To tread the fair path | The Asian Age

To tread the fair path | The Asian Age

Gender inequality

The results of India’s 2011 Census on gender inequality is shocking in its implication; far fewer girls than boys are born in the country each year in the last decade. Comparing the number of girls actually born to the number that would have been born under a normal ratio suggests that “600,000 Indian girls go missing every year,” comments The Economist. The catastrophe stems from traditional perception of so-called Indian parents — the boy is a help for the future, where the girl is a liability. “What is alarming is that female foeticide is more common among educated middle-class than poor rural families,” says Indian Union Health Minister. Worse still this trend is increasing.

Globalisation and exposure to western thinking process have brought in slow but steady changes in the way we used to think about ourselves and about the world around us. Apparently a lot has also changed in the world of Indian women- the way they dress, the way they are taking strides in the so-called man’s world; one would have expected that the traditional perception about the girl child must have become more positive in the society in the last 10 years but the Census figures tells a diametrically opposite story. It seems the negative perception has not only been kept alive, but also nurtured and cultivated in the society. It may be an interesting angle to find out what is the discourse around girls and largely around women in the public domain as mirrored in the popular culture in the last ten years. This will to some extent bring out how far we as marketeers and communicators are a party to perpetuate this perception?

Ten years after globalisation Indian MNCs are busy selling fairness creams projecting and focusing dark skin as a barrier in the marriage market. Such communication only reiterates the image of girl’s marriage as a monster in the parent’s mind. Brands only changed communication when activists, intelligentsia and the policing bodies started crying wolf.

Apart from a handful of stories of empowered and successful girls on scooters and cars the major advertisers in TV are the beauty care and grooming products which ruthlessly exploits the fragility of female beauty. Having created a hamesha gorgeous icon of her, brands made her hysterical about her looks. Falling hair, boring black hair, cracks at her heels, blackheads at the tip of her nose, nightmares of pimples breaking out made her buy costly cosmetics — "because you are worth it". Every TV channel has their own local Shehnaz Husain with their hundred products and facial packages.

Specter of dowry has never stopped haunting the parents of a girl child. The construct of the father of ladki has traditionally been accepted as an object of social ragging. There is no respite from this traditional victimisation. Ads tongues in cheek still perpetuate those perceptions starting from the classic Pan Parag ad, Hum ladkewale hain bhai. Demon of dowry is alive, flourishing and in some cases glorified. MP and MLA’s sons are getting choppers as gifts from marriages and are highlighted in media almost reconfirming the sanctity of dowry wrapped in kind in
marriage.

Marriage as a monstrous expenditure has only snowballed over the years. Strangely globalised Indian youth have shown their preferences for the traditional marriage over plain and functional model of court marriage. And the traditional form of Indian marriage has progressively become bigger, larger and spectacular over the last two decades. The Bollywood single handedly designed the glamour quotient around it — elaborate sagai, prolonged sangeet, massive processions, song, dance, fireworks, drinks, DJs, filmy mujras — a spectacle which need to be professionally managed at a professional price.

All diamond brand commercials are revolving round marriage situations where breath-taking diamond necklaces both in terms of look and money are bringing in new standard of marriage trousseau striking terror in the middleclass parents’ hearts. The whole construct never allowed girl child to be perceived in the positive light. She remains forever stuck at cost centre, bigger, escalating and snowballing cost.
But what I feel, there is a need to integrate the issues of negative perception about girl child with our day-to-day thinking by making us proud about girl child and by driving home the belief the she is the most beautiful wonderful and valuable gift of nature.

And advertising can do it. There is always a fresh way of doing things in advertising and marketing linking issues with day-to-day products. It does its job in small emotional, lovable steps without being judgmental about people. A special mention here is the Maruti commercial where the working girl gifts a cheque to her father to buy a big car, and proud father smilingly utters car bari ho gayee aur beti bhi (My car has become big and so has my daughter).

When would Indian parents’ tone change from fear to pride when they utter the line Beti badi ho gayi. Think about it.

Replacing mommy in the kitchen

There was a time when mommy and food was inseparable. You could not have thought of food without thinking of mommy. Taste, warmth, ma ka hath –gastronomic juices blended with emotional outpourings used to create a heady cocktail of sense and sensibilities. Ads were full of grinning mommies and salivating eaters going gaga over food.But of late what has happened to the traditional mommy? Today why bachhe and Baap try to leave house moment mommy announces her menu- of karela & lauki as in the recent Cadbury ad.

Is there any truth in the picture painted by Cadbury ad about traditional mom? Or is it another expression of advertising license?The new Cadbury commercial is a 30 second capsule of a three decades of change in mommy’s kitchen. Traditional mommy has always negotiated with children with her concept of health food and so called junk food. Karela , lauki , palak , dudh all were mommy’s staple and she was a master strategist in formulating different ploys to force them down children’s food pipe . Palak khaoge pilot banoge , milk will add fairness , have your karela ,lauki and you will be allowed to have your burgers and colas. If she is an avowed practitioner of health food she is also the canny house wife making the best uses of her cooking resources including leftovers. Her skill in recycling the baasi(leftovers) sits comfortably with her obsession with wholesome food.

Today both these contradictory skills have lost their charms. Her lauki is a recipe of disaster and her best effort to make her own recipe palatable (-lauki sunke bhagna mot aag kuchh special hain- don’t run away hearing about gourd curry ...today’s’ preparation is special) have few takers. Only poor dad got caught; but then he has always been her proverbial guinea pig. When did the traditional mommy become such a big loser on her own traditional turf and how?

Well, a lot has happened or rather made to happen in her world in the last three decades by brands and marketers and in their coup they had a faithful co- conspirator who is none other than the new age bahu. Cadbury commercial mirrors this untold story. Thirty years back Saash was all powerful and kitchen was her kalakshetra ; tradition was her store house of recipes and years of practice and application in kitchen contributed to her stardom in the fairy tales of food. The aroma of maa ka hat ka khana used to bring truant children cart wheeling inside the kitchen. The newlywed wife used to find it difficult to win her man’ heart through stomach; because mommy ruled his taste bud. As a desperate attempt she had to ask her mom in law for her recipe of Change chhoole .By replicating her mom in law’s skill she would make her man discovered mother provider in his wife.

An intelligent strategy to win her man from his mom but time and again such experiments would back fire. How could she remember 24 items in change chole recipe and therefore the final preparation more often than not would have ended in disaster. Masala brands came to her rescue- na bhule aap kuchh na bhule hum. Remember the popular ad where Mandira Bedi pretended as if she were cooking as per her mom in law’s instruction but in reality was dancing to the tunes of her favorite music. The brand was almost conspiring with her; you do not openly defy tradition; asks your mom in law about the recipe, pretend that you are cooking as per her direction, make enough noise in the kitchen to show the world you are really slogging. Leave the final touch to us Everest masala . Sash khoosh, and pati moos mon ami .

That was the beginning. Young bahu had no plans to toil in kitchen day in and out. She had too many things on her plate- her career, her gym, her classes and beauty parlor, her new born child and hundred other agenda .The more she found herself hard pressed for time more the brands and gadgets came to her rescue and started changing her from inside. She started believing in brand communication that brands could increase height, tone up muscles and give more mental power. She is no longer worried if her children find roti and milk boring and old fashioned. One bowl of Kellogg is equal to two roties or a glass of milk. Cadbury is not a condiment; it actually is a meal.
Over the years brands have changed recipes and have added new wholesome variants. Atta, Dal , rice are popular variants in noodles ; soups and noodle combination offering great small meal options and make neo mother a fun mummy playing her khao pio game . Some brands like Horlicks and Kellogg’s went one more step ahead and started targeting mommies as end consumers not just as providers. They convinced her about the hemo-cal nutrient of women’s Horlicks. She, according to her children, has taken up the Kellogg’s challenge to make herself shape into Katrinawali dress. Children are happy and so is young mummy; tummy khus , trim mummy bhi khush.
If there is anybody who has lost out in this game is the good old mummy and mom- in- law. Considering that her loss of power and hold on children as makers of mouthwatering meals are being showcased by a chocolate maker is the most ironical of all communication. I remember an old toothpaste ad where the mommy barged into son’s room and snatched away all his chocolate bars because in those days chocolates were the painted villains courtesy toothpaste brands . Poor mummy never realized that this villain of a condiment would one day imperceptivity upgrade itself from junk food to a loved and respected dessert course of our daily meals and in the process would settle an age old score with mommy .
A sweet revenge indeed!

Setting the gold standard

Rank and position has a universal appeal be it in the Commonwealth Games or in the release of new advertising commercials. Every month marketing journals and pullouts come up with their expert ratings. Some award rank based on defined parameters i.e. story element, likeability, memorable, brand recall etc. Other only pronounce the final verdict best or bekaar.
A good advertising commercial is an acid test of a creative mind. Sometimes the challenge is far more difficult than the ones faced by the creative people outside advertising world. Advertising per say operates in the make believe world (aare ye to ad hain) in quarantined time band (switch the channel, now ads are running) and acts as a coitus iterruptus with the main programme the viewers were engaged with; The task becomes more difficult because very rarely the original creative expressions see the light of the day; commercial creatives like courtesans are subject to the assault of itchy palms and reflexive creative erection of the people with power of financial approval.
Therefore a commercial creative needs more sympathetic assessment .Strangely enough the experts of the advertising world when they don the hats of a judge completely forgets the ground reality and penny pinches on issues like angle could have been different, production value should have been better, technical excellence not up to the mark almost ignoring the issue of likeability.
One such best and bekaar verdict of ads recently by experts seem to have baffled not only viewers like me but the editorial team of the publication as well.Maggi vegetable noodles ad has been voted as the best and the one on Tanishq glam gold got the thumbs down.”
Rather than analyzing the best ad which the editorial team finds short on originality and which according to them is bordering on a cliché let me focus on the one declared Bekaar. In the category of jewellery the piece of jewellery takes the centre stage and more often than not the wearer is a carrier albeit a glamorous one .The role of the wearer is secondary..She is like a mannequin –a medium of display. Tanishq seem to turn this trend on its head.
The ad opens with the ending of a book opening ceremony by a young lady. So the context represents an act of evaluation of a cerebral creation. But then it is also the end of the session and the party/ so called socializing is about to start. The young writer of course is going to be the lady of the evening. In came the second lady in gold and the party stopped for a moment. The intruder was not a stranger but a close friend of the writer. They exchanged pleasantries and hugged each other in tight close up camera shots and then on the camera stuck to her .She stole the show. Her jewellery , her looks her colored sari vis. a vis. the black dress of her friend all seemed to have high jacked the attention to a level which almost created annoyance even to the viewers of the commercial. Most fo the so called Jewellery advertising would have ended here. But this one has a twist in the tail. The lady in gold realized what her jewellery had done to her friend’s party and hurriedly left on the pretext of a headache. The pretext was not convincing and it was not meant to be. So when she was questioned by her husband /boyfriend about the silly pretext she said it was far better than ruining somebody’s evening.
Jewellery is hallowed: The instinct of every jewel is to escape its commodity status and become priceless. Moving beyond physical price a jewellery is in quest of its worth beyond money in the world of emotion. The second part of the commercial brings out the story of this ascent. The lady in gold is as much annoyed by the undue attention that her jewellery is demanding as the viewer and her own value system got activated. It is her respect and love for her friend, her culture to control and give proper attention to the values and worth of others that the commercial carries the brand into a different level. The commercial has actually brought into play what is best and what is bekaar in the human value system.

Profile of a Diva –Durga

Distant drumbeats announce the arrival of the Durga idol to the local pandal. Like every year this year too I felt that unmistakable elation at heart, the sense of freedom and celebration which I am sure is a common sentiment shared by millions. Apart from celebration the concept of this female Deity has always fascinated me. She is the primordial mother force, all pervading yet so practical, down to earth,so professonal and probably that's why so contemporary!

Born out of the collective anger and exasperation of gods she is a war goddess; a fierce, fighter against any force that dares to disrupt the cosmic equilibrium. She is an agenda onto herself, an avowed activist against terror, a one woman demolition squad against evil. She is one goddess who has been frozen in the frame of war amidst her family snap. In fact her construct is not complete without the context of evil. Take the Ashura out of the picture the very idea of Mahishasuramaradini would collapse.

She is a strange synthesis of the opposites. Born out of combined male energy she is a female force. In many sense Durga redefines the concept of power. She is not just a fusion of collective power. Gods wanted a power to destroy their enemy; she came out in the form of a power that gave birth through destruction. Power needs to be perpetuated and multiplied. It needs to be recycled, regenerated through the process of creation and not limited and marginalized by the catastrophe of destruction.

There was nothing miraculous about her operations as described in the Chandi.She used no magic,no mesmeric charm with which most of the divine powers are ordained.
She displayed hard work. She fought, She took the beating, she got tired, took refreshing drinks and engaged again in her mission with renewed vigor .She never looked for outside resources,but delved deep within herself and came up with new profiles of power. She not only demonstrated multitasking at its best but also displayed her ability to be a multi entity to rise to the magnitude of the task at hand.

She represented the purest form of governance. The problems she had set to solve were not created by alien forces. They have their origin in the mismanagement of power by the gods themselves. All ashuras were made powerful by some god gifted boon be it from Brahma ,Vishnu or Shiva .Wishes were granted right left and centre by gods with full knowledge that the recipients nursed bigger personal ambitions and there were strong chances of the boons being abused . They would come to their senses when their own boon was used against them. When things had gone out of control big time SOS were sent to Devi.

Devi had to be invoked. She would never appear uninvited.As a crisis manager she would only swing into action when collectively approached by the gods. Once called she would take complete charge, no questions asked, no fault finding commission being set up. She would tame power hungry brutes, terminate the tormentors and then would hand over control to the male gods again to run their show. Once her job was done she simply disappeared.

Even her social visits among the mortals are short and swift –once a year for a few days. She is powerful because she is the eternal provider and would never ask for anything. While other gods fight with each other for their share of offering from the mortals she would never even utter “perform my puja”. She would appear at the end of each battle with a blank cheque of boon to the gods-an unconditional commitment to save and serve.

As more and more Durgas are adorning the positions of power in big houses hitherto managed by their male counterparts Durga remains single most manifestation of a woman in action with full array of feminine roles- a mother, a leader, a manager and a home maker offering unique principles of managing power and taming the tormentors and practicing family codes in the dry corporate world.
Ya devi corporateshu netri rupen samsthita
Namastasmi namantasmai namanstasmai namonamaha.

What's Cooking?

Flip through any TV channel- local, national or international, you will unmistakably find a cookery show! Kitchen has come a long way from its primitive, sweaty, sooty, grimy, functional workplace to a stage of performing art. Nor is kitchen any longer the domain of mothers, maids and house mistresses .Kitchen space has become more democratic over the years. Everybody is welcome –young ,old ,male, female ,professional , amateurs, poets, police ,painters, actors ,players, lawyers, singers you name them they have performed in this Broadway of baking and cooking.

All these shows irrespective of their being in local, national or international channels are fairly popular and enjoy respectable TRPs. Kitchens cut across clutter, kitchens connect. Busiest of the housewives, working women, dutiful husbands, accomplished bachelors, bespectacled dadajis and bemused daadis all watch cookery shows with interest. If your product /brand have remotest connection with kitchen put your ads in the cookery show and be assured of a sizeable viewership.

Only a couple of decades back kitchen was out of bounds for everybody else except mothers and home makers. Male members’ duty would end with bringing ingredients at the kitchen door. Nor were they interested to know what was happening inside; they were more interested in what was coming out of it rather than what going on inside it.
Things change, stories evolve, plots take new turns and cookery and kitchen were no exception to this law of evolution. As the joint family structure crumbled, women started taking bolder strides into the male world, managing home and office the old elaborate traditional recipes looked desperately out of sync. So were the proponents of them-mothers, dadimas and mother-in-laws. Brands and gadgets jumped in to fill the gap; media took up the role of the new cooking coach and elevated cooking from a daily chore to an exciting serial.
Cookery shows, as represented through camera eye create a sweat less spectacle of feast for the eyes. Under the cool light and cooler air-conditioned ambience of the studio fire burns without smoke, thanks to efficient chimneys, ferocity of frying have been tamed by the shining, silent ovens. The crude and laborious parts of cooking like cutting and cleaning are carefully photo shopped from the frame. Shots of fresh Vegetables dissolve into pre- peeled, chopped, sized and washed pieces in clean glass bowls and Teflon coated pans. Even the ordinary cooking medium like oil sugar and spices are introduced like the cast of a drama with close up spotlight shots. Cookery show is an attempt to spice up the ordinary, glamorizing the grind.

There is an element of discovery and surprise in these shows; the shows bring to limelight the unsung culinary skill of the ordinary or that of the people who are successful or famous in fields other than cooking .As a show it is a complete dish by itself. It neither demands continuity from the archive of our memory space as to what has happened before nor does it leave anything in the “to be continued” format .It is free of the past legacy and future expectations. It narrates, educates, demonstrates and finally rewards the viewer in flat 20 minutes. There is a cogent transaction of skills between the performer and the spectators; recipe empowers the recipients.
No wonder the reality shows based on cooking have grown in popularity across the world. The most popular one - The Master Chef has broken ratings records in two of the world’s biggest markets. It has been successfully running in UK since 1990 and the Australian version became third most watched Australian TV program since 2001. Master Chef is not just a TV show, it has become a cultural phenomena. The soon to come Indian version is even more dramatic because it goes a step further. The show will offer to set the winner for life. The grand prize will be a restaurant in winner’s name. Which the winner will run and make an occupation out of his talent and thus change his/her life forever.
Cookery shows have already made waves in the bigger screen. A Meryl Streep and Amy Adams starrer Julie &Julia went on to receive 27 awards and nominations in different film festivals including nomination for Academy Awards. The screen play was based on two true stories ; My Life in France, Julia Child's autobiography and a memoir by Julie Powell documenting online her daily experiences of cooking each of the 524 recipes in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
A culinary legend (Julia Child) provides a frustrated office worker (Julie Powell) with a new recipe for life in Julie and Julia. That’s where probably lies the power of cookery shows. It not only tells you how to make you food taste better it also says, that if you have the passion for cooking you can add a new flavor to your life and to the world around. And that’s a recipe worth talking about!

Biking and bragging

Bikes have an inherent problem of managing the “I” factor. It kick starts a big ego ; an ego which is embedded in its DNA. Distinctly differentiated from the docile domesticated scooter bikes are born to defy all codes of control and restraint. In its compact entity it is stuffed with power that can match four wheelers in speed and acceleration. What it loses in size it compensates in sound, be it in the boom of the engine or in the unusually loud horn. If a scooter purrs, a bike blares.
The bike and the biker complement each other in this ego trip. Sitting on his sleek bike and covering his head inside a space–suit designed helmet ,the known family man transforms himself into an cold mechanical entity .His family on the pillion looks in contrast extremely fragile ,vulnerable and far removed from his steely cocooned world. His behavior also highlights this change. Ask any motorist they dread a biker more than an autowala . The biker would dodge, dribble, defy all traffic rules. His ego lies in his acceleration, defying gravitation; speed creates a blurred sphere around him where his only audience is he himself. In his mental amphitheatre he is the performer and he is the only viewer.
What about the bike ads . Do they mirror this to motivate consumer or engage with hardcore feature selling like any other machine ads?
A good number of the bike advertising are built around ego trip. Why the biker lifts the front wheel or jumps the terrains or negotiates the hair raising turns and to what end? His megalomania takes different forms .When he is in the deluxe mode he thinks he is the harbinger of change and lives a larger than life existence; he changes everything from spotted shirts to dotted dogs; in his world Tommy bhi deluxe. In his more enlightened mood he rises above petty clashes and glitches of life. His magnanimity makes him forgive his father or a teacher who chastised him, or the boss who humiliated him. In his euphoria he soars above all failures.
Another set of ads portray his ego in quixotic absurdity. A Ritwik Roshan fights with a tornado to retrieve his cap; in another occasion he engages literally into mudslinging with what looks like a band of outlaws. There is no damsel in distress no oppressed soul to be protected from the oppressor; no fires exchanged no bad words; tit for tat mud for mud. Is it a very male thing to do? Are these commercials really connecting with teen age fancy?

Leaving aside the ego portrayal the rest of the bike advertising are hardcore feature selling. Fuel economy, durability, trendy looks and switch start and the latest auto transmission system. Why should bike advertising need to stick to the speed, power, glamour, fuel efficiency or technical superiority. In order to be a brand a product needs to be more than a bike / machine. Have we, as communicators, really looked into life and tried to understand the role a two wheeler plays in our lives. Out on the street dramas being enacted every day. I was a witness to one such around two bikers.
I was driving along a road which had a little stretch of climb. The pushcart on the left side of the road dumped with cement bags was being pushed up by a profusely sweating laborer. His stamina was first draining out and very soon the cart started rolling back slowly threatening to crush the puller under its weight .In came from nowhere two bikers with all the filmy trappings- leather gloves, eye gear et al and positioned themselves on either side of the rolling cart;firmly positioning themselves on their bikes each one propped one leg on to the cart and throttled their bike engines. Within seconds the rolling reversed and the cart with combined man and machine power started negotiating the climb. The sweating cart puller looked gratefully to the young bikers who gave him a smile and thumps up and then once the cart got into level road they disappeared.
Imagine the sequence as a TV commmercial!It's sad we dont look around and make every communication so formula and so straight jacketed. what do you think?