Indian industry doesn’t have guts to get outliers on board: Prahlad Kakkar

Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, the unlikely face of Nike's Just Do It campaign, is a hero to some and a pariah to others.

Colin Kaepernick appears as one of the faces of the Nike Inc advertisement marking the 30th anniversary of its ‘Just Do It’ slogan. (Reuters Photo0

Prahlad Kakkar

ADVERTISING CAN be a massive tool for social change. What Nike are trying to do with Colin is utilising his power to take on a government, which right-wingers support and which everybody else does not. But nobody so far has been too open about their lack of support. Colin has taken it to another level and has become a rallying point for the anti-Trump movement.

In the advertising industry, you bumble around and try to find a pivot or a fulcrum to base your entire campaign on. You have the whole Hollywood against Trump. They keep sniping at him. But it’s not a rallying point. It’s momentary.

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Colin now is a pivot. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. You get a reaction to a guy like Colin, and Nike have hired him as their brand ambassador despite being aware that they are going to get an equal reaction from the other side. It’s going to polarise the vote bank literally, this move by Nike. Now they are going to be polarised into action. You are going to have the right wing versus the liberals, and not the Republicans versus the Democrats. We’ll get to see what America is made of.

The Indian industry doesn’t have the guts to get outliers like that on board. Here in India, Tanishq, in an ad, has a dark-skinned girl who’s getting married a second time and we voted that ad as the second coming of Christ. Everyone is like, ‘look, how this ad is going to change our society’. The advertising companies in this country are never willing to take a single risk.

The attitude among the Indian ad industry is changing but they need a little hand-holding. They need a government which doesn’t demand them to toe the line. It’s the same with whoever is in charge, whether it’s Congress or BJP. And the advertising industry is ever willing to toe the line. So much so that the ruling government at the time prefers them to the Bollywood industry.

The Indian ad industry has never wanted to take up a social movement. When JP Narayan went against Indira Gandhi, did the advertising industry support him? Of course not. They are for the status quo. Even though he was riding a wave during the Emergency. Like Anna Hazare, who went on a hunger strike against corruption when the Congress was in charge. He was the toast of the nation, but did the advertising industry support him? Of course not. You’ll only hear them say “go with the flow”. But what’s ‘go with the flow’? They need to learn to stand up against the flow for a change.

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(Prahlad Kakkar is an Indian ad film director. He spoke to Bharat Sundaresan)