My absence from this blog is proof that I had something better to do, now nursing a horrible hangover I can finally put things in perspective, when I started writing this blog I was a blue eyed optimist whose ideas of advertising was a rosy picture of six people in a smoke filled room belting out ideas that would make a clio committee rub onions in their eyes because their tear glands could not cope with shedding enough tears to justify the beautiful advertisement that they had just witnessed. But a year and a half does change the way you look at things especially when you are in an environment that is filled with people with different outlooks opinions and outlets for creativity.
Doing my masters in communication opened my eyes to an array of opinions of advertising. From the ones who considered it the work of the devil to those who appreciated it as art and that advertising lecturer who just kept stressing that there are not enough magi and amul advertisements on the air, I even had a scholarly encounter with advertising while spending a semester on my thesis which was about children’s advertising but the one thing that really gave me a wake up call was my baptism in advertising courtesy of origami creative concepts, an agency that was started by four friends straight out of college. What sounded like the perfect place for me and my two friends to get our feet wet in the industry turned out to be a wake up call. THE CLIENT OWNS YOUR ASS is the motto of advertising agencies. Brilliant ideas were just thrown into the bin because the client was just too afraid to try something different.
People who wish to have an advertisement made for their business need to understand that. They are buying a piece of a news paper or time on the air to make sure that the people who are glancing over it stop and pay attention to it. When Volkswagen wanted the beetle sales to improve in America post world war II they made the famous lemon advertisement that shocked the advertising world but changed the publics opinion about the car. Now you wouldn’t see TATA taking out a full page ad for the nano with the headline “fire hazard”. Creative advertising is not just bold advertising it is that droll copy lines packaged in a clever way, its using visuals that make people stare at it wondering what the hell are you trying to say. I would like to believe that the M T.V generation is a bit more lateral than the sun T.V generation. But the advertisement that is being designed for this generation doesn’t reflect a gap.
This article is a plea to advertisers rise up and convince your precious client that the idea you scribbled on a bar napkin at 12:00 A.M is better than the one that he wants a focus group to construct. While watching Mad men I came across a quote by don draper which should be the way advertisers look at clients "You are the product. You feeling something. That's what sells. Not them. Not sex. They can't do what we do and they hate us for it.”
