The Hindu Business Line : Shock and awful?

A guy in a towel answers the doorbell. It’s the washerwoman, in a mini skirt and a revealing blouse. As her eyes travel down his frame, his towel falls. “Nikaliye na!” she says. “What!” he asks. Kapde” says the woman.

This TV commercial for GenX Undergarments (for Lux Hosiery Industries Ltd) was among the 19 complaints upheld by the Advertising Standards Council of India’s Consumer Complaints Council (ASCI) for the January-March period this year. The council heard 32 complaints, including those of ads with double meaning, racism, and bias.

The visuals and voiceover were “suggestive and indecent, and could give rise to widespread offence”, the Council said of the undergarment ad. Admakers Ogilvy & Mather assured the TV commercial would be modified.

Is sex and related imagery a monkey being trained by market-savvy admen to manipulate the senses and push people to reach for their wallets? “They do attract attention. It is a gimmick. It’s usually the late entrants, those with a small budget, who go in for this. Like the guy wearing a flashy dress in a party to attract attention,” says U. Jayraj Rau, Vice-President and General Manager, JWT, Chennai.

“Sex definitely is a hook to attract attention, and it will continue, especially for short-term tactical use. But it has to go with the overall strategy for the brand. One must look at R&D: Relevance and Difference. But many are using sex to be different, not relevant, as their priority is to get attention,” says Pankaj Mathur, Branch Head, MC{+2} (formerly Madison Creative), Delhi.

A percentage of advertisers globally have always depended on a dose of sexual stimulation to sell a product or service. From Calvin Klein, who associated jeans with sex, himself saying, “The abundance of bare flesh is the last gasp of advertisers trying to give redundant products a new identity”, to perfume ads with women in various forms of nudity.

In India, ads got bolder in the last two decades. You had Malaika Arora and Arbaaz Khan under the sheets for MR Coffee, a filter brew trying to compete with instant coffee makers using the tagline ‘Real pleasure does not come in an instant’. Then there were models Madhu Sapre and Milind Soman courting controversy, wrapped seemingly naked with a python, their feet sporting Tuff Shoes.

Recently, leather goods maker Hidesign’s ad showing a skimpily clad woman next to a leather bag caused ire for commoditising women, and being unrelated to the product promoted. The ad was withdrawn. ASCI received complaints against the ad for Amul Macho underwear – where a woman is shown fantasising as she washes her husband’s underwear. Even ads for condoms, directly related to sex, have been pulled up for explicit imagery.

These are not the first, and they won’t be the last, say ad men. An official from The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) on condition of anonymity says that “sex does sell” in advertisements. “The question is about how is has to be represented.”

So while it sells, Hrithik Roshan learns the secret recipe for making Parle Hide & Seek’s Milano chocolate chip cookies from a beautiful woman, depicted as similar to the process of making love. Elsewhere, actor Morgan Freeman investigates ‘crimes of passion’ based on sexual savagery of men wearing the Axe Vice fragrance after ‘nice girls turn naughty’.

In other ads, there are tongue-flicks, lips being bitten suggestively, slow-motion swaggers, low hiplines, plunging necklines, and voiceovers and copy that bring bedroom antics into the telly and print.

Is advertising veering off towards more brazen associations, riding on the clause that it’s a baser instinct that’s sure to grab attention, even if the ad in question is creatively unappetising?

P. Subramanian, Brand Manager, Interface Communication, says many advertisers believe that as long as it attracts the consumer to the product, it does good for the brand. “But it doesn’t always work that way. Kwality Walls’ Feast (with a bold ‘The Big F’ tagline) didn’t do well for the brand. It had to be withdrawn,” he points out.

He also recalls an incident where a client only wanted to create a buzz in the region where his product was to be advertised, and was not wholly dependent on customer response there. The client was more than happy with the ad made for him, which punned on a woman’s breasts, though it had not even a remote association with the product. “He strongly believed the woman and the double-meaning tagline would sell the product,” says Subramanian.

Rau says such short-cut ads won’t give long-term results. They get noticed, create awareness and visual impact. “But you don’t get believability, credibility, and finally, sale of the brand,” says Rau.

But admen like C. S. Amudham of WOC Advertising Enterprize disagree. “Of the 50-odd campaigns we’ve done with a decent budget, those with sexual connotations have given visibility. It’s not about the competition, it’s about clutter. “It’s tough to get through, and sex helps me to break through the clutter. So I use it,” he says.

The company’s recent ad for Tamil radio channel Aaha FM raised the hackles of women’s groups and ordinary citizens alike. The ad in print and hoardings for the channel promoted by the Kumudam magazine group had the Tamil tagline ‘Pozhudhupokkin Utchakattam’, meaning ‘the height of entertainment’. Each visual was the picture of a young girl or boy, a man or woman, with eyes closed, head thrown back, lips parted, to depict a sta te of pleasure – in this case relating sensual pleasure to listening to the FM.

Thirty-four-year-old Damayanthi recalls being aghast after seeing the ad when driving down to pick her daughter from school. “The sex part of it was unrelated to the product. Give me humour any day! When I recall ads made with clean humour, there’s a feel-good factor to it,” she says.

Will what works for a Western audience work on home ground? Is morality an issue at all for an adman playing the number game? Are consumers conservative? “The entire social set-up is changing; people are more open. Earlier, a kiss used to shock. Now, you have ads for negligible lingerie and sanitary napkins. Westernization has crept in. Clients are ok with using sex as an element,” says Mathur of MC{+2}.

Interface’s Subramanian says that while people want liberalisation and modernisation in their lives, tradition is important to many. “Films and advertising both reflect consumers. That consumer is still strong on tradition, and not comfortable with open talk of sex. If it borders on entertainment, that’s ok, but it should be well-made. If consumers don’t like what the ad says, they won’t give it much thought,” he says.

And then there is the sphere of young impressionable minds. While some target sexual messages specifically to them, others consider such ideas equal to denying a nation’s progress. “We see children imitating violence on TV. It happens with messages related to sex as well. In today’s fast life, children and adolescent may confuse the ad as representing a culture. We advise parents to monitor their child’s ad time, and to tell them that isn’t the real world,” says a Chennai-based child psychiatrist.

A growing middle-class with aspirations and more money to spend mean ad people push themselves to think out of the box – and increasingly about sex – to stand out in the crowd. And as there is no censorship in the ad world, it comes down to individual agencies, and individuals within that set-up who create and implement these ads, to tell a craft from a gimmick. “Ad agencies have to introspect. Restrictions have to be self-imposed, to ensure we help the overall ad scenario,” says MC{+2}’s Mathur.

JWT’s Rau talks about how pushy brand managers manipulate clients into believing sex will work for their product. The truth is, he says, it will work, people will notice, but the product may not really sell. The client by then is too far gone into it to escape.

Subramanian of Interface says some agencies are careful, and don’t think along controversial lines. ‘If someone comes with an idea likely to draw flak, we laugh about it and then drop it. Nobody wants to spoil their name. For instance, agencies think hard before using an animal in their ads, they know animal rights agency PETA is watching.”

How much do curbs really work? Ads that shocked viewers with their imagery and got a lashing have come back as if the first round of controversies never happened. For instance, before its GenX Undergarmets ad this year, Lux Hosiery had in 2006 faced criticism for its GenX Premium Briefs ad where a semi-nude man is molested by a clothed woman. The ad was withdrawn.

Admen like Amudham are not too worried. “It’s all about top-of-mind recall. After six years, even now when I give my visiting cards, I’m identified with the Prime Roaster ads. The company got what it wanted,” he says. These ads were pre-launch teasers saying ‘Breasts you’ll die for’ and ‘Thunder thighs in town’. Amudham says he has no problems with controversies.

The issue of sex in advertising may not be as simplistic as it seems.

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Shock and awful?