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Ramesh Narayan

Humour, if used tactfully, can be a great way to capture the attention of the target audience.

LET'S face it, we all think we have enough to worry about. And complain about. And we don't need advertising that increases the furrows on our brow with anxiety, confusion, or even irritation for that matter.

We would rather get our crow's feet and wrinkle marks smiling. As it is, advertising is an intended interruption to our news or entertainment, unless one spends hours devouring catalogues. The fact of the matter is we read newspapers for news and watch television for the content. And end up watching advertising in between.

Humour has always been a great way to sell, especially if used tastefully. Yet one has traditionally seen humour being used to sell either FMCG or durables. Conventional wisdom had it that you don't use humour to sell serious products like insurance or products where the technology and value proposition seemed to be the hero. And of course the Government thought that the entire populace was a morose mass of morons who did not have a sense of humour. As they say, "you can think like only you can".

That's why Centre Shock and Alpenliebe successfully used humour and other `serious' service industries didn't. Well, these days, the joke is on those who did not dare to use humour.

For one, humour is light, elevating, rejuvenating and has great repeat value. Think of the number of times you laugh heartily at parties, hearing the same old jokes being repeated with gusto. At best, you play the spoilsport and blurt out the punch line before the tired joke-master can, but you enjoy it anyway.

On a more practical level, humour is a great differentiator, more so, when others don't have the guts to use it. Remember any advertising for batteries? Odds on, you have forgotten all the serious stuff about technical specs and the like. If you are as old as I am, you would remember the Standard Furukawa advertising where the campaign used humour in small-sized print advertising (Why is a Standard battery like a mother-in-law? Because it goes "on and on and on".)

Those who are more contemporary will definitely remember the fantastic animation and humour packaged tightly with superb art direction for Amaron Batteries. The second campaign is presently on air, and believe you me it has great repeat value. From the `sing-song' narrative to the `ting-tong' sign off, the advertisement is a winner all the way.

Hutch and Nokia have discovered the joys of entertaining customers not just with their products but also with their advertising. A recent TV commercial has an animated family that is `shrunk' to watch movies on their handsets.

One would of course, wish that recognised songs are not directly lifted and used. Nokia, in fact, had another memorable commercial where an army of clowns scrambles to put a smile on a dreary customer's face. That's entertainment for you.

Dominos and Reliance Infocomm have been using the amazing width of expression that Paresh Rawal can bring to any role he graces to keep their audiences smiling. Paresh really brings the recent RIM commercial to life with his persona.

For many years (yes, private insurers have been advertising for about four years now) insurance companies thought that since they dealt with `morbid' subjects like death and injury, they should put on a black hat, hold a sickle in their hands and act as if the grim reaper had come to collect the insurance premium from the hapless customers.

Fortunately, they seem to be breaking out of that mindset now. ICICI Prudential deserves to be congratulated for leading the charge in the right direction. The fact that its `Chintamani' advertisement in its TV and print versions is doing an encore this year proves that there is no `chinta', only money for ICICI and Lowe in persisting with this lighter approach.

Tata AIG has also decided that a smile is a good policy and has created its second TVC in the `smile genre.'

All in all, the message seems to be clear. Make the customer smile and you can laugh all the way to the bank.

(The author heads Canco Advertising.)

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