Ad Vice/Sumanto Chattopadhyay

America, 1968. Campbell Soup Co.and its advertising agency are hauled before the Federal Trade Commission for the way in which the visuals in their print ads are photographed. One ad in particular is in question. An ad for Campbell8217;s Chicken amp; Stars Soup. It8217;s a new chicken soup garnished with pieces of chicken and thousands of little tagliarini stars. The agency goes to work on the brand launch. It comes up with the same Chicken amp; Stars Soup. And the headline, 8220;New from Campbell8217;s! Chicken soup in the star spangled manner!8221; The visual is a tureen of soup on a table with a red, white and blue table cloth. All very clever. But the trouble arises when they go to shoot the ad. The pretty little stars in the soup have all sunk to the bottom so they can8217;t be seen. Nevertheless, the art director Bob Ballantyne manages to get a beautiful photograph of the soup with all the tagliarini stars winking just below the surface.

How did he do it? By placing shards of broken glass in the soup. The stars were stuck to the tips of the shards so theywouldn8217;t sink. This was just one of the innumerable 8220;cheating8221; techniques used in those days to get the desired effect in advertising photography. Everybody was delighted with the results and nobody gave it a second thought. Until the Federal Trade Commission got into the act. A four year legal battle ensued, after which it was deemed that the 8220;cheating8221; done in the Campbell Soup photography was indeed cheating in the broader sense.

Until this landmark case, nobody in the American advertising business considered 8220;cheating8221; wrong or illegal. They believed that what they were doing was in good faith. Sure, they were trying to make their products look as alluring as possible. But they weren8217;t trying to fool consumers. Nevertheless, advertisers became cautious from then on. They knew that they were being watched.

India, 1999. The situation is akin to pre-1968 America. Ad film makers and photographers use mashed potato instead of vanilla ice cream, as the latter doesn8217;t last under the lights. Forsimilar reasons, they use shaving foam instead of whipped cream, soap bubbles instead of beer foam, white glue instead of milk in cereal commercials and, of course, acrylic dummies instead of chocolate cubes. There are no watch-dogs breathing down their necks. Should there be?

Ad film director Gyan Correa, who is well-known for his great-looking product shots, feels that, 8220;If the cheating is used to reproduce a product attribute, it8217;s fine. If it enhances a product attribute then it8217;s unethical 8212; it makes poor advertising sense as the actual product won8217;t live up to the expectations raised. The consumer finally draws the line between what is permissible and what isn8217;t.8221; Correa believes that Indian directors rarely cross the line. And that they use cheating only for the sake of efficiency. Not to beguile. 8220;However,8221; he adds, 8220;just to put things in perspective, an edge-to-edge close-up of a length of toothpaste on a 218221; screen is in the first place an artifice. It8217;s unnatural for the human eye to seeit at that magnification. And it looks ugly. So you use an acrylic model to get smooth, well-rounded surfaces and that perfect tweak8217; at the end.8221;

So far, no one8217;s complaining.