I cannot believe how much attitude these advertisement guys are trying to pour into each one of their creations on the Indian television. I am pretty sure that they have the innocuous aim of just wooing the yuppies (yo!), but have they no regard for me who just shudders out of goosebumbs whenever another such stupid creation presents itself on the TV ?
Wherever I see on the TV, there are dudes doing things which cool people ought to do, you know speak incoherent Hinglish, sport spiked hair, wear skin tight Baniyans so that their bulging muscles dance indecently in front of your eyes. And then their are the girls, again indulging in cool stuff highly associated with gangs of 21st century teens like rolling their eyes, breaking into a dance at the least possible prod and generally behaving as if each one of them is the last girl in a world that has just suffered an atomic war that has selectively wiped out all the other girls. Some cases in point:
There is this ad about the new CBZ motorcycle. Those at the drawing boards wrecked their brains and figured this thing: If the old CBZ model had a 150 cc engine and the new CBZ has a 160 cc engine, which is the one word which would appropriately describe this humungous, almost brilliant leap in technology. Nevermind that Royal Enfield has been consistently churning out 350 and 500 ccs in India for like a millenium, a 10 cc increase over 150 can only be done justice with one word: Xtreme. So like the morons they really are, they have gone ahead and called it CBZ Xtreme. Notice how they have omitted the E in Xtreme because proper pronunciation would not let their product get registered on the limited comprehension radars of 20 somethings and who knows: a CBZ Extreme might after all, not turn out to be as Extreme as Xtreme. With this much of Xtremity, I expect nothing less than a machine that breaks window panes with its sound, regularily breaks the sound barrier, and produces fumes of aqua regia in place of the regular exhaust of CO2 and CO. No it does nothing of the sort, and I am pretty certain doesn't hit anything more than 120 kmph (Pulsar 180 doesn't). Xtreme. Let me just say: My Foot. Thats not all, the model driving the bike proudle says: Thinking is such a waste of time. I would say it would be. For the demographics you are targetting, it would be a surprise if the overhead produced by thinking doesn't fuse their brains into one clogged lump. Thats what these people selling products would have us believe, that thinking is a waste of time. What next, take out our wallets and courier them to you if only you rope in king khan telling us that it would be a cool thing to do ? There is another bike ad in this regard although its a bit less obnoxious. I think its Apache from Honda. Everything is fine with the ad and I like the look of the bike but I just wish they would have refrained from projecting an extreme image of the rider replete with the bad boy image, leathers all over, and chicks going ga ga all over him with the guy himself employing most of his time wheeleing and stoppeing the bike.
Then there is all this talk about forming gangs. Not groups of people who share common interests but gangs who do all the cool stuff. I think Airtel has an ad regarding this. There is a gang of dudes who like racing toy cars in abandoned garages. Their carefully manufactured images include, tight fits, spiked hair, and guess what, tattoos reading 'Tom', 'Dick', '&', 'Harry'. Real ingenious I would say because the whole notion of tattooing is so naturally cool and new as the number of people who have resorted to painted hair or pierced navels or tattoed bodies in search of a unique identity still dwindles at a mere 200 million worldwide.
The bottom line is that its not the product I have problems with but rather the things they are being projected into. As always, I have problems with the irrationality of cultivating a personal image based on corporate whims and secondary expectations, a trait that the media is propagating extremely carefully.
Wherever I see on the TV, there are dudes doing things which cool people ought to do, you know speak incoherent Hinglish, sport spiked hair, wear skin tight Baniyans so that their bulging muscles dance indecently in front of your eyes. And then their are the girls, again indulging in cool stuff highly associated with gangs of 21st century teens like rolling their eyes, breaking into a dance at the least possible prod and generally behaving as if each one of them is the last girl in a world that has just suffered an atomic war that has selectively wiped out all the other girls. Some cases in point:
There is this ad about the new CBZ motorcycle. Those at the drawing boards wrecked their brains and figured this thing: If the old CBZ model had a 150 cc engine and the new CBZ has a 160 cc engine, which is the one word which would appropriately describe this humungous, almost brilliant leap in technology. Nevermind that Royal Enfield has been consistently churning out 350 and 500 ccs in India for like a millenium, a 10 cc increase over 150 can only be done justice with one word: Xtreme. So like the morons they really are, they have gone ahead and called it CBZ Xtreme. Notice how they have omitted the E in Xtreme because proper pronunciation would not let their product get registered on the limited comprehension radars of 20 somethings and who knows: a CBZ Extreme might after all, not turn out to be as Extreme as Xtreme. With this much of Xtremity, I expect nothing less than a machine that breaks window panes with its sound, regularily breaks the sound barrier, and produces fumes of aqua regia in place of the regular exhaust of CO2 and CO. No it does nothing of the sort, and I am pretty certain doesn't hit anything more than 120 kmph (Pulsar 180 doesn't). Xtreme. Let me just say: My Foot. Thats not all, the model driving the bike proudle says: Thinking is such a waste of time. I would say it would be. For the demographics you are targetting, it would be a surprise if the overhead produced by thinking doesn't fuse their brains into one clogged lump. Thats what these people selling products would have us believe, that thinking is a waste of time. What next, take out our wallets and courier them to you if only you rope in king khan telling us that it would be a cool thing to do ? There is another bike ad in this regard although its a bit less obnoxious. I think its Apache from Honda. Everything is fine with the ad and I like the look of the bike but I just wish they would have refrained from projecting an extreme image of the rider replete with the bad boy image, leathers all over, and chicks going ga ga all over him with the guy himself employing most of his time wheeleing and stoppeing the bike.
Then there is all this talk about forming gangs. Not groups of people who share common interests but gangs who do all the cool stuff. I think Airtel has an ad regarding this. There is a gang of dudes who like racing toy cars in abandoned garages. Their carefully manufactured images include, tight fits, spiked hair, and guess what, tattoos reading 'Tom', 'Dick', '&', 'Harry'. Real ingenious I would say because the whole notion of tattooing is so naturally cool and new as the number of people who have resorted to painted hair or pierced navels or tattoed bodies in search of a unique identity still dwindles at a mere 200 million worldwide.
The bottom line is that its not the product I have problems with but rather the things they are being projected into. As always, I have problems with the irrationality of cultivating a personal image based on corporate whims and secondary expectations, a trait that the media is propagating extremely carefully.
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