Nawabs, Nudes, Noodles: India through 50 Years of Advertising

by Ambi Parameswaran

I was speaking with Krishna Ramkumar of Avanti Fellows – co-founded with Akshay Saxena – which was one of the winners of the Tata Salt Desh Ka Namak Award, 2014. This young man had a plum job with Boston Consulting Group in New York after he had completed his BTech from IIT Bombay. He gave that up after three years to realize his dream of creating affordable coaching for engineering admissions. He had raised some first-round funding and was confident about his future. I spoke with him at length about the risk he had taken with his career and how people of my generation did not dare take such a risk. He had a simple answer to my words of admiration, ‘Your generation did not have a choice. You were lucky to get a good job. You could not give that up and there were no angel investors waiting to fund your dream. Our generation is different. We can always go back to our old employer, who will take us back quite happily. In fact, even if my venture fails, it would be seen as a positive on my bio-data. So I don’t think there is any downside to my decision. In your generation, it was different.’

good advertising is an attempt to always stay one step ahead of the consumer. Such a move, sometimes, results in accolades but sometimes it results in stone pelting, especially in our country where there are enough stones on the roads and enough idle minds and hands to throw them.

in India, where prescription-only brands are not allowed to be advertised on television and print media, in the US, even politicians are game for starring in television commercials.

there is this myth that Indians are all vegetarian. But according to reports – Outlook, 10 December 2007 – 80 per cent of all South Indians are non-vegetarian and the number is 44 per cent for North Indians

Washing machines, refrigerators and other household durables got a leg up when the government decided to reduce the excise duty from the 60 per cent levels to a modest 15 per cent during the wave of liberalization in the early ’90s. It was reported that a Socialist party member stood up in the parliament to complain to the then PM, Narasimha Rao, that if washing machines became cheaper, thousands of poor women who were employed as domestic servants would lose their jobs. To which the erudite PM is reported to have replied, ‘Do you want us to be a nation of maids?

farmers in Kerala and Tamil Nadu wore the dhoti in one way, whereas farmers in Andhra and Karnataka wore it very differently. For those of you who are getting confused, in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, men wear the white dhoti in the ‘lungi’ style, as popularized by the famous ‘Lungi Dance’ song.

ELEVATOR PITCH: Can you explain your idea in less than thirty-five words before the elevator reaches the floor at which the client is going to step out? Be ready with an elevator pitch at every pitch meeting.

PITCH FEES: Clients sometimes offer to pay a ‘Pitch Fees’ when inviting agencies to pitch for their account. The sting in the tail could be that by paying the fees, they can claim ownership of the idea. So watch out, the generous client may not actually be that generous.

If you hate your boss, you will change your job (and boss), even at a lower salary. And if you love your boss, you will stay on even if you can get a better paying job elsewhere.