TV Advertising in India

While watching the semi-final and finals of the Indian Premier League (IPL), I was reacquainted with the TV advertising in India. In the West, we feel rather blasé about advertising and mostly can't have too little of it. Except for the biggest showcase of them all -- the Super Bowl. In general, one would agree that Western advertisements are largely function and relatively very few of them are memorable, as say the Taco Bell Chihuahua or the Slim Mac vs Bloated PC. As an observer of consumer psychology and of marketing in general, I made some observations.

The Lighting
First of all the bright lighting and consequent filtering is ubiquitous, as if we are watching the advertisements in an idealized world. This lighting may be called the Latin Soap Opera lighting, but it has very direct importance -- to make the persons look whiter than they are, and therefore more of an authority figure. Patriotic as the Indians are, they always take their cues from the fairer-skinned person.

There is also an unmistakable glow on screen that makes one feel as if they are talking to a deity. It reminds me of flowers and other shapes in psychedelic videos that puts you in a trance and makes you smile and engage.

Everyone is Happy With You
This may be a remnant of the long socialist era, but ALL advertisements show large groups or crowds, and everyone is happy. It is ironic that with the increase in materialism, people are becoming increasingly lonely, but the advertisements portray camaraderie and communal good. The message this may send is: Buy this product, and everyone will be happy, including you. Something that's called a Bandwagon effect to influence the audience. This works because the market is small and not fragmented, as the next step is still pretty basic.

Another way of looking at it is that the advertisers are simply mining the patriotism and nationalism India never had any shortage of, just that the booming economy seems to corroborate it. There is enormous mileage in this approach. Complicated and concerted movements of hundreds of people are a hallmark of Communistic countries. I find it amusing that socialist propaganda ass

High Drama
An Indian advertisement is full of high drama. They don't sell you life insurance by telling you that the breadwinner may die an untimely death, so you better get some backup. Too understated for the Indians. Instead you get a long scene where you're given enough to believe that the breadwinner has been murdered by an intruder, as the housewife returns to a clearly affluent house.

Volume
Everyone knows that the volume goes slightly up during the commercial breaks. We know the volume will go up by 20% or so, and are ready to compensate for it by hitting the mute button, or using functionality that adjusts for it. On Indian TV, the volume may well go up 200%, because no one is regulating that. There has been too much growth in this industry in such a little time, and regulation, as is usual, is slow to catch up. It's a seller's market all the way.

Every culture has its own norms of what is subtle and what's hardball. My observation is that advertisements in growing countries are a whole lot funnier, edgier and entertaining than their counterparts in the developed countries, perhaps because all creativity has been exhaustively mined. Think of the campaign to get Americans to buy toilet paper. The ad campaign had a memorable line, spoken by a child to her mother: They're nice people mommy, but their toilet paper hurts. So it was then in the US, so it is now in India.