Prabhakar Mundkur: Indian Advertising and its Mother Schizophrenia

By Prabhakar Mundkur

 

It would have helped if we had a uniform understanding of Indian mothers.  Last week, we saw two very different portrayals of mothers both emanating from Indian agencies.  One of course was the All Out TVC which ostensibly was making a commercial, that was in support of Indian mothers #StandbyToughMoms.  But the portrayal may have just backfired in spite of good intentions.

 

 

Largely because it showed an Indian family sitting down to a meal where the Indian mother didn’t even have a seat at the table.  She then begins to play the servant rolled into a doormat role where she is busy serving an enormous family while she goes hungry herself.  She decides to be stern with her son who is behaving like the usual spoilt Indian brat and pushing his plate away rudely, only to be reprimanded by the mother-in-law – another cameo from the India of the past.

 

Says Priyadarshini Narendra, an experienced strategist: “How is this a tough mom, when she doesn’t show the guts to stand up for herself and acts like a doormat? At the end,she needs to be rescued by a man, without his validation, she just standing there looking mulish.  It harks back to the Nirupa Roy trope. Which hopefully we have outgrown.”

 

Milan Vohra, well known writer, says: “I find the ad regressive. It’s high time they stop glorifying clichés. And why does this woman behave like she’s their tight-lipped maid? Does she need someone else to speak for her? If the whole point was to show she’s a silent tough type maybe she could have had one pithy comment at the end to the bratty beta. Bah!”

 

So, in many ways what might have been a film made with good intentions seem to have upset a lot of mothers because of the regressive woman stereotype portrayed in the film.

 

And the big surprise is that the commercial was made by the same agency that did the path breaking #Shareyourloadcommercials for Ariel, which fought for an equal status for women.

 

The India – Pakistan advertising collaboration

Another much shared commercial on WhatsApp was the Shan Foods commercial for Peek Freens Cake-up. The ad focuses on two characters; a working mum and her son. The mum religiously fills up the son’s tiffin box with cakeeveryday and there is a letter she puts in the tiffin which attempts to instill the right values in her child.  So far, so good. Yes, it is touching at one level.  And it is a beautifully made film.

 

 

But after having seen it one can’t but help, come up with some questions.

 

One mother I showed the ad to said without any hesitation, that at one level the film was saying “I love you so much beta, but I’m a cliched working mum who is never around and therefore I will assuage my guilt by feeding you processed cake with artificial ingredients and sugar EVERYDAY!”.

 

Of course, having worked on brands like Kellogg’s, which are maniacal about nutrition one can’t help asking the second question. What are the daily nutritional requirements of this cake and is it really wise for a mum to be feeding her child this cake every day?

 

But at least it portrays the modern mother in Pakistan.  Now take a look at the All-Out portrayal of the Indian mother.  Are mothers in Pakistan more progressive than India?  Or is it just our schizophrenic understanding of what today’s mothers are about?

 

Indian Print ads – lots of media innovation and no creative innovation

In the 80s and 90s, Indian print ads moved you. Whatever happened to the print ads of today?  They are so obvious, they don’t make you smile or evoke any emotion at all.  And all the while you are struggling to read your daily newspaper that is so full of media innovations, it’s a struggle to read the paper because it is falling apart with fold-outs.  Or is it that we know how to be creative in English and we know how to be creative in Hindi, but we haven’t quite got around to being creative in Hinglish?

 

But the KFC ad in the UK brought resurrected the creativity of print advertising. Provoked by a shortage of chicken in all their restaurants, KFC decided to turn the overall consumer disappointment on its head.

 

 

The ad read “A chicken shop without any chicken. It’s not ideal. Huge apologies to our customers, especially those who travelled out of their way to find we were closed,” the ad reads.

 

“It’s been a hell of a week, but we’re making progress, and every day more and more fresh chicken is being delivered to our restaurants.”

 

 

Andrew Bloch, Founder and Group Managing Director of Frank PR called it a ‘master-class in PR crisis management’ on twitter. I can’t help but agree!