Ad hoc ad clips

Apart from a few rain-clouds that had crowded the far edges of the sky, the day was pretty sunny. So, I was not the only one taken by surprise when it started thundering in the middle of the hot afternoon. Malli, who is still learning to get used to the habit of having regular baths, was humming his usual Mission Impossible theme under the shower when the first thud of thundering was heard. Poor boy, who got petrified, jumped out of the bathroom, clutching the cake of soap in his hand; dripping soapy water. Amma, after finishing her Saturday-morning cooking and washing was getting ready to have her nap. The sight of his son almost turned into a ‘mer-boy’ would have been a joke to her if she hadn’t notice that Malli was actually wetting the bedroom floor. Knowing what was coming up from Amma and in a vain attempt to cover up the shameful act, Malli put up an angelic face and asked, “Amma, What is this new soap?” His condition and tone was uncommonly funny that Amma instead of boxing his ears started laughing. Witnessing the spectacle from behind my bedroom curtain, I decided that the scene would be an ideal one to relaunch a soap that is already in the market!

So, when Aunty Manel asked me to write how I see the issues Samitha Akki has spoken out loud in her last week’s column, I was more than happy to scribble on something that is within my comfort-zone.

If we are seeing an excessive number of nude or semi-nude female models in TV commercials, the reason for that is the advertisers and the brand teams not giving much thought to conceptualisation. The product which they are trying to promote could have been advertised in a different way, placing it in a far better light than next to some waxy pair of legs. After seeing a certain soda ad, continuously played on TV during a cricket match season, I tried to figure out why they used a ‘faceless’ female model, wearing a red coloured dress with above-the-knee-slit to advertise a fizzy drink. How come it didn’t turn out to be an ad on a hair-removal cream?

It is a fact that the businesspersons do not select nudity as their first option. But, as someone who had been in the ad making business for sometime, I have seen clients go for exposing when the other concepts we offer are out of their budget.

If you are someone who had tough times with clients who rejected your most creative concepts because they thought that they might not understood by the people, there you go, I am not talking gibberish.

But the agencies and the clients are making a genuine effort to look for other ways now. Local TV channels do not have stripping-clips like in Indian or any other foreign TV channels. They are quietly realizing that the times when the woman was used for cheap commercial gains are coming to an end.

But the left-alone trend is creeping into the music videos. This is why Thaththa banned Malli and Nangi to watch the Sinhala Chart Shows going on TV. He doesn’t want the local versions of Bay Watch stealing into my poor siblings’ minds. Making a music video eats up both money and time. Unlike those days, every guy who can shower-sing thinks that he is a super star and starts like acting one. So, a woman who’s willing to go on air is easy to find to squash into his first video clip. Unfortunately, the so-called fame-seekers do not realize that a video full of skinny girls in bikinis does not make a lasting impression on the viewer.

As Samitha Akki said, nudity is an art, and it has to be used likewise. Overkill of nudity does not raise sales, but rather backfires. So, if you are planning to advertise your next fruit drink with semi nude girls, you might as well give a ‘sili sili bag’ free for the lenient consumer who might have had the urge to throw up seeing the ad and yet bought your stuff out of sheer sympathy.

From a ‘Tele-loving’ family to ‘dinner-loving’ family

It was surprising how our family became a ‘tele-hating’ family from an ardent ‘tele-loving’ one. Before, Nangi and Malli came along, Thaththa was adamant that my early childhood should not be blotted by the ideas vomited on me by the ‘yakaa-pettiya.’ So, apart from the ‘television’ I had in my mind, the first I came closer was the one we had at my Achchi’s place in Weligama. Vacations at her place always had a sense of fascination and the TV was certainly the most prominent feature of my holiday package.
At that time, a TV in a village was as rare as ivory, which was the very reason why her veranda needed a ‘HOUSE FULL’ sign during the tele-drama hour. The crowds never ventured beyond the veranda. They would sit there on the mats which were laid out for them, never opened their mouths even to yawn, but quietly slipped back into their houses once the tele-drama was over.
Meanwhile, Loku Nanda, the disciplinarian, would never allow us to go and exchange a word with them, fearing their ‘evil-eye’ would fall on my cousins and me. If you tried to cross the boundary between the living room and the dining room with your plate of rice in hand: You had it!!
Times changed so rapidly that the crowd started growing small in number. Finally, it was only the family and the mats were no more laid out. What’s more? We could bring in our dinner to the living room and eat without any fear of getting a stomach-ache for eating in front of a crowd.
The only tele-drama I can remember watching with alacrity was ‘Amba Yaluwo.’ I must have been five or six years old by then, but the impression it created on me is still fresh and very much alive even after sixteen long years.
Once we got a TV on our own, Thaththa was never the one to confiscate the remote control or pull off the plug when Amma started complaining about our excessive watching of television. But the tele-drama was one thing he could never tolerate. It was his habit to mark the assignments or simply read a newspaper when Amma, Nangi and I nicely warmed our chairs in front of the TV. But, one fine day, by a cruel stroke of fate, we found out this certain Indian tele-drama had a nice storyline and to our utter surprise Thaththa agreed.
But, the enthusiasm was very short-lived when the characters who were supposed to be dead started popping up to life again and a disgusting series of remarriages and divorce between the two male characters and the protagonist lead Thaththa to ban us from watching any tele-drama thereafter.
Even the local mega tele-dramas which followed suit were similarly moulded, way too long and after the initial few months, the storyline was changed beyond recognition.
As for us, young girls in school-going age, wearing heavy make-up and flirting with boys who come on trail bikes were way too much to stand, after the day’s heavy work.
Instead, when our neighbours waste their precious time, watching an endless tale of a vicious love-triangle, we eat our meals in peace and share a light moment or two. After all, at the end of an exhausting cartoon hour and a news bulletin session, our TV needs a break too