A cup full of creativity!!

Advertising.

Take a moment. What does this one word bring to your mind. Products, brands, promotions, shahrukh in numerous ads, some abstract jingle you heard while getting a haircut at the salon? Well, advertising is much more than all of these. It is, probably, the highest form of make believe. The advertisers will convince you that you look old, that your husband/boyfriend would love you just that much more if you use this cream every night for the next 30 days or wear this rather sexy pair of jeans that looks 'Oh-my-God-gorgeous' on Sushmita Sen. But what advertising does best is convincing you that you can actually look like Sushmita Sen or that model in that particular red dress in that ad (and you will pose in front of the mirror to see if you actually do even if it is hidden away from the rest of the world). And all advertisers do this obviously for the 'holier than thou' client of theirs. Now none of this should suggest that I don't like ads. I love them and I absolutely adore subtle intelligent advertising. Obviously, Govinda in some red kurta saying Thanda thanda cool cool is not my idea of an ad, but Shahrukh telling me that he has used Nokia for years is (and this has nothing to so with their screen image). It is just the intelligent use of the personality for a classic showcase of the product that convinces you to try that product that advertising aims at. It is, without doubt, the best medium to create a brand image that pervades the psyche of the consumer, if done well.

I belong to a generation that has seen some really good ads from our days in the cradle. From Lalitaji (plain, simple, direct) to Aishwarya and Aamir in Pepsi to Aamir Khan in Coke paanch series to the adorable pug in the Hutch ads to cricket in Nike on bus tops and finally to the borderless Airtel. At the same time we have been exposed to some rather horrendous gimmickry that only they would call advertising! But still, in my opinion advertising, if done properly and intelligently can serve a purpose and actually build a brand.

So yesterday, as I sat in my office working I came across this collection of ads that left me spellbound. Some of them purely because they were really clever and the others simply because they weren't ads at all! leave aside the bad ones to their own existence, I am putting up some of the ones I really liked in the following post.

And we can leave the point of least resistance, the reach and effectiveness et al for a later discussion.