In 30-second frames of leggy models and Bollywood stars, ads tell stories to tickle your desire. Some spin the myths of a new arriviste nation; others simply make you smile. But as any couch potato worth his bag of chips will tell you, as in cinema, the formula has hijacked the story. Which is why, the cho-chweet kid in a commercial rarely acts his age, spiked hair and a state of heightened excitement is de rigueur for any teenager; the villager always wears sparkling white dhoti-kurta and pagdi, and, to your incredulity, Amitabh Bachchan sells hair oil and chocolate bars with equal elan.

If viewers are tired of being bombarded with stock images disconnected from reality, the legends of Indian advertising are no less annoyed by the spell of creative ennui in the industry. “Some clichés have been overdone,” says Anand Halve, founder member of Chlorophyll Brand & Communications. “It’s an indication that not much thinking is being done,” agrees adman and director of Corcoise Films, Prasoon Pandey.

The head honchos of the industry helped us come up with a list of formulas that save ad-makers the trouble of creative thinking. They’ve been done to death. Now, they need a fast burial.

A family of clichés: When Alyque Padamsee, the father of Indian advertising, created the no-nonsense housewife Lalitaji for a detergent ad in the ’80s, he was tapping the emerging consciousness of the smart consumer. The result was a national icon. Now, Padamsee has had enough with “smiling, grinning idiotic housewives that dominate the ads.” Pandey cannot understand why the women, whether in the kitchen or the boardroom, are always pictures of unruffled ease, not a strand of hair out of place. Have you wondered why in Indian ads, a woman must shed the sari and slip into western wear to be admitted into the gleaming portals of success and fair skin? “Check any before-and-after transformation ads like Fair& Lovely. The woman always graduates from Indian to western outfits once the promise of the product is realised,” says Halve. For admakers, the sari — and Indian attire in general — is unfashionably provincial, and hence, for the low-end consumer. “In an ad for a low-cost product, the woman always wears Indian clothes. But while peddling a high-end product like washing machine or the plasma TV, she cannot but don a western avatar. It’s only in the public sector communications that you will see a sari-clad woman with a laptop,” says Halve.

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