Way we Advertise

If somebody would ask me what is the best thing on TV, I would say, The Advertisements.

I find this new Rahul Dravid advertisement on air these days rather amusing. This advertisement is being aired by the Heroes Project, which is a national initiative that works with media organizations and societal leaders in India. This initiative is doing a commendable job of bringing together Indian Media, Business houses and Societal leaders like sportpersons and filmactors on a platform to put forward an idea of AIDS awareness creation. But, all due respect to their noble intentions, purely from the advertising point of view I would rather say that the advertisement in question misses to convey the point.

How? Advertising is primarily about two things

1 Creativity ( I know 99 % of the people, including me, would say this as the first thing. It ofcourse encompases many more things),

but more importantly advertising is about

2 Creating a Message that Lasts, a message that lasts in the deep recesses of the audience' brain, which already is being bombarded with excess information.

The real task is bundling creativity with creating a message that lasts, and that too in a time limit of as low as 30 seconds. This is daunting and many of the advertisements that we see now a days lack one or the other. In this advertisement (read the below text as spoken by Rahul Dravid)

First Sentence: Walking onto the field with no protection, Foolish isn't it?

What Rahul Dravid is doing along is padding up for the field, which gives an impression that he's trying to promote some cricket accessories. The moment you see the red ribbon, you realise that this must be an AIDS awareness campaign, but what he means by the field then.....Hmmm, that is interesting

Little understanding of advertising that I have (though I left the books long back), here lies the problem. At the first we are trying to focus upon a problem directly and then we are choosing similies to convey the idea or is that a pun?

Second Sentence: And yet people do the same thing, don't play with your life

If somebody misses to notice the red ribbon he will remain under the impression that this is a sports referal.

Third Sentence: Don't take chances with AIDS, protect yourself and others

Only after this line that we get the message, which is avoiding AIDS and not a sports accessory.

This Video can be seen here

Still though, Walking onto the field thing is an interesting simile or may be I'm too weird.