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.