All about the disconnect between ads & sex appeal

Shiveshwar Raj Singh

I wonder why a brand chooses to launch its “fall collection” in the middle of April?
Is it because some people forgot their geography lessons and conveniently moved us to some spot in the southern hemisphere?

Or because that’s the only way they can drive home a laborious visual pun of stunningly scantily clad women falling out of trees the moment they cast their eyes on the national hunkster — a certain John Abraham who happens to be sporting a pair of … now what were they advertising here… ah! Yes it’s a pair of jeans … or … uh ... er … dark glasses …. I think… that make you look very very sexy.

Oops! Isn’t that the tagline for a hair styling gel??!! Talk about falling creative standards.

Now picture this — it’s attendance time in a class, which would make every straight guy give up bunking forever.  As a boy innocuously raises his hand, he sends the girls into a frenzy of “Yesss!”  “Oooh Yesss!”

Then comes the wonderful payoff: How many you have? Watches, they mean. At least that’s what the boy had on his hand… not what you had on your dirty mind.
Enough to make Sigmund Freud blush.

If that doesn’t spell it out for you, then how about an island, shaped like a mermaid where this hot-looking girl picks up two huge balls just as she’s is grabbed from behind by another equally hot-looking girl who suggestively squeezes the balls. A lesson in Chickonomics is just a spray away.

It’s all about SEX.
Be it subliminal or be it in your face. Make it classy or put it crassly — it’s definitely in your advertising.

Why? Because, mon cherie, sex is cool, sex is fun and sex is best when you have ideas none (sic!).

“Arre yaar! Idea chodd aur thoda sex daal!”
It’s what connects shoes to instant coffee. Air-conditioners to ice creams.

What was earlier the strictly guarded turf of condoms (remember salivating at Pooja Bedi in a shower?) and denim ads is now fair game for talcums and colas.

If you’ve got a curvaceous bottle soda just get Mallika.If you’ve got a new pizza to advertise then get Malaika. And if you want a coffee in your cola, just get kinky! As an ad for a lollipop urges us “lagey raho!”

While sex as a pleasure may be overrated, its appeal to advertising cannot be. We will find a sexual connotation for any product or service if we put our mind … sorry, libido to it.

But how or when did this sexual revolution, if we can call it that, take place? Not so long ago we were a nation that was bred on moral science classes and prone to take to the streets in a vociferous protest against a smooch on celluloid.

Ready to force dance bars to down shutters and launch sangathans to protect the abla naari against exploitative use as an object d’sex.

So, how come we let this connection between loose-fit jeans and loose life morality sneak past the snipping censor scissors?

If there is one thing advertising does, it reflects what’s current in our culture. Channel programming is getting more and more risqué. Not just movies, now even Saas Bahu serials routinely show extra marital affairs. 

Adultery is no longer a sin. On the contrary it’s kinda in. My point, and there is one after all, is to avoid getting judgmental. If sex is what does it for your brand, then please, by all means rise to the occasion. Create ads with the least moral compunctions, if that’s what it takes to get under the consumers ad-cynical radar.

If Mallika could make it to Cannes, no reason why our ads cannot. Just as long as we remember to put a semblance of an idea in it. Because like it or not, that is one thing that’ll always work in advertising.

The author is creative director, FCB-Ulka, Delhi