Cadbury’s Kuch khaas hai advertisement is a perfect example of old wine in a new bottle. There was a time when brand stories were told in the form of interesting copies published in newspapers. This was replaced by video and now there is no dearth of either medium or media. With time, the art of story-telling has evolved and now stories are no longer created for just one platform or form of video, rather various renditions are made. Yet some would call it a lost art. “There are many lost arts. In today’s world, we don’t know what works anymore. People use the word ‘viral’ loosely and how and when people use which form of media or medium to consume content varies. The environment is very tricky and is very difficult to cut through the clutter,” R Balki, film-maker, told BrandWagon Online.
Kal Aaj Kal
The yesteryears were all about story-telling. Remember those quirky ads by Pidilite Industries for its adhesive brands – Fevicol and Fevikwik? One of the ads that perhaps has remained with us is the Fevicol bus ad which featured an overloaded bus carrying passengers in the desert. Interestingly, all passengers despite a bumpy ride, remained glued to the bus and did not fall off due to the presence of the adhesive brand on the bus. If we step back a few years in time, it is impossible to forget two of actor Aamir Khan’s ads. One is the Lehar Pepsi ad, ‘Got Pepsi’ featuring actors Mahima Chowdhary and Aishwarya Rai (now Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), and later a series of ‘Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola’ ads.
For Prasoon Joshi, chairman McCann WorldGroup Asia and CEO and CCO McCann Worldgroup India, the art of anything evolves and so is the case of story-telling. “We humans have been telling stories before the arrival of pen and paper. In fact, in India, we have had Shruti Parampara, and add to that courts of kings, which have storytellers for entertainment. These storytellers typically would build the narrative on the spot. So culturally India has been known for the art of storytelling including folklore,” Joshi explained.
The Indian advertising industry has gone through its grid. From long format ads on television to 30 seconds and even 10 seconds. But in and around 2014, many brands dabbled into the art of long-format storytelling with ads ranging between one and four minutes in duration. While the longer format was released on YouTube, the shorter version of these ads was released on television.
For instance, one such popular ad is Adani Wilmar’s ad for its oil brand Fortune featuring an old grandmother, who persistently brings home-cooked meals for her grandson who has been hospitalised. However, she is turned away by the nurse every day. On his birthday the grandmother brings a home-cooked meal once again, and this time a big tiffin for the nurse and a regular one for her grandson. The nurse reluctantly allows her to feed the grandson. The nurse eats the food cooked by the grandmother and enjoys it but does not allow her to feed the grandson. Next, day she succumbs to the request of the grandmother and allows her to feed him. The grandson who has been reluctantly eating so far, tries to grab the food and has it.
Industry experts believe that copywriters and creators will have to evolve with time and have to create solutions for all platforms and devices. “As the media landscape expands so does the mind. We can process much better today than what we could in another age. So dealing with more screens or multiple screens simultaneously, or multiple platforms, all of this is absorbed in us. But we’ve started forming impressions about channels once again and the era of choosing content over the platform is easing out. I believe brands have become channels too. So you know if you like what Cadbury puts out or what Coke puts out. And you drift towards their content,” Amer Jaleel, founder, Curativity (Alternative Brand Services Ecosystem), explained.
Back to the Future
So the question remains – if the era of classic storytelling is gone, is the role of advertising and marketing now restricted to just driving sales or lead generation? Naysayers say that even in the good old days, marketing was always expected to support sales and that role may have evolved but not changed. Now, the industry also has to tackle technology in the form of differing media and most importantly, generative artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT. For Joshi, it was celluloid that replaced copywriting, and this evolution is inevitable. With the advent of new tools, the question that has to be answered is whether these tools make one lazy or less imaginative.
So how should copywriters of this age deal with disloyal Gen-Z consumers? “It’s not that difficult! I don’t subscribe to the view that go live among them, do the things they do. Observe them minutely. Live on the Internet! Rubbish! Do that in the normal course. But if you watch the content that is put out today that too is part of the actual world you live in. Half your life is real life, you and your family and your friends and your workspace and your community. And half is what you watch! That’s a big part of not just your entertainment but your life. If you as the audience live there, I as a writer can also live there. That’s good enough for me to learn about you and write for you,” Jaleel explained.
All the industry experts agreed on one thing: A story can be told in any format – it is only the style of the craft that changes. “We’ve all seen a picture tell a story. That’s just one frame. We’ve watched a story being told in 10 seconds. Some call it a ‘thumbstopper’. A social post can tell a story. Long formats and short formats – both tell stories. A meme can tell a story. So can an e-mail, a letter or an SMS. A glance can tell a story. A story can have another story hidden inside. Our life is stories. It’s what we pass on to people. It’s the currency of life. Whatever the medium or format, when we exchange stories – as brands, people, community or society – we exchange meaning, learning and emotional currency,” Josy Paul, chairman and chief creative officer, BBDO India, said.