Washing maketh woman?

Detergent advertising has reached new highs - or new lows - depending how you look at it. The last ad for Surf Excel was trying to sell us the idea: "Daag acche hai ".

Yeah, right.

This particular ad seemed to have been giving the following brief: Housewives love cute kids. Find two such specimens and build some story. After all, it worked for Pepsodent ...

So you have a little girl who stains her dress by walking through a puddle. And a little boy 'hitting' the puddle to punish it for spoiling the girl's dress - in the process becoming quite a mess himself. Cho chweet no?

It's the 'daag accche hai' line at the end that's hard to stomach. It's no fun getting your favourite clothes stained, and never will be!

Are you washsome, tonight?
Of course, it is tough being a brand manager of a detergent. You have to produce 30 seconds of brand communication to air in the ad breaks during K serials. Year after year. Even though you have nothing new to communicate...

Everything that could be said about the benefits of cleanliness and daaglessness has been. Husband ka promotion, society mein izzat, bachche ka future - all the demons have already been invoked.

I have a little bit of inside info on the world of detergents. In those days the 'Bombay 1' unit handled all the Lever's business and was regarded simultaneously as the most prestigious. But it was a somewhat interesting time as Ariel had just been launched and Surf had a fight on its hands. Personally, I was an Ariel fan - it had made the washing of clothes so much easier than the traditional ragadte raho method. This experience came to me when i started to wash my own clothes.

I had read somewhere in the Ariel campaign itself about the attributes of a survey the company conducted. A survey conducted to make aware the growing consumer about the new ways of washing and the health concerns related to it. Of course, a new innovation by a detergent company to establish itself amongst the minds of the maturing Indian consumer. There were 17 'wash attributes'. Cleans... Whitens... Keeps clothes bright... Keeps clothes like new... Removes stains easily... Removes tough stains... Gentle on hands... Keeps husband faithful ...

 Going by the fanatic devotion wives in detergent ads have traditionally had towards whiteness and brightness, I'm thinking there has to be a deeper, primeval reason. People love to hate advertising, and they call it purposeless without realising that they are buying into it!


Coming to "daag acchche hain", it was a refreshing departure from the age old cliche "white is good, clean is good" etc. If you need to make a difference and do good things, you need to get your hands dirty, right? So Surf Excel said just that: go ahead, get dirty. It told mothers that getting dirty doesn't mean your kid has been up to no good - he's just living his childhood. It's almost an anti-detergent thought! And who better than a powerful detergent like Surf Excel to give you that confidence to let your kid get dirty! Now isn't that confidence and peace of mind something mothers will want to buy into???? Its not targeting youth and its plainly appreciating the joy of being a child and that dirt is a part of childhood so get on with it!!!

The insight for the latest Surf campaign is completely different. It is part of a global 'Dirt is good' campaign. The whole thought there is that kids love to play and get themselves dirty. That's part of growing up and in this increasingly mechanised world, encouraging kids to play, exercise thier imagination, get dirty and therefore more immune and resistant, is perhaps the best way to help them grow.

Actually Persil had a similar ad campaign in England. The ad showed kids in the normal 'growing up activites' and generally getting clothes dirty. The catch phrase goes somethign like 'its not dirt'.
The idea, i believe is just to say that kids will be kids - they WILL get clothes dirty, but a housewive need not worry because Persil will clean them anyways. If you think about it the theme does strike a cord - it talks about how a major worry for housewives need not be a worry anymore.

The idea is not to say 'dirt is good' but that 'dirt is no longer a problem' - and maybe thats what Surf Excel is trying to communicate.Yeah, and the mother of all such ads was the Nirma one that used to come earlier in my schooldays. Kind-o got on your nerves, right?

Actually this kind of "dirty is good" stuff has been done before - Recall a washing machine ad which celebrated kids getting dirty - and another where assorted people willfully get dirty - and Sunlight in some countries worked on the premise - "an invitation to get dirty"

Well..the discussion about the 'detergents n soaps' are incomplete without mentioning the classic "iski sari meri sari se safed kaise..". I dont understand how could that commercial make an impact on women, when white sari wasn't a famous choice as it represented something else. "iski sari meri sari se bright kaise" ..yeh hota to baat samajh mein bhi aati kuch ..!!! 
 

The worst part about detergents and toothpastes today is that they have special microscopic Oxocholoroflourocarbohydratoneuroprotono molecules which pass through even the toughest little knots in twined network of the cloth (for toothpastes it is those miniscule caverns between two teeth but that they manage to penetrate through) and pulverize the dust particles. I don't even understand why they are given sobriquets like Power boosters, White Washers. As far as the chemistry lessons in class X have taught me, detergents can have the simplest chemicals in the right proportion to remove the stains. I wonder which planet these manufacturers drop from. And talking about bristle design on brushes, every other brand has joined the bandwagon claiming a new effective design. I wonder how all the old ones fail as soon as the new ones enter the market.

Wonder if Marilyn Monroe's problem might have been not using the right detergent. Maybe gentlemen really prefer whites. With fresh lemony fragrance.

Splogger's Park

The latest in spam trends a while ago was 'spim' (spam on IM). Now it's 'splogs' (spam blogs). What's more these blogs have some kind of automated bot which goes and adds authentic sounding but totally irrelevant comments to genuine blogs.

Dunno if the word 'sploggets' exists but it sounds apt to describe spam blog comments!

The intriguing thing is unlike spam mail there is actually an attempt to 'personalise' and make the spam sound like a comment from a real person. Check these samples:

Hi good blog! I'm gonna bookmark for future reference. I have a pet supply chicago site/blog. It pretty much covers pet supply chicago related stuff. Come and check it out if you get time :-)

Well you obviously have not read my blog or you'd know I live 3000 miles from The Windy City!!!

Bloggs are such a wonderful way to plublish ones thoughts. Thanks for letting me visit and leave a comment. Link to Low carb diet store.

I let you visit? That's news! The spelling mistakes are a nice 'bozo' touch.

My boss doesn't want me to surf on company time, but I had to check out your blog and leave my comment. I think you've done a good job on it. I hope you don't mine if I use some of your ideas on my own blog about engine information marketing niche search.

Flattery gets creative - still doesn't work coz anyone who's blogging has the brains to know a real person didn't write that!

What'd'yu do 'bout it
Someone wrote about the attack of the 'splogs' a week ago and suggested users of blogger go to the comments section and add a 'word verification' option. That's a great idea - I shall do it right away.

The moral of the story is that whenever any medium becomes slightly popular you have unwanted marketing intruding on that space. In the case of the internet it's not only unwanted but random and untargeted since it's 'free'.

Spam - even with a .02 % response rate may have worked with email - since every old idiot uses email. But I don't think it will work on blogs because it's still a more elite and IQ driven universe.

Afterthought: Has Google Adsense worked for any of you? I signed up but never actually inserted the code since I couldn't figure out how it might make me money... I have never clicked on an Adsense banner myself.

This is not a matter of principle or anything. It's just that the ads served on Indian blogs - the ones I read more often - are pretty uninteresting. That could change with time, of course.

As of now, the only way I see the cash pouring in is via 'click cartels'. Like I noticed on a popular blog references to MASAT: Mutual Adsense Amukkum treaty...

Comments spam is a big problem, most blogs have put in filters etc. My blog is off-google so doesnt get spam (doesnt get traffic too, but thats another story).

Regarding Google ad-sense, I guess everybody signed up, but it's like the old time ad banners, nobody gets paid.

But Time of India obviously likes it, their main page has several google ads. But they probably wanted to keep the experience consistant with the print edition... search for news needle, in the ads haystack.

Splog comments are probably a prick in a blogger's post. I wonder why they are still trying. If it's the link that they're trying to add / clutter so that they rake better on Google, they've lost it already. Because Google initiated an industry wide "nofollow" attribute which is widely adopted by most popular blog software and services. Look up your source under comments. All href links in the comments are rel="nofollow" attributed.

Perhaps there are bots who do this kind of thing... Program how many "splicks" (spam clicks) you want and watch the $ pouring in. But hark, Big Brother Google has probably figured that out - and is watching!