those self-styled, self-proclaimed “intellectual” cricket purists who insist that checking out the score of a test match once in two days during the office hours is much more fun than watching Shane Warne bowl to Sachin Tendulkar in an exciting run chase in a packed stadium under lights. They are definitely going to miss hating the IPL!

Some “purists” went to the extent of comparing the IPL with all its fireworks and hot girls with professional wrestling. I’ll agree that IPL is excessively commercialized, that the cheerleaders are distracting and a lot is happening off the field but the bottom line is, its only sport.

So dear purist, if you still insist it is entertainment, I think you need some perspective and English lessons… I’ll give the English lessons first :p

Chapter 2: English Lessons

Entertaining and entertainment – they are not the same words!

You see, the IPL may be entertaining but not all entertaining things qualify as entertainment. Our politicians in the Parliament put up some really entertaining shows from time to time but that doesn't mean the telecast of the parliamentary session on Doordarshan is reality TV. It's pretty much the same argument for the IPL!

For the grammatically challenged, here is a dramatic illustration ;)

Chapter 3: Perspective

P.S: Summarizing what we learned today, IPL is sport, not entertainment!

sachin tendulkar in "200"

P.S: Don't expect a real movie, this is just a poster for the highlights :p