While in Rome, do as the Romans!!

The other day I was just thinking about the changes that have taken place in the advertisements we see, with respect to the way the messages are conveyed. I compared two ads that are very clearly etched in my mind. The first one is of Ajanta Watches (which I think was done by Mudra). It had a music piece by Beethoven playing in the background with a lady playing a very lovable grandma. The point here is the use of Beethoven. The second ad that comes to my mind is that of Pepsi that said, “Yehi Hai Right Choice Baby…aha!” The point here is the use of a strange language.

You might be wondering what the point of relevance here is. Well, what I am trying to say here is the difference in the approach. One ad uses a Beethoven piece and the other ad uses a language medium that is neither Hindi nor English, .at best it is Hinglish (even MS Word does not recognize this word. Mr. Bill Gates, you need to gear up and do better than Windows Vista!!).

Language purists who swear by Webster and Chambers would have gone crazy about the use of such outrageous English!!! Earlier (I still know a couple of people) advertisement professionals used to swear by Bern Bach, and Ogilvy. The use of English was crisp, and very proper. But post 1991, India went through a lot of changes. Earlier, it was unfashionable to say that one went for a Hindi movie!! Arnold, Stallone, Van Damme, Tom Cruise were suddenly in vogue!!! However, Hindi was still the people’s language. The result, the insurgence of a new language, Hinglish (essentially Hindi, with generous dollops of English thrown in). We, in our younger days, took to this language very easily. As a result advertisements also started using them to communicate with us. Hence, today we have an Idea Cellular saying “What an Idea, Sirjee” and Virgin Mobile saying, “Think hatke”.

Here, we (and also, the advertisers and the creative agencies) need to understand what the real purpose of making an ad is. What is more important, to create a brilliant work of art with great visuals and impeccable technique or make an effective ad? The ideal situation is to have both, but then life is hardly ideal! So, we have a Nirma ad which is very in your face, with the word Nirma being mentioned exactly 7 times in a 30second ad and that becomes a huge success and on the other hand, we have a Hero Honda Karizma Ad that has all the ingredients(including Hrithik Roshan) that does not ruffle many feathers. I think the idea here is to help sell the product. In order to do that it is very important to get that connect with the TG, whatever it takes! In today’s world of SMS, we are much more comfortable with brb s (be right back) and dnd s (do not disturb) and btw (by the way). So, to me it makes a lot more sense to speak in the language that people understand.

Someone said and very correctly, “While in Rome, do as the Romans"