AUTO MOTIF

The latest Vodafone ads by Ogilvy & Mather show a dolled-up autorickshaw with the tagline “Bolo aur bajao”. And why would the humble autorickshaw play the lead in an advertisement for the caller tunes of a cellular-service provider? Rajiv Rao, executive creative director, O&M, says, “You listen to Bollywood songs when you are in an autorickshaw and autowallahs often play them loud. We wanted to show that you can get music on the go. And the autorickshaw exaggerates the whole Bollywood angle since almost all of them have pictures of heroes and heroines. The autorickshaw is cool.” Indeed.

Meena Kadri, a senior designer and brand strategist based in New Zealand, spent two years in Ahmedabad, clicking pictures of autorickshaws. Her photographs of autorickshaws, their signage and even the artwork on their mud flaps were displayed at the exhibition “Like That Only” in Scotland and New Zealand last year. At the Glasgow show, Kadri had a visitor — New York-based graphic design heavyweight Stefan Sagmeister, who has Guggenheim Museum, Lou Reed and Rolling Stones among his clients. Sagmeister was intrigued and pleasantly surprised. “He said qualities like delight were eroded in the West and it was great to see it being celebrated, but I am more interested in the way the autorickshaw embodies jugaad than its kitsch value,” says Kadri. “It symbolises a way of thinking that underpins innovation and flair rising from necessity rather than from abundance,” she says.

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