Advertising and the modern Indian

It doesn't take a genius to see that the golden age of Indian advertising has started. According to a recent study, the Indian advertising industry is going to grow 65% in the next six months (granted, it made a loss in the first six months, but anecdotally I can say that the field seems to be hotter than it ever was). The proliferation of fast-moving consumer goods brands (many of which sell similar products) make creative branding a necessity rather than the luxury it might have been in the days before competition got so stiff.

And it's not just FMCG where advertising has made its mark. India is becoming more literate. Although most English-language newspapers have seen tough times lately, the Hindi-language newspaper business has taken off as if hitched, literally, to a shooting star. In a time when many publishers are so desperate to sell ads that they offer deep discounts, I remember a colleague once remarking, "they don't even bother with discounts in the Hindi paper, they know they're going to sell ads." I bet the ad folks at Conde Nast would kill to be in that position.

That said, advertising in India must still be ferociously difficult. I've noticed myself how segmented the market can be. Take advertising for the recent Bollywood romantic-musical-comedy-drama-potboiler "Love Aaj Kal." (The title means "Love Nowadays") The film posters in most major cities showed the two main characters (actors) locked in each other's arms (above). The film's title appeared in English. A few days later I went for a trip to a much smaller town. The posters here were also advertising "Love Aaj Kal," but the protagonists were placed chastely at opposite ends of the paper, and the title was in Hindi.

The point is, the metropolitan audience is a whole different breed of horse from everyone else. It used to be that most Indian ads were lame and formulaic, usually featuring a celebrity or movie star schilling a product that had nothing whatsoever to do with the narrative content of the advertisement. But those days seem to be coming to an end. I've embedded of my favorite ads below.



Say "zoozoos" to anyone who's been to India anytime in the last two months, and you won't have to say anything else. These ads took the entire country by storm. The spots aired during the IPL games, the all-India club cricket matches comparable in viewing power to the American Super Bowl or the finale of Americal Idol. Sensitive to the risk of overexposure (or perhaps just that creative), Vodafone commissioned more than a score of them.



Vodafone seems to have had a streak of winners lately. This ad has shown everywhere from TV to the multiplex (I've seen it a few too many times) but it's funny and looks completely different from most ads on Indian TV today.



One of my favorites from the day I first saw it. Apparently this ad caused a huge controversy. Whatever. The main character is relatable and his predicament ist just the right blend of comedy and pathos. Fantasizing about insulting your noxious boss is old news, but making a nasty acrostic out of his very name? That's creative.

Unfortunately, most Indian ads are not this creative or interesting. Tomorrow, I will go negative, and see if I can dig up clips of some of the worst offenders.