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Power to the People

The Hindu?s latest ad comes out as a sarcastic and yet straightforward communication, where dark humour evidently plays a key role

Campaign: Politician

Brand:The Hindu Daily

Company : The Hindu

Agency: Ogilvy India

The Campaign

Just magine, a huge closed room which sees flying sandals, screeching voices, banging tables, breaking chairs, old faces and a silent spectator. Can you guess the spot? Our enormously large Parliament that houses the representatives of this nation??debating? endlessly on policies. Well, this is what defines the backdrop of The Hindu?s latest commercial. The argument is simple: It?s time our politicians behaved, for the youth is watching!

Created by Ogilvy India, the commercial opens with a bald man dressed in whites sitting in his living room, looking somewhat restless. Soon, his mother enters the room with a plate in her hand that holds burning incense sticks and a prayer bell. While the angry son throws a paper ball at her, she throws the ball aside without paying any heed to him and continues with her prayers.

Next, when his phone rings, he takes the call and starts screaming into the mobile. He bangs his table and cuts the call soon after. When the caretaker enters the room with his tea, he throws his sandals at the helper and stands up on the table and starts delivering a speech. The helper, quite unmoved, pours the tea into his cup and leaves the room.

The daughter (in the kitchen) observes her father for a while and asks her mother if anything is wrong with her dad. The mother, unperturbed, informs her daughter that nothing is wrong with her dad; that he is only preparing for the budget session. Eventually, as an instrumental version of poet Narsinh Mehta?s ?Vaishnava jana to? (a bhajan endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi during his daily prayer) drowns out the screaming man, the ad ends with the note, ?Behave Yourself, India. The Youth Are Watching?.

Our Take

India currently hosts as many as 150 million first time voters and they are no longer ready to suffer irresponsible politicians. Corruption, dereliction of duty, bad behaviour and inadequate infrastructure are some of their key concerns. They have questions for the candidates who are standing for elections and they want their answers now.

Recognising this need gap, The Hindu?s new campaign quite boldly poses these questions to the leaders and urges them to behave. The commercial holds up the strong dislike that Indians have towards their politicians, shining its light on these representatives who are wedded to privilege and power. The ad surely comes out as a sarcastic and yet straightforward communication, where dark humour evidently plays a key role. Incidentally, the new ad marks the next phase of The Hindu?s Behave campaign, which was launched in October last year. Interestingly, while in the last campaign the politicians were admonished for their bad behaviour, the latest one focuses on reminding the clan that the power to re-elect them undoubtedly lies in the hands of the youth.

Eventually, The Hindu campaign aims to become a crowd-sourced project, by asking people to send in their own questions via social media which will be featured as ads in the paper. Going forward, it hopes to address some of these issues so the youth can make an informed decision when they eventually vote.

Surely, some good intention to deal with and surely some good communication to represent that intention.

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First published on: 19-11-2013 at 03:24 IST
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