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: Recall that eminently hummable jingle from a Bajaj bulb commercial, Jab Main chotta baccha tha…? Nothing great about it, except that the protagonist appeared to be 60-plus, singing peans about… no, not an Ayurvedic balm or a new dental service… but our everyday electric bulb.

In the final execution though, the creatives at Leo Burnett fell into the trap: the last sequence showed the gentleman sneaking into the kitchen to bite into the doctor-forbidden goodie, as his dismayed wife snaps on the overhead light.

Why is it that elders in our ads are always doing things forbidden? Else, they are always nitpicking, crabby and, if nothing else, dispensable.

How predictable! Just as predictable as those pranksters in Asian Paint commercial who declare they dig chocolates and not amle ka murabba, while pointing out different colours on the walls to the out-of-fashion grandma. Worse was Star Care’s ad that morphs a dead man with the tagline, “India’s biggest challenge/ Let’s shorten the queues…” The offending piece was purportedly made for an NGO, Population First, as part of a public awareness drive. To be sure, there are certain category of products, life insurance in particular, that lend themselves naturally to an older generation. Remember that SBI Life (O&M) ad that features an elderly couple, the lady at a sewing machine when the old man presents her with a diamond ring and the woman mumbles “is umar me kahan pehnungi heera.” Prompt comes gallant husband’s rejoinder, “Heerey ko kya pata tumhari umar.”

However, the point is, elders don’t make good subjects for admen because they—in general perception—don’t wield much influence in household purchases, except when it comes to personal things such as toothpastes or creams, or, and here comes the big surprise, when it’s a big-ticket purchase related to real estate.

These are indeed the findings of a Starcom Worldwide study commissioned to a Mumbai-based consumer diagnostic company, The Key. The main finding of the survey is that marketers in India perceive elders to be a “homogeneous, ailing, financially restricted group that is extremely resistant to the changing times.”

(See accompanying piece, “Different strokes”, on page 4 for details.)

One needs only look at the marketing or communication brief for any category or brand targeted at an average Indian household for proof. The demographic definition virtually ends at 45 or, at best 50 years.