Ideas – the good, the bad and the downright m************* ugly

In ad agencies all over the world, kids are taught about the power of the idea. Creative heavies, client servicing suits, heads of offices and other seniors face their teams with stern faces during the periodical agency reviews and talk of the power of the ‘idea’. Greybeards carrying titles like Executive Creative Director, National Creative Director, CCO and the like, inveigh against the sins of creating advertising without ideas. Gentlemen and ladies from agency offices outside of their home countries, from both sides of the table – the client and the agency – talk of the power of the ‘idea’ after going through agency reels, with the knowledge and authority given by their job titles.

The sum total of all such lectures is just one sentence: ‘advertising which is based upon an idea is good advertising; all other advertising is a waste of time.’ And, you know what! I agree, with one qualification – advertising which is based upon a good idea can be good advertising; if not, it’s a lottery. The word good is my qualifier.

Once you’ve bought into this precept, there are two obvious questions: “How do I know I have an idea?” and “How can I distinguish between a good idea and one not so good?” In response, agency heavies normally stretch out their long arms to show off some more ads, and try to help the kid learn this basic requirement – judgement. Forget the irony and the cynicism of my language – this is still the best way to learn, from the material which we see every day on our TV screens.

What follows is neither a lecture, nor a set of examples to prove I am right, but some bouquets and brickbats based on my perception about how good or bad an idea is. To me, an advertising idea needs to fulfil a very short set of criteria:

• Does it support my brand promise, personality and character?
• Does it dramatise my brand’s benefit?

Simple, I would have thought. However, looking at some recent ads on our screens and papers, from large agencies, and for large clients and brands, perhaps not so simple after all.

What an idea, sirjee!

To start with, the new Idea ‘School’ Cellular TV campaign, about teaching children in remote villages, is just mind-blowing. I quote from the website: “Demonstrating our brand promise, this campaign asks a simple question, ‘Why should a child be deprived of education if there are no schools close to him/her?’” And indeed, these TVCs do show the power of the idea – that mobile telephony can reach where other media may not be able to, that mobile telephony is not just about basic personal communication, that mobile telephony can indeed do something fundamentally powerful for communities – indeed the power of the Idea is that it can change lives of millions of people in our country. You can see the ads here:

http://www.ideacellular.com/IDEA.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=IDEA_Page_Advertisements&displayParam=IdeaSchool.html

Does that mean that education through mobile telephony is a reality? I have no idea (no pun intended!), but perhaps it will spark questions from many people who have never thought of this medium as a means of education. Perhaps some will examine this medium for this purpose, and perhaps a few will take the plunge of actually going ahead and doing it. Perhaps people in India already have done so. And that would change the face of basic education in our country all right.

Or perhaps education through mobile telephony is not possible, or too expensive, or there are other insuperable problems. But that’s not really my point. I have actually two points to make, for which let’s go back to the two questions I had asked earlier, slightly paraphrased this time around:

• Is the idea in the TVCs support the brand?
• Does the idea in the TVCs support the brand’s benefit?

The Idea website states the brand vision to be “To be the most customer-focused mobile service brand, continuously innovating to help liberate our customers from the shackles of time & space.” The brand values have been stated in the same source to be “Innovate. Stimulate. Liberate....”

Read these, together with Idea's published brand mission.:

• The India footprint Idea: Anywhere connectivity - bringing India closer
• The Technology Advantage Idea: Tomorrow's technology to enrich today.
• The Customer Focus Idea: Make a single interaction a lasting relationship.
• The Employee Focus Idea: Nurture the roots that nurture our ideas.

And now see the ads again. What’s your answer to the two questions I have posed above? To my mind, the idea passes the test with flying colours – it places the brand Idea on a unique pedestal, separating it from other players, and gives it an aura, beyond the functional. Insofar as the purely functional is concerned, it does show all these phones working in villages, where I guess Idea Cellular does provide reach. This campaign has an idea which can truly change our lives – and I do and try to kick my heels (without success and with major discomfort, I might add) and say “what an idea sirjee!”

The dog, the girl and tying the knot

First the dog came back, finding the missing sock for the little girl going to school, then chasing her school bus carrying her tie in his mouth. Then he was there again, licking her stamps for her greeting cards. Everybody in my home went all dewy-eyed and spouted baby talk when these ads hit the airwaves – we had been desperately in love with the pug ever since we saw him when Vodafone was Orange, and when my son insisted that we buy him the same dog (I am glad to say he, the son and not the dog, grew up fast).

The dog personified the brand – lovable, childlike, simple, friendly, helpful, warm, etc, etc. Even hardcore career-building MBA students loved him – I know this, I have taught some 2,000 of them over the last few years: every time I showed them the ads, they all used the adjectives I have listed above.

So when the pug was back a few months back, it was time to quote Robert Browning:

The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn
Morning’s at seven
The hillsides’ dew-pearled
The lark’s on the wing
The snail’s on the thorn
God in His Heaven
All’s right with the world!

The return of the pug was followed by the story of the little girl whose pen ran out of ink just before the end of the exam. The look of distress on her face would have melted the soul of a Ghenghis Khan. But help was at hand – a combination of Sir Galahad in his shining armour and the Scarlet Pimpernel arrived in the shape and size of a small boy who stretches his arm and deposits one, single, solitary, priceless drop of ink on her table.

The girl and pug is called “happy to help”, the boy and girl is called “Chhota credit”, and the tying the knot is called “call conference”.You can see Vodafone ads at http://www.vodafone.in/existingusers/Pages/vodafoneTVC.aspx?yr=2008

Beautifully simple and touching, and stunningly effective, this TVC reinforced all the values of the brand which the pug TVCs did – the adjectives I heard about Vodafone the brand by my friends who happen to buy advertising were ‘lovable’, ‘friendly’, ‘helpful’, ‘warm’, and others of the same ilk.

What I see on the air now is a bunch of kids trying to teach a friend how to tie a knot on a conference call. Now, all of us know that tying a knot is a difficult task, requiring the fullest concentration and considerable dexterity and finger strength – not something to be undertaken lightly. And what do we see in the commercial? These four kids pulling the poor fellow’s legs! Far from helping him, one guy lounging on the sofa guffaws loudly at his friend’s less than successful attempts to get the knot right. Would we use the adjectives ‘friendly’, ‘helpful’, etc to describe the brand Vodafone in these TVCs? I don’t think so.

When I first saw this TVC, I thought this was the latest in the ‘think hatke’ series from Virgin Mobile. The personality coming through in the call conferencing TVC was Virgin Mobile and not Vodafone. (You can find Virgin Mobile ads at http://www.virginmobile.in/tv_ads.php)

So here’s my point – even if the idea of the TVC is a good one, fun, works with the TG, you need to think about whether it’s in line with the established personality of the brand. If not, you better think of another idea.

The serial torturer

You know the old old story:

Girl gets boy.
Girl loses boy. To girl no 2. (I am told by those who know that boy actually cheats on girl no 1, but that is frankly incidental to the whole story.)
Girl no 1 still loves boy and wants him back.
Girl no 2 is a b**** loses no opportunity in snubbing girl no 1.
Girl no 2 also has a temper, and snubs boy a few times.
Girl no 1 happens to be around at various places frequented by boy. Girl no 1 runs into boy at airport, and recognizes pendant they had gifted each other in happier times.
Girl no 1 gets boy back.

At least that’s the story so far. A simple, innocent, five-handkerchief story that can and probably does happen to any girl next door. Girl no 1 may lose him again, or dump him deciding that he’s not worth all this trouble. But we shall see how the story progresses thereafter.

No, this is not the latest piece of tripe being peddled by one of our so-called entertainment channels. You can see the ads here - http://www.truveo.com/tag/POND'S This is an episodic set of TVCs created by one of India’s finest ad agencies for Pond’s White Beauty Cream. Girl no 1 looks truly white and cherubic – but unfortunately through my bifocals so does Girl no 2, so I guess both had been using the Pond’s and the fact that Girl no 1 gets her boy back cannot be attributed to her use of the product. Indeed, the TVC does not claim that she uses the product; nor is her winning back her boyfriend attributed to her use of the product. In fact, the brand and the product is completely incidental to this bunch of TVCs. In the last dog that I watched, where boy and girl no 1 meet at the airport, and she recognizes the pendant the boy is wearing, I thought that the TVC was for a jewellery brand; which was a nice change, I thought, from the normal vacuous puffs of hot air one sees in the jewellery category.

And now for the loud guffaw

Some months ago, I found this ad in one of the pink papers – I forget which. Interesting idea, but such an inept and memorable execution! Feast your eyes and mind on this one: