Had
we been a power surplus nation, our population would never have been
second largest in the world. The 1.2 billion could well have been just a
few millions. This is because a man’s desire for sex is inversely
proportional to availability of a TV set. At least that’s what Idea
Cellular’s new ad campaign tries to depict.
Taking
off from the widely-criticised utterance of Union Health Minister
Ghulam Nabi Azad that watching late night TV can help control
population, Idea depicts its 3G service as an alternative when a power
cut proves to be a kill joy.
3G
applications such as mobile TV, gaming, video calling and social
networking on “superfast” Internet can help keep the people entertained
and they would no longer be interested in their wives. “TV to Biwi” says
the voiceover as men across India get disappointed due to a power cut
and give lustful looks to their wives. None of the dutiful wives are
actually enthusiastic at the prospect of a rocking time even though more
women than men watch TV and hence should logically have higher levels
of boredom.
After
some shots of a rocking bed, the ad shows women with bulging stomachs
and more children sharing resources in the country. Enter Idea 3G and
people get busy with their mobiles watching TV, interacting through
Facebook or making video calls all of which leads to no new births.
The
new ad goes on to make fun of vasectomy. Two characters standing in
front of a vasectomy clinic declare, “Ab iski kya zaroorat hai” even
though the procedure is the best known long term means for birth
control. The commercial, developed by Idea’s creative agency Lowe, ends
with a tagline “No Abaadi, No Barbaadi”
However,
the creative directors forgot that mobile phones run on batteries which
need to be charged through electricity and using 3G services would only
squeeze up the batteries faster thus bringing people back to square one
in case of a power cut.
In fact, the Idea officials feel the ad, one of their “champion ideas”, will bring in a social change.
“This
time, the Champion idea is 3G which has a strong entertainment appeal,
and has been designed to resonate with the larger audience, on a
critical subject that looms large on the country,” Sashi Shankar, Chief
Marketing Officer, IDEA Cellular, is quoted as saying on the company’s
website. The 3G service is relatively a new mobile service which is why
we still need to wait till the next census before handing over the
“social change” award to the company.
Idea,
it seems, is no stranger to such a misrepresentation of facts. Its
other “champion ideas” have also been bereft of logic. The ‘Use Mobile,
Save Paper’ campaign propagated use of mobile phones to reduce
consumption of paper and hence fewer trees to be cut.
The
ad failed to mention the e-waste generated by mobile phones. Made up of
non-biodegradable plastic, chemicals and metal, these toys of
communication are not all green. Moreover, they also don’t run on clean
energy. The telecom sector burns subsidised and highly polluting diesel
to power its mobile network towers. In fact, Greenpeace is currently
running a campaign against sector leader Airtel so that it shifts to
renewable energy for running its lakhs of network towers. In addition,
the batteries used by mobile phones need to be charged with electricity
which is generated through coal, hydro or nuclear power.
While
coal needs to be mined out by clearing acres of forests,
hydroelectricity disrupts the water bodies and surrounding ecologies.
Paper production from pulp would actually pale in comparison to the
cumulative and long term sins of mobile industry.
The
mood of both the ads remain light and humorous, but the fact that the
company has high hopes from its campaigns mandates that we also take
them seriously and hence put them under scientific scrutiny. Sadly,
they fail to live up to the expectations.
This write up was first published at www.thehoot.org/
