Dikhega...Bikega....Tikega!!!

Advertising - A judicious mixture of flattery and threats.”
Stephen Leacock

Hello people…..it was just yesterday that I had the pleasure of watching television without any interruption from my  daughter or my husband for a total length of  10 minutes of time.
It felt like a privilegeJ….but at the end of it I could hardly catch anything….if your expression is, “WHY???”….I have a ready answer……All I could catch was advertisements…..I tried moving to different channels but apparently my luck was against me and every place had the right same thing…..exhausted I surrendered and tried enjoying them…….but alas was irritated…..they could convey nothing to me…some were so vague….I was left guessing what product were they endorsing….

This bring me to todays  topic…suggested my PRACHI…..Effects of Advertisements on our Lives. Do we really get influenced by advertising  and does it really help us make decisions…when deciding to buy a product. I believe they try and sell our desires.....they make us believe that they are here to help us achieve what we desire…..it could be anything…being more fair…being more macho…being more famous…being more confident. But people  we do blame advertising for making the society  so stereotypical and for setting hard to achieve targets and so on and so forth……but they have to sell and they sell…….what we are ready to  buy….remember if there is no demand…there will be no supply….so somewhere what they show reflects us …..our opinions and our mindset.
With the limited knowledge I hold on advertising…..but thankful to the inbuilt logic in my head let me try and group the advertisements the way I see them.


The basic funda that I understand is --- register the product on consumners minds….they play with our minds…..they make us believe that they are helping us achieve something…but in reality they are just creating a need for their product in our life. We have seen a generation grow up on Bournvita, Boost and many more health drinks…but only see decreasing trends in overall wellbeing of kids…..even the health drinks are sold in a very intelligent fashion…by targeting various groups…earlier it was moms…..but with the current revolting generation….where kids want to have their say in all things…..Targeting a mom for  health drink for Kids is useless and probably we can say less effective….so we see a new trend…the kids are directly targeted…..because  today kids make their own decision they choose their own health drink……so we see adds where it is shown that the health drink will help them fight the bullies in school and so we see Kids telling moms to get a so and so brand in the adds and that is a mere reflection of the real world…..

It’s the same way for many more products…they show a female getting attracted to men who use a particular cologne, after shave or a particular hair gel….so it’s the desire to be near a beautiful girl that makes men buy the product…they are selling this desire and showing that their product is a shortcut…..What makes me laugh they use this same concept for men undergarments…..are yaar tum superman to ho nahi fir kaha se dikhegi…….yaar thodi to akal lagao…….

Also finally let me end the bias…..and target some of us gals as well…we have a generation that thrived on Fair and lovely……..the name itself is so damn biased that says only fair can be lovely…..not only these but many more stereotypical adds.

There is a slew of new products in the market which never existed…and in a decade have become something every house hold uses….. we used soap and still use it but pay higher prices for different ways in which it is packaged.
Few new ways in which soap is today presented to us:
Face wash
Shower gel
Hand wash
I sometimes wonder how advertising…gives gender to things which never had a gender….today we have fairness creams for men…a separate soap, talc etc…so now we are creating this gender divide….even in the consumer market….i wonder what new things could be sold and in what new way……the agencies I must say have a pretty intelligent and creative team who are pretty successful in it. Some advertisements are so vague that u remember them for their vagueness….and so they achieve the target of capturing your attention…these are just a mere seconds which help them get a exponential boost in sales figure…Also sometimes I wonder will a life without them be the same……I know they might mislead us but they also help us know what’s available in the market…it our responsibility to make a wise decision…..
So at the end I can sum up saying
“Jo Dikhta hai…..wahi Bikta hai….aur wahi market me tikta hai”

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Comments

  1. This is nice article. I would recommend you reading THE POWER OF HABITS by charles duhig. Your article seems to be an analogy of the same.
    Some corrections needdd -
    pls use single full stop not ......
    Use punctuation marks.
    Do spell check once.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thanx ..i have read a few pages of that book...still confused who's comments are these

      Delete
  2. A grt one di... Feel like reading it again n again
    Keep the words coming, gurl..

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good work nidhi, u tired to touch the topic with relevant facts like , 'advertising gave a product a gender'

    ReplyDelete

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