We have a favourite question we use in qualitative research to understand the extent of emotional bonding a customer has with a brand (yes, there are some one us naive ones who believe that people have eomtional bonds with brands) – how would you feel if you came to know that x brand is dead / banned from the market…
Of late, I have been fantasising about asking advertising creative types this – what would you do if chillies were banned in ads
Coke and red – chillies – was fresh when it came on air long ago… but since then all manner of ads have been using chillies to show ‘hotness’ of the brand…
Last month, Hindustan Times threw a party in Bombay to announce their impending (that word sounds so ominous) launch in Bombay… the invitation was accompanied by a bottle of some red sauce – Capsico? chilli something or the other?
A hot newspaper?
Are there no other creative ideas to show ‘hot’?’
Just as I write this – the new Liril ad flashes on tv –
Since when is Liril a hot soap ? and why should a soap be hot ? and how does an ingredient like aloe vera suddenly make a brand hot? (let me not get started on this – this is Rashmi Bansal’s take on this ad – my only thought is that if Hindustan Levers has passed such an ad, this must be surely signs of extreme desperation…)
The semiotics of red and chilli are very interesting… I had written about Asian Paints using red evocatively in Different Strokes….
What are your thougths on this?
You left out Bajaj Legend, and half a dozen more.
The chilli is a prototype. Like the money counting iyer, like the tonsured headed tamil boy, like the drunk goan catholic, the chilli has come to stand for the prototype of a host of features – hot, sexy,(the female in an ad biting on one end of the chilli with a come hither look), spicy, colourful. whatever.
C, I think stereotypes are still ok – say, the drunk goan catholic – in a 30 second ad, a familiar stereotype helps get the message across… but creativity otherwise seems to be at a dead-end while it comes to visual metaphors….
Charu, I just got to this after you left your pointer. I don’t know anything about advertising, but the feeling I get as a consumer is that there are periods in which people feel creativity is dead, and then something comes along or happens that sparks a whole new burst of creative energy. For example, I really thought the spoofs on Mountain Dew (from Sprite?) a few years ago were superb. The whole idea of spoof ads like that, done so lightly and cleverly. Then in 2003, when Airtel hit town announcing that incoming calls would be free and so forth, Orange put up huge ads simply saying “ditto”. Simple and clever. Which reminds me that I’ve always thought the Air Deccan slogan, “Simplifly”, is a stroke of genius.
So perhaps we’re in one of those low periods now? There’ll always be your guys willing to use a chili, or a woman trying to look sultry, to send out the “hot” message — but there will be others more willing to use their minds in different directions.