It was a rainy morning. The cook’s radio had Red FM blaring away about Naughty kahanis and halkat jawanis, Auntie Khanna was yelling out to Uncle Khanna, “Darlingji kudiyan shud-iyan dekhna chaddo andar aa ke chai shai peelo (don’t ogle the girls in the lane and come and have your morning tea). Natrajan’s poodle called Moonlight was woofing in symphony to the roadside stray ‘Romeos’. Kaash kuch to change hota, I wistfully sighed and opened my newspaper and suddenly the world seemed to shake and I felt shivers run down my spine. Baba re! Should I run for cover like Obelix? Were the heavens about to fall? As I threw down my paper to call everyone out, the world suddenly righted itself. I looked down in bewilderment and realised that the ‘jitters’ had come from the newspaper. When I cautiously picked it up and turned the page I realised that the “vibrations and excitement” were courtesy Polo and Vento. The company had put a vibrator into the paper to give Dilliwallas a reverberating jolt and focus their attention on Das Auto…
Volkswagen is not the only ‘wicked wizard’ that attempts to stir up some turbulence in a placid ad space. There are a considerable number of Alfred Hitchcocks and Spielbergs on the creative side of an agency whose idea is to shock you in your tracks. These OMG (Oh My God) strategies can take any of the avatars below.

Savdhan! Hoshiar! These shake up and wake up messages are alarming, unpleasant and unnerving. However, the seriousness of the issue justifies the cause. The swaggering cowboy with a cigarette in his hand to a ‘farewell cowboy’ as just a picture on the wall — are wake-up calls about cigarette smoking being injurious to the health. The billboards nonchalantly asking the car driver on the mobile phone about ‘dying’ to take the call are piercingly direct and effective. The nature of the behaviour requires that distress and punishment — most often as loss of life — are generated to encourage not consumption but non-consumption. So anything from ‘don’t touch unidentified objects’ to ‘say no to drugs’ to ‘Balbir Pasha sharab ke nashe mein condom nahi pahnta, Balbir Pasha ko AIDS hoga kya?’ are part of these Jago-Manav-Jago campaigns.

Pareshan Samadhan! The other set of communication messages are not so philanthropic, as these are the problem-solution ki-nds. That is they first ring the alarm bells and then present you with the brand solution. Thus this could be a case of everyone stands aside when you walk in through the doors and the showstopper is not your magnetic personality but your bad body odour. And in the next shot comes the Rexona solution. One of the most shockingly appropriate advertisements in this category is the Shock Laga ad! TVCs where everyone from the school teacher to the family has their hair defying gravity and standing up straight; or the one in which the husband is ‘stuck’ to the maid and the shocked wife becomes part of the ‘shocked chain’ when she tries to pull them apart. Thus, very simply, if you want to avoid the electric jolt, ‘switch’ (pun intended) to Havell’s.

Bijli Giri! And then there are the Dabbangs. The intention is simply to shock you and stand out of the clutter. The pioneer in this category being the reptilian alien who comes and throws a stone to break your TV. The message being one of the neighbours’ envy boiling at the owner’s pride. The recall was so complete that a lot of children called out, ‘Onida’ when they saw a lizard.
Vibrating newspapers, a la Das Auto and the open mouthed OMG amazement of everything from electrocution to urinating on an exposed wire to Kat gaye chikoti do chore in Karol Bagh. So kahe jate ho bazaar go to Tradus.com are interesting creatives that make you stop in your tracks.

Thus, the gyan is simple if you can stun, shock and send a shiver down the consumer’s spine, the fear principle works and recall in most instances is perfect. However, the tool also needs to be used responsibly. In case the intention is to curb negative consumption, creating the drinking and driving or ‘say no to drugs’ scenarios are justified. In case you are on a problem-solution mission, Shock Laga is again permissible. However, when the intention is simply to stand out from the clutter, Mr. Marketeer you may wish to view the creative from the ethical lens and realise that disturbing a mundane but peaceful subah by stirring up excitement might not be a welcome intrusion!

The writer is professor marketing, IMI, Delhi