The Cave Paintings of Our Time

Advertisement, as Ad guru Alyque Padamsee once observed, are the cave paintings of our time. In an India where ‘two minutes’ could mean anything from ‘right now’ to an eternity (or even a bowl of noodles), it so happens that the commercials most worthy of such everlasting honour of late have been for time pieces. For watches, to be specific—those marketed by Titan Industries. This is a company that has held its own against fancy foreign brands for over 20 years and seems to have such a good grasp of domestic sensibilities that its broad leadership of India’s market goes virtually unchallenged. In an age of hyper competition, this is remarkable.

But then, Titan was never in the business of selling time pieces to begin with. As its first managing director, the late Xerxes Desai, had foreseen in the early 1990s, the wristwatch has all but lost its purpose as a time keeper. The objective of coordination with others, he held, was better served by a network, with time centrally kept and common to all, something that telecom services have come to display on millions of handsets in the years since. Titan, thus, has always been in the soft business of selling style. The stuff that never goes out of fashion, as they say.

That is a somewhat more complex business than making high-accuracy devices that tell IST, GMT or whatever. It involves reaching out to people, getting into their mindspace and identifying with them. It calls for an intimacy that goes well beyond rational appeal. And on this, Titan’s ads not only seem to get closer and closer to people as they evolve, like works of art on prehistoric walls, they also tell us something real about their lives.

As exhibit A, consider this popular commercial for Titan Raga, a brand of watches for women. Crafted by the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, the adfilm features Katrina Kaif, eyes aglow, oozing ooh-la-la charm as she offers wedding advice while getting all decked up in bridal finery:

“Don’t get married kyunki
tumhare saare dost married hain,
Yaa iss liye ki tum aunties ke
sawaalon se pareshaan ho.
Don’t get married kyunki
Valentine’s day pe lonely lagta hai.
Don’t get married kyunki chhoti behen
bhi line mein hai.
Ya yeh sochke ki old age mein company milegi.
Don’t get married kyunki, ‘Phir maa
kab banogi?’
Don’t get married kyunki ex-boyfriend ki
shaadi ho rahi hai—yeh toh bilkul mat karna.
Toh phir, when is the right time to get married?
When you find the one who
deserves your time…”

“Titan Raga,” the actress ends, her voice a near whisper of poetic self-affirmation, “Khud se naya rishta.” A new relationship with one’s self. Hmmm… It has been aired on TV channels, but at the rate at which it’s raking up ‘views’ on YouTube, it will probably end up reaching a few million more than its media target. Titan’s real challenge, however, has been at the premium end of the market. In 2006, India’s top watch marketer launched its ‘Swiss-made’ brand Xylys—to “address the discerning globalised customer”, in the words of its current managing director Bhaskar Bhat. The kind of fellow who’s exposed to all manner of swish watches that have long held sway over the global market for stylewear, but is open to any brand he can call his own.

Exhibit B, thus, is a TV commercial for Xylys. Conceived by an ad agency called Famous Innovations, this one has Farhan Akhtar as Mr Hyper Active. In a voice reminiscent of Richard Dreyfus’ in Apple’s famous ‘Think Different’ campaign of 1997, the director-turned-actor gives us an alternate take on time:

“Working nine to five, but first five to nine.
Putting in a few hours more,
for a few seconds less.
Chewed our pencils.
Last night’s take-on pill, tonight’s midnight oil.
That time between dreaming… and creating.
The space between nothing… and everything.
Where boundaries are challenged.
And the 25th hour is made.
And while the world may say there are only
so many minutes in a day…
There are a few who know better.

‘Stay Inspired’ is the brand’s sign-off, but the voice that lingers on is of a female vocalist, a spaced-out singer whose Adele-like Time Doesn’t Know track wafts its way into the ad’s narrative between ‘dreaming’ and ‘creating’. It’s hypnotic, mesmeric enough to draw one into another zone altogether.

A well made audio-visual commercial can leave a long lasting impression. But some of the most arresting cave art would perhaps always be the kind that stays still. The kind that grants one’s gaze the luxury of time to look again and marvel at leisure. Among the most striking ads in print lately has been a surprise from Frédérique Constant: the one for its Devanagari Script watch. Its dial is a work of beauty. Its ‘4’, especially elegant.

adfilmsAdvertisementscave artKatrina KaifOgilvy & MatherTitan