Flashback:

When the caveman discovered fire, made the wheel and started scribbling on the walls of his cave, he realised his kid Mozo, was happy just playing with cute lion cubs, hanging from tree branches and just taking things as they are. He mused, how WILL he learn?

Hence the concept of teaching children came about. Mozo and his peers had “school”. But our Mozo wanted to think beyond making wheels; he wanted to learn from nature. Mozo was scolded abut his constant absence but he would smile and point at the trees.

Consequently, classrooms were shifted to the caves so that Mozo and those like him could not run away, but luckily, that could not stop Mozo! From then onwards whatever Mozo did to get some life, was called – Bunk!

Fast Forward:

Mozo has been the Che Guevera of bunking and the soul of this tiny kid keeps on finding one body or the other to let people know that there is something beyond those dull classrooms, life is lived outside one’s books! We bunk college and go places! But there is something much productive which we can do with our lives. Bunking a class often is taken in a negative way, but what is one supposed to do when one does not understand a single word being taught in the class? There comes the “Mozo Philosophy”. Bunk, get some life and learnthe things which are not taught in class. Ever been to a river bank? They teach us Geography without taking to us to a Delta – we are supposed to imagine it in our mind! So bunk class once in a while, get some air, learn something, mess up with things, resolve them out, fall, get up and learn!

Did I hear Mass Bunk somewhere?

Subliminal Advertising

Subliminal advertising involves the use of subtle images which aren’t visibly perceived. These images/videos usually have sexual or power references and can be used to influence mood and bring a feeling of familiarity. They are largely considered to have harmful effect on society owing to unconscious manipulation of consumers. Some examples can be seen below.

Use of the word ‘sex’ on the skittles packet

Erotically stimulating visuals

Use of the word ‘sex’ again

Exaggerated Advertising

Exaggeration increases the odds of making a sale by grabbing your attention and making you remember the ad. Basically, take the basic idea you want to communicate, your concept and then exaggerate it; take it to extremes. According to the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) “obvious untruths or exaggerations intended to amuse or to catch the eye of the consumer are permissible provided that they are clearly to be seen as humorous or hyperbolic and not likely to be understood as making literal or misleading claims for the advertised product.” What this means is that as long as consumers can make out that the ad is clearly an exaggeration, it is permissible. For example, the following ads are clearly exaggerated and cannot be mistaken for reality.

An Ad for the Volkswagen Bus, exaggerating its size

An exaggerated ad for a widescreen TV

However the ASCI also states that “no advertisement shall be permitted to contain any claim so exaggerated as to lead to grave or widespread disappointment in the minds of consumers”. An example of such exaggeration is the banned print advertisement of Maybelline, which used Photoshop to exaggerate the effects of their anti-wrinkle product and thus led consumers to believe that such results were possible in real-life.

The banned Maybelline ad

Surrogate Advertising

Surrogate advertising is a marketing strategy in which a company appears to be advertising one product or brand, when it is really advertising another; for example, an apparent lung cancer ad might really advertise a cigarette brand. This is only used when a company is banned from advertising a certain product, such as cigarettes or alcohol. One type of surrogate advertising involves using TV commercials that mention a product for which a company is not known as a way of bringing up the idea of a product for which the company is known. For example, a company known for making alcohol may make a commercial that highlights a new soft drink. The commercial itself is made to advertise the soft drink but, because the company is known for making alcohol, many viewers will automatically think of the alcoholic beverage when they see the soft drink ad.

Kingfisher Surrogate Advertising

Teacher’s Surrogate Advertising

Undertones of Caste or Racial Discrimination

The ASCI clearly states that “no advertisement shall be permitted which derides any race, cast, colour, creed or nationality.” Many assume that these instances would not occur in modern day ads, but they still do appear in sometimes subtle and sometimes very visible ways.

A racist ad for PSP

Skin colour and race discrimination

In conclusion, what does one do?

Firstly, it is our responsibility to infer what is actually being advertised in such advertisements. When the viewer becomes aware of the traps that advertisers are setting, these traps can be successfully avoided. Secondly, it is also the responsibility of the viewer to complain against any ad that hurts their ideologies or their sentiments, since the ASCI is a complaint based organisation, and cannot take any action unless and until a complaint is made. Under the ASCI, the following practices are regarded as unethical:

1. Ridicule caste, race, nationality, color and creed
2. Incite people towards criminal activity, provocative, cause disorder and/or violence in the country
3. Breach laws and/or glorify obscenity or violence in any form
4. Glorify terrorism, communal massacres, criminality and so on
5. Ridicule the father of the nation, the national emblem, part of constitution or the image of a national leader or a state dignitary
6. Depict women in a deprecating manner
7. Display distasteful visual content that goes beyond the established norms of good taste and decency
8. Exploit and encourage  social evils

So it is time that we became of these unethical practices and start voicing our opinion. Let us know about any ads that you found hurtful or derogatory.

The journey of the Mumbai Dabbawalas starts from Andheri Station. The mode of transport used is the Mumbai local train. Churchgate station is the destination for these all dabbas. The rearrangements of the dabbas based on their destination area and building is done here. After one hour from the delivery, the collection process starts. All the dabbas are collected from the different offices. Then at Church gate station the segregation of these dabbas happen. After segregation the dabbas they are dispatched to Andheri station, where the final sorting and dispatching to the respective homes takes place.

Mumbai Dabbawalas are in this distribution channel since last 125 years therefore there positioning and image has been deeply rooted in minds of Mumbaikars. Dabbawalas are keeping pace with the growing demands and technology by bringing their presence and promotion using the new age media channels and vehicles. SMS can be used to place the orders even online placement of orders is now possible because of their digital presence on internet.

The Mumbai Dabbawalas are one of the few precious entities who have world record in best time management with a “Six Sigma” rating. The maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield, or the percentage of defect-free products it creates. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the products manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defects per million).They have their name in “Guinness Book of World Records” and are even registered with Ripley’s Believe it or Not.

What is more interesting to note here, the process of the Dabbawalas does not use any sort of technology guidance. The collection, sorting, distribution, re-collection and sending back of dabbas all happens manually. So how do they manage to be so perfect in delivery all the time? They use a handwritten coding system on all their carts.

While marking, the area codes are marked very meticulously and the process is so smooth and error-free that error rate is 1 in 16 million transactions giving them Six Sigma performance (99.999999%). Even more amazing is the fact that the people who are serving these Dabbas are generally 8th grade pass outs. These Dabbawalas are themselves shareholders of the systems. 635 are senior employees among these Dabbawalas. But it is flat organization with no hierarchy in it. So there are no employees or employers. So there are no managerial layers, explicit control mechanisms and organisational structure. Dabbawalas are divided into sub groups of 15 to 25 each. Each subgroup is supervised by four Mukadams. These Mukadams are experienced old-timers and hence are familiar with the coding and the colours.

Observing the characteristics of this organisation, there is no technology, no highly educated people, no explicit management technique followed, but still they manage to achieve an efficiency that is rare even among the top businesses of the world. This proves that to succeed in business, technology, education and management are secondary features. What is supremely important is the spirit of the human connection, hard work, sincerity, dedication and good leadership. Even in the age when people are obsessed with building faster, more efficient technology to improve their businesses, the Mumbai Dabbawalas are definitely an example of the victory of man over machines.

1. The Force: Volkswagen Commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R55e-uHQna0

This ad was aired during the 2011 Super Bowl. This advertisement uses emotion, children and humour to appeal to their audience. This commercial has used Star Wars to sell its product. The little boy is dressed as Darth Vader. The background music is from Star Wars. Hence this attracts the Star Wars fans to the commercial and connects with them. Humour and wit has been used all throughout the commercial. This commercial also depicts a stereotypical American family, with a cute child and a lazy dog. This way, American families can relate to the commercial. The target audience is Generation X; people who like being home to take care of their families and make their kids peanut butter and jelly; people who have grown up liking Star Wars.

2. Honda – The Cog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ve4M4UsJQo

The commercial was made for younger audiences that are fascinated by logic and operations. It shows Honda Accord parts interacting with each other and in the end the commercial stops on a Honda Accord Station Wagon. This commercial purports the fact that every car part serves different purpose but when their working together will produce more comprehensive process. Through this they want to communicate that Honda Accord is precision built machine that works in perfect harmony. This idea is completely endorsed by the only dialogue of the commercial, “Isn’t it great when things just work?” This commercial also wants to put emphasis on the fact that Honda puts lot of care into the design of the car. The old school music has been used to signify that they have been in the business of car making since ages. The Rube Goldberg machine form is used to show the care and efficiency in the designing of even smallest of part. The transferral of energy and the smooth motion of the parts also depicts that the Honda cars are designed to give seamless movement from one place to another. This commercial uses artistic and creative appeal.

3. Tata Indica Xeta
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esqHM5vRUF8

This commercial has been made by FCB ULKA and shows young, fun loving, attractive girls driving Indica Xeta singing a peppy song “It is the right kind of a day to soak up the sun. To get out there and have some fun!” On their way they see a shirtless hunk and ask him suggestively if he knows any man who can rub suntan lotion on them. The guy looks blankly at them and replies “May be you should try the beach café”. The girls collectively say “Dumb!” and speed away in the car. Then the commercial features a voiceover saying, “Fortunately, life gives you a second chance. So, here’s the new Indica Xeta.” Then the three benefits of the car have been shown. It talks about the powerful engine at an economical attractive price. The positioning has been done purporting that you are fool if you go for another brand in the small car segment. The cool dude represents all those customers who are dumb enough to overlook the benefits of the Indica Xeta. The commercial and its background song put forth this positioning. The target audience is of age group 25-30 years, who are first-time car buyers.

4. Maruti Suzuki
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcgmEECta4o

Maruti Suzuki is recognized all over India as the true Indian brand, and they use this existing positioning to launch a beautiful campaign which features many cars of their brand and focuses on the Indian-ness of Maruti. It shows people from diverse backgrounds relying on Maruti for their car needs and focus on all of them coming home – hence the tagline “India comes home in a Maruti”. The various people shown are a modern high class daughter picking up her father from the airport in a Grand Vitara, a traditional married couple coming home to meet their parents after the birth of their child in a Wagon R, a young middle class couple with the man dropping the woman to her home in a Swift and her parents getting angry about the late hour but the man honestly approaching and meeting the parents, an army officer returning home from his camp after getting leave in a Gypsy, children coming home from school in a Omni taxi and lastly a stranded college guy wanting to go home from Diwali being picked up by a person in a Swift. This diversity of people shown represents the diversity of India and is also shown in the different cars shown, thus showing the true Indian nature of the brand. The advertisement uses a patriotic and an emotional appeal to connect with the Indian audience.

So what do you think of these commercials?

• Pepsi, known for their innovative marketing, ran universal campaigns which were the same in every country. This led them into trouble in Taiwan. Their campaign tagline, “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation!”, when launched locally, translated to “Pepsi will bring back your ancestors from the dead”!

• KFC’s slogan “Finger Lickin’ Good” translated in Hong Kong as “Eat your fingers off”.

• Coors beer, which is one of the top five brewers in the world, had the tagline “Turn it Loose”. Unfortunately when they launched this tagline in Spain, they had to suffer a lot of embarrassment, as their tagline translated to “You will suffer from Diarrhoea”!

• American Airlines’ slogan “Fly in leather” was translated into Spanish, and because of a small spelling error, it was translated as “Fly in the nude”.

• When the premium brand of Parker Pens launched in Mexico, they made a promise to the consumers that the pen “will not leak into your pockets and embarrass you”. But they confused the Spanish verb for “embarrass” as “embrazar”, which in turn made the statement that the pen “will not leak and impregnate you”!

• Electrolux is a Swedish company which makes vacuum cleaners. When launching their product in USA, they wanted to emphasize the extra strong suction power of their vacuum cleaners. In the process, they came up with the tagline “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux”, which raised quite a few eyebrows in USA because of its double meaning.

Even when products can get their taglines appropriate, there is still a danger of the product names being translated into something appropriate. A few examples:

• Mitsubishi Pajero in Spain: “Pajero” is slang for the word masturbator in Spanish.

• General Motor’s Chevy Nova in Latin America: “Nova” means “it doesn’t go” in Spanish.

• Ford Pinto failed miserably in Brazil: “Pinto” means “small penis” in Brazilian Portuguese slang.

• Toyota’s Fiera proved controversial in Puerto Rico: Fiera translates to “ugly old woman”.

• Vicks in Germany: In German language the letter V is pronounced as F, consequently Vicks was pronounced as an equivalent of the F word!

• Schweppes in Italy: A promotional campaign for Schweppes tonic water in Italy read “Schweppes Tonic Water”, but the brand name was translated to “Schweppes Toilet Water”!

All this goes to show that you can never be too prepared when it comes to advertising, proof reading goes a long way and that sometimes even big advertising giants can fail miserably because of tiny oversights. At the very least, they provided humour to the regions that they advertised in. Tell us about more advertising goof ups that you have seen!

Remember that song from Guru – “Jaage hai der tak hamein” –what a lovely depiction of the power of dreams! We all have dreams in life; sometimes small, sometimes big. People often assume that their dreams can’t be real but what’s important is to pick a dream, stick to it and work hard to turn it into reality. All great things start from a single dream. We have so many examples who made it big just by following a dream – the likes of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, et al.

Yes, it does need ample amounts of patience and belief to turn your dream into reality, but it’s worth it. There may be a time in your life when no one will understand what you actually want to do, what you are up to; they may even mock you or tease you for dreaming high, but don’t pay them any heed! Every possible task is often claimed to be impossible before it fruitions into the otherwise.

Mount Everest was climbed in someone’s dreams before it was actually conquered. It is only your dream which will keep you going, which will keep you living. Live a dream which will define your life. Don’t confine yourself in a territory, walk out of it. As someone once said, “aim at the moon, even if you miss, you will land amongst the stars!”

Lastly, after giving much of this gyaan, I would love to share this monologue, from the movie Guru.

Gurukant Desai (Abhishek Bachchan) – “Bapu keheta tha, sapne mat dekho, sapne kabhi pure nahi hote, par maine dekha….aur kya hamara sapna pura hua?”

And the crowd roars.

Dream, because you never know when the reality of your closed eyes will surface up in front you!

Fret not guys. If you’re lucky, your girl will be a hard-core romantic and will like being mushy lines being spouted at them. If you are one of these fortuitous men, we have compiled a list of the eight most loved romantic dialogues of popular films of all times here, to save your day.

Yes, these lines may sound cheesy to you and must have already begun cringing, but try them out. Go on. And good luck.

You complete…me.
– Jerry Maguire

I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her.
– Notting Hill

I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel with you.
– Dirty Dancing

I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss from her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it.
– City of Angels

Our love is like wind. I can’t see it, but I can feel it.
– A walk to remember

Take love, multiply it by infinity and take it to the depths of forever…and you still have only a glimpse of how I feel for you.
– Meet Joe Black

Every step I took since the moment I could walk was a step towards finding you.
– Message in the bottle

Storm clouds may gather and stars may collide, but I love you until the end of time.
– Moulin Rouge

This is the same Bollywood that sees female actors portraying a negative or a sexual character in a film as a “bold” move. Such characters are also distinguished within the film, wearing black or dark makeup and skin-tight revealing “western” outfits in contrast with the “good girl” with traditional Indian outfits which go very well with her Indian values. Even when the protagonists do wear “western” outfits, they somehow have to prove their Indian-ness by showcasing Indian values in some way or other, like in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, where Rani Mukherjee has to prove to the audience that in spite of wearing such outfits she is a “good girl” by reciting a devotional Hindi song.

One may argue how such stereotyping “really affects” the world and how it functions. This argument is easily rebutted by the fact that even in today’s world, almost everyone thinks of a female when thinking of a model, a male when thinking of an engineer, a female when thinking of an elementary school teacher and a male when thinking of a professor. These stereotypes are a picture in the head and not an accurate mirror of the real world. This is dangerous since it hampers the attributes, qualities and opportunities given to different genders.

Such rampant conservativeness and regression under the disguise of progress is prevalent in today’s Bollywood, and is present even more blatantly in certain very popular and successful films. One example is the immensely mainstream and popular Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge. It was a huge hit, and so were its songs. But the amount of stereotypical gender narratives that exist in this song and the film in general are staggering, and do reflect on the type of mentality that Bollywood filmmakers had in that era, and still continue to have in the present.

Even the title of the film can give anyone a prelude on what to expect out of the film. Although it does refer to the traditional practice in Indian Punjabi weddings of the groom taking the bride away from her parents’ house to his house and start their new life together, the characters in the film represent two lovers, or should I say one “male” and one “female” lover, because the difference shown in their actions when they are in love is huge. While the “female” lover is seen to be oppressed by her family and kept in shackles of domesticity with the imminent threat of an arranged marriage (all of which she silently and obediently adheres to as she is a “good girl”), the “male” counterpart is seen travelling across the world to rescue his lover in heroic showdowns with the woman’s family, all the while supported in this cause by his father. Thus, even in love men and women are not deemed to be equals and are placed in the stereotypical images of a hero and his damsel in distress. Also notice the two dominant characters in the story are the hero and the heroine’s father, not the woman herself. She is just a pawn in the fight of masculinity between these two figures, seen by both of them as a prize to be possessed and kept, and in the end given up by the father to the hero as a sign of defeat. The choice of the woman or her strengths, qualities and attributes play absolutely no part in the process. She is expected to live either under the dominance of her father or of her husband.

As per the view of our “progressive, enlightened and forward-looking” filmmakers of today, if this is what constitutes the fair representation of the sexes, then India has a long road ahead towards enlightenment.