Somebody has to do those ads

Whenever I take a trip down memory lane (a really short walk for me!), I remember my Wonder Years, that period of time in my life when I realized that I was not good at anything, apart from getting millions of zits on my face, giving Alfred E Neuman a major complex, and getting into trouble at school as well as at home for delinquency, while most of the other people I knew were either great at sports, academics or at hitting on the women whose attention I somehow never seemed to attract.

It was a different matter altogether that I wasn't too bothered about getting their attention, and this fact has been stated, not as a case of sour grapes, as one would conveniently like to think, but just as a means for me to set matters straight.

I also remember that time in my life for another important reason. When I hit class 9, our faithful, 9 year-old black and white 14 inch Philips TV finally breathed its last.

After innumerable tube changes, after changes in the springs of the mechanical system of the TV console that enabled us to switch channels (we had 6 of them), and after a whole lot of time spent on searching in vain for the 60 channels that our cable guy said he provided, while we were able to see only around 23 since we had no S-band, the TV had shown us the last of its monochrmoatic oeuvres.

One fine day, my Dad, who is an extremely patient person, finally decided that he had enough of this, and without anyone of us in the family being aware of it, went out and brought home a Samsung 21 inch colour TV, with 'superhorn' technology and all that jazz, and I remember that day as being among the happiest days of my life.

Never before had I thought that I would have been able to fall in love with an inanimate object, but my TV changed all that. My blood would boil with rage, every single time someone who pretended to be really smart called the TV as the 'Idiot Box'. Now that was a case of sour grapes, if there ever was one!

One of the best things about the telly was the advertisements. With a world-record short attention span, yours truly could all but sit and watch a sitcom or some serial, unless there was some lesbian action in it, and given the Uma Bharatis and the the Sushma Swarajs, founders of the EOTEB (Enemies Of Testosterone Expression Brigade) were all against showing the right kinda stuff on TV, one had to make do with single servings of inane stuff courtesy of the ads.

To conform to the "grass is always greener on the other side that has the golf course outside your office that only the high profile clients can play on after paying big money to your corporation so that you can sell your souls out to them" idiom, I somehow have viewed people in a lot of other professions with serious envy. People in the advertising profession are prime on my envy list.

Right from those typical Amul utterly butterly ads, to the Pepsi-Coke cola war ads, to the really 'cute' dairy milk ads, I was fascinated by all of them. I still like quite a lot of them, specially considering the fact that I am without a TV for most part of the week, and the only things that I can watch on the telly without having to worry about the continuity are them adverts, and the occasional football game, only if my family decides not to take revenge on me for having been so possessive about the remote, sometimes even taking it to the loo in order not to relenquish control of it.

There is this very interesting blog that I chanced upon, courtesy of a colleague's recommendation, and its got a whole host of interesting ads by all the leading agencies along with the author's critical comments and other fundaes on the same. Do check it out.

However, there is one side of advertising that nobody seems to really care about. Do you recall all those ads that have people advertising for products that cast grevious doubts on their personal hygeine?

Spare a thought for people cast in ads such as the ones for itch-guard, ring-cutter, for the various anti-dandruff shampoos, and all the other ones that have them shown as subjects who don't have high levels of personal hygeine, who don't take care of themselves, and have gross infections in unmentionable places, or are complete idiots.

Take the case of this celebrity anchor as well, who goes from door to door, inspecting the lavatories of common people and claiming that he can clean their toliets better, armed with the latest in toilet cleaning equipment.

You and I, as discerning viewers would have the option of switching channels, but imagine the sheer agony that the better halves of these people have to go through under the most normal of circumstances.

Here is an instance where our man has to go meet his prospective in-laws. A pretty ordinary event for most people taking the matrimonial plunge.

FIL: So, ******, what do you do for a living?
Stud: Sir, I work on the small screen.
FIL: Oh, you're a big star? Which TV shows are you on?
Stud: No sir, I just do a lot of advertisements for TV.
FIL: I watch TV 24/7/365, come to think of it, your face seems familiar! You're the guy in the itch-guard ad with the painful groin rash, aren't you?
Stud: (wishing he'd taken to begging instead).

Dignity of labour is one thing, being in a potentially embarassing situation with every single step you take is something altogether different! Some computer generated skin infections on screen, which has a close up of your face on it as well, can seriously hamper your chances of getting any, unless you go to some country where those ads are not telecast.

This reinforces my thinking, that the true enlightened ones are those who are behind the scenes, and behind the screens as well.

Somebody has to do those ads. Better them, than you or I!