question hour. Ads mould attitudes

Ads mould attitudes

If you were to define what advertising does and achieves, what would it be?

Kolkata

Rohit, advertising creates cultures. Many nations of consumers talk and live like ads. Advertising is a powerful perception-creator. To that extent, advertising messages mould and make generations of attitudes. One fine day, we will all sit up and blame many creative pieces of advertising for developing the kind of gender or colour bias that our children may have or had. Advertising creates a bias, which can be positive or negative. A bias for action. Consumer action.

The condom market in India is suddenly on the upswing. I counted 21 brands in a local store recently. And none of them were big brands. What’s the chemistry at play here?

Ahmedabad

Jayant, no chemistry here. It’s just a demand and supply game. Condom brands have depended on third-party manufacturers in the market in the past. Bigger condom companies wrote a self-fulfilling prophesy of creating new and localised competitors in the market, when they withdrew from third-party manufacturing as volumes grew and set up their own facilities. Every ‘third-party’ first looked for another big brand to make condoms for, and when that was not found, they invested in creating and marketing their own brands in the local market. These were good manufacturers who had gotten used to high quality standards. They invested in creating brand names that appealed to the local masses and got the distribution game going. Smaller brands too make for a mighty market share, for sure. These brands depend very highly on the sensuous visuals and purvey condoms as accoutrements for pleasurable sex. They do not talk the language of HIV and protection from pregnancy, as much as tell the story of real fun sex. And they thrive.

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