Many took notice when Birla Sunlife Insurance’s commercial Jab tak balla chal raha hai, thaat chal rahi hai featuring Yuvraj Singh started appearing on air frequently after news of his cancer was made public. The ad received much flak for cashing in on the sensitive situation.
But, of late, hasn’t it become a trend to portray certain aspects of a celebrity’s personal life in a commercial to garner more attention? Hasn’t the line between the real and the reel blurred in the ad script? We have seen Abhishek Bachchan talking about his baby in Idea Cellular ads right from the time Aishwarya’s news of pregnancy was announced. Actor Shilpa Shetty, who made public news of her pregnancy, is seen these days in an ad of PregaNews.
Ad guru Prahlad Kakkar says that all these ads including Yuvi’s is very true. “Long back, even Sourav Ganguly appeared in a Pepsi ad — Main Sourav Ganguly… bhoole toh nahin — when he was dropped from the Indian team. It’s a very interesting thing to play with the real stories. These commercials reveal the truth. The situations are not concocted and thus are more convincing. These ads may not increase the trade but they definitely create a certain resonance with the audience,” he says.
Abhinav Tripathi, senior creative director, Mccann Erickson, Mumbai, says that in today’s time we have started associating with the happenings in a celeb’s personal life through newspaper reports, interviews, etc. “The masses are aware of what’s happening in a celeb’s life. In this case, Abhishek Bachchan playing a small town boy in a commercial would not make that much sense as him portraying an expectant father or a father of a newly-born. Through media, audience associate with a celeb’s real life. Advertisements extend that association in the reel life depicting celebs’ real-life stories,” he says.
But has that happened because we are falling short of stories? Abhinav remarks that it is not because we don’t have stories but because the star power speaks more. “In a country like India, where the masses are star-struck, celebrities in an ad would be more overpowering than the stories. It makes more sense to treat a celeb like a celeb than someone else. Stories take a back seat when a star is already there in an ad,” he says.
Shiveshwar Raj Singh, group creative director, Draftfcb Ulka, thinks that with real-life stories picked up from a celeb’s life, ad makers hope to be more convincing to the consumers. “If I have to make an ad for a shop selling wedding dresses, I would not mind taking Ritesh and Genelia, as they have been in the news for their wedding recently,” he concludes.