The IPL is the Super Bowl of India when it comes to advertising. Viewership reaches record levels, and so does the game of advertisers who launch their biggest campaigns of the year at this time, eyeing the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions. This time, it is the CRED ads with Madhuri Dixit, Anil Kapoor, Bappi Lahiri, Udit Narayan and Govinda that have become the most talked-about campaign of the season. Just like Pepsi’s Cindy Crawford commercial in 1992 Super Bowl was and Budweiser’s “Typical American” this year.
Although our budgets might not be as extravagant as those in the West, it’s a matter of prestige to crack the Indian Premier League (IPL) formula for eyeballs, and become the most talked-about ‘event’ on the screen, after cricket. And this time, the joke is on the advertising industry itself. This is how advertisers seem to be adapting to an environment where anything and everything, good or bad, can potentially land you into trouble, like the Tanishq and Surf Excel advertisements.
CRED, also the IPL’s official partner this season, has created quite a stir with its campaign ‘not everyone gets it’. The company is a member-exclusive online platform to pay credit card bills. It seems to have taken the cake home with an audition-styled campaign whose catchy lines stick in your head long after you have switched off the ad. I can’t seem to shake off Bappi Da going ‘Download CRED, baby. Download CRED’ while writing this article either.
Also read: India is wearing hate in 2020. No space for Tanishq’s secular jewellery
Who to laugh at?
Nowadays, anything that can will go wrong, even if your message is completely innocent and harmless. This leaves advertisers with little space to get creative. More and more restrictions obstruct their flow and limit their ideas — these restrictions are not only imposed by their client but also by the times we are living in.
The internet age has also made the attention span shorter. No longer do people offer their undivided attention to a product’s ad during a commercial break because they have no other choice — they skip it on YouTube after the first five seconds, and in those five seconds, the brand has to get its message across to the viewers, so there’s demand of functionality instead of creativity in ads. This can get terribly difficult to work around.
But brands such as Netflix and CRED turned inwards for their humour and punch in their ads and found that it works. Not only have they cracked jokes at themselves, but they have also got viewers to notice their brands within the five-second window, when you can’t skip the ad. There’s both fun and functionality here.
In 2018, when Radhika Apte starred in every other Indian TV show or movie on Netflix (Ghoul, Lust Stories, Sacred Games, to name a few), the internet indulged in massive trolling of the streaming giant. But Netflix turned around the joke for its own good, and took centre stage in creating memes of Apte being the sole karta dharta of Netflix India.
In the same way, CRED, whose ads are made in-house (which is a bit disappointing because I would have loved to see the humour come from a frustrated agency copywriter with at least 300 wonderful but ‘rejected’ scripts under their belt), turn the joke on itself. It acts as a picky client ready to settle with the boring call to action of downloading its app via ‘simple voiceover’ because every celebrity ‘audition’ is, to put it mildly, not up to the mark. This client wants big stars, creativity, flamboyance, pizzazz in its ads, but also doesn’t want it. The resulting ads beautifully give CRED all that and more. Even the jingles, which are extremely fun, take the name CRED at least 10 times. There couldn’t be a better win-win situation here. A tactically fulfilling ad that is also creatively satisfying.
We might see more such campaigns in the future where the company looks inward to crack a joke. This isn’t only because joking or commenting has become impossible, with everyone walking around carrying their ‘offence’ radar held up high. It’s also because the internet has emerged as the number one space for your brand’s ad and its importance will only grow with time.
And if there’s one thing overshadowing hate on the internet right now, it’s memes. Every brand will have to find a way to make a meme of itself. It’s good to see even Indian brands warming up to the art of laughing at themselves.
Also read: Streaming portal Eros Now apologises for ‘vulgar’ Navratri ads that triggered boycott call
Sensitive times
After the Tanishq ad debacle, it is quite likely that advertisers must be feeling more sensitive, alert and cautious of their communication. That’s because even saying the right things or spreading the message of love, communal harmony and diversity can now make for bad PR and invite boycott calls.
But the Tanishq episode isn’t an anomaly. Even in the past, consumers have taken offence to completely harmless messages, like the ad by Surf Excel where the Hindutva brigade lost their minds over a Hindu child dropping her Muslim friend to the mosque, protecting him from getting splashed with Holi colours, so he can read Namaz in clean clothes — only to have him come back and play Holi with her. Or the Lux ad featuring Shah Rukh Khan, which became controversial just because Khan was secure enough with his masculinity to embrace his feminine side for the camera.
One also has to note that Indian ad makers and brands have always been shy of taking a political stand or picking sides in controversial socio-cultural matters. While Indian advertising does comment and reflect on society, politics and trends, it doesn’t necessarily take the bold stance that brands in the West do. Nike’s ‘Dream Crazy’ ad featured Colin Kaepernick, who had taken the knee during the playing of the national anthem at the National Football League (NFL) in 2016, to protest racial injustice in the United States. The ad caused much furore and led to consumers burning Nike shoes and other apparel. But Nike stood its ground. Even during the recent Black Lives Matter protests, brands took to social media to clearly state their stance on the issue. That doesn’t happen in India. Tanishq had to pull down its ad after massive online trolling, it couldn’t stand behind its message of love.
If the IPL is to become to Indian ad season what Super Bowl has come to mean for America, here’s hoping that advertisers take it up a notch and produce ads at par with international standards. Although, in the current environment, that seems like a bleak possibility.
Views are personal.