Lalit Modi, the irrepressible impresario of the IPL, has a tough job on his hands when the IPL returns for its fourth edition next year with two more teams and a minor matter of 36,000,00000,000 more advertisements.
The expansion itself is acceptable only if the idea is to provide more options for KKR and Kings XI Punjab to lose. But anybody seriously following the IPL this year will obviously be appalled by the plummeting standards in the core area of what constitutes today’s cricket —- commercials.
As the valuations on teams, players and the entire IPL have zoomed up, it is also important that ad agencies increase their budget for commercials by at least Rs.500, an amount that should be good enough to get them a decent enough book on improving IQ and general knowledge. And if they can help it, they can also possibly ban zozos that seem to be a mutant mix of Sharad Pawar and Lalit Modi.
Here’s a low down on some of the ads that have taken this year’s IPL telecasts down to a new low.
Slice of life ads
Slice of life ads, as the name readily suggests, is about sly lies. These ads are full of warm sequences and stirring visuals that are not even remotely connected to the product. They underscore the essential truth that is at the core of all marketing efforts: It doesn’t take much to cheat the public.
But all slice-of-life ads have an interesting message in their sub-text: Ha, ha, ha.
Example One
Young kid is late in coming back from his evening games outing. Mom and dad, naturally upset, raise the most important question in such times: Whose son is he really? In case, you need spelling out, the message here obviously is: Those who are unsure of their son’s parentage invest in insurance policies. Cue: Happy family. And a happier neighbour.
Example Two
Man, with his wallet jutting out of his back-pocket, is dozing off in a park bench when a knavish man lets out a surreptitious hand to try and filch the purse. But just in time, a young wisp of a lad, sitting nearby, snaps his fingers, the sound of which, helpfully amplified in a state of the art studio, reaches the man’s ears in time for him to wake up with a jerk. The would-be thief is stopped in his tracks. In the background, a bank’s logo unfolds to the accompaniment of soft strums. The message: Why depend on a robber when banks can do the same thing better.
Example Three
A man, apparently headed abroad, and his friend set out for the airport in a cab. Man gives some money to the friend to pass it on to his (the former’s) wife and children. The dependable friend is puzzled and comes up with the most logical question for the occasion: ‘What happens if you croak abroad and what happens to the children and wife?’
The man, stung by the whiplash of this question, realizes his folly — of befriending such a scheming twit who has an eye for his wife. So he divorces the friend and heads abroad with his head held high, safe in the knowledge that he is now well insured against nagging blokes.
Cola ads
When it comes to capturing the imagination and angst of the youths, no other product ad does a better job than the colas’. Cola companies have a good reason to target the fascinations and fads of the youth brigade: Their product as such has nothing to advertise itself on.
Girl and boy, on a sultry day, find themselves thirsty while travelling in a crowded bus. The toothy girl looks wistfully at a billboard of a large cola bottle. She, in a show of typical youthful imagination, extends her hand and fetches the non-existent bottle and passes a non-existent glassful to the boy, who exhibiting matching youthful fantasy, drinks the non-existent drink from the non-existing glass and smiles contently.
Yes, you are right the two are hallucinating and the product naturally shares its name with the American street slang for cocaine.
In another ad, a young man is shown to outsmart a gaggle of security personnel, and gets away by drinking the cola that is meant for the President, who must have ordered it to go with his evening shot of hard liquor.
The altruistic message to the young lads out there is: You must earn your liquor. But colas come easily. Especially by cheating.
Automobile ads
The availability of breath-taking, jaw-dropping, eye-catching, muscle-twitching technology has meant that you no longer will be bored to death by dreary and drab commercials for staid cars and SUVs. Cutting-edge, state-of-the-art and other such synonyms-prefixed graphic works brilliantly take care of that. Of boring you, that is.
The miracle of modern animation science is that it unshackles imagination. So, you have dazzling ads where cars are shown to blaze on astro orbits in distant galaxies, on desolate strips in dangerous deserts, on uninhabited tracks in fiery forests and on every other conceivable stretch, except the one on which you and your car actually find yourself daily: A real road with real traffic. There is a compelling and honest reason for ad men to stay away from every-day street for car commercials: They are far too lazy to get out of their couches in their AC rooms.
Even among the very many inane ads for cars, the one, which involves Sharukh Khan flubbing his lines, forgetting the name of his on-screen pair and calling her by the name of a car, stands out for its total nonsense. But you have to agree that Sharukh is effortless in playing stupid. He is an absolute natural when it comes to foolishness.
AC ads
As a technological product, no gizmo has evolved so enormously as the air-conditioners have. ACs no longer stop with dispensing normal cool air. They are now advertised to purvey ‘vitamins in air’, ‘altering the DNA of the surroundings’, ‘keeping out all dangerous virus and bacteria like TV news anchors’. Surely one day, as technology moves forward, ACs will reach the level of intelligence that will help them sort out the Kashmir issue and improve the spelling abilities of Shahid Kapoor (As of now he cuts and pastes his name from his school report card).
Akshay Kumar ads
Commercials that feature Akshay Kumar are popular, especially among ad-makers as the burly hero gives them the convenience and flexibility of not having to think up anything remotely new.
In all his ads, Akshay is either asked to dangle from a rope or jump off from high-rises including kitchen tables, while the product to be advertised is splashed across the screen. You can be sure Akshay will bounce around like a deranged monkey even if the product to be plugged is shoelaces.
So, all things considered, IPL ads need, well, a strategy break. And in the meantime, if it comes to that, we may have to pump bullets on Akshay if he laughs that laugh again.
