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Journalism of Courage
ARE you one of those who switch channels the moment they say break ke baad? But we8217;re sure you stopped to watch the freaky guy with frizzy hair in the Centreshock commercial. Or stayed till the end of the latest Five Star ad to see if Johnny8217;s papa found him eating chocolate.
Advertisements today are a source of entertainment in themselves. The 8216;smiling mommy-happy daddy-chubby baby family8217; no longer endorses everything from cereals to tyres. Ad gurus are talking of, and casting, real people in real situations.
Move over, Mr Conventional Hunk. Everyman is doing a better job. He is more convincing and also sells better, say ad men. Whatever happened to the Adonis who flashed his sparkling teeth to sell you toothpaste and flexed his muscles to tell you how comfortable he felt in his brand of baniyan? The lanky, buck-toothed, average-looking guy-next-door, who, until not so long ago was limited to playing the sidekick, is today posing some tough competition for him.
Piyush Pande, group president and national creative director of Oglivy 038; Mather, believes this is a transition from advertisements that need to tell you, 8216;hey, look at me, I8217;m an ad8217; to those that reflect life. 8216;8216;And in life, there is no Adonis,8217;8217; he says. O038;M is the brain behind the unconventional commercials for Centreshock, Mentos, Five Star and Alpenliebe.
Elaborating on the O 038; M philosophy, Pushpender Singh, senior creative director, says, 8216;8216;By no stretch of imagination would one have thought of screening a puny little fellow with crooked teeth in a toothpaste commercial,8217;8217; referring to the Close-Up ad with the small guy accosting a college stunner. But this does not mean that it8217;s pack-up time for the happy family scene. 8216;8216;They8217;ll stay, but the good news is that people have become bold enough to harness different ideas,8217;8217; he adds.
Another commercial by the agency features a truck driver, Hari Singh Mehendiratta of Haryana, telling us why he uses British Petroleum. 8216;8216;Sales of BP have shown an increase after the ad,8217;8217; says Singh. The catch, he says, is that a real truck driver relating his experience is more convincing than lines mouthed by paid actors. 8216;8216;The first reaction when you see an ad is 8216;this guy has been paid to say these lines.8217; Not so here.8217;8217;
8216;8216;People got bored of perfect looks,8217;8217; says Anil Warner, executive creative director of J Walter Thompson Advertising, which thought up the Mirinda ad featuring a family with frizzy hair.
Casting directors too have a big part to play. 8216;8216;Casting directors are making an effort to get actors, not models,8217;8217; says Pande. Warner agrees, 8216;8216;Casting is according to what the script demands.8217;8217; So, if it8217;s a not-so-perfect, at times downright funny guy who can say it better, so be it. As Adrian Mendonza, creative vice-president of Rediffusion DY 038; R, puts it, 8216;8216;Stage artistes are also playing characters in ads, they are more than just good-looking people. But you may still need the Adonis to do the suiting commercial.8217;8217; However, he does not favour putting people in funny clothes to bring out humour. 8216;8216;It is the idea that matters,8217;8217; he says, citing the example of the Philips bulb commercial where a palmist is fooling an unsuspecting client, until a bulb throws light on the hand. 8216;8216;The idea was funny, the casting included average-looking guys,8217;8217; he says. The need to have funny people or weird clothes did not arise.
Shankar Nair, creative vice-president of McCann Ericksson India Ltd., feels that ads today are using 8216;8216;a deliberate sense of humour8217;8217;.8216;8216;Commercials are not idea-driven and rely on shock value. It reflects a paucity of ideas,8217;8217; he says. The M-Seal commercial, he says, is a good example of an idea-driven pitch. It showed an old man8217;s signature being wiped off his will soon after his death by a leaking pipe, much to the dismay of his greedy relatives. 8216;8216;This idea was humourous and the casting was very good. So one didn8217;t need a deliberately funny guy,8217;8217; he says.
But Nair agrees that the need to cast the perfect guy has receded. 8216;8216;After consumerism set in, the growth of advertising has made it move away from the face. A father has to now look like an actual father.8217;8217;
