Reasonable Assumption
I am going to write this review assuming, reasonable I suppose, that my reader has watched this advertisement himself or has at least heard about it from other quarters. If my assumption is wrong in the case of any particular reader, I should call it a coincidence worth celebrating for?you?re lucky you didn?t watch it!
Introduction
Marketing and advertisement is a tricky business. Often it is believed that marketing is a very refined form of diplomatic persuasion. However obviously correct it may sound, I disagree. Diplomacy is asking people to go to hell and making them look forward to the trip. Persuasion is convincing people that they truly deserves being made fools out of.
Do you notice the subtle distinction? (On an altogether different note, I would like to observe that I am angering so many advertising professionals, some of whom are indeed my readers).
Jest and jokes apart, the point remains that good advertising needs a careful understanding of human psychology and the uncanny knack of making people identify themselves and their lifestyles with whatever muck you?re out to sell.
It is therefore really unwise to have an encounter between an investment banker and a SEBI official as an advertisement of a breakfast cereal or a chocolate drink?though probably not quite unwise to show a moment between a mother and her toddler as an advertisement for an investment programme, within certain reasonable confines of proper ad-making.
Let us keep the guiding principle in mind for now: good advertising needs a careful understanding of human psychology and the uncanny knack of making people identify themselves and their lifestyles with whatever muck you?re out to sell.
An Overview of Anatomical Chaos
God does not play dice, says Albert Einstein. While Einstein said this in a very different context, we can interest ourselves with the meaning of what he was saying?he said this to stress his belief in determinism.
Everything must have a reason and everything must have a precise reason. One can reasonably extend this to the physiological structure of the human body. Our eyes and our noses and our ears are where they are with a reason. A displacement in their position can be disastrous.
As an example, let us face this: our arse is the most fascinating organ. God put it behind us to stop us from just sitting in front of it all day and ogling all the time! I daresay, it will be seriously revolting for me to have my arse staring down at me one morning, grumbling and all. No, no! It?s best behind me?look as it may!
Furthermore, it will be a cause of serious displeasure to me if I had to breathe in and out through a nose positioned precariously between my shoulder and my armpit?especially during the later half of the day.
Chaos in the human anatomy?external in particular?is a revolting and disgusting prospect. Not only is it profoundly impossible to identify oneself with such a horrible thing, it is something that one would vehemently avoid!
Any chaotic display of the human anatomy is nothing less than hugely grotesque. It is therefore very unwise and frankly foolish marketing to show ugly, animated lips writhing on otherwise perfect bellies?
?not to mention, disregarding and actually insulting adult manliness (if you know what I mean)?
An Overview of Incoherent Confabulations
Let us momentarily return to the introduction where we tried to outline the principles of advertising. As we said there, ideal advertising strategy would be one that enables the consumer to identify himself and his lifestyle with the product that you?re out to sell (remember, there we had very generously called it ?muck?).
However, (without any reason) we ignored another basic principle that is much more obvious as well as fundamentally necessary.
An advertisement must have a clear message and must be expressed pleasingly. Therefore, one would normally see investment schemes (let us use them as our guiding examples) advertise themselves using a very contented retired man with children well established and with a lot of money for his old age.
One does not see a forty-something go up and down monthly to a bank with a cheque with nightmares of an old age plagued with bankruptcy in his mind as the ad campaign. Both campaigns project more-or-less the same message; what differs is the effect it has on the viewer. . You do see the point, don?t you?
?Oye Bubbly? is an incomprehensible confabulation (forgive me, I don?t find a better word). The ad does not tell you anything apart from the fact that having a bottle of Pepsi with you would provoke any hole?then be it your pocket, the gap between tomato slices in a burger, the resonance cavity of a guitar, or bellybuttons of bikini-clad ladies?any whole whatsoever would suddenly start singing a rustic song.
An ugly idea indeed! And to cap the whole pandemonium, it also suggests that if the person somehow succeeds in escaping a persistent vegetative state after all that, one would be devoured by a building that has a huge tongue. A ridiculous idea indeed!
If at all the ad had a ?campaign?, it got lost somewhere. I can reach no conclusion apart from the fact that Shah Rukh Khan (the model) had woken up on the wrong side of the bed and used the wrong sink as a toilet the day he signed up for this ad. Poor man!
Putting Things Together
?Oye Bubbly? fails to conform to both of our principles of advertising. I know someone is going to tell me I went wrong while outlining those principles, inevitably because he or she is an advertising professional and therefore knows the textbook principles of advertising.
Instead of leaving scope for argument of that kind, let me ask the professional to excuse me from replying to him?simply because it is of great astonishment to me that an advertising professional differs openly from his consumer?the one he lives to serve!
With visuals that are revolting and repulsive and no particular ?campaign? in mind, the advertisement is cheap entertainment?of the grotesque kind. May be someone found it funny?ah, such cases remind me of an adage?
?If there were no idiots in this world, morals and intelligence would have been unnecessary!?
