Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Now that's what I call a campaign!

This is pure brilliance! Well scripted. Simple, crisp yet comprehensive. And delivered adeptly in a style that only the Big B is gifted with.

2 comments:

Paresh said...

I heard this before I saw it and let me tell you... its a lot more powerful on just the spoken word. But yeah, i'll be damned if that's not a good campaign.

Zeenat Rasheed said...

Sorry to disagree with the crowd, but I'm not terribly impressed with this ad.

Perhaps I'm part of the "cynical India" but here are just a few of my beefs:

1) Amitabh doesn't sound half as good in English as he does in Hindi. He can't be guttural or passionate, he doesn't know how to make his face emote and match the words coming out of his mouth. The only time he sounds animated is when he's talking about India buying out companies rather than shunning them. While a very random, and somewhat crass, example to put in a speech such as this, it's the only time Amitabh is given the chance to illustrate change or injustice, which he's much better at doing than just talking theory.

2) This ad proves yet again that Indians just cannot write English that is meant to be spoken. The copy for this ad must have looked very impressive on paper, for Indians have a great grasp of the language and write it perhaps better than the Brits and Americans themselves. But once spoken, the words fall apart in a clunky and unconvincing sound, typical of Indian speechwriters.

Words like "precipice", "ravine" and "pulsating" are just not used in oratory - look to speeches by JFK, Dr. King, Winston Churchill and even Barack Obama, and you will see that in order to be effective and powerful, language doesn't need to be superfluous or arcane - it needs to be simple and direct, with the impact made by the driving idea behind it, not simply the words themselves.

Plus, if the purpose of this campaign is to try and appeal to the cynical Indians, presumably traditional puritan types, he's probably better off appealing to them in their native tongue (or the most generic of them, anyway - Hindi) rather than in the voice of the colonialists and metropolises. Also, it would be nice to hear a couple of ideas on how/why they should be less cynical and not just assume that lofty language will do the trick.

3) India Poised? Wasn't the debacle of "India Shining" enough in the last election? Certainly, the theme of this campaign is a lot more modest - suggesting that India is on the brink of greatness, rather than having achieved greatness already. Even so, they could have come up with something a little more unique so that the ad is not immediately linked with that time when the government showed a terrible lack of insight into the psyche of the true India.

Just a couple of thoughts. Welcome a discussion.