Sunday, February 28, 2010

The More Things Change...

...the more they remain the same.
TV viewers of the One-day cricket in India recently were 'treated' to an ad.

A red swimsuit clad PYT swimmingly emerges from the sea in a long-shot to end up in a closer shot (no pun intended). The shot ends there and there is a transition to the category/brand...a cement brand. A VO did link up the two,somewhere.
Where did this come from? A lot of us were wondering.
All communication , I believe, emerges from an 'complicit' model of consumer behavior that the creative believes engages with the consumer. What is the Complicit Model here? A lot of People Like Us (PLU) were tut-tutting away at this piece .
Guess what...we all noticed it in the sea of advertising , discussed it and even remembered the brand in many cases. Given that limited-overs cricket in India transcends class barriers , was the creative intent to cut through and register brand across target groups ? Was that the intent?
Was the Complicit Model that the category is dull boring one which needed the kind of treatment to get attention?
If so ,maybe it worked. Maybe the brand-owners are laughing all the way to the bank as we speak...maybe creating communication for all does require different mental models of the market? And not all of the models are what the chattering classes feel comfortable with.
Tell me what you think...

3 comments:

Kundhavi K Bala said...

hey, welcome to the blog world. i beat u to it by a few days!!
in fact the jk cement (i remember the brand despite not being part the target group) was going to be my next story too!
look frwd to reading ur posts

K said...

The JK Cement ad is certainly generating a lot of comment - mostly moralistic...and mostly from people of a particular vintage :). But this ad and several others (I can name the fevicol moustache ad, the ibibo pot ad, the HDFC Life Insurance ad; Emotional Atyachaar et al..) offer a fascinating commentary on the changing social landscape. All what we would call 'crass/in bad taste' and all clutter breaking!! Would love to know impact on sales.

vishy said...

I remember the ad. Not the brand. There goes all the money down the drain for the brand manager...!!