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Journalism of Courage
Children are the most reliable formula in Indian advertising
Sara Arjun is an old hand at the business of cuteness. In her pretty pink four-year-old world,the camera is buddy. She preens for it,it teases her out of shyness. One moment,she is an angel with a heavenly smile and,within seconds,a sulking little prima donna. She can traipse like a model or hug her doll to make an adorable picturebut she makes sure the prop doesnt cover her face. Sara has been modelling since she was a 21-month-old and has played the lovable little girl in ads as varied as Maggi and Tata Sky,Santoor soap and LIC.
Children such as Sara are Indian advertisings most dependable sales pitch today. They are the stars of 60-second capsules of innocence that can sell you cola and chocolate,insurance policies and cell phone plans. We are in the story-telling business and you cant go wrong with a kid. If you have a kid and a dog,its even better, says Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar,chief creative officer,Rediffusion Yamp;R,the agency that handles Airtels cellular service which has used children in their advertisements several times.
The professionals of this show business dont come cheap. Top stars can charge up to Rs 1 lakh for a commercial. The next rung of actors gets anything between Rs 5,000 and Rs 50,000. Sara,Virej Dasani and Rahul Pendkalkar are in the middle bracket and climbing. Virej is the face of the latest Airtel commercials,the boy who warms our heart when he clambers up to the terrace after mommas scolding to talk to his father on a toy phone.
Not all the stories being spun in the ads are the stuff of childrens bedtime tales. If the consumer goods industry cashed in on childrens pester power years ago,advertisers cast youngsters as active decision-makers or little people with adult hang-upsa Volkswagen ad shows a child walking into a showroom to plan his Beetle purchase,a boy in a Bajaj Allianz ad asks his parents,Kuch mere future ke baare mein socha?.
Not surprisingly,the faces of innocence have also embraced adulthood. Rahul Pendkalkar is eight and has his own PAN card. He has done 42 ads from Ambuja Cement,Vicks and Dettol to HDFC and Ford Linea, says father Pravin,an advocate. Just Google his name and youll get all the information, says the proud father. Rahul studies in Class III at St Lawrence High School,Mumbai,and misses classes often in order to accommodate his shoots. His parents insist hes treated normally at school but have pampered him with three bicycles,one motorised bike,80 school bags and 40 compass boxes. He is no novice at interviews and reels off his practised lines with ease: I love going to school and studying and I want to grow up to be an actor, he says,eyes glued to his Playstation.
In an industry that rides on practised innocence,a person such as Ujwala Tendulkar is an important link in the chain. Tendulkar handles casting at Om Creations,a firm in Mumbai that supplies actors to production houses. We have a database of around 10,000 people, of which 2,000-3,000 are children, she says. Tendulkar gets around 10 portfolios a day from eager parents. Children actors are in demand. On a regular day,we get around 5-6 calls from different production houses asking for child actors, she says. An ad audition is a time of stress for parents and children,with 200-300 children in fray for a single role.
What kind of a child makes the cut? Cute and cuddly are terms bandied about loosely at auditions but younger children are more in demand. Age is the key,says Ronnie Lahiri,a producer who has worked with children on ads for Sunfeast,HDFC Bank and Axis Bank. A child between the age of 5 and 9 is the most preferred, he says. Existing stereotypes of cuteness bleed into advertisements,subtly reinforcing how a child should look. Fair is usually lovely. Thaara Umesh,a casting director based in Chennai,who has been in the business for 20 years and holds auditions for ad agencies across the country,hints as much when she says she doesnt find too many good-looking children from the south. They are very okay-okay, she says.
The one exception is Vodafones new Happy to Help series,which features a dark girl with an enchanting,serious face. When we were selecting children,there were a lot of pretty faces. Beyond a point,there is a fatigue factor. So we used Nichealla Beharie. She is an Indian child based in Johannesburg,where we did the auditions. We used her because she was plump and dusky. Above all,her body language was natural,like a child, says Rajiv Rao,national creative director,Oamp;M.
Societys stereotypes and anxiety get depicted in the children, says Santosh Desai of Future Brands. Look at the number of kids being shown wearing spectacles in an ad. The child is cute when he is shown as a vulnerable person and the specs add to the vulnerability, he says.
On the sets,though,children can be a handful. Shoots can be stressful because you cant really direct them. They have their own way of going about things, says Vinil Mathew,an ad film director who has worked on Good Knight,Surf Excel and other ads. Filming babies is the most difficult. You just hold the camera and wait for the baby to smile or cry. There is nothing much you can do, he says.
Producers are anxious to keep the children in good humour. Virej loves playing football. Most people know this and they always make sure they there are footballs on the set for him to play, says mom Jayna Dasani.
Pushy parents and bratty kids are part of the package. The children are too much,they introduce themselves like adults. They act as if they are Amitabh Bachchan, says Umesh. Jayna recalls how she had to stop taking Virej for auditions because he started throwing tantrums on the sets. After being grounded for a while,the five-year-old started behaving.
Parents deny that they have shoved their children into the limelight too early. Sara loves being in front of the camera. If a week goes by without a shoot,she asks us to take her for auditions. The minute she gets bored,well stop, says father Raj Arjun,a theatre actor in Mumbai.
I think the exposure is actually good for him. He is definitely more intelligent than kids around him, says Virejs mom.
On the other end of the spectrum is Naman,a seven-year-old who has been part of 30-40 auditions and landed only a small role in a McDonald8217;s ad. Mother Hema Kanoi is disgruntled with the process. It has been difficult. Waiting for 2-3 hours when the agencies dont even specify a child of which age group they want. Naman has been shortlisted so many times,but then they reject him. No one tells us why, she says.
Naman hasnt hit the magic formula and Virej intends to keep his a secret. In his Mumbai home,he has had enough of cuteness and posing for the camera. The restless childs eyes light up when we ask him if his friends watch him on television. Yes,but I dont tell them how I get ads. They might get selected at the auditions, he says.
