A boring existence

Unless you’re into drugs and live on a different planet, you must have realized by now that life on earth can be boring.

With all our 60” plasma tvs, ipods, 5 mp GPRS phones, 5000 TV channels, electronic music, Facebooks and Orkuts, race cars, sports, pot and pills, movies and celebs… life remains boring.

In fact, a lot of these things were created primarily to kill boredom. Television, mobile phones, the Internet, etc., may be the flotsam of scientific progress, but they are popular because humanity needs newer and newer ways of keeping boredom at bay.

The early man was busy hunting all day and spending time with his cave woman partner all night (teaching her the important lessons that you can’t mail order babies and that human propagation involves a lot of team work). He never had the time, or the intelligence, to get bored. With civilization came lots of free time in which man figured out that life is boooring.

So man invented wars, circuses, gladiators, magicians, private zoos, public executions, courtesans and art. Today’s version of which are football, Formula 1, cricket, HBO and gadgets. Plus, of course, sex, drugs and alcohol.

Through the ages man also tried to kill boredom through personal initiative. Some found a passion. Some chased a dream. Some fell in love. Some plunged into religion. And some plotted murders.

But no matter what anyone tried, or tries, boredom remains like the hooded guy with the sickle, sooner or later it gets every one.

The last two truly exciting things that happened on earth were Buddha and Jesus Christ. The next exciting thing will be the coming of aliens. If they visit us. If they exist .

Footnote: Do aliens exist? Nobody knows. But… the universe contains a hundred billion galaxies like our Milky Way, with a hundred billion squared stars (that’s one followed by 22 zeros). About 50% of these stars are supposed to have planets. A scientist friend once told me that even by the most conservative estimates, it’s perfectly logical to assume that many billion planets with intelligent life exist.

Footnote to above footnote: If you hold up a grain of sand, the patch of sky it covers contains 10,000 galaxies.

I like Bollywood movies but…

In an old Hindi movie a girl’s father announces, ‘Aaj Innispettor Gullu gaana gayenge’. Gullu doesn’t even pause to clear his throat and launches into a song – ‘… Happy burday to you, happy burday to Suniiiita….’ The rest of mankind has birthdays, Bollywood has burdays.

In one Amitabh Bachchan movie his horse falls in love with a bronze horse that’s part of a statue. And the two elope – the real horse and the bronze statue horse. The other part of the statue - a bronze general – is left dangling in the air.

In the movie Anand a man dying of cancer (Rajesh Khanna) sings songs and acts irritatingly chirpy throughout and keeps calling Amitabh Babu Moshoi. This is a landmark film because for the first time the villain and the hero don’t have a fist fight (but that’s only because the villain happens to be a cluster of cancerous cells).

If someone ever acts in one Hindi movie as a villain he’s going to spend the rest of his Bollywood career as a villain.

A Hindi film’s idea of acting is this - when the hero loses his father or mother he quickly rushes up to and sits on the nearest bed and turns his face away while covering it with his open palm and says something that sounds like ‘agggllluuuuu’.

For women, a Hindi film’s idea of acting this - at regular intervals the heroine calls out to her dad, ‘darry’ and pouts. Halfway through the movie she tells darry she’s in love with an orangutan who also happens to be a police officer and is bearing his child and wants to marry (rhymes with darry) him. At which point the Dad says ‘Munzoor hai. In fact Sunita, I quite fancy Inispettor Bundar myself.’

One Hindi movie was titled ‘Katilon ka katil’ (translation: The Assassin’s Assassin). What might that movie have been like.

Everything about a Bollywood movie is loud. The clothes they wear, the audiences, the acting, the songs, the characters, even the speakers in the theatres are all shrill and loud !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All Bollywood ever makes is musicals. Even Bollywood thrillers have songs – guys chase each other in fast cars, shoot at each other, chuck bombs etc, but all the while they’re singing, ‘Roop tera mastana, hey look out! Grenade! …Pyaar mera diwana….’.

In all Hindi movies when they’re happy or sad or depressed or celebrating something or getting married or divorced or growing corn in the fields or babies in their beds or making love or war or picking their nose… they sing.

In movies from any other country they act.

The average ad

In most ads products solve problems they are not supposed to.
A chewing gum wins a guy a girl. A cola gives you the kind of euphoria that usually comes from doing illegal drugs. A deo makes you attract women the way Paris Hilton attracts paparazzi. A talcum powder lands you a job.
Most products will win you a girl. Or get you an undeserved promotion. How? No one knows but everyone buys this logic and hence the products. No one says, ‘Hey, I bought your chocolate and my sex life still sucks.’ (‘You got to give it time, ma’m. Keep having our chocolates.’ ‘For how long?’ ‘I don’t know, till you’re sixty and senile.’ ‘Ok, thanks. Have a nice one.’ ‘You too.’)
Wouldn’t it be nice if all a chocolate did was satisfy your craving for chocolate? The problem is there are so many chocolate brands. And they’re all alike.
The other thing about ads is, the people they show are always deliriously happy. Like they’ve just escaped from a lunatic asylum. And their hair is always shiny, their skin always smooth and their teeth always pearly. Unless they are in say, a shampoo ad, in which case, they start with ridiculously bad hair and end up with ridiculously good hair via the product which as a bonus also sorts out their sex life, avoids a major social blunder, prevents the third world war and finds a cure for cancer.
The average ad is just that, average. Here’s the exception - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BlV1j8tBZ4

Men like you and me (almost)

During his lifetime Picasso produced 50,000 works of art (1885 paintings included).
Michelangelo worked for 4 years on the Sistine Chapel.
Vincent Van Gogh spent all his money (sent by his brother Theo every month) on paint and canvas. He lived on bread, tea and tobacco for months on end. Apart from the absinthe, that is.
Cezanne, one of the founders of modern art, was for most of his life, ridiculed by his friends, his family and by art critics for painting the way he did. He was quite old before he could have his first solo exhibition. None of this stopped him from painting religiously every day.
Very early in his career, Robert De Niro was to play the role of a corpse in a movie. De Niro drank only water on the sets, kept only to himself, didn’t laugh or chat with anyone during the breaks. So on the day when the camera was finally turned on him he had a deathly pallor on his face. The scene was supposed to last only for a few moments.
Alexander fought his first battle when he was 18, by the time he died at 33, he was already the greatest conqueror the world had ever known.
Newton, with a brain no larger than yours or mine, discovered (allegedly from a fallen apple) the laws of gravity and motion and the fact that both laws kept the planets in motion. This was, and remains, probably the biggest leap the human mind has ever taken. This same 3 pounds of grey matter also helped him create the theory of colour, find the speed of sound, develop calculus and build the first reflecting telescope. (In 1693 it also gave him a nervous breakdown).
Napoleon, exiled in the island of Elba, swore he’d march to Paris and take over France without firing a single bullet. In three weeks, he reached Paris and was crowned the Emperor of France for the second time. Without firing a single bullet.
In almost all respects these guys were just like us. One nose, one mouth, one liver, one brain, a pair each of eyes, ears, legs, arms, lungs and kidneys, a circulatory system, a nervous system, a digestive tract, 206 bones, 639 muscles….
Yet, if we’re sent to the corner shop to buy a loaf of bread we’re likely to screw up.

Why I am in advertising

Why am I in advertising? To write hinglish lines? To make a living? To sell oil/soap/watches/beer/pcs? Because in advertising all you ever do is cavort on sunny beaches with semi clad models? (If only.)
The happy and liberating truth is that in spite of all the irritating ads you see on TV and in magazines advertising does have its saving graces.
The same profession that creates brain damaging jingles also has ads with lines like the following.
For The Economist: All great men like a think.
For The Economist again: Pass. Pass. Pass. Do your answers sound like a Brazilian football match?
And The Economist yet again: If you carry it around for show, sooner or later it will.
Timberland shoes: Paint our shoes? We’d rather dye.
Timberland again (this time with a picture of a Red Indian): We stole their land, their buffalo and their women. Then we went back for their shoes.
Nike: Michael Jordan – 1. Isaac Newton – 0.
Volkswagen’s air-cooled, radiator-less car: No radiator problems. No radiator.
Avis rent-a-car: When you’re only No.2, you try harder. Or else.
For the One Show advertising awards function: Announcing another evening of whining and dining.
The body copy for some of these ads is pretty brilliant too. Here are the last few lines for a typically chatty VW ad: A Volkswagen is actually shorter than other station wagons. (It’ll park in 4’ less space.) So next time, why not ask the man at the car wash for a discount. Don’t tell him we sent you.
Pick up any of the old One Show and D&AD books, The Copy Book, or The Art Direction Book and you’ll see so many examples of writing full of precision, skill and wit.
Equal if not more passion is brought to art direction. Alexandra Taylor (who has created a lot of powerful ads for British Army) does hundreds of layouts with hundreds of type face options before she chooses one. Then she works for days perfecting it. Steve Dunn (Leagas Delaney, London) also says he experiments on and on for days until he’s got the right look for an ad. It’s the same with all the good art directors. And it’s the same with commercials. The good craftsmen agonise over every little detail so they have something they can be proud of.
Check out the script writing in this old classic film for VW - We see a car floating on water. The voice over says: What makes the Volkswagen the most seaworthy car on the road? A sheet of metal seals the bottom. And the top is practically airtight. So a Volkswagen can definitely float. (At this point we see the car is sinking. The voice over continues.) But not indefinitely.
There is another great consolation. There are guys in this business who you will respect for their towering intelligence, talent and (consequently) stature. People like Bill Bernbach, David Abbott, Dan Weiden, Lee Clow, Tom McElligott, Frank Lowe, Neil French, Tim Delaney, Indra Sinha, Luke Sullivan, Steve Hayden and so many other quiet men in quiet suits who have brought dignity to advertising. And by extension, to my life.
Somewhere you work out that if men like them can belong to this club, it should be okay for a wastrel like me.
‘If you want to be a well-paid copywriter, please your client. If you want to be an award-winning copywriter, please yourself. If you want to be a great copywriter, please your reader.’
- Steve Hayden, Ogilvy