WTF is up with Indian advertising???

What is wrong with Indian advertising these days? Seems like there is a serious lack of ideas. All brands in a category seem to be talking about the same thing…sure you can argue that the products aren’t very different hence they might seem similar….agreed but the creative idea and execution can be different right?

Let’s look at cosmetics:
The Olay and Pantene ads….same concept…. same treatment...very very similar copy. Just the celebs are different I guess, who knows they might have some common models as well.

The fairness cream ads…every fortnight there seems to be a new variant and you can be sure that competition will have a similar one very soon, but you’d think they’d atleast make a different ad but NO!

The other thing that really pisses me off about cosmetics ads is that they are turning to scare tactics now…use me or you’d be fuck ugly…c’mon gimme a break…we’ve had beautiful woman for eons now we don’t really need jojoba extracts and peach creams do we….I recently saw an ad for anti ageing cream..very harmless talks about lines etc but the fuck up is it talks to 30 yr olds…if 30 yr old women need aging creams I’d much rather have them sent to concentration camps than have them use these creams….marketers seem to be talking the catch ‘em young principle to the extreme.

The other example of absolute same message is in the telecom space…..

Here is what I think happened during the briefing process for these campaigns

Client: lets talk about 3G…we are launching our services soon
Servicing guy: ok…so what features do u wanna talk about?
Client: U know about 3G, the new technology (which infact it isn’t…its more than a decade old)
Servicing guy: Yeah sure but what aspects of 3G, speed? Connectivity? Interactivity?
Client: everything man….why is it so hard for u guys to understand this stuff….why do u work on this account if u don’t know how cool 3g is?
Servicing guy (either panics or says suit ur self): yeah it really is a cool thing u know/u r the boss man…whatever u say…u know what lemme go over to the creative guys n see what we can come up with…I’ll get back to u soon…kthxbai!

SG to creative guy: We have a 3G campaign guys
Creative guy: ok so what’s the brief
SG: It’s a 3G campaign
CG: errrmmm I know but that isn’t a brief
SG: you do your job, don’t tell me how to do mine
CG: fuck u…come back 3 days later n take the crap I make

SG to CG: the brand window is too small don’t u think? Doesn’t really bring out the features of 3G
CG: whatever man..here are the files do whatever the hell u want with them


U get the picture….so all we see on tv is 3G is so cool and we have it ya’all…you gotta buy it cos sooner or later we’ll give it to u in one way or the other…

Consumer1 : So what do i get it activate 3G?
Consumer 2: No idea
Abhishek Bachchan: Get Idea….Awesome plugging don’t u think…"Th-th-th-that's all folks!"


There have been crappy ads before and there will crappy ads forever …that isn’t really the problem.

What I think is the problem is that either all agencies across the board have smoked up so much that their brain has evaporated and they just rehash stuff and put it out…or brands and brand managers are too busy focusing on visibility/other buzz words, have way too much money to spend and don’t really care about what their communication is and how its messes the consumers mind as long as their brands screams out louder than their competitions.

Well it isn’t all bleak out there…there is still a lotta good work being put out there…just that this horrible stuff outnumbers the good stuff…probably that’s what makes the good stuff really stand out…I don’t know.

This is giving me an idea though…will soon start an ad review blog…just hope I don’t fall into a laziness rut and manage to update it regularly. Suggestions are welcome (assuming u guys have managed read through this and wouldn’t mind more of this on a regular basis)