I have always loved advertisements. They are so full of colors and peppy music and jingles that refuse to leave your brain for long. I can still recollect the famous jingle of Britannia biscuits that I watched during my school days. ‘ting-ting-ting-ting’. Many a times I have caught myself humming the tune of an ad that I happened to see just before leaving for office. Advertisements connect you to the happening world outside, show you warm exotic places and educate you about the stuff in-vogue. Yes, they can be weird and full of innuendoes too. What has a pretty woman’s painted, caressing fingers got to do with a men’s perfume? In real life, nothing. But in an ad, with the suggestive tunes and background, that opens a plethora of possibilities.
I think children have a knack to understand advertisements better than adults. They catch the phrases and the innuendoes better than the oldies. Have you noticed how easily children by heart and role play ads? My young cousins are experts in advertisements. Talk about a new product in the market, and they can immediately recount its advertisement!
Advertisements can ignite nostalgia too. One of my best friends used to sing ‘washing powder Nirma, detergent powder Nirma’ at the top of her voice to annoy her hostel mates. Recently at a reunion gathering, the hostel mates forced her to sing it again!
There was a time when people were forced to watch the ads, when you had only DD National and was left optionless! Later, when cable network sunk its roots, you could always flick the channels, rather than watch the ads. Siblings would adjust timings of the shows like this; “Haan, so when the advertisements begin, I’ll watch WWF and when that channel has advertisements, you can watch your stupid movie.” Soon, with the advent of advertising agencies, that field has witnessed a massive change and became a huge space of creativity and turnovers in millions
As a child I was an expert at deciphering advertisements. My grandparents would miss half the things in the ads, thanks to the speedy delivery, the loud music and the short dialogues, and I would gladly explain the ad to them. Maybe, as kids, you knew the trends and the common verbiage and that made the task easier. As you grow up, you lose touch and slowly you start failing at understanding ads. You begin by missing a few terms. Then you realize that you can’t make sense out of a few dialogues. Further, an ad begins and ends and you feel blank! You just haven’t understood what just happened on screen! That’s when you should seek help of your younger siblings or cousins! They would look at you incredulously ‘Cant you understand such simple things in life???’
Well, hence proved that ageing is inversely proportional to your advertisement grasping abilities.
