Indiantelevision.com Team

(23 March 2007 8:00 pm)

MUMBAI: The Bombay Ad Club's annual Advertising Review was conducted by Future Brands MD and CEO -designate Santosh Desai on 16 March in Worli, Mumbai. The Ad Review this year was interesting since Desai who has spent over 21 years in advertising is now part of the client community. The shift in perspective from an advertising agency to a client was highlighted by Desai in an hour long multi media presentation peppered with television commercials to emphasize his points.

Desai covered every aspect of the mushrooming advertising industry - print, television, activation, out of home and rural advertising.
While rural advertising has generated interest on and off over the past years, Desai still felt that not much of rural advertising exists. The print versus television advertising has also occupied the minds of advertisers and clients especially over the question of reach. Desai expressed fear that the strategic messages were getting lost and in some cases, there weren't any strategic messages at all.

Although he refused to get into the awards scam or "the award multiplier" as he calls it, he said that as a medium clients were showing declining interest in print.

Desai also had some very interesting points to make on the "exteriorization of women"- from pleasing the mother in law with her comely qualities to "what will Rahul think of my pimple" , creatives suggested that women were growing more confident, more aware of their physical selves. The Recova ad has the ageing wife take control and use an anti ageing cream to get her disinterested husband attracted to her again.

Similarly the whole concept of "pride of India" may also have been carried a little too far in ads like Rajnigandha( not too far fetched in the light of Mittal-Arcelor and Tata-Corus stories) and Intex computers (a geeky looking Indian in a decrepit American coffee house is a NASA scientist who gets a call from the White House).

Desai also spoke about the changing dynamics of relationships and the way they are perceived by multi national company as against an Indian company. The Citibank relationship manager shows an urbane male executive tossing some meal even as he is reminded of "how it might be time to review Mr. Mehra's portfolio". On the other hand, the "Shastriji" ad for State Bank of India refers to banking beyond financial transactions with the manager actually worried enough to look up his retired customer at his residence. The relationship between the two moves from being clinical to more warm.

However, the idea of Cadbury chocolates transforming from merely chocolates for kids to "kuch meetha" on special occasions like festivals or even wedding "shaguns" was a brilliant attempt to assimilate a western product into Indian ethos, said Desai.

A perennial debate amongst advertisers, clients and people in the know is if the 30 second commercial as we know it is dead? While talking about the recent developments in activation, he cited the example of O&M's recent on ground activity on the streets of Bangalore for ticket sales at the Rangashankara theatre. Although this brilliant work, activation in general was not big enough he maintained.

Desai also found the 'Blue Billion' activation by Pepsi around the World Cup a good example of activation on a large scale.

Summarizing the presentation, Desai raised some pertinent questions on how advertisers are clearly focusing on individual ads. The whole exercise of brand building, however, is getting a secondary status which is a matter of concern especially from the client's point of view. Desai also expressed fear that there was a "gradual collapse of strategy" or "proposition" and the question to ask is whether this phenomenon would benefit the client.

"While the product message through each ad has been amplified, there is a certain loss of interest in the ownership of a brand by advertisers." In this scenario, what happens to the model of a 'brand' and is the ad strategy today dependent only on the creative and representation?

Desai also posed a question to the audience with the need for a new vocabulary to describe and address the new consumer. He also said that advertisers in general were unsure if this vocabulary would arise out of asset creation or the service provider.

Desai ended his presentation with his pick for the year 2006: Happy Dent TVC. While justifying his choice, he explained that to him "great advertising is like enigmatic art- it is simple and explains a product but at the same time, it holds back a little. It does not reveal itself completely and that is why it makes for great conversation."

Ending his presentation he mentioned that in 2007 "advertising had much to do but most of all it should make for great conversations."

The event was sponsored by Dainik Bhaskar.