Did the recent TV Commercial for Polo mints make you laugh or throw up your hands in resignation? As a business person, do you wish there were more advertisements with this kind of vignette, or do you think creative people who are always urged to push the envelope, have taken this a bit too far?

The judges at the recent Ad awards gave the Nestle ad for the mint its highest award. But the Chairman of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Dr. Uditha Liyanage, wrote to protest his disgust at the idea of awarding a trophy to the advertisement. In his opinion, although he contends that the commercial is ‘extremely creative’ and ‘engaging’, the heady mix of the ‘vita’ and the ‘mint’ is an example of advertising’s insensitivity to our local identity, a cultural "hotchpotch". Which side of the fence are you on?

There is an ever-raging storm in global marketing that goes something like this: Ad agencies (and the marketers they represent) are quick to overlay one culture on another, erasing the nuances and values of each. More specifically, it is the threat that Western culture flows through the ideology and techniques of advertisements at the expense of a country’s indigenous values. Famous examples are advertisements that celebrate taboo behaviours in conservative cultures, those that recommend instant gratification over time-worn traditions, technology over human interaction, or independence of the individual over family traditions revolving around inter-dependence. The list is as long as you want to make it. Cultural purists have locked horns with liberal ‘free-market’ thinkers over the clash between protecting one’s culture versus facing up to modern realities. It draws on the age-old fear of advertising’s insidious power of persuasion.

So the most recent cultural spanner thrown at the advertising industry over the TV commercial for a ‘Western’ mint, needs to be looked at more closely. Moreso, since it comes from the marketing sector itself. Dr. Liyanage makes an important point about the direct relationship between ‘relevancy’ and ‘effectiveness’ in advertising. The Big Idea, he observes, can only be effective when it resonates ‘cultural nuances and trends’, our ‘identity and ethos’.

Clearly, not all marketing people will agree. Marketing communication is often not always a reflection of the vocabulary and speech rhythms of the target audience. Products don’t always fill an expressed need, as classical marketing used to believe. Brands sometimes succeed because they anticipate needs that no research uncovered. (Post-it notes and Hotmail comes to mind). Empathizing with the audience is one thing, but marketing is not the mirror of society. It’s rather the window. So is the overlay of one form of cultural expression on another tantamount to ‘cultural vandalism’, as Dr. Liyanage warns?

Liyanage takes offense at the treatment of the revered ‘Nurthi’ with a rap rhythms, evidence of a certain "rootlessness" and the "decadence" in society. Whenever there is a cross-pollination of eastern and western cultures, these arguments surface. Advertising is always a convenient punching bag. Rock star Sting’s mixing of a Middle-eastern chant in "Desert Rose", like George Harrisson’s borrowing Ravi Shankar rhythms, fortunately have no product to sell.

Serious Business

Instead of getting into a discussion of the music itself, it’s good to ask why is such an east-west ‘hotchpotch’ upsetting when it takes on the garb of advertising? My view is that people take advertising too seriously. In this group I include some advertising people as well. They unwittingly provide those on the outside to judge it by its myths. It may be the most politically incorrect statement to make at this time, but an awards system for advertising is itself partly to blame for foisting such myths. It positions ad people as powerful change agents, in possession of some mysterious raw materials they can whip out at any instant and shape society. According to this ‘mythology’, Ads are all about ‘targeting’ poor unsuspecting consumers, and awards are all about rewarding those who cast these invisible spells. It maybe a flawed mythology, but it is real; it the flip side of responsible marketing that we expect will promote social identity (as opposed to cultural ‘rootlessness’), and progress (as opposed to ‘decadence’).

There’s nothing culturally shocking today about peddling a mint in a country where the marketing of ice cream, beer, pizza and toothpaste has not met with cultural protest (by those who might arguably defend curd, toddy, stringhoppers and toothpowder). The treatment of the story-line, a twist of the boy-meets girl, as a school teacher-student relationship, is still very much a stereotype.