Clean cut ads for a not-so-clean world

Have you ever watched a Pakistani commercial and wondered, Yeh kaunsi duniya hai? (Which world is this?) Or, to be more specific, why does everything seem so clean, so perfect, and so IDEAL?

Let’s look at some examples:

The newsboy cap on the old man’s head is SO typical! How many daadas or naanas actually wear a newsboy cap?

Do our postmen look like this?

One could be forgiven for believing that Rafhan would not be the brand of choice for someone living in a house like that.

Holy crap what a clean gym!

If I received Rs 1,000 for every time I saw someone like chacha from this ad at a dhaaba then I wouldn’t have earned anything really.

The Problem
The problem with this is quite simple – it all feels artificial. It is not reality. As important as the insight is, the look of characters and the setting are equally important. Insights are used so the audience can relate to what is being communicated. The portrayal of insights will be incomplete if it doesn’t reflect reality.

India and reality: Good Indian ads, in my opinion, apart from insight, story, and script, have also nailed the look.

Here are a couple of old Indian ads; notice the way the people look, the setting, and even the lighting:

Why is there such a stark difference between their execution and ours?

Our people: Pakistanis are a bit more image conscious than Indians and that is the root of the problem. This particular clean cut practice is derived from this societal tendency. Brand managers/marketing teams want their brand to be respected and a clean cut look will help achieve that. Embracing reality would be a risk.

Consumers are also image conscious and highly judgmental. What is unknown is how consumers would react to real looking people and settings in a communication – would they judge a brand to be beneath them because they don’t like what they see in the advert? Or would they connect with it more strongly?Our ads simply spell out ‘we have no idea what the reality is’; and, while societal tendencies may be a part of the problem, capability may be the other part.

Capability: The clean cut look gives the impression that the people responsible for these ads – agencies and clients – live in a shell. Does the background of the human resources holding positions at both client and agency end affect the output? It’s possible. The other factor to consider is how good our talent is at extracting insights and how much importance they attribute to deep insights. Moreover, we don’t know if their standard of deep insights does justice to the insight(s) or not. The other aspect of capability is technical; especially when it comes to lighting. Don’t we have the technological resources to shoot in light that does not seem artificial?

Having said all of this, there are a few local examples that our brands can take a lead from.

Glimmer of Hope: Though the following are limited to social media, it’s a start:

Brooke Bond Supreme

Lipton

The above two ads have, to a large extent, managed to keep it real. It is high time someone takes the risk – if it can be called a risk at all!

The writer is a marketing enthusiast who has a knack for going into the nitty-gritty details of human behaviour to form a better perspective around strategies and tactics. He tweets @omardelkhan7