Most of the time, when you watch ads on TV, you can’t even guess the product being advertised. Like the recent ad featuring what look like South East Asian people being lined up to be shot. Here’s what happens in the ad and as you read, keep in mind that it’s an Indian ad.
You see a sniper on top of a building. A young man in fatigues, with his hands tied behind his back, is made to kneel facing a wall. He is one of many being forced to do the same. A fat man, also in fatigues and accompanied by a foreigner with a camera, strikes an authoritative pose next to a line of shooters who are pointing guns at the kneeling men. The fat man indicates to the photographer that he should take photos and then orders his gun-wielding men to shoot. The kneeling men are then shot with what sounds like bullets but are actually – lo and behold! – paintballs. Soon the wall and the kneeled bunch are covered in splotches of paint. They then dance like maniacs while being paintballed while the photographer whips out a camera and starts photographing them. And then it says “Colours can come alive. Micromax HD”.
I’m all for black humour, but it has to make sense. Why are these people being shot? That too using paint? And who is the colonel overseeing their deaths? And why does he have a white photographer documenting the assassinations? And how is any of this related to a phone?
Then it struck me. This is actually an inspired ad. It’s been written by a history buff. Someone who is a fan of The Killing Fields. And Pol Pot. And also maybe, just maybe, they’ve heard of Leni Reifenstahl. Maybe they got their dictators mixed up and decided to write an ode to the two. Nothing else would explain it. Perhaps next in the series of historically inspired ads would be a train being set on fire and instead of burning, the attackers can set off a firework display which all the train passengers get to look at and dance while doing so. “Colours can come alive. Micromax”.
What? Think that’s offensive because it’s too close to home? What’s good for one tragedy should be good for the other. No?
If Micromax hadn’t managed to turn you off watching ads for a while, here’s another ad which might manage to do so. It was bad enough that we had to see a woman hanging from helium balloons at the IPL opening, but in the ad breaks, we get to see Farah Khan and a host of cricketers and commenters making fools of themselves and gyrating to something called Dil Jumping Jhapak Jampak Jampak advertising IPL 6. I’m assuming that the creators of this delightful commercial, which makes you wish you’d turn deaf and blind at the same time, were inspired by Psy’s Gangnam Style and thought they’d make their own Gangnam. While Farah Khan does have a passing resemblance to Psy, the less said about the ad the better. You also can’t help but feel sorry for the poor sods who have to dance in this video. This is the price you pay for selling your soul to Sony.
My favourite fail ad, though, is the one that offers a deep insight into the workings of Aamir Khan’s mind. Aamir’s dressed in drag. Again. This time to sell us Godrej’s ACs. The first time Khan opted for cross-dressing was in a film when he played a drag queen for a song in Baazi, in 1995. Then in the Tata Sky ads, he appeared as a Punjabi woman (among other Indian characters). He looked far from pretty, but still, there seemed to be some rationale behind his cross-dressing. Not this time. Why do we need Aamir to dress as a woman to sell us an AC? And why is Aamir so glee-struck to dress as a woman, other than for the big cheque at the end of the bad commercial? Beats me. I’m not sure how this fits in with the tag line “ideas that make you brighter”, unless that’s a subtly pro-woman statement from Godrej. It seems like all Aamir wanted was a chance to wear a dress again.
However, the best ad of the year hands down isn’t on TV. It’s given me claustrophobia every time I step into the car in the last few months. Turn on any radio channel and every five minutes, Amitabh Bachan raps “breathe in a bit of Gujarat”. It’s more than any person can bear. If I breathe in any more of Gujarat, I’m going to have a big slice of Jasuben’s pizza in my nostril.
Imagine Aamir Khan in drag dancing to “Dil Jumping Jumping” while lines of Chinese people are lined up and shot against a wall with khakras while Amitabh Bachan raps “breathe in a little bit of Gujarat” in the background. It could be a statutory warning ad against bad commercials.
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