MxMIndia

Tag: 30 Second Thrillers

  • K V Sridhar on how the advent of TVCs made it easier for him to explain what he does… in '30 Second Thrillers' which is set to release today

    So what do you do, Pops?

     

    As K V Sridhar’s ’30 Second Thrillers’ releases today, we carry a first-person account on how the advent of TVCs made it easier for him to explain what he does for a living

     

    By K V Sridhar ‘Pops’

     

    My love for conversations is undying; it only grows with every passing one. I love conversing because with it comes the opportunity to observe and meet an insight. For fifty eight years

    of my life and close to four decades of my career, I have beenladen with conversations, each of which have had somethinginteresting to offer. Through all these million conversations,

    the most common question has been, ‘So what do you do?’ aquestion that has become more of a human reflex. I have beenasked this question on train journeys, at social dos and even atweddings. I am sure it holds true for you too.

    Before the 1980s, whenever I was asked, ‘So what do you do?’I used to be in a fix, because with this question, came the toughtask of explaining what a Creative Director does in advertising,alongside explaining what advertising is. But in the early 1980s,the magic box – the television set made my job easy. As televisionbecame popular and colour television a rage, advertisements also

    began to get entertaining. Elements like music, stories and funwere woven in some seconds and presented to the audience. Withthese little doses of entertainment, people started connecting

    with the products. The face of ads had changed. No longerwere they propaganda; simply pushing the product down theaudience’s throat. Now, they were emotionally sliced momentsof life that resonated with people.

    So what changed with this? People and their perception ofads did. Love began to foster between the viewers and the ads.

    Soon, people started finding favourites. Every time they wereaired, people savoured them with the same enthusiasm overand over again. The jingles soon started getting hummableand the wisecracks increasingly quotable. The music soonbecame a subconscious tune in people’s heads. The actors inthe ads became their friends. This is why ‘Lalitaji’s’ advicewas valued, why people bonded over ‘Mile sur mera tumhara’,why friendships were formed over ‘Hamara Bajaj’. Because

    ads were now a reflection of life!

    And this emotional connect made my life easy. For now,whenever I was asked, ‘So what do you do?’, all I had to do,was to refer to one of my popular ads, from ‘Wah Taj’ inthose days to ‘Thums Up’ today. As soon as Isaid, ‘Have you seen the Wah Taj ad with ZakirHussain in it?’ or ‘Have youseen the Thums Up ad withSalman?’ The answer is usually an enthusiastic ‘Yes!’ Faceslight up or a spark flickers in the listener’s eyes, as soon as Isimply state that I have been a part of them. Then, a suddeninquisitiveness is what takes over. A series of questions areasked, each of them with the intent of knowing what happensbehind the scenes.

    ‘Zakir Hussain is amazing, have you spoken to him?’ ‘Howis Salman during the shoot?’ ‘Are those stunts for real?’ Forthem, I become a key to a magical world. They want me to tellthem anecdotes, instances and challenges. They want me toshare, as to how something they so muchlove is made.

    The love hasn’t worn off with time, it has only grown. Eventoday, we see the insane love for Zoo-Zoos, and have adaptedCadbury Dairy Milk as a way of shubh aarambh in our livesand we still celebrate friendship with the ‘Har ek friend zaroorihota hai’ Airtel Song. The love has transcended through theages, through genres, through ads. The thirty seconds that we,the world of advertising creatives create with great complexity,is viewed and perceived as a simple dose of entertainment bythe viewers and the relationship equation is simply that of love.

    People’s fascination for ads has always excited me; Ithoroughly enjoy sharing my community’s experiences withrandom strangers, who watch what we have created withgreat vigour. While I will continue conversing at every availableopportunity, I am bound by the human limitation of time,

    opportunity and presence. And thus, I give my passion forconversations a new shape – a book.

     

    Excerpted with permission from the Publisher from

    30 Second Thrillers by K V Sridhar (Pops)

    Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing India

    Pages 333, Softback

    Price: Rs 499

    Also available at Amazon at link 

     

  • Exclusive pre-launch extract from K V ‘Pops’ Sridhar’s book ’30 Second Thrillers’

    Life Jingalala & other adland stories

     

    K V Sridhar, popularly known as Pops in advertising circles, needs no introduction to MxMIndia readers. Currently Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Hyper Collective!, Pops was until recently Chief Creative Officer in Sapient Nitro and is perhaps best known for 17-year stint with Leo Burnett. Earlier this week, his book ’30 Second Thrillers’ was launched. The book is possibly the first to bring us behind-the-scenes info from the ads of yore – like Chal Meri Luna by Piyush Pandey to Agnello Dias’‘Airtel smartphone ads’.

     

    ’30 Second Thillers’ tells the story behind ads, interlaced with inputs and insights from the makers themselves. It features interviews with creative heads and directors of all generations. Pops has handpicked each ad based on its popularity among viewers, met their creators and talked to them about the entire process. The creators include Alyque Padamsee, AG Krishnamurthy, Piyush Pandey, Prahlad Kakkar, R Balki, Prasoon Joshi, Prasoon Pandey, Josy Paul, Agnello Dias, Arun Iyer, KS Chakravarty, Prakash Varma, Nitesh Tiwari, Preeti Nair, Ram Madhvani, Kailash Surendranath, Amit Sharma, Ashish Khazanchi, Gauri Shinde, Shriram Iyer, Kartik Iyer, Parshu Narayanan, Shantanu Sheorey and Pops himself.

     

    We produce here the Tata Sky ‘Isko laga dala, toh life Jingalala’ story from Ashish Khazanchi, now Co-founder, Enormous Brands

     

    By K V ‘Pops’ Sridhar

     

    As I traverse from yesterday to today, I reach an ad, whose slogan has become a part of the popular culture. It has been rendered into one-liner jokes, used in films as a comic element and is still loved. Tata Sky, the digital network service gave the world, “Isko laga dala, toh life Jingalala”. We have Ashish Khazanchi; sharing the tales behind this highly entertaining line.

     

    The Jingalala Moment

    Ashish, I think, “Isko laga dala, toh life Jingalala” is one of the most popular slogans after radio days. A slogan, that may not make any sense but because of its phonetics, it has caught onto the imagination of everyone. It became so popular that even an Amul Hoarding was made for it!

     

    How did such an entertaining idea dawn?

    ‘Pops! It was also used in a Salman Khan movie. I feel, it became popular due to its sheer weirdness. “The once upon a time” of this ad starts, when Tata Sky was coming up with a new way of watching television. This was during the times, when people had cable connections, which aired seventy to eighty channels and were happy with it. Tata Sky intended to usher in a quantum leap on how television was being watched. There were some satellite television options, but they weren’t really gaining success. This was because, they took the technology route to reach customers, and that route proved to have an intimidating effect on the customers. As for Tata Sky, we were very clear on the route we would take. It was to be of “More entertainment coming your way”. Not just seventy – eighty channels, but now the audience would get three times more channels. Increased choices in terms of content – active learning, games, cricket from different angles; it was more than just channels! It was about entertainment. To communicate this variety of entertainment, we needed a line; a slogan. So we got thinking.’

     

    That is when the line ‘Jingalala’ line came up?

    ‘No! The first line we thought of was, ‘Dish nahin, Dishkyaun hai yeh’, a line that said – It isn’t just a Dish connection, but a huge change in the way people consume entertainment! We at the agency level found this line very catchy and hence, we wrote many commercials around this line. We went and presented this line and the commercials to the clients. Vikram Kaushik and Vikram Mehra were the clients. After listening to the lines, they were a little apprehensive and said, “We are Tatas and we never take a dig at our competitors. We never denigrate them. It is against our company ethics.” We were a bit confused as to which competitor are we taking a dig at? With this line? And they said, Dish TV. That is when we realized! Because, when we had written it, we had no reference to this angle. We were actually referring to the physical Dish Antenna. But yes, unintentionally it did turn out to be a competitive line. So now, we had to start from scratch.’

     

    What happened next?

    ‘One day, I was sitting at home and thinking as to, what can be done now? What will be that line which will be as much fun and also ridiculously squeaky? One that can hold all that the product has to offer. After a couple of attempts, I nailed it. For fun sake, I wrote the line, “Isko laga dala, toh life Jingalala” and found myself laughing out loud, alone, at my home. Immediately, I messaged Chax (KS Chakravarty) saying that I cracked it, and wrote the line. He replied with four to five smileys and said that he loved it. The next day, I shared the line within the office and everyone loved it and found it crazy. We went back and presented the entire communication plan to the client. Their immediate reaction was the best reaction; they started giggling and said, “Do it, it is very interesting”. They also requested to come back with one more option, so that they have a benchmark against it. But it was obvious that they had liked the line; it came to everyone as an instinct!’

     

    What was the other line you gave as an option?

    ‘I guess it was, “Tata Sky ho sang, to gapu chi gapu chi gum gum.”’

     

    Once the ‘Isko laga dala toh life Jingalala’ slogan was out in the universe, what was the initial reaction it garnered?

    ‘Initially, there was some cynicism which we faced, especially from the advertising fraternity. But the audience loved it and it began to gain popularity. Soon, the cynicism vanished. Pops! The line meant a lot of things; it told people that something big was on the way. It did not talk about the complicated picture quality and sound quality aspects. This line simply told people, that some kind of “Jingalala” is going to happen and got them curious. This resulted in people checking check it out. And the line, due to its fun and crazy element, gave us a creative respite. We could do all kinds of crazy thing in our ads. We dressed up kids like Einstein, we had a man dressed up like grass because he wanted to go to the stadium to watch a cricket match, from the best possible angles. The line back then, also had many versions, “Pooch dala toh life Jingalala”, “Cricket hai toh life Jingalala”.’

     

    Who directed the ads?

    ‘Most of the ads were directed by Ram Madhvani! Also, I would like to make a special mention here, our clients get full credit for having stayed with this line for almost seven to eight years now.’

     

    How did you think of the word, Jingalala?

    ‘Honestly, I have no conscious memory of it source. But if I deliberate a bit, I think it had got stuck into my brain from the song “Hum bewafa” of Shalimar. The song has a tribal chant – “Jingalala hu, Jingalala hu”.’

    It is the power of creating something creative, out of gibberish, which gives way to such slogans. Being highly audio people, slogans like this become us. These creations make us traverse beyond languages and regions.

     

    Excerpted with permission from the Publisher from

    30 Second Thrillers by KVSridhar (Pops)

    Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing India

    Pages 333, Softback

    Price: Rs 499

    Also available at Amazon at link