Tracing Tata Sky’s Advts and a review of their latest ad – Active Darshan

There are times when you are so impressed/depressed that you have that impulsive urge to pen down your emotions. I dedicate my first blog in this forum to – Tata Sky Active (TSA) Darshan TVC.

Coming from Chennai, the first city where CAS was implemented,  I totally understand the need for a set top box. The product offers (or claims to offer) the viewers better control of what they want to watch and provides an opportunity to the price sensitive Indian consumer to choose his offering. Another possible pitch could be that consumers were deprived of certain genre  of channels (mainly sports and axn star movies types) and hence based on a particular event(cricket world cup et al) you could position your product and come up with promotions to initiate product purchase.

If you look at TSA’s initial ad, they started off with this campaign during the World cup: The famous grass man. They then added the celebrity element in the form of Hrithik Roshan and combined celebrity pull and reason to buy(cricket world cup) to come up with another ad. To increase sales before the cricket season was over the came up with an offer to watch cricket finals in Hrithik’s private theatre.

From then on they have been coming out with almost one campaign every month!! I found most of them sensible or alteast was neutral towards them. There was one in October 2007 which exaggereated the functionalities of Tata Sky. Then came their festive season ads with prominent South Indian Film personality Kushboo endorsing tata Sky during Diwali. This I think was their first entry into regional ads. There was one particular ad during the Diwali season which was very impressive. I felt that the ad encapsulated the product, the festive spirit of Diwali and also tried conveying this in a lighter note thro animation.

In 2008, after becoming the fastest DTH provider to reach 50m subscriptions, in a move to increase the base further, they reduced their prices and this set of a new set of ads in the months of Feb. In March, they then targeted the family segment and tried conveying that Tata Sky brings families together and stuff. I think their string of bad ads started sometime now. Their ads became more and more boring and informational without any touch of interest generation or creativity.  In April they started another campaign with the same theme of family togetherness but this time around stressing on the fact that you can learn while you watch.

I think that they began with a two pronger approach this year. 1- They wanted to reduce prices and increase sales and 2 – they wanted to target families. Unfortunately almost all of thier ads in the family segment have fallen flat and fail to leave any impression whatsoever. Comparitively thier price drop ads have decent recall ( Is it cos most of the price drop ads have good recall?). But I think the last straw was the ad which made me write their ramayana – The Active Darshan ad.

“Ghar me Tata Sky aayega to acche Samskaar bhi aayenge” – What a selling proposition. Insnt there any limit to such a thing called exaggeration. The type of situations that they have chosen to convey this message add insult to injury. A group of college guys taking pics of a gal and then a guy has a long look (close to drooping) and then with a sigh of desperation he says “yeh paap hai”!!!  and that realization stuck him cos he watched tata sky with his family. Now isnt it bad to even take such photos? Isnt it against your samskaar? So should I have tata sky and tata Indica as my family car to get the entire SamsCAR range? Beats me.

Next, a business transaction, the boss is damn pissed and asks the guy so whats your take..(Reminded me of brandman presentations), that guy gives gyaan by quoting lines from the Bhagavad Gita. I am sure that even a consultant could have given a better answer .

Ok, there has to be something that i liked about that ad. And that is – The “aura of enlightenment” which they had created behind the sofa using a spotlight . But then if this is what I can recall after watching the ad, I wonder if the advt agency really knew what it was doing.

I feel that the quality of TSA ads have been heading south at great speed(one ad a month) and hopefully they will apply the brakes before they crash.

Sex – Are we thinking straight?

This has been bugging me for quite sometime now.. What is sex?

In Hinduism Kama (materialistic living which includes sex) is one among the four paths suggested in Hinduism to merge with Brahman or to escape from rebirth (Moksha). Most olden temples contain figures depecting postures or some sexual content. The Kings who built this temple mighty well know the purpose of the temple and the sacredness attached to it. I am also convinced that most of them would have undergone the gurukula kind of education where they would have read the scriptures and other vedas. Given all this if they had to build such figures..then isnt there something wrong with our vision of sex?

Incidentally when I was visiting the Konark Sun temple, I was amazed at the amount of sexual content presen out there in the form of sculptures. It is said that the king had all postures described in the Kamasutra depicted via those sculptures. By the way, what about Kamasutra..  the word Sutra means – The source or Origin of Dharma – the source of the teachings, the source of the practise & the source of meaning or significance. It is said that Shiva’s gatekeeper Nandi (the Bull) overheard sex lessons ( sorry for trivialsing the whole thing) given by Shiva to parvati and lo and behold Kamasutra was born. If there was a culture which allowed such a thing then why is it a taboo to talk about sex..

Taking the argument further.. we all know that every king had his own “andhapuram”. Often high socials such as kings and royal concords had concubines and houses called “Andhapuram” or “Harem” as in middle-east (Islam). In hindu societies concubines is the norm; in muslim societies more than one wives is the norm; and in christian societies, massage clubs and escorts are the norms. So where did we pick up this concept of Sex being a wrong thing to talk about or discuss or even undertake?… Stretching the argument, I would say that Sex was an art form just like dancing, singing et al. The kings encouraged the art form and there were people who perfected the art form.

India is considered as the birthplace of Hinduism and once upon a time there was such an open view of sex in this culture and now… Fashion shows are booed.. Sex movies are sold under some lame pretext and most ironically.. prostitution(come on its not a bad word..) is illegal!!! Man… have we actually grown up or to use the right word… EVOLVED?  Haven t we lost the plot somewhere along the line?  If yes, how many of our rights and wrongs are actually founded? At a more basic level.. what is right and what is wrong? Think..and I think that sex helps your though process!!

Note:

1. Disclaimer: The above post is based on a few google searches and hence exactness of the information (not the thought) is questionable.

2. How many of had alteast a tinge of negative thought when you read the heading? That actually answers how SCREWED up our thought process is…

3. The last sentence is an untested hypothesis