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EVERY once in a while, an ad catches my eye for its wit, whether intended or not. A recent billboard in Karachi promoting a shampoo read: ‘Love your straight baal? Lock it! Rock it!’
Considering the rest of the ad was in English, I was puzzled by the copywriter’s use of the Urdu ‘baal’ instead of ‘hair’. Now I am no purist when it comes to throwing words from different languages together: after all, Urdu itself is a mishmash of Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hindi.
This cocktail came into being in the military camps of the Mughals where mercenaries from across the region came together and concocted a lingua franca to be able to communicate. In fact, the word ‘Urdu’ itself comes from the Turkish ‘Ordu’ which is also the root of ‘horde’, meaning a large mass of armed horsemen.
Know more: Literary Notes: Common misconceptions about Urdu
So for pedants to moan at what they see as the bastardisation of Urdu is to forget the origins of the language. But to return to the shampoo ad, why baal, and not hair? I soon realised that had it just been ‘Love your straight hair?’, the ad would not have stuck in my mind. And that, of course, is the point of creating a message that resonates.
Sadly, few ads in Pakistan have any humour or sense of irony: almost without exception, they are banal and boring, and therefore instantly forgotten. However, the recently concluded biennial military jamboree in Karachi, the International Defence Exhibition and Seminar, or IDEAS, has as its motto this warped message: ‘Weapons for peace’.
Marketing messages reveal a lot about a society.
Did the person who created it realise the contradiction, or did he deliberately put two diametrically opposed concepts into this single short phrase? We will probably never know, but the fact is that it sticks in the mind because it evokes the idea of doublespeak from George Orwell’s futuristic novel 1984.
Of course advertisements use images, words and sounds to push their message, with each reinforcing the other to sell a product or an idea. In the recent Indian elections, the BJP put together a brilliant series of short, crisp TV ads to promote their prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi. The language used was simple, everyday Hinglish, an amalgam of Hindi and English.
But political ads only work when the audience is open-minded: if it has already decided on something, then the message can backfire. When the government ran a large number of crude TV ads critical of Imran Khan just before his Islamabad rally on Nov 30, they cut no ice with his supporters. Indeed, the government was placed on the defensive, having to explain that funds for the negative campaign had not come from the exchequer, but from PML-N supporters.
Marketing messages reveal a lot about a society. For instance, Urdu publications are full of ads for creams that promise a fair complexion overnight. In countries with sizeable African populations, there are treatments that promise to straighten kinky hair. Clearly, people are uncomfortable with the way they look and want to conform to whatever the mainstream dictates through its current ideal of good looks.
Here in South Asia, it is considered desirable to be fair-skinned, so women who weren’t born with a light complexion go to inordinate lengths to lighten their skin. Advertising firms exploit this insecurity to sell all kinds of dubious products. In the Far East, this quest for beauty has women undergoing surgery to straighten their noses and make their eyes rounder. All these painful procedures are sold through unrelenting advertising campaigns promoting an elusive image of perfection.
One ad on a Karachi billboard still makes me smile when I think of it. This proclaimed Rooh Afza to be ‘King of the Reds’. Having grown up with this ubiquitous, sweet, syrupy, rose-scented drink, I now recoil when I’m offered a glass of the stuff. So I can’t get over the cheek of the copywriter who came up with the slogan.
I’m not sure he or she knows about the noble reds gently ageing in oak vats in the great vineyards of the world. Surely the title of King of the Reds should have gone to Petrus, Chateau Lafite or Chateau Latour? To accord it to Rooh Afza is clearly an abomination. But then I’m being literal: the fact is that the very absurdity of the words has made me remember the message, and that is the point of the exercise.
Talking of beverages and memorable ads, I recall one from years ago that showed a man with a broken Chivas Regal bottle in one hand, looking distraught. The accompanying message read: “Have you ever seen a grown man cry?”
The British have a highly developed sense of irony, and this is reflected in many of the ads displayed across the country. One family planning ad I saw in the Underground showed a man looking very pregnant. The message was: “If you had to carry a baby for nine months, wouldn’t you take precautions?”
Published in Dawn December 6th , 2014
