The television advertising has undergone a sea change. Instead of selling products or its features, the ads now sell attitude, aspirations and emotions. Consider the Indigo CS ad. There's office tyranny, pettiness and you only get to see the car at the tail end of the ad.
It doesn't bore you with the mileage bragging, power window or any other feature. Just a vindictive smile on the employee's face and only one line in the ad, ‘at the end of the day, it's the style which matters'. Pure entertainment and statement anchored on youth.
Or be it the Fastrack ad. A couple breaking apart, without speaking a single word through out the ad. Both of them make smirking faces at each other, returning each others gifts — Fastrack articles — and moves on. No product message, the ad just has one thing to sell ‘move on' attitude. Many such ads make to the list.
You rarely get to see adds which will punch ‘sabse sasta', ‘sabse achcha' catch lines, or ads communicating ‘in new pack'. It's all passe`. ‘Move on', ‘Dar ke aage jeet hai',"har roz utho nahi jago". are ‘in'TV ads have seen a lot of innovation in the past couple of years. Advertisement on TV is no more informative, it's entertaining. What's the idea behind keeping features at a bay and infusing entertainment?
Industry professionals are citing that the "information context" of the ads ought to be kept for the print media which will do all the intellectual work. And the fun and entertainment part shall be taken over by TVCs which initiate the highest recall value. It is proven time and again that a serious message does not evoke as much response as humour does. One run of humour ad equals ten runs of serious ads!
Almost all the products come with more or less same features. It becomes difficult to establish a ‘very distinct' image of the product in the minds of the audience. Cult ads like Fastrack, Virgin Mobile and MotoYuva have a great recall value even if the features of the brands are not talked about.
Even radio ads are becoming increasingly free from the information clutter,afterall how much info can you pack in a 10 second slot!
TV is an emotional medium, being both voice and visual medium, and does justice to entertainment or emotions better than any other medium.So lets look forward to a whole lotta "Attitude thrown at us" !!!
