Get a better idea, Sirjee
Ad campaigns of Idea Cellular try dealing with social issues but fall flat on logic,
Says MANU MOUDGIL
Had we been a power surplus nation, our population would never have been second largest in the world. The 1.2 billion could well have been just a few millions. This is because a man’s desire for sex is inversely proportional to availability of a TV set. At least that’s what Idea Cellular’s new ad campaign tries to depict.
Taking off from the widely-criticised utterance of Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad that watching late night TV can help control population, Idea depicts its 3G service as an alternative when a power cut proves to be a kill joy.
3G applications such as mobile TV, gaming, video calling and social networking on “superfast” Internet can help keep the people entertained and they would no longer be interested in their wives. “TV to Biwi” says the voiceover as men across India get disappointed due to a power cut and give lustful looks to their wives. None of the dutiful wives are actually enthusiastic at the prospect of a rocking time even though more women than men watch TV and hence should logically have higher levels of boredom.
After some shots of a rocking bed, the ad shows women with bulging stomachs and more children sharing resources in the country. Enter Idea 3G and people get busy with their mobiles watching TV, interacting through Facebook or making video calls all of which leads to no new births.
The new ad goes on to make fun of vasectomy. Two characters standing in front of a vasectomy clinic declare, “Ab iski kya zaroorat hai” even though the procedure is the best known long term means for birth control. The commercial, developed by Idea’s creative agency Lowe, ends with a tagline “No Abaadi, No Barbaadi”
However, the creative directors forgot that mobile phones run on batteries which need to be charged through electricity and using 3G services would only squeeze up the batteries faster thus bringing people back to square one in case of a power cut.
In fact, the Idea officials feel the ad, one of their “champion ideas”, will bring in a social change.
“This time, the Champion idea is 3G which has a strong entertainment appeal, and has been designed to resonate with the larger audience, on a critical subject that looms large on the country,” Sashi Shankar, Chief Marketing Officer, IDEA Cellular, is quoted as saying on the company’s website. The 3G service is relatively a new mobile service which is why we still need to wait till the next census before handing over the “social change” award to the company.
Idea, it seems, is no stranger to such a misrepresentation of facts. Its other “champion ideas” have also been bereft of logic. The ‘Use Mobile, Save Paper’ campaign propagated use of mobile phones to reduce consumption of paper and hence fewer trees to be cut.
The ad failed to mention the e-waste generated by mobile phones. Made up of non-biodegradable plastic, chemicals and metal, these toys of communication are not all green. Moreover, they also don’t run on clean energy. The telecom sector burns subsidised and highly polluting diesel to power its mobile network towers. In fact, Greenpeace is currently running a campaign against sector leader Airtel so that it shifts to renewable energy for running its lakhs of network towers. In addition, the batteries used by mobile phones need to be charged with electricity which is generated through coal, hydro or nuclear power.
While coal needs to be mined out by clearing acres of forests, hydroelectricity disrupts the water bodies and surrounding ecologies. Paper production from pulp would actually pale in comparison to the cumulative and long term sins of mobile industry.
The mood of both the ads remain light and humorous, but the fact that the company has high hopes from its campaigns mandates that we also take them seriously and hence put them under scientific scrutiny. Sadly, they fail to live up to the expectations.
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