The twists and turns of Hero Honda

I want to document the thrills and spills of one of the most consistent(ly annoying) advertising campaigns on our televisions. I believe it all began with this hideous monster of an ad.

(Did you notice the way Irfan Pathan, all charged up to ball the ball of a lifetime, delivers a red hot juicy full toss?!)

Since I was not in the country I cannot tell exactly how popular it was or how long it was shown for. Mind you, there were some pretty harsh words being said about it so I guess it was big enough to get under the skin of some.

I started taking an interest when they changed track from that Bollywood-Cricket crossover rubbish and started promoting the Hockey world cup. For our international readers, contrary to EVERYBODY’s notion, cricket is not India’s national sport – hockey is. But when this old powerhouse of hockey was to host the Hockey World Cup, God knows it needed some bigging up! Here’s my favorite from that lot:

I dare say that one was nice and effective. A popular cricketer going out in support of a sport that desperately needs it and doing it well. Hooray. The ones featuring Priyanka Chopra and Rajyavardhan Rathore get a lot more sinister with a subtle and not-at-all-subtle threat to go watch the matches! But hey, at least the idea was right.

But then they went and put up this ad:

Apparently this genius concept has been on for a while now.
‘Thinking is such a waste of time’??! Yuck. What were they think… no I’m too pissed off to even make that joke!

Seriously though this is the kind of dangerous crap that produces lunatic daredevils who more often than not harm not only themselves (not such a big loss!) but innocent bystanders too. Irrespective of the disclaimer they hastily put up saying only idiots should try this, such an imbecile notion being displayed to a young, developing country spells nothing but trouble.

So subliminal message? The campaign creators are evil geniuses who realise that some decent ads endears people to the brand who are thus all the more distraught when you put up the ads. But distraught or not, it stays in peoples minds and what’s that they say in Marketing 101 – No publicity is bad publicity eh?!