Doordarshan had its own set of rules and these kept changing. It was not just Sweetex that had to tread the treacherous slopes of the Mandi House office. Hindustan Lever, which was launching its fairness cream, was prevented from using the Hindi word for ‘fair’ or gori. They found a way around it by using the word nikhri and over time managed to get it established as an equivalent word for ‘fair’. Though nikhri in Hindi literally means ‘improved’. Even sanitary napkins were not permitted to be advertised on prime time.
Indian advertising legend, the late Bal Mundkur, founder of Ulka Advertising, has an interesting story to narrate about fairness obsession from his early days in advertising in the 1950s: ‘I once said to John Thurman, Country Head BOAC (airline), a client I serviced, “John, why do we not replace European stewardesses with Indian models in saris?” He replied, “Rubbish. Spray them a bit dark and put a tikka on their foreheads”’1.
Sometimes the most innocent of lines provoke violent reactions. ‘Does she … or doesn’t she? Hair colour so natural only her hair dresser knows for sure’ was the line written by Shirley Polykoff of Foote Cone & Belding [FCB] in 1955 when the Clairol account moved to FCB. This seemingly non-acceptable phrase turned a non-acceptable commodity into the highly respected industry that hair colouring is today. But when Life magazine saw the ad, it did not want to run it. Finally research amongst their female staff, as suggested by Shirley Polykoff2, showed that none of them saw any double meaning in it. Many years later, the ad for Calvin Klein jeans featuring the teenage-sensation Brooke Shields with the line, ‘You wanna know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing’. Either because of her age or the skin-baring commercials, the ad came under a lot of fire. But the jeans were a huge hit.
In order to bring about some method to this censorship madness, the advertising agencies, advertisers and media decided to create a body that would help bring about a level of ‘self-regulation’ in Indian advertising. Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) was born in 1985. Modelled after the UK Council, it had sixteen members on its Board of Governors and a twenty-one-member Consumer Complaints Council.
ASCI came out with elaborate codes on ‘Self-Regulation in Advertising’. These rules have been modified over time and extended to cover new categories of advertisers. Complaints received by ASCI were put up to the CCC and were either upheld or rejected. If the complaint was upheld, the company was told to make modifications to the advertising and resubmit the ads to ASCI for their record. Most large companies, advertising agencies and media owners (television and print) were members of ASCI, and almost always complied with the directives. Non-member companies were wont to disregard the ruling. As a final shot in the arm of ASCI, the government of India in 2007 modified the Cable TV Network Rules to ensure that no ad found objectionable by ASCI could be aired through any cable network.
Taking a leaf out of the ASCI code, television broadcasters too set up two self-regulatory bodies, News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) and Broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCC). These bodies are, by and large, concerned with the content that is broadcast and not the advertising.
While ASCI had been set up in 1985, a condom ad managed to make headline news in the parliament in 1991. JK Chemicals, a part of the Raymond Group, decided to enter the condom category. The company wanted to see if it could give this product a new image, far removed from the Nirodh-family-planning aura. The agency tasked with the job, Lintas, turned the argument on its head and decided to brand this condom ‘KamaSutra’, and position not on the family-planning platform, but as a enabler of better lovemaking – ‘For the pleasure of making love’. The brand offered a range of condoms such as textured and other special interest condoms – dotted, ribbed, contoured, long-lasting, superthin, intensity (multi-textured), smooth (plain, extra-lubricated), extra-large, flared and flavoured/scented condoms. KamaSutra was priced at a significant premium to the government brand, Nirodh, and even the imported condoms, which were retailed in sleazy cartons.
Commenting about this campaign, William Mazzerella, Professor of Antrhopology at University of Chicago, has surmised after speaking with the creators of the campaign that once the big idea of the sexy condom had been arrived at, the name KamaSutra seemed particularly fortuitous to the agency team because it instantly satisfied three crucial requirements: maximum reach/intelligibility, an erotic connotation, and cultural legitimacy3.
The print ads released for KamaSutra featured the model Pooja Bedi – daughter of Kabir and Protima Bedi – that added to the buzz value of the campaign. Industry observers lauded the campaign since it was extremely upfront about sex, but was at the same time rather elegant. In a rare first, the brand took over the entire advertising of the September 1991 issue of the Men’s magazine Debonair. The film made for KamaSutra got stuck in the Doordarshan red tape, though cinema halls did carry the film. The campaign attracted enough positive and negative press. Among the first to attack was the Women and Media Committee of Bombay Union of Journalists who lodged a complaint with ASCI. At the upper house of parliament, Rajya Sabha, member Dinesh Trivedi complained to the then minister of social welfare, Margaret Alva, requesting she calls for a ban. Trivedi also complained to the Press Council saying that the ad portrayed women as sex objects and it sought to promote ‘sex itself’ instead of family planning and prevention of sexually-transmitted disease. ASCI ruled that the brand modify some aspects of the advertising, the parliamentary question got lost in an inter-departmental file movement, and Doordarshan quietly withdrew the storyboard approval they had given. Having created enough buzz and publicity around the brand, the company quietly went back to using shop displays to support the brand.
If KamaSutra, or KS as it was called in short, created a long run soap operatic drama, another brand got shot in its head the day the ad broke. In mid-1995, Tuffs shoes ran a half-page ad in the Times of India featuring supermodels Milind Soman and Madhu Sapre in the nude except for their shoes and a strategically positioned python wrapped around them. The brand, the advertising agency Ambience, the founder of the agency, Ashok Kurien, the models and all involved with the ad were taken to court for obscenity. India Today reported in September 1995: When Soman and Sapre admitted on 27 July that they had posed in the nude for the Tuffs shoes campaign, the moral mafia descended on them. They were charged with violating the Indecent Representation of Women Act, 1986, and subsequently under Section 292(A) of the Indian Penal Code4. Ashok Kurien recalls how the case dragged on and the judges kept changing and in one such hearing, when the judge asked, ‘Who has seen these two people during the photography session and can say that they did not indulge in any sexual activity?’, a voice from the back shouted, ‘The python’.
Even the Wild Life Protection Act was invoked to fight the case for the poor python. The ad, which was done in a tasteful manner, ended up being in a long drawn court battle, only to be dismissed fourteen years later. Times of India has this amusing anecdote of what happened outside the courtroom in 2004: The crowd overflowed outside the court as bystanders gathered for a peek at the duo. The final gem came when an old woman who was present in court and did not recognize the models, asked Soman, ‘Who are all these people waiting with you? What have they done?’‘Koi chor log honge (Must be some thieves)’, he replied with a smile.
If nude models and a python caused a furore, yet another ad saying ‘Nude Models Wanted’ was a big hit, this time with mothers. This small ad written by Chris Rosario for Trikaya’s client Johnson & Johnson in 1993 was a call for baby models. The copy of the ad is a work of art: ‘Figure: Chubby; Hair: Preferably; Chin: Double; Eyes: Brown; Skin: Peachy; Age: 8-12 months. Candidates should be carried to Trikaya Advertising on Sunday, 12th September, 10 am to 2 pm.’ This small ad was rated as the ad of the decade by the advertising fraternity. Fortunately, it did not provoke any court case.
ANIMAL PHOBIA: Using real animals in ad films is today highly regulated by the Animal Welfare Board. They can appoint a supervisor to ov
ersee the shoot and more. So before you approve a script featuring a python, a dog or a cat, just find out how you are going to manage the Animal Welfare Board.
In addition to dragging brands, models and ad agencies to court, the mid-’80s also saw the government levying a tax on advertising. Companies were told that 20 per cent of the amount spent on advertising would be disallowed. Fortunately, the industry rallied around and this draconian law was later repealed as the economy opened up.
In the 2000s, ASCI has been facing a lot of flak from consumer advocates for excessive use of sex for selling two particular types of products: undergarments and deodorants.
It is a village water tank. Women are having a bath, washing clothes as the music starts. ‘Yeh toh bada toing hai’, and in walks an attractive shapely young woman. She is curvaceous with a look of a cat that had eaten a bowl full of cream – played to perfection by Sana Khan who went on to star in Bigg Boss with Salman Khan. To the astonished looks of her fellow villagers, she opens her bag of dirty clothes to pull out a pair of blue men’s briefs. She then starts washing them erotically, pounding them on the rock as the women around shriek in mock terror. She finally holds the clean pair for all to see and the clincher promise flashes: ‘Amul Macho. Crafted for Fantasies.’ The ad caused a great deal of excitement till ASCI ruled that it was obscene. ‘Yeh toh bada toing hai’ went into popular lexicon.
Brands such as Axe have used man-woman attraction to sell the world over. An Indian brand Wild Stone decided to add an Indian twist to its sales story. Indian language porn literature is full of illicit sex with ones neighbour’s or brother’s wife – the eponymous sexy Bhabhi. There was a very popular soft-porn website called Savita Bhabhi. As an ode to Savita Bhabhi, the Wild Stone ad is set in a locale where there is celebration underway, for example the Durga Puja. The attractive young woman, obviously married, is carrying a tray of flowers. She collides with a young man who had just emerged from his bath fully drenched in Wild Stone deo. The smell of his deo sends her into a world of fantasy, she is rolling in bed with him … the film cuts back to her collision and the brand name flashes: ‘Wild Stone. Wild by Nature.’ The brand sublimely offers the promise of illicit sex with attractive strange women if you use the deodarant.
This ad too was hauled in front of ASCI and was told to amend its storyline.
While we have seen brands trying to push the boundary of decency to attract eyeballs, we have also seen several new categories pushing the limits of societal acceptance.
i-pill was launched as a product that could be taken by women after a night of unprotected sex. The brand was aggressively promoted on television and this led to gross misuse by young women. Doctors started getting patients who had taken i-pill several times a week. And this led to a whole new set of complications. Finally, the brand was told that it should not advertise on mass media. The brand by then had changed hands, and fortunately, the new owners decided to abide by the guidelines and have smartly extended the brand name to a category that is of relevance: Pregnancy Testing.
Yet another product category that burst into infamy is the category that goes by the name ‘vaginal cleaners’. A brand called Clean and Dry offers a whole range of products including vaginal whiteners.
From the days of Doordarshan questioning the exposed navel to Doordarshan permitting sanitary pad advertising only post-10 p.m., we are now in an age where everything is out in the open, enabled by cable TV and Internet. Given the intense competition among television channels for advertising, chances are there will be some television channel that is willing to take the toing or the Wild Stone or the Clean and Dry advertising.
As Hindi movies and television serials are becoming more and more comfortable with the exposure of skin and discussing till-now forbidden topics, brands too are starting to embrace interesting subjects.
One of the brands that has tried to push the limits of societal understanding of difference has been the brand Fastrack. In an ad creatd by Lowe Advertising which ran in 2012, the brand shows a closet shaking vigorously. When it opens, out walks a young girl adjusting her clothes, and if you thought you would now see a young lad coming out, you were mistaken. Out walks yet another girl, again adjusting her clothes. ‘Getting out of the closet’, demonstrated in very explicit terms. The brand has spoken in the past of moving on! In June 2015, social media went abuzz over an ad by the online retailer brand Myntra which showed a lesbian couple getting ready to meet one of their parents.
Also in 2015, jewellery brand Kalyan decided to feature film star Aishwarya Rai in an ad reminiscent of the era of rajas; where they showed a dark-skinned kid fanning the film star. Social media went agog over this faux pas. Child labour. Social class discrimination. Colour discrimination and more such criticism were showered upon the ad. The brand quickly issued an apology. The film star feigned ignorance and apologized.
So from the days of Doordarshan, today we have social media playing the role of the jury. We can expect more brands to start looking at dimensions that may have been seen as too liberal in the past. The challenges of the kind faced by Tuffs and KS will continue to remain. But if societal mores are changing, brands can stay rooted in the past or can try and stay one step ahead of the consumer. As Harish Bhat, Member Group Executive Council, Tata Group, observed when I discussed the Fastrack campaign with him: ‘Just as good writers capture the fringes of society very well and bring them to life, does advertising have the courage to do that? Or will advertising stay in the middle of the road?’
Last Word
Consumption Era Cometh
INDIAN ECONOMY TOUCHED $2 trillion in the year 2014 in real dollar terms, making India the nineth largest economy; in purchase power parity terms, Indian economy is estimated at $7.3 trillion making it already the third in the world.
But look around you. Does India really seem all that prosperous? The broad GDP numbers tend to hide one big truth, the per capita consumption capacity of the nation. If we were to factor that in, India may not feature anywhere in the top ten, unfortunately.
For all the readers who are less than forty years of age, the story is bound to get better in the coming years. As Indian GDP continues to clock over 7 per cent growth, as prosperity trickles down, India and Indians will shake off their poverty blues and start embracing the consumption culture. Marketing and advertising have to play a big role in the forthcoming transformation of India, from a country of penny pinchers to a country of consumers who love consumption.
Advertising expenditure as a percentage of GDP is still hovering around 0.4 to 0.5 per cent in India. This compares rather unfavourably with almost all other developed and even developing economies where ad spends are often in the 0.9 to 1.2 per cent league. The low ad spend ratio is due to several reasons. In many categories, we did not have too much competition and therefore not much advertising even till the year 2001; as new brands enter the market, we will see advertising spends shoot up. Secondly, the cost of advertising in India, whatever marketing managers may say, is still very low. These costs will go up, as we will see later. Thirdly, several categories of products and services do not get enough ad support in India.
If ad spends move up to even 0.8 per cent, what can we expect to see around us? For one, we will see the emergence of a consumption era. Antropologists talk of potlatch as a way indigenous peoples of Canada and American Indians show off their wealth and reaffirm their status, through exhaustive and exhausting display of food and gift-giving. We are seeing some signs of this in India, we may see more of this in the years ahead.
Advertisers and ad agencies will play a major role in driving this consumption culture in India. And in numerous categories, the head room for increasing consumption is immense. In mundane categories like packaged foods, per capita consumption is miniscule. In services like health insurance, the Indian market is yet to gain good traction as penetration numbers are infinitesimally small. And if we were to go to the top of the consumption pyramid, and look at a product like luxury hand
bags for women – as against a Chinese working woman who owns at least five luxury handbags, the Indian working woman owns just one, if at all.
Let me now try and present what I think would be ten mega trends for the Indian advertising and consumer market:
1. The way we define markets will dramatically change in the coming two decades. The classical rural/urban divide is fast disappearing. According to Hindustan Unilever and their Chairman’s speech, India can be segmented into fourteen zones which can be targeted with specific products and services. These zones are a mix of rural and urban areas. It is to be noted that both Indian Readership Survey (IRS) and Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) have adopted the new NCCS (New Consumer Classification System) which is geography neutral, considering only the education of the chief wage earner and the possession of durables, as against occupation of the CWE. Till recently, we used the SEC System that classified urban households as A/B/C/D/E and rural households as R1/R2/R3. The adoption of the NCCS is a seismic move, in my opinion. The use of NCCS will encourage marketers to start looking at consumers across rural and urban India without blinkers. Why should you discriminate a rural consumer just because she or he is living in a small village, as long as his/her aspirations are similar to her city cousins?
2. Moving to the next seismic shift: the definitions of gender may also undergo dramatic change. The role of women in Indian society is changing rather rapidly, driven by the increasing rate of women moving into higher education systems. The entry of women into jobs and businesses will put a reverse pressure on the men of India. Men will have to seriously start re-evaluating their role, not just out of charity but because women will not tolerate a husband who will not cook or change nappies. So men of India will have to not just start using cosmetics, but also learn to cook and clean.
Nawabs, Nudes, Noodles Page 24