 | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | REDIFFMAIL:
The commercial played on ‘Raju’s size’. It passed the ASCI scanner although it was clearly lewd. It was rejected by Kalanidhi Maran’s Sun TV network for being ‘offensive’. | | Sex sells. And the creatively-challenged advertising fraternity is liberally using the three-letter word to sell everything from underwear to e-mail service. In a bid to get a brand noticed really quick, advertising agencies are taking a rather bawdy route to nirvana. Faced with a cluttered television environment, where 200 odd channels air thousands of commercials everyday, creatives are increasingly becoming obscene, vulgar and over the top. So it isn’t really surprising to see an advertisement for designer jeans, where the model is showing off her underwear rather than the pair of jeans. The campaign was for print media, which sought to promote jeans by Rocky S, but the advertisement was discontinued as the core product was nowhere in sight. Rather than making the product the centre of the communication, advertisements today seek to shock and titillate through sexual innuendos and indecent representation of the female form. Even though the usage of both kinds of creatives go against the code of Self Regulation in Advertising, such commercials are increasingly becoming par for the course.
| | PICTURE SPEAK | |  |  | AMUL MACHO
The commercial got the maximum complaints in recent times. Yet, it has not been discontinued as the ASCI found nothing ‘offensive’ about the advertisement. | | |  |  | FRENCHIE
There are no people in the ad yet it ran into controversy for its sexual imagery and overtones. It was aired on AXN’s World’s Sexiest Commercials. | | There is so much of pressure on both the brands and their agencies to deliver that the need to bring in the sexual element is immense. Explains Rocky S: “My advertisements are all about the feel of my fashion. It doesn’t need to have the products on display. As long as the aura and the feel come across, my message is conveyed.” Currently, the talk of the town are two underwear commercials—Amul Macho and Lux Hosiery. Underwear brands today believe that qualities like comfort and quality are a given, so the brief (no pun intended) to the creative agency is personify intangible qualities of the brand like virility and machismo. A similar brief had been given to Pushpinder Singh of Saints and Warriors by Sandeep Sekhsaria, the promoter of Amul Macho. Says Sekhsaria: “The intent was to portray the brand as a personification of machismo. Therefore, the commercial has a woman fantasising about her husband while washing his underwear. The hue and cry is because it’s a woman who is fantasising and not a man.” In their bid to get noticed, small-time brands are trying to cater to fan the latent sexual fantasies and desires of people. The dividing line is very thin between naughty and vulgar, believes Singh. While the Amul Macho ad passed the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) muster, the Lux Hosiery commercial has been modified. It shows a scantily clad woman—dressed as a ‘dhobi’ looking at a man suggestively—saying “Nikaliye na… kapde,” is a clear sign of pushing the envelope a bit too much. A few years ago, controversial or even sensational commercials were mostly about products like condoms or underwear, as it had to convey a message about something as intimate as sex. The line between naughty and vulgar often thins when brands for consumer products like watches, jeans, mobile phones start representing “values” of brand through sexual innuendo, which typically get the brand and its owner instant recognition. | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | LEE
The commercial showed a man’s hand in a woman’s waistband. Objections were raised about this ‘suggestive’ gesture, because of which the ad was discontinued. | | But what do such suggestive commercials mean for sales? Sekhsaria claims the sales of Amul Macho are up by 35 per cent after the ad was launched on television. Perhaps this is why most other consumer brands are also resorting to brazen creatives. The reasoning given by consumer brands products for the usage of double entendre and orgasmic sounds is rather tough to explain at times. For instance, when Rediffmail wanted to launch a television campaign to announce its unlimited e-mail account, the commercial played on “size”. The commercial begins with two girls discussing something “big” their colleague Raju has. “Is it really that big?” Raju’s size is discussed everywhere from men’s toilets to office floors. The ad ends with Raju clarifying, “It’s not big, it’s unlimited.” The commercial was rejected by Kalanidhi Maran’s Sun TV network because it was considered offensive. Says Suvarn Verma, the ad filmmaker who made the rediffmail commercial, “Ads only have 15 to 30 seconds to make a point. Since the advertiser is spending crores on a commercial, the creative communication has to ensure that the product gets noticed.” Justifying the commercial’s need to play on Raju’s size, Verma says that the target audience for unlimited e-mail service clearly happens to be young professionals and students. This commercial, too, passed the ASCI scanner as its members did not think it was vulgar. Brand owners don’t mind the usage of vulgarity if it gets their brand the attention and the advertising fraternity feel that television is about choice. So if irate consumers do not like certain commercials they can very well switch off the television. Singh feels that advertising reflects society and doesn’t shape it, therefore no moralistic stands should be taken on television commercials Unlike commercial films, there is no censorship in the advertising industry as it’s a self-governed industry. ASCI is an umbrella body that stands for the protection of consumer interest and that of all concerned with the industry. Expressing concern over the frightening rise in the usage of sex or female form to capture people’s imagination, Gualbert Pereira, secretary-general of ASCI, says: “There is a definite trend towards using sex as a means of attracting attention to an advertisement.” Thanks to the code for self-regulation, which came into practice in 1985, ASCI has since then consciously worked towards reducing misleading, offensive and unfair advertising. The council has representation from the advertisers, agencies, media and other advertising services. However, the ASCI believes that while self-regulation is a great thing, the industry must show more responsibility or else regulation and censorship will come from outside. Currently, the ASCI can only advise a brand on its commercials and campaigns after it receives complaints, but since September last year, the Directorate-General of Health Services has recognised the ASCI’s code for self regulation, and the purpose of which is to control content of advertisements. Says Pereira: “Brands are encouraged to come and show their campaigns, though there is no rule for formal approval. The ASCI is increasingly moving towards regulation in order to avoid censorship in future.” From the look of things, advertisers and agencies are in no mood to listen. Index |
