The people I met said so... (Part 1)

               I attended a talk by Madhukar Sabnavis, the Country Head for Discovery and Planning at Ogilvy and Mather India, and the Regional Director for Thought Leadership, in January. The topic of discussion was "My one wish for creativity in advertising". It was very interesting given the fact that he himself is a very creative man. At the end of the talk he expressed his wish in the following words, "As we grow and adopt in the advertising world, let's keep the Indian soul while taking up western culture".
             True! Today, advertisement is one of the largest propagated medium to the common man. It has played a huge role in spreading knowledge about FMCGs or fast moving consumer goods like lakme, l'oreal, Nike, etc. to the masses.
            If we look at a time span of about thirty years in the Indian advertising industry, we see a huge change as time passes.
            The mid 80s saw the western influence on India. Advertisements like the cadbury dairy milk ad, showed a young couple wearing very western clothes playing hide and seek, thus letting people relate to the upcoming western culture in India. But as we progressed in that decade, we saw upcoming actress, Raveena Tandon, debuting in the Asian paints ad, in a backdrop of a big traditional Indian Wedding and Raju Hirani in an 80s Fevicol commercial with elephants. This shows that the late 80s advertising had begun a new phase where they were based on Indian scenarios.
            In the 90s, the radio and the cinema came back and the television took a back seat. But, the consumer durable world and the fashion world opened up in the 90s, and advertising was at it's peak. With the changing times, the form of advertising also changed. Global tie-ups began and a lot of agencies started globalising. The position of women also changed in the 90s.
           More and more female based advertisements were made in order to connect with the "Typical Indian Housewife" seen in the Indian household. Advertisements began to touch the heartland of India, but simultaneously brands in India were globalising. So, brands like Coke, Nike, Surf, which were global, were indianised for the Indian public. But brands like Bajaj, which were Indian looked global due to it's advertise content. Thus, it was proved that India caters for the local Market rather than the Western Market, and it was necessary to indianise the ads in order to connect the product to the masses.
           In the new millennium, we see about 72000 print labels, 500 radio stations and about 15000 tv channels. Advertising in the 2000s became a challenge for the creators with each brand or agency coming up with ideas which would be a food for thought for the Indian public. The "Tata tea" ads with the tagline "Jaago re!", was based on the political scenario in India, while the first "Idea" ad with the tagline "What an idea, sirji!" was based on riots prevalent in India. The blackberry boys ad with youngsters singing the song too, saw the westernisation brought about by new products coming in India.I think the "zoo-zoo" ad campaign was one of the most successful ad campaigns in recent years, with the agency coming up with about 25-30 ads with the zoo-zoos.
            Today the Indian advertising industry is fully concentrating on connecting with the Indian public and thus are bound to produce ads which include the scenes from a normal Indian house rather than showing an american or an english house. Weddings, birthdays and anniversaries are the popular themes for these ads and even we enjoy watching such ads.

            We have to admit that the advertisers in India have managed to assimilate the best techniques from the west but at the same time kept it all Indian. I just hope that this continues for a very, very long time!