FEED DDB India's posterous

macro-trends and the collective consciousness

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:39:00 -0800

Macro trends and the collective consciousness

Gone are the days when Ramayan meant pin-drop silence and staring at the TV in rapt attention. Gone are the evenings when gullies would be vacant as everyone wished Sachin a century.

With proliferation of media and tailor-made everything, India’s collective conscious has reduced to the size of a pea. There was a time when what everyone watched on TV last night was Close-up Antakshri or Philips Top 10. That’s what kids spoke about, that’s what mothers discussed and that’s what years later endured in all their memories.

Entertainment, advertising and media in general, accounts not just for our present but helps build memories for tomorrow and provides a country with a collective consciousness that binds them together. Brands that have been a part of that, live on.

But in today’s India not only is the divide between the rich and the poor excessive to say the least, it is also just as extreme between a metro-mini-metro, metro-metro, north Bombay- south Bombay, Sidhi garden-mahavir enclave…

When was the last time Bollywood, India’s dream generator, gave the country a nation-wide hit? When was the last time a movie had people queuing up not only at multiplexes but at that run-down theatre in Bathinda too?

People are busy opposing Telangana and Gorkhaland when the boundaries in their collective experiences have long been formed and have led to a disintegration of the collective consciousness of India. No wonder today, that Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara doesn’t give you goose bumps. No wonder, today then, that not everyone has even seen Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara.

But then how does it affect us in advertising?

Sample the current twitter tag of ‘#iconic ads’ and you’ll find people reliving ads that spoke to them all. From Deepikaji to ‘papa ki karan petrol khatam hi nahin hunda’. Ads that they all remember. Ads they all enjoyed. Ads that form a part of this collective consciousness.

If there really is very little that binds us all, then perhaps this is both a challenge and an opportunity for brands to bring us together. To be the common thread that expands these silos.

With advertisers spending a lot of time identifying the exact target group right down to the underwear they wear, there seems to be a serious risk of dividing people into boxes that probably exist only in our heads.

So then would it serve the brand right if advertisers were to kill themselves (and their planners) in trying to narrow down to this perfect consumer? ‘Contraceptive for the busy woman who works in a BPO or is an air-hostess’, said a client to me. He wants it in the body copy. Must we really bother with telling people that this product is for them? Can they not figure that out for themselves once they know what it does. Why must we specify it in such detail that perhaps even reduces the spill-over effect?

Enough has been said about the increasingly unhealthy silos people have created for themselves. They say social networking is pulling us apart instead of bringing us together.

If the product is customized, should the advertising be? Advertising tells stories. Interesting, warm, funny, engaging stories. Stories that people want to share. Stories they want to, perhaps, hear again.

Perhaps then there is merit in using your exact definition of the TG in deciding your media plan.

And leaving brand planners to find that elusive culture sign that brings people together. Picking up that macro cultural trend that isn’t found in excel sheets but instead in the pulse of the nation.

Surely a brand can narrate a convincing story based on what it has to offer instead of getting too muddled up in who it is for. Perhaps one needs to define the media and sales TG real close. But the creative TG… the broader the better?

Considering the decline of the collective consciousness thanks to micro-targeting, is it then time for us to not scoff at the client who says ‘my product is for all women’? Instead, find him a story to tell that brings people together and not just take the easy way out by micro-defining his TG for him. No wonder most average advertisements today are 30 second definitions of the TG, than what the brand’s story is.

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