Enough has been written from the time of David Ogilvy on the art of writing in advertising. There has also been the constant debate about long copy and short copy, as also the worry that consumers don?t read advertisements which have too much copy.
The desire to make everything in life visually appealing has also impacted advertising, and that, to my mind, is the biggest threat to the craft of writing in advertising. This group, The Indian Express, has, for years, communicated through advertisements which said a lot. Only because there was a lot to say. Consumers don?t like reading if what they are told to read is irrelevant. But their curiousity needs to be satiated through advertising which is compelling and tells a story.
It is this story that is sadly missing in Indian advertising today. More than the craft itself, it is the singular lack of understanding the art of compelling story-telling which we have replaced with pithy slogans, often in the vernacular – or, worse still, in Hinglish. You can have fusion food, but fusion thought can have severe repercussions!
It is this art that needs to be revived, much as the art of good writing itself. I don?t see many advertisements which one wants to tear out and pin up on a soft-board, but I do remember a time when we used to do it. The recent campaign for TCS was story-telling at its best. And it worked.
This whole reading thing itself is a fallacy, besides being illogical. We are increasingly becoming a ?reading? society: there is more to read, more email to send, more information to send and absorb, so why on earth do we leave advertising so stark and bereft of any craft? I guess this age of SMSing will slowly destroy whatever language and writing skills may exist and that will have its eventual impact on an industry which is a combination of both, the visual and the written.
But there needs to be a closer examination of the drivel that is often thrown up by research agencies and wisened clients who believe the hurries of the world have afflicted every single consumer. They then establish a self-serving logic which suggests that since consumers are in a hurry, give them something quick and easy. But have we ever pondered over the fact that any Indian consumer takes at least five times as much time to buy things than his western counterpart?
We, in our country, have more textbooks per person than any other in the world. We spend more time reading than most other peoples of the world do. We have the largest number of newspapers; the largest amount of magazines; the largest number of even business dailies. So, where do these assumptions of ?low-reading propensity? emerge from? Why would we begin to make this mistake of robbing advertising of its soul? And the soul is the written word.
The art of writing must run concurrent to the art of reading. One needs the other to co-exist, so if one does exist, why do we want to eject the other from that ultimate communication business, advertising? And, why would we do that even in categories where the thirst for knowledge is as great as it should be: travel, automobiles, housing, etc? These are high-value categories, and need a craft of writing that enables the consumer to make choices. But that will only happen if we are able to wrap it in a craft that is both arresting and stimulating.
It is this re-invention that the business of advertising must seek. And do so quickly before the dying embers are quickly replaced by garishly painted hoardings that scream slogans which need twisted linguistics to comprehend!
The writer is CEO, Equus Redcell