Even as he battled alcoholism and other personal demons, Don Draper, fictional advertising executive and anti-hero of the show Mad Men, could be counted on to come up with profound observations about human nature and the art of selling. “You are the product. You feel something. That’s what sells,” he tells his protege Peggy Olson in a season two episode, in response to her assertion — an advertising cliche, if ever there was one — that “sex sells”. On the face of it, with its wink-wink-nudge-nudge references to sex (including an image of a lock opening a key), a recent viral commercial for a sexual wellness brand, starring Ranveer Singh and adult film actor Johnny Sins, seems to conform to the cliche: It draws attention to itself by, well, talking about sex.
Look closer, however, and it becomes evident that the commercial has important points to make: About why female desire cannot be ignored and the need to destigmatise the topic of sexual health. These are startlingly modern concerns, addressed amidst the regressive setting of a saas-bahu serial. And so, through subversion, feelings — of dissatisfaction and shame — experienced by a vast number of people, are addressed. The stickiest advertising campaigns — whether they feature a girl in a polka-dotted dress commenting on recent news developments while selling butter, or an ecstatic woman dancing onto a cricket field to congratulate her match-winning partner while munching on a bar of chocolate — understand the persuasive power of appealing to “feelings”.
All feelings and enlightened discourse aside, though, any advertisement’s ultimate success can only be measured in terms of how well it does its primary job, which is to persuade consumers that its product is worth spending their hard-earned money on. As Draper put it in his hard-nosed way, “What you call love was invented by guys like me… to sell nylon.”
