The word blog, I just realised, rhymes with slog.

Having just declared “I am going to go right back to blogging again”, I can see what a lot of hard work and commitment it takes to be a regular blogger. And yet the world is full of writers, who aren’t even actual writer writers, merrily blogging on, churning out in 400-words or so, ‘Dear Diary’ entries for the whole wide world to enjoy.

I remember the first time we heard the word blog, wondering uneasily if it was some kind of monster or a form of bodily discomfort. Turns out the origins of the word ‘blog’ owes its roots to an American Jorn Barger, as way back as 1997, who came up with the word weblog—to describe ‘logging the web’ as he surfed. Then Peter Merholz  broke up the word weblog to we blog, more as a joke --rendering it at once into not just a new–age noun but a verb as well. And that was in 1999.

And then arrived handy blogging techie tools to make it all a breeze for millions of wannabe authors, closet journos, and secret scribes, making it possible for anyone to become a published writer, instantly. I have just read that there are more than 8 million blogs online, and that a new blog is created every 8 seconds. (ie in the time it took to write the last sentence, another blogger was born). And I am sure most of us can’t remember when exactly the word blogging casually entered our lives, much like googling and tweeting.

Well I now have my second book out, ‘Runaway Writers’. I was told by a friend from the digital community recently, “Now that you are launching a new book, you better start a blog site at once…” I realised with a jolt that I did in fact already have one. Just sitting there in cyberspace. (It’s much like an automatic chappati-maker we all wish to buy when we see it on TV, and then realise we already actually have one , bought several years ago, sitting quietly  in our kitchen closet).

So I am now taking my blog out of the closet where it has languished for a few years, un-up dated, un-read,  rapidly uploading a few of my earlier writings to make it alive and breathe again , and start the slog again...

 I mean blog...

[The Hindu] Empow(d)ered woman

‘Touch the Pickle’ for sanitary pads directly addressed and defied a ridiculous Indian taboo that a girl who has her periods should never touch the pickle jar, as it would cause its contents to rot.

Earlier, if an Indian woman was seen coming out of the closet, it was usually with some cleaning implements in hand; to make the floor sparkle and shine — before her husband brought his muddied boots home from the office. Now, it is to declare her sexual preference, not her floor-cleaner preference. Jai ho, Indian advertising!

Even as the recent Myntra commercial sold clothes woven around a story of two women (deeply in love with dressing, and each other), came the news of a shattering of glass ceilings; a noise heard around the world of international advertising. India had won the Cannes Grand Prix for a P&G campaign: The Glass Lion for addressing gender inequality and prejudices.

This brand new category created quite a buzz at Cannes, the ultimate award show celebrating the best of advertising from around the world. India, rife with gender inequalities and stereo types, seemed a happy Lion-hunting ground, and had some worthy contenders for this most coveted prize. And win India did — not once; but twice, with two path-breaking ideas for P&G.

‘Touch the Pickle’ for sanitary pads directly addressed and defied a ridiculous Indian taboo that a girl who has her periods should never touch the pickle jar, as it would cause its contents to rot. The phrase was a war-cry to challenge many other hushed no-nos that we in India know so well: don’t enter the kitchen, don’t play vigorous sports, don’t enter a temple. This provocative insight by Creative head Josy Paul’s team at BBDO, Mumbai, was the core idea that freed sanitary pads from coy references to ‘those four days’, not to mention doing away with the mandatory brand-demo every client insists on putting in; (undoubtedly confusing a lot of ignorant males that girls ‘bleed blue’ once a month).

The Indian win was even more creditable as it beat the Internet favourite #Likeagirl campaign from the American sanitary pad brand Always. After winning the Facebook Award just a week earlier, Likeagirl somehow paled into an already-heard-that-one idea. To the jury (eight women, two men) of the Glass Lions Award, ‘Touch the Pickle’ must have scored high on quaintness and Third-World charm, even as they exclaimed to the press: “This is a gender issue that impacts every single woman worldwide, it’s innovative and disruptive, entertaining and engaging…” They were also referring to the huge body of work supporting the idea — from TEDx talks to stand-up comedy routines — that made Whisper shout it out for young girls. (Curiously, not against male prejudice, but women themselves — elder women perpetuating age-old meaningless customs, despite suffering so much themselves as teenagers.) True, not one of those modern upper-class girls depicted in the ad would’ve even heard about that pickle superstition; but the insight became a curious catch-phrase to build up a huge ‘movement’ around the brand. The results were stunning too: Whisper’s share of voice went up from 21 per cent to a remarkable 91 per cent.

And then lightning struck twice in the same place: BBDO won for fighting gender bias — again! This time, not that strike of lightning we know so well telling us how to get whiter whites but a detergent brand that put laundry advertising in a new spin altogether.

The main TV commercial shows a very real-life drama unfold, even in the most liberated of Indian homes. An elderly lady comments on how far working women have come, and even shares with her friend, the fact that her daughter-in-law earns more than her son — said with a hint of pride, and no prejudice. Even if the commercial had ended right there, it would’ve been a strong message to society that it’s ok for a woman to earn more, even the son’s mother doesn’t have an ego problem… Just as we are silently applauding the moment, we hear an interaction between the daughter-in-law, busy with her laptop, and her banian-clad husband. “Why didn’t you wash my green shirt yesterday, yaar?” asks he, in mild annoyance. Three women turn very slowly to look at the man. In the moment of profound silence that follows, comes the sledge-hammer of a thought: Why is laundry only a woman’s job? Silence. Ariel. #ShareTheLoad.

It is easy to understand how this ad resonated with every member of the jury, even without cultural contexting. In 90 per cent of urban Indian households, laundry is considered a woman’s job — not just for ensuring promotions at work for the husband, or an impromptu dance with the adoring slave-wife, as she puts out the tightie-whities to dry. Housewives almost always operate the washing machines…as many men, it appears, who so love the knobs and touch-screens of their cars and music systems, can’t figure out the dials of washing machines, and anyway who has the time to separate coloureds and whites and dainties. Perhaps a dirty secret of even first-world Western households…

In a witty ad campaign that uses humour rather than strident berating, P&G pushed guilt-struck males into sharing the load, and even earn bragging rights, by blogging about it in a contest that took off like a washed handkerchief in the wind. Extensions of this huge core idea found their way to celeb fashion designers endorsing their labels, quite literally: “Can be washed by both men & women’’ said the label at the collar. Next, the most watched-space for young men and women was hit too, with Ariel. “Will you Share the Load of household chores with your partner” appeared on online Matrimonial websites. A moment for reflection for every male chauvinist contemplating marriage, for sure.

The banter-with-a-serious message continued with encounters with newly wed celebrity couples. The message Share the Load, percolated to many other household chores. The dabbawallahs of Mumbai carried the message on their shirts, even as they delivered lunch-boxes (lovingly filled by the wife at home, perhaps). But even as one senses the fun the agency must’ve had coming up with this good-humoured washing of dirty linen in public, the dazzling results came in: sales registered an increase of 60 per cent as women must have added Ariel Matic to their shopping cart to further remind the man of the house that it’s not about who wears the pants but who washes them too.

Cannes awards apart, we can look back on the past year and recollect a number of gender-benders that have hash-tagged their way to fame. Havells had ideas as endless as their gadgets. One laugh-out loud example: at a girl-seeing-ceremony, the mommy-ji laments that her darling phoren-returned son seeking a wife suffers so much in his bachelor life abroad, stepping out even for coffee. Thump! The defiant girl firmly places her coffee-maker before the startled boy, saying take this one and settle down, no visa problem either; as she herself wants to be a wife, not a kitchen appliance. Havells#Respectforwomen. Undoubtedly!

The much-hailed Titan Raga went on from its widow re-marriage theme, to showing poised single women moving with the times, despite running into ex-lovers at airports making dumb observations (“we could’ve made it work, if only you’d quit working”). Nimrit Kaur’s amused rejoinder said it for all of us who encounter retrograde male attitudes.

The Airtel wife-who’s actually-the-boss. The Bournvita competitive mom. The Fastrack convention-defying teen. The HDFC parent-supporting daughter. The Sofy imnotdown Gal.

What a different face of the woman of today! One wonders if planners in ad agencies arrive for work with a checklist in hand, ready to pin their next advertising message on a sharp arrow that carries a gender issue shooting out of TV screens. Well, we’ve had them push the pay-packet envelope already with the Ariel ad, but why, wonders my friend in advertising, didn’t they push that Whisper insight to a far edgier level than the rather unheard-of but cute ‘Touch the Pickle’ superstition? Isn’t ‘Enter the temple’ the more real and prevalent issue to highlight?

Meanwhile, it is refreshing to take the conversation away from the clichéd fairness creams and powders that once represented the empowered woman. Or the ‘empow(d)ered’ woman, as a wag put it. With gender-fighting enzymes and ego-boosting enhancers, Indian advertising is firmly keeping stride with today’s aware Indian woman.

Indu Balachandran is the author of Don’t Go Away, We’ll Be Right Back: The Oops and Downs of Advertising. Email is indubee8@yahoo.co.in

The article  was featured on http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/indu-balachandran-on-the-bold-new-face-of-women-in-indian-advertising/article7460411.ece

Interview- Laughs From The MAd World: An Interview with Indu Balachandran

Here is an interview I had done with dialabook.in..

Indu Balachandran is hot, happening and full of breeze! Author of a barely three month old book on the quirks and adversities of a mad life that is already a bestseller running into reprint, her quick prose dazzles with gentle humor and 29 year old wisdom from having worked her way up in one of India’s top ad agencies, as she elbows us with her crafty blueprint of “making it” in that luminous land of advertising. Smarter than a Dummy’s guide, and lighter than newsreel, Indu’s wild experiences at JWT (formerly HTA) inspire her debut book chronicling the best job in the world, not just because of the money but also because “work is synonymous with fun and people are never found in the (ad) agency way past 10:45 am because they were busy catching up with work, because they were too busy all day having fun, or rather it’s synonym work… so they took time off for some work…sorry fun, and that is why they were so late arriving for fun, in other words work.”

Peppered in frolic Indu cracks down on the yuppy hierarchy in ad agencies, effortlessly seizing every living ad caricature she has met, baring for us the poor vulnerable souls of Creative (bedraggled copywriters and art directors of both pre-Mac and post I-pad eras), the traumatized Client servicers and account executives, Planners and tiara flashing Media men and women (from Planet Hollywood) among several others. She breaks open and closes every straitjacket in the business of advertising, proving to us there are no superheroes, only super-teams on super-steroids. The Copywriter, however, does remain the consistent butt of all jokes and affection, who, through all his/her hard work, laziness, and good times and bad, chants feverishly “Give us this day our daily, multi-grain, nutria soft, ezee digest, super crust, vitamin enriched bread.“ The ensuing empathy and reality, “For every high flying Creative Director traipsing off to Brazil to judge entries for an award show, there are about 7328 humble copywriters trying to write a sales conference AV script for a rubber lined gasket or a fuel injection pump. Or… administering vitamin pills to the client’s depressed sales force.”

This book is a fond reminiscence, but mostly a hail funny look at the goggle eyed workforce of eccentrics, jokers, nerds, sleazepots, and above all dreamers. “Advertising is the only non-criminal human activity that allows you to make a living off your character defects, which usually include pride, anger, gluttony, lust, sloth, greed and envy”! Alight these pages guilt-free, vacuous, and help yourself to anecdotes and delectable potshots at the people we love to hate. Indu has given us, what every aspiring, current or former young ad professional wants to know: What does it take to succeed (or survive?) in the Attention Deficit world of Advertising. This slim digest of 100% Tao is both intimate and objective at once, with energy so textually manicured and yes, meticulous! Read on, to identify your stereotype better than any Facebook quiz on what’s your ad personality. Be it acronyms, acrimony, or jargon, the death is in the detail, as CANNES (CERTIFIED AWARD NABBERS, a category of defensive, award obsessed Creative Directors) assume tall tones like “Conceptually the copy is turgid, but consciously so, because the undulating greens in the visual need a holistic counterpoint.”

A verbal cartoonist with crackling insights on every aspect of the industry, Indu leaves you rolling on the floor laughing your pants off while still inside your head, dizzy even with the unbearable lightness of being an agency outsider, or worse, insider, a has been or a will be, as you scour these pages of her MAd ex love.

This week we sneaked up on former advertising professional and eco travel writer Indu Balachandran, who hands us a boisterous script of the ad world in her first book Don’t Go Away We’ll be Right back: The Oops and Downs of Advertising.

What a Title!!!
The words “Don’t Go Away, We’ll Be Right Back,” uttered every single day, just before a commercial break all over the world, is actually a cunning way to remind people about this Book! Which means glamorous talk show hosts like Oprah and Simi, funny men like Jay Leno, even respected news presenters like Pronnoy Roy, all say this phrase for me— completely free of cost. How’s that for some clever, un-paid-for advertising…

From copy trainee to executive creative director… all in 29 years. Are all these years encapsulated in your book? Is this the bible to surviving faux pas in the advertising world?

There are some characters and observations in the Book that I remember from my first year as a trainee in HTA Delhi (now JWT). So yes, it is a happy recall of many years of being in a charged, idea-rich environment, where a remarkable set of talents come together. Besides, I am also a compulsive scribbler of ‘wit as it happens’ aka the ridiculous (oxymoronic) things people say at meetings. For example: The client who says, “I’d like to see some fresh, innovative ideas that have been tried and tested many times…” Or this angry reaction when a great campaign is rejected: “The client changed his mind again!” “Yeah, but the new one doesn’t work any better…” Priceless stuff!
When I first started writing about some of the loony ways we advertising guys work and talk, I found lots of readers from other agencies say, this is EXACTly what happens in my agency too. And even though it wasn’t really the intention, some said it made them stop and think about their work quite a bit: the inordinate amounts of time we waste on pointless stuff at meetings, the play-safe clichés we keep on using for ads, and all the eccentric nutcases we have to put up with, just because they are ‘creative people’… So if there’s any such thing as “Laugh Your Way to The Top” then my Book has a dubious, higher purpose as an advertising manual!
It’s purpose is also to make those in advertising ‘see themselves’ and make those who left the profession recall an enjoyable time of their lives, and for the newbies—give a realistic picture of the madness, mayhem and excitement, without scaring them away.

Was advertising a conscious choice for you as a youngster when people had more conventional career options?

I think I’ve always wanted do writing… thanks to a Dad who was pretty amazing with wordplay. He got us Mad Magazine from abroad years before anyone in India had even heard of them. He got us “The Golden Trashery of Ogden Nash-ery” filled with brilliant nonsense rhymes. Even though we never knew there was such a thing as an Ad Agency, I did dream about writing the world’s shortest short stories: birthday cards which start with an intriguing line on the cover… and end with a twist on the inside. I used to write these all the time for friends through school and college. All sound practice for writing pithy stories for 30 second ads, I guess!

Tell us any personal favorite dreaded or bizarre “Oops” and “Downs” of the ad world?

In Oops, a Client –ex-JWT Delhi people will know who I’m talking about—who said at the end of his annual briefing in our conference room: “That’s it. Now my balls are in your court…”
Another was a hoarding design “The restaurant has a bra attached…” Yet, another at a college’s annual day brochure, where the faculty was not amused reading: “4.00pm. Address by Faulty Members.”
But here’s JWT Chennai’s favorite story: Our senior accountant, a conventional south Indian gent, was perhaps influenced by the hep lingo used by young people. He once said: “The Manager is quite upset…today she took out my pant”. Only later we figured he was using a highly common phrase in ad agencies: “We had our pants taken by the client today”!!
And some horrific downs … We used to do ‘8-projector audio visuals’ in the 80’s, with a million tiny slides filling several Kodak carousels. Once in the middle of a crucial presentation, slides suddenly started popping out and flying away out of the over-heated projector, and we were jumping about bizarrely catching them, like we were in cricket practice!

What has been one life-defining commercial for you, as in an ad that changed the way you saw art, advertising or even the great Indian middle class?

One amazing campaign that makes me proud of what advertising can do—and it truly affected the great Indian middle class—is the Tata Tea ‘Jago Re’ body of work. It told us to ‘wake up’ to corruption, to the way we use small time bribes to get past traffic offences, get admission to schools, get tickets etc. right down to yanking us out of our apathy towards voting. That was really big! At the same time, it was firmly locked into the basic brand promise: the tea that woke you up. It worked both ways; it affected our thinking, and it affected their sales. Fantastic!

A more light-hearted example is the sparkling brand work on Pepsi. Remember ‘Nothing Official About It?’ What a brilliant way to appear more cool, un-boring and youthful, while hijacking attention from the competition who had won costly ‘official’ sponsoring rights to a major sports event! I also think Pepsi’s “Mera number kab ayega?” was so bang on: reflecting a terrific insight into a typical Indian anguish, as we endlessly wait, wait, wait for something to happen. Pepsi’s advertising catch lines invariably went right into our everyday conversations, even newspaper headlines.

Tell us about creative hierarchy in an organization as flat as an ad agency.

Hierarchy in ad agencies is something that happens through the professional respect you earn –no matter how old or young you are. Do some truly outstanding work: and you are the one on top; on top of everyone’s mind. That’s what really matters! Ad agencies are not only great at generating brand names for products, they are also proficient in generating fancy ‘nearly-there’ titles to denote hierarchy. So these are handed out sometimes to retain talent within the agency; to individuals who produce good work, yet have no leadership skills to actually become a ‘head’ of any sort.

You’ve won several awards in advertising. What drove you?

Honestly speaking, there’s an unbeatable high that comes from hearing “Sales are suddenly up since our campaign broke…here’s a superb letter from the Client…” This feeling far outlasts the other kind of high from doing something that upped the bar and drew a ‘wow!’ from the ad community. And while I have no Cannes Gold to boast of, I became the envy of millions when I won another kind of gold: the 22 carat one—a whole kilo of real gold for writing in 15 words or less why I liked shopping at Vivek’s Department Store. The cheesy, winning rhyme I wrote was entirely due to my training as a copywriter!

How cathartic was writing this book?

I think most humorists doing spoofs are invariably writing the real truth, even if in an absurd or comic style… and so too with this Book: it’s written on behalf of all those who have to suffer weird colleagues, boring clients, eccentric divas, moronic bosses, needless time wasters… So yes, it was cathartic! The thing is it could have easily got very cynical—that’s one thing I’m not, and hopefully it’s more of a laugh-along than a ouch-that-hurts!

What made you quit advertising?

Well, one trigger was this: my leave record was in shambles, and the second biggest passion of my life, travelling—was being compromised. An unbelievable opportunity came along: would I like to review eco-friendly hotels all over India, which means free travel, free stay, free food and unlimited adventures? YES! So I did the unbelievable: quit JWT—for 29 years my home, my life… But the last month was the toughest: I was at a 3-day Pepsi shoot with Shah Rukh Khan (incidentally the first-biggest passion of my life, if you wondered about it a few seconds ago!), and I thought, am I mad to give up this amazing advertising life?? Plus there was also this half-written Book on advertising that my two sisters were after me to finish…

Real Time Working professionals, and not just those in the news, are braving it, every second, everyday. How are you coping with the present?

I keep in constant touch with what’s going on and also do the occasional creative workshop, teach at management institutes. But there’s NOTHING to beat the joys of a travel writer! So far I have been to over 60 hotels: magnificent palaces, humble beach shacks, cozy Himalayan hideouts… met many inspiring eco-conscious owners. I have enough notes on the funny side of travel for another upcoming Book!

Did you ever read any soul stirring books about advertising?

As a trainee in HTA Delhi, I read From those wonderful folks who gave you Pearl Harbour by a famous copywriter named Jerry Della Femina. The most soul stirring books on Advertising have been The Copy Book filled with essays of advertising greats that makes you think the copywriter has the BEST job in an agency, and A Smile In the Mind where every single page of this wittily written and illustrated manual can make you a better creative person. “Cutting Edge Advertising” by Jim Aithchison is also fabulous. But my favourite one that actually led to writing this Book… is The Joy of Work, by Scott Adams. I keep on re-reading it and laughing. It set me thinking: what if Dilbert was in an ad agency? That’s why I roped in (Don’t go Away… cartoonist) Paul Fernandes—we simply had to have those quirky illustrations! I dream of the day when I give Scott Adams a copy of my Book. Till then, I’m wondering how to reach one to SRK…:).

This interview was featured on http://dialabook.in/blog/laughs-from-the-mad-world-an-interview-with-indu-balachandran/