Today Spiceal

Menu board outside the NFC (NITK Food Court) a.k.a. NFC (Neha Food Court) a.k.a. SNP (Sri Nandeshwar Prasanna). Circa April 2008. Good times.

Ad One

I feel stagnant. This 'break' between finishing college and starting work gets on my nerves, specially when the period in question extends to over two months.
I am not a particularly vociferous fan of television. Four years of college life ensured that interaction with it was restricted, unless you wanted to watch regional (read gult) movies or football/cricket matches in the common room.
On the side, the LAN ensured that I watched the best content ever created, so I returned home with certain well defined thresholds of what could pass muster.
My TV season began with the IPL. More than the matches, what interested me were the ads. I guess the high price for the time slot ensured some kind of filter for quality.
The telecom companies seem to have come up with the best ones, the jingle and the pug in the Vodafone ad being the best. Airtel with its Madhavan and Vidya Balan series seems to have got it right too. Recently I saw a Reliance ad focused on voice clarity. Pretty good too. But there was one Airtel ad which riled me. Something about A.R. Rehman in between. Now that ad had a line, "Can we add some party mix ya?" mentioned coyly by what looked like a garishly made up teenager. I took a while to recover. That 'ya' sentence terminator is anything but creative.
The worst during that period was the Gaur Grandeur ad. It focused on a single line, "This is really hot", if I remember correctly. It reeked of the wannabe 'cool' spirit which seems to be in vogue nowadays.

Hyundai make a mess of ads. They had this Accent ad which seemed to say that performers rarely talk too much. Fair enough. But then the ad ends abruptly with ," I want to be like ". Someone seems to have pointed it out. They removed that section in later ads. Tata's CS ad looks vivid. I like the part where the chairman's face is superimposed over the chimney smoke, which seems to shoot out of his ears. Nice detail. But I think Logan targeted them in the 'style is not everything' ad. I actually like the Logan ad. It's got a nice dare to be different tone. No bling. No wannabe-ism.
But I think I saw the worst one right now. By Ford. It starts well with what seems to be a nice story of a woman waiting for her husband to take her back from a party. But then you see the car which seems to have the worst paintshop blue ever. And then there is this shot of guys looking amazed at the way this husband/driver makes a turn. I specifically remember a french-bearded short chubby fellow with mouth wide open. And the jingle.
'Your love is my life'?!
'Knight in shining armor'?!
That's a car ad? Yes it (the car) takes a good turn, albeit staged, and not so well. Notice that it goes in between two cars. And in a sec, no sound whatsoever, the car in front goes poof.

Then there is that 'pretty' ad with shots of a girl in three different settings. The music in the backdrop resembles the Garnier ad. But then it says some rubbish in French/Italian/Spanish. Joillere de vive, I think. I don't know if it is a cosmetic ad. Or a jewelery ad. And I can't figure out the language. Why would anyone buy something of this sort? More importantly where would you buy it?
Shock and recover. Axe. That guy looks like the biggest dud in town. The two girls around him seem least shocked. I guess the shock happens after the ad. I hope they recover.

But none of them beat the Dandi namak ad. It was always shown twice. And my my, what a visual journey on making salt. Pity they didn't do too well.

What's a good ad? Check this one I saw recently in Kolkata: adsoftheworld.com/media/ambient/calcutta_school_of_music_learn_to_appreciate?size=_original
No bling. No 'yo' ness. Plain and simple. Awesome. No wonder it won at Cannes this year.