Between the Briefs

So see… it’s that time of the year again. The end of the year, I mean, of course. So everyone is going around making these resolutions that will mark 2010. Now me, I’m not the kind of person to make resolutions. But yet, here I am, contemplating a post on it. It’s not the resolutions that tempt me to write this, but the way it will be written that does. See, all these social media experts (they’re everywhere now), they keep telling me that you must write posts with lists. People love reading lists. Which I somehow find strange ’cause I read a to-do list every morning and really, it doesn’t fill me with a warm and fuzzy feeling on the inside. An occasional hot flush, perhaps, but that’s about it. But the social media experts told me to write a post with lists ’cause people love reading it and ’cause everyone today has the attention span of a fruit-fly and ’cause a post where everything is written in bullet points makes it easier for everyone to take it in. And you can’t argue with the social media experts, so here I am doing the two things they asked me to do:

• Writing a “lists” post (starting now)
• Writing on “trending” topics

So yes, it’s that time of the year again and I must make resolutions. And as I move closer towards closing in on my second year on the job and on my twenty second year staying alive, here’s what I promise to do:

• A Little Less Cynicism, A Little More Ideation – I think it’s safe for me to say that I’m not exactly everyone’s daily dose of sunshine. I wrinkle my nose way too often and leave the room with a bitter after-taste. But well, like my CD once said, “If you can’t think of anything nice to say, make something up.” Those weren’t his exact words of course, but it was something to that effect. So starting 2010, I resolve to spend a lot more time thinking of niceties and spend a lot less time saying “It won’t work”. Perhaps it’ll make me a better person too, but I wouldn’t hold my breath and wait for that one if I were you.
• Swear to Swear Less – Yes, fewer “The fuck is wrong with him/her?”s, “What kind of a retard made this/wrote this/thought of this?”es, “Why are being made to act like boorish idea whores?”es. Come 2010, I’m going to be refined and polished and calm and composed. Some four-lettered words can’t be avoided, of course, and we’ll just have to learn to deal with them even though they taint and mar our otherwise chaste work environment. These include (I’m really beginning to kick ass at these lists):
  • Can’t
  • Won’t
  • Don’t
  • Hmmm
  • Nice
  • Good
  • Okay
  • This. Idea. Can’t. Sell. Crap.

But anything over and beyond is totally and utterly non-permissible. “Love thy client, colleague and vendor and slowly arrive at a state of beatification”, is what I’m going to see myself do. God promise.

• “Why so Serious”, No More – No wise cracks on this one. I’m serious. I take everything (including myself) too seriously and more often than not, it’s not worth it. This doesn’t mean you’ll find me putting on a pair of stilettos and dancing on table tops (erm… I mean, it’s only the end of a year, not the apocalypse, no?) but still… from now on, I will smile at least three times a day without any provocation and be found basking in the warm & toasty warmth of the world. I might even stop biting my nails to get rid of all the nervous tension and start getting manicures with pretty little French tips. Imagine that… Shikha Gupta – copywriter by day, poster girl of exhilaration by night. Kafka didn’t know what he was talking about when he wrote “The Metamorphosis”. Because this, ladies and gentlemen, is the real deal.
• Open to the Idea of an Open Relationship – You know how sometimes you’re working on something and you spend a fair amount of time on it and you think it’s niceish and then when it gets printed you put it up on your desk as a tiny memento for yourself… you know the feeling? And you know how sometimes another agency works on a similar cause/brief and does it well and does it so much better and gets the world to stand up and applaud it and how part of that world includes your team and your client… you know that feeling? If you don’t, let me paint you a pretty little picture. It’s kinda like being married and having your husband drool over your frenemy and tell you how hot she is, is what it’s like. And it makes you want to punch your husband in the face (or wherever it hurts most) and dramatise the whole situation and say, “Yeah, I’m never going to be good enough for you!” But then you arrive at a state of reconciliation (with yourself, not the husband) and understand that some things can never be changed. The grass shall forever be greener on the other side (excuse the cliché) but two can play the game. This for that, tit for tat. It’s very immature, I must admit, but at least I no longer come off as a prude. That, and also, despite all the anger it makes you want to better yourself just so that you can stand up, point and say, “Ha ha! Who’s hotter now, bitch?” So well…
• Stop Inflicting Self Harm – In spite of all my anger and resentment, I don’t come home and slash my wrists every night. No, the self harm I’m talking about is this… ranting and venting without restrain on my blog, pretending that NO ONE will read it. But it does get read. Not read enough to be made into a movie, perhaps, but read nonetheless. And for reasons understandable, I don’t feel like jeopardising my job or career just yet. So from now, everything’s going to be a lot more bowdlerised and cryptic and “read between the lines” types. And you must prod and probe to arrive at the larger truth or forever await your moment of divine revelation.

And there you have it… my plans for 2010. If you can think of anything I can or need to add to this list, do add it. I might even consider it for real. For the rest of you, I’m going to leave you with a little pixie dust to add to your holiday cheer. Poof.

Shahrukh Khan has never been one of my favourite brand endorsers. He’s never been much of my favourite anything, actually. And with the new set of ads for Dish TV, I have two more reasons for it. Watch:

It’s strange for something to promise something as big as bringing home life and for the creative to be completely devoid of the sentiment. For all the PR and drama that ensued regarding Khan’s turning old, you’d think they could’ve brought in some of that drama into the ads as well.

But somehow an adopted kid finally being convinced over Tom & Jerry and an extremely unconvincing Khan as an old man didn’t bring in the same kind of charm Aamir and Gul managed to bring in for Tata Sky Plus or even the convoluted emotional hook the Airtel DTH ad thrived on. It’s got someone who’s supposed to be a force to reckon with and it’s still got nothing. Almost tragic like.

The more I think about it, the more I realise I use words like “great” and “bleh” too easily to describe things I love and hate. But then when I think about it some more, I also realise that I wouldn’t have it any other way to describe what I’m about to describe.

What I’m talking about are two recent attempts (successful attempts) at viral marketing. Few “new media” campaigns have been able to create a stir the way the Whopper Sacrifice campaign did, until now.

The first one was for Ikea, created by Forsman & Bodenfors. I’ve somehow always liked the advertising for Ikea and now with their latest venture into social media, I think I like it still more. And here are my reasons for it. For starters, it makes me happy to think furniture can have life. Which is what Ikea’s advertising somehow always manages to do… like with the “Decorate for the Holidays” campaign. And with the new Facebook campaign, they’ve managed to get people to engage, without trying too hard. That’s the second reason to like it. With the no-reins feel that social media tends to bring along with it, it’s easy to get swept away. But Ikea’s attempt was simply… simple. Not too gimmicky, not overly “Ah, look… we’ve changed the world!” types. And most importantly, it had Ikea involved via their store manger. Which means this wasn’t just something left to the agency to take care of by themselves, but also had the brand’s presence created through their person. And I’ll admit that I am partial to this set of social media advertising only because it makes a lot more sense, even if it isn’t all glitzy and glamorous. So here goes:

The second one I’m talking is for Skype. This isn’t the first time Skype’s gone viral; its earlier “Laughter Chain” was also quite successful. But not Skype launched its first-ever, live streaming campaign where they put a guy in the middle of nowhere, next to a phone booth, gave out the number of the booth to people and got them to get in touch with him… via Skype of course. I can’t think of a better way to get people to try out a service and a better way to get the word going. And it’s exactly this that I love about advertising today… the way you can do absolutely anything and do it all the better than ever before.

Bingo chips brought slapstick humour to advertising with an undeniable fervour when it launched. Undeniable and addictive. So much so that it actually keeps you waiting (or… erm… “waiyting”) for the next batch to be doled out with all its inanity. Much like the latest commercial, which is nothing short of entertaining. If there was some place where it did fall short, it was the accent that wavered ever so slightly. Because really, the mark of the authentic Mallu accent is one that’s accentuated by its “crenginess” and never (I say, NEVER!) by its crunchiness.

My personal favourite, of course, remains the “Flip It” commercial but only because it reminds me of my ever-so-flippant clients, who never tire of asking for “more options”. Here’s to them and the ability to laugh at the situation, if only at a later time and date.

I begin Saturday morning with a healthy dose of advertisements; today started with Episode 58 of the Best Ads on TV podcast.

It was then that I saw the “Crowd Rider” commercial for Subaru by Leo Burnett, Sydney. It goes like this:

Now, the commercial is not what you would call exceptionally brilliant (we’ve all seen so many of these ads where million of people come together to form something of some sorts or just to add that larger-than-life feel to it (remember, “It’s a Big Ad” or “Man-made Machine“?)), but that’s just the advertiser talking – the “Been There, Seen That” jaded nonsense that doesn’t mean squat to the regular guy. So it may not be exceptionally brilliant, but it is exceptional in its own little way. Because Subaru went out there to say that when you or you or you or you go out for drive, there’s a whole company at work for you, and the “All for the Driver” pay-off ties in well with this, without trying too hard.

By contrast, I’d like to mention what India witnessed for another automotive brand on the fateful day of November 11, 2oo9. This was the day when Volkswagen was launched commercially in India. And it was no secret.

For starters, the first thing you saw when you woke up that Wednesday morning was the front page of the TOI screaming at you about how innovation at Volkswagen always makes the headlines. Nice thought, I’d say, if what were to follow were actually backed up by the statement.

But what followed instead was a roadblock, that did everything to tell India that Volkswagen had launched (including telling them how to pronounce it in so many languages)…  did everything, that is, except make it something truly memorable. Notice I stress on “truly” because, although it got everyone to sit up and notice, it did nothing to be remembered past 10:00 a.m. that day. Not for the regular Joe who probably wasn’t thinking of buying a car that morning at least.  Because this is what all the ads looked like.

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

This goes on for another 10 pages. 13 ads in one newspaper on one day and not one that makes you even say “Ah”. If you missed them, let me know and I’ll mail across a folder of the ads to you. But I really don’t see the point in doing that either.

And that’s precisely the problem I have with these roadblocks. Because, as someone I know said to me at work the other day, “It’s a full page, front page ad in the Times of India. You could put anything there and people will notice it.” Yes, well… then why wouldn’t you put just anything over there?! There’ve been so many painful occasions when we’ve all had to hear “It’s too creative, no one will get it” or “We don’t have enough space to say what we want, so forget all the brilliance you had planned and just lay down the facts as is” or “We’re a small brand, no one know us… we don’t want to take these risks just yet” and here’s a brand that’s a force to reckon with, that’s laid out enough money on day one of its communication campaign to buy at least two of its cars and there wasn’t scope for one, tiny “Ah” moment? I’m not even asking for an “Ah-ha!” moment. I mean, you’ve got to give me something. Just not this.

Oh and the TVC, not very inspiring either. “German Engineering. Made for India.” they say. I’m sorry, but it said nothing about its either being German or being Indian.

Perhaps I’m asking for too much and perhaps the ads did what they had to. But I’m just not convinced.

It’s not everyday that you get to see good advertising for juice. Nothing beyond the “100% natural. All fruit.” kind of messaging. Which is why when I saw the TVC for the new brand of Saint Juice, an uninterested “Ho-hum” was all I could manage. This, despite the fact that the execution was quite neat.

Directed by Prakash Varma, Nirvana Films, Bangalore

However, a chance discussion at work about the TVC got someone to share Saint’s print ads. I haven’t actually seen them in print, but I have to say it’s been long since I saw copy-based advertising that made me feel like there’s still hope for us copywriters.

I particularly like this last one. And just for that, Mr. Raj Kurup and team at Creativeland Asia, thank you.

But the truth is, we never really learn. We think we do, but we don’t.

Because we don’t really learn to know when to give up or learn to know when to fight. For that matter, we don’t even learn what it takes to say, “No” at the right time or say “This is not what I signed up for” when you know you’d signed up for more (or less, depending on what your day’s like).

We don’t learn to read people’s thoughts and figure out what they want, the way they want it, without a brief and we definitely don’t learn to take a brief on face value.

We don’t learn what makes us clingy, desperate people, who’ll claw on to whatever little we can to make sure we survive and we don’t learn what it is that makes us just as blasé at other times.

We don’t learn to just yell at someone who’s got their head up their ass and tell them they’ve got it all wrong or learn to put our foot in our mouth and say, “Yeah… okay… fine”.

We really don’t learn a lot except for when it comes to kidding ourselves.

Before I say anything about this, please watch the four TVCs I’ve added here.

Creative Agency: Tribal DDB

Creative Agency: Contract

Creative Agency: Rediffusion – Y&R

Now, I have three questions. One: Why do all these commercials come with a VO that speaks as if it’s the voice of the future? I mean, we’re talking about broadband connections and laptops here; with the tone these ads adopt, you’d think we were talking about some super cool phenomenon which deserves to be part of some sci-fi film of sorts. Two: Is it my imagination or are these ads beginning to look extremely “templatised” in thought and execution? And three: Which agency handles the Dell account?

I love dysfunctional families. Makes me feel like mine is one of the many. Which is why I like this ad for the Vodafone Diwali offer. I especially liked grandpa who sits in the corner and delivers his “Meri raye se”s with such panache (including saying “bleyu” with that typical North Indian twang). See:

And there’s this other one with Irfan Khan talking about the whole wedding situation.

They’re not ha-ha types but they are the “Bring a smile to your face” types. So I’m not complaining.

When I was in college, I once attended this seminar on advertising and marketing. I attended it really because Prasoon Joshi was supposed to be there and, at that point, I was in awe of him. Yes… it’s pathetic, but it’s true.

Anyway, as luck would have it, Prasoon Joshi couldn’t make it due to “unforeseen circumstances”. But we had Prahlad Kakkar there in all his glory and that wasn’t so bad either. So then we have this Q&A session where someone asks Kakkar what he looks for in someone when hiring them. I remember Kakkar’s specifically using these words: “I look for someone with a fire in their belly”, followed by other such stuff as they need to get up in the morning with a passion to conquer the world or something like that. All very pretty.

Almost a year and a half after taking up my first job, I revisit this episode in my mind and learn one of the most important lessons ever – NEVER TAKE ANYTHING FOR GRANTED.

And I say this now with a conviction you can’t dispute. And I have two good reasons that stem from the same episode, other than a whole lot of other reasons. But here’s what I’m talking about:

• If you believe whatever is printed on an invite, you’re in for a disappointment. The person who sold the show to you in all probability just lent his name. Don’t get me wrong. He will teach you something about advertising even in his absence; but most importantly he will teach you a little something about deceptive advertising.
• If you take for granted that you will be one of the many with the” fire in the belly”, you’ll go through many days feeling like absolute crap just because you cannot keep up the pretence of being passionate about your job all the time.  Again, I’d ask you to wait before you judge me. I’ll explain myself with a few situations:
  • A month or so back, my boss had signed us up for some classes on Entrepreneurship Development where a lot of this inspirational rubbish was being flung around for free. And someone said, “If your job or whatever it is that you’re doing doesn’t make you laugh any more, you need to quit.”
  • And then someone who used to be my client asked me whether my job makes me happy and it took me a while before I could answer this question honestly.

Statements and questions such as those above really make you think twice about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Now you’d think I’m someone who hates their job. But I don’t. In fact, I find it hard to imagine myself doing anything else, is how much I think my job and I meant to be together. But I just think being passionate about it every day is too much to ask for, realistically speaking. Because the things you’re really passionate about will come by just once in a while. For the most part, you’ll be stuck doing things you’d rather not do. For instance, as a copywriter you want to be creating ads – big, brilliant ads that people love and will discuss over coffee or beer in the same breath as Obama’s winning the Peace Nobel. Perhaps the day will come when you will create such ads, but before that there will be years of brochures, flyers, posters and whatnot that just won’t inspire a cell in your body even after you spend days and weeks trying to perfect it.

And then there will be days when something you really do care about will come along and you are really impassioned about it. But by the time you’re done creating your work, either your team doesn’t get it or the client doesn’t want it or the budgets suddenly get scrapped and you end up with something mediocre at the end of it all. Now if you’re telling me that you’ve been through this all and you still wake up feeling kicked about your job then, there’s got to be something wrong with you. Because when you are churning out something mediocre, you bloody well feel miserable about it. Of course you could say “Just stop creating mediocre stuff” but that will initiate a whole new debate.

What I’m trying to say is, don’t take for granted that your job will kick ass or that you’ll always do what you set out to do. The good days will come… but not without a slew of horrible ones. And it’s being able to work through the sludge early mornings, late nights and pretty much every weekend in anticipation of the good days that’s more important than walking around wearing a “I *Heart* My Job” t-shirt all the time.