Good n Bad

To me the matters of good and bad seem like a sine curve when it comes to advertising. What's good is good, what's mediocre is mediocre and again, what's bad also seems good for people tend to get iconoclastic and relate to that bad piece of advertising, or sometimes these bad pieces of advertising appeal to the inner, concealed selves of human beings which we try to hide from the public eye.

Many people chastise Bingo for its unconnected ads, but then its a success story. To many people, it seems a bad piece of advertising, but if the primary motive of advertising is to boost sales, which I believe, one must admit Bingo is good! One real good, simplistic and wonderful ad to me seems to be the Reliance Classic Color Mobile with FM wala ad. The ad shows people grooving to the beats of latest chartbusters, and conveys the message damn well! That is one good thing to me...

Coming to bad things that click, when I asked people to write down some ads they liked and some they disliked, many of the girls said fairness cream ads were what they hated to the core, for they glorified fairness as beauty. But, to a marketer, these ads are runaway successes so much that it has made big companies roll out entirely new product lines catering to fairness creams for men segment.

Talking to bad advertising, one ad that I feel hasn't done justice to the product is Nokia 6300. Just the other day, a friend and I were discussing about the ad and while I felt the product exposure should have been in some other way, he felt that an ad is pointless when you are showing the product after 3 shots, and that too just a snapshot of it. There is absolutely no justification why they call it stylish. I have seen the phone, and I must say its a piece of art, but the ad doesn't tell me anything about it. This is definitely bad, according to me!

Again, Amul Macho ad has recieved lots of brickbats for its sheer eroticism, so much that the government has asked it to be put off the air. Many people dislike the ad for it seems B-Grade or even lower, but the sales figures speak otherwise. There are equal number of people who enjoy the ad as those who dislike it, as the article suggests. This suggests that though the ad is considered bad by a segment, if it has hit upon its target segment, it obviously is a hit. Again, by our assumption of a good ad being that which wins sales, this must be good.

So, when we judge ads, what is good and bad? What is a good piece of advertisement and what is a bad piece of it?! Should ethics be involved in advertising, or what should be the prerogative of advertising? As the Hutch Delhi Half Marathon punchline goes, Daudne ke liye bas dil chahiye! (You should just have a heart to run!), I say bechne ke liye bas dil chahiye! (same for sales!) So, I think we must all put aside our judgements about ads and just appreciate those ones that bring in the customers. After all, what is a good ad that doesn't win customers?!