The first advertisement we ever listened to as kids must  be ‘கோபால் பற்பொடி’ Gopal Toothpowder ad. The ad lasted probably ten seconds with just one line. இந்தியா இலங்கை, மலேசியா சிங்கபூர் ஆகிய நாடுகளில்  மக்களின் பேராதரவு பெற்ற  பல்பொடி, “கோபால் பல்பொடி”. “The only toothpowder which has people patronise in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore is Gopal Toothpowder.”

This ad kept coming at you after every song, during every program in the Radio. Probably a distance second would be ‘Aspro’ and Asprin tablet. The toothpowder company is still going strong which is as old as Independent India.

One advertisement we in KMR family loved was a Radio Ad for Woodward’s Gripe Water. A simple ad with powerful message. A lady (Let’s call her Lady A) walks into her daughter’s room and asks, ‘what happened?’ The daughter replies, ‘Baby is crying.’ Lady A says, ‘give Woodward’s gripe water. When you were a baby I gave you this when you cried.’ Just then Lady A’s mother walks into the room and asks, ‘what happened?’ Lady A says, ‘baby is crying,’ Lady B says, ‘Give Woodward’s Gripe Water. When you were a baby I gave you this.’ Then Lady B’s mother Lady C walks in. Same question and same answer.

A very simple ad conveying how people have trusted the product for generations. And the ad could be made in two dozen Indian Languages because the language and content were so simple. I recommend reading this article to understand what goes behind making an ad. When Woodwards Gripe Water became every household’s go-to medicine.

The Video Ad:

I truly fell in love with Ads when I read a book on Advertising in British Council Library in 1981 or 1982. Two Ads are still etched in memory. The first was about a Motor Car. I don’t remember the model but it must have been from one of the Big Three (Ford/GM/Chrysler). The Ad had just one line of Copy-write matter. Assume the ad was published in 1968. The ad Said – 1983 in bold letters for half a page and at the bottom in small print were the words “You need to think about your next car.”

I just tried to recreate the ad from imagination. I hope my friends in USA (Venkat/Sam/Guru/Radha) will be able to retrieve the original Ad for me.  Assuming the ad was published in 1968, it went something like this:

The other one was, one of the great ads ever produced for Avis rent a car. The tag line was “when you are No -2 you try harder.” There are many variation to this series of ads and one of them went like this:

This advertisement paid huge dividends for Avis resulting in increased revenue and more importantly conveyed the image of serious customer oriented company.

From the book, I learnt about Advertisements, Ad Agencies, Copy Writing and promotion. I fell in love with the industry and hoped to become an advertising professional one day. From then on, whenever I saw an ad, before reading the content, I checked which agency had produced the advertisement (printed at bottom of the ad in fine print). I learnt about leading Indian Ad companies like HTA (Hindustan Thompson Associates) and Lintas, Rediffusion and Oglivy Benson & Mathar.

Of all the agencies, I liked Rediffusion the most till they produced series of Ads for Congress during 1984 which were overtly polarising and stopped loving the agency. Trivia: These ads were produced by Mr. Rajiv Gandhi’s cousin’s Mr. Arun Nehru’s friends in the agency. A sample Ad:

Sorry I digressed. Yes I fell in love with Ads and wanted to be part of it. I wanted to become a copywriter. Soon I started dreaming of wining ‘The Pencil Award from D&Ad. Kept dreaming about winning Palme D’or in Cannes. However, I had no clue on how to go about it. I was not sure how one got into an advertisement  Company. What was the qualification requirement? I was also not sure if I had the language skills and was creative enough. Only my mother believed I had good language skills. The only thing I learnt about the industry was ‘Account Executive’ and ‘Accounts Executive’ was not the same and it was no spelling mistake. Years later I would join an American Speciality Chemical Company as an ‘Account Manager’ and that was in Sales role.

The Golden Period of Indian ads were the late eighties to early nineties. Colour Television was becoming more common and the advent of Satellite Television in India created a boom for the Ad makers. There are many videos in YouTube on Top 10 Ads or Top 20 Ads of 90s. Some of them are everyone’s favourite. Like the ‘Hamara Bajaj’ campaign from Bajaj, created by Lintas who also produced the famous Lalithaji ad for Surf washing powder. Even the print ads were creative. When the 100 CC bikes were becoming popular and Royal Enfield, the makers of Bullet, was losing market share, they released an Ad. “Let the boys have their toys. A man needs a Man’s Bike.” (Bullet was a 350 CC Motor Cycle). Agencies spent time and took efforts to create Ads.

Why this sudden reminiscence about Advertisements and the title of the blog. Well with advent of streaming services, most of us have stopped watching Television and thus advertisements which dominate 70 to 80% of telecast. Most of us watch TV only when sports is on.

Thus, it was during this year’s Women’s Premier League cricket, I was forced to watch Advertisements. The only ad or two of the predominant ads were for toilet cleaning solutions and floor cleaning liquids featuring leading actors of Hindi Cinema. Of course this toilet cleaning ad featuring an actor started in Tamil, featuring a reasonably famous actor – Abbas. Now you have popular Hindi cinema actors taking over the role of advising you, well, how to clean your toilets.

A typical ad shows that the actor comes into your house and heads straight to your bathroom, sniffs around and immediately recommend you what kind of cleaning solution you should use. The other variation is, an actress comes to your house and as you sit down (mind you not on the dining table as we generally do, but on the floor) to have a meal, she sees a million bacteria on the floor (n0t visible to us but she has microscopic eyes), forgets the lunch and gives  recommendation on how to keep your floor cleaned. And these ads were relentless. They were shown after every over, after every wicket fell, before the match began, during breaks and during post games show.

I am not  sure if Matt Damon and Matthew McConaughey endorse Harpic (a toilet cleaning liquid) or similar product in the USA like our actors do. If they don’t,  we can claim a genuine first in this.

After a gap of a fortnight, IPL (Men’s league) started and all the cleaning ads disappeared. Some geniuses must have thought only women watch Women’s game and vice versa. It’s now about online gaming shows (they should be banned, a blog for another time) about insurance, cars and card games. If you had thought the standards can’t go down below this while watching Women’s league, well, you are mistaken. Last year, I wrote a blog on IPL and commented that you can mute the TV and escape sound pollution. Now the you have to close your eyes as well during the ads. They are either vulgar, or insensitive or both. Renuka kept asking me, ‘Who approves these ads?’ I said the ad agency produces the ad and the customer (marketing dept and CEO) should be approving it. But I am not so sure.

I could find only two ads which were OK, one by a car hiring company (Zoom) and other one a car buying ad – Spinny featuring Sachin, Kumble and Yuvraj (all cricketers). Most of the rest lacked creativity and the content is pathetic.

Writer Sujatha had written twenty years back how the Radio Ads have become lousy. அதட்டும் மனைவி, உடனே அடங்கும் கணவன் – dominating wife and the domesticated husband. The husband always buys the wrong product as imagined by the wife and when she scolds him, he immediately accepts that he is an idiot and promises that he will be more careful in future. The ad is same for all the  products ranging from cooking oil to cellular phones.

Today,  you can neither listen to a good ad on Radio nor can you watch one on TV. In years passed by, they (the copy-writers) wrote catchy phrases which got struck with you for years. This was an Ad for a bathing soap from Tata’s, India’s best known company. “OK – அளவில் பெரிய குளியல் சோப்.’ ‘OK Alavil Periya Kuliyal Soap.’ ‘OK – Bigger Size Bathing Soap.’ The message was clear. You get a bigger size soap. So it is Economical to buy our product. The words rhymed and thus stayed with you.

Looking back, I think, I should have made an attempt at becoming a copy-writer. You don’t really need huge creativity and language skills to write tag line for toilet cleaning liquids using leading actors of the day. I am just thinking Naga would have become an excellent copy-writer in Tamil. He produces one-line gems, full of wit and wisdom. You chose a wrong career Naga.

On the other hand, I also believe, we used to make mediocre products but good ads. Today we definitely make better product but bad ads. If this is true, it is a good trade-off. By better products, I am not just talking about Toilet Cleaners here.