Nostalgia

India produces the best ads in the whole world! Any doubts about that one? Check out the number of awards Indian Ads have won at major international award festivals in the recent years and u will know Im not being parochial or partial..(though it is very much in me to be both when it comes to cricket!).

I did some reminescing to think of the ads that have stuck in my head ever since I started watching TV. Earliest being the Vicco Vajradanti ad that has been showing in cinemas ever since I remember. The trademark jingle is still the same and the same grandfather figure bites into the sugarcane till date. All fans of Indian Tradition (read 'jobless protesters') can take pride that their agitation that some things should not change has succeeded atleast in this aspect. I remember Aamir Khan jumping over veihcles, sliding under shop doors and getting a Pepsi only to find Aishwarya Rai asking him for another one. Strange game that advertising is, one of my other favs is the Aamir series for Coke. A Nepali tourist, a bihari babu kinda guy - did he pull em off or what! The Aish - Hrithik campaign for Coke sucked though.

Pepsi always came up with fun ads, be it with cricketers or filmstars. Particularly good ones were with Shane Warne, Tendlia and Carl Hooper, another one with Tendlia and Azhar. Some with Shahrukh were good too. Fevicol - or should that be Pidilite - had some of the best ads of all time. Stuff like a man's shadow getting stuck to a shutter with Fevicol written over it, a hen laying an unbreakable egg after eating its feed from a Fevicol can and one where different TV sets in a carpenter store show different pics based on whether or not the Fevicol can is removed from the set top were howlarious to put it mildly. There is another one where they show us an overloaded bus with people on top, on the side and every other possible place on the bus and still not falling off - Fevicol is painted behind the bus in huge letters u see!

Amrutanjan had one amazing catch line - It's gone - and it made people say it in all different languages. I would wait until they said it in my mother tongue and feel suffused with pride that they felt it important enough to use my mother tongue in a national ad.

After spending two years in the US and baulking at their quality of advertising, which was mostly someone reading out product benefits, the belief that we make the world's best ads has been reinforced ten fold. I've loved Motorola's ads for its new phn, Pepsi seems to have lost some touch though. I will surely write upon this some other time as Im fascinated by the world of ads...enuf for now though.

PS: After all the questions, Sehwag is going to be on the plane to the Carribean...Please, oh please, vindicate our faith in you, Sehwag saab...