I'm almost sure that some of you might have heard the word " triaminic" earlier and only if you'd have the audacity to recollect, it is somewhat etched in the faintest of your childhood memories. Triaminic is an analgesic( decongestant) meant to relieve children of common cold and cough. I'm assuming, you're already getting bored, well , so am I , and that is exactly why I'm writing this post.
The advertising industry, in general, has always been ruthless enough to capitalize on the most dormant of human emotions and resurrect corporate benefit. The strategies promulgated are somewhat symbolic of human nature yet, hollow to the core in their meaning. Let me begin with a native example. I'm sure you're pretty aware of the architypical Vicks ad, the one which portrays a lady ( who looks rather too young to play a mother) who tries to comfort her son ( who looks old enough to apply Vicks all by himself) by rubbing his stand-out red coloured nose with Vicks and within the span of that 15 second advertisement, not only the boy's cured off his nosily notions, but there's a conspicuous depiction of motherly love showered all over him, as if the so called motherly love is resurrected only in catastrophic times of nose blockages.And what follows is some idiotically silly tagline, the so called icing on the cake. You may wonder why I seem to have a grudge at this.Perhaps , you'll get a hunch in what follows. Upfront, as and when I saw this advertisement for the very first time, it placed in my thinking an inconceivable correlation between mothers and analgesics, which technically is non-existent. So much was the profundity of this advertisement, that , I, then a boy aged 8 years, had embibed an unshakeable belief that perhaps, the effect of analgesics and the so called motherly affection , were variables that always went hand-in-hand, not to forget here the non-sensical belief, that analgesics may prove effective if-and-only-if they're applied by moms. These very notions were thwarted one night, when my white blood cells almost gave up, and I had to succumb ,quite inevitably, to the most irritating diseases of all in-humanity: Common Cold. Coincidently, mother wasn't at home that night.With mummy having night duties, twice a week, dad had to be my only company. I remember myself being the sole victim of his cooking dexterity which somehow always ended up in unpalatable disasters, and then, by the virtues of a unanimous consensus on the ramifications of gulping those unpalatable disasters , we ended up dining at the nearby restaurant. That night, dad being the only help at home , had to make up for mom.The best he could do then was to threaten me to take the analgesic, while I backfired and threatened him of telling mom, that my common cold, was a possible consequence of his forcing me to try "kulfi" , which according to him is by far the best thing one can buy with money, but of course this was only one side of the "forced Kulfi" story, and I better not reveal the other half. As skeptic I was to let dad do the honour of applying the ever iconic Vicks, I was as much confident of its irrelevance, for the preconceived notion of having mom around in common cold catastrophes had haunted my mind ever since I had watched the advertisement. What happened , wasn't much less than a revelation. I actually felt better and there I stood wondering at the audacity of these capitalist giants to try and fool eight year olds in believing the unbelievable. What more can an eight year old feel other than his own "silly"ness of assuming with folded eyes all that is told to him , while others hear his opinion and laugh at it.
Such is the misery of capitalism, which hasn't obscured from exploiting the power of human emotions, Human Sensitivity , so to say.
The advertising industry, in general, has always been ruthless enough to capitalize on the most dormant of human emotions and resurrect corporate benefit. The strategies promulgated are somewhat symbolic of human nature yet, hollow to the core in their meaning. Let me begin with a native example. I'm sure you're pretty aware of the architypical Vicks ad, the one which portrays a lady ( who looks rather too young to play a mother) who tries to comfort her son ( who looks old enough to apply Vicks all by himself) by rubbing his stand-out red coloured nose with Vicks and within the span of that 15 second advertisement, not only the boy's cured off his nosily notions, but there's a conspicuous depiction of motherly love showered all over him, as if the so called motherly love is resurrected only in catastrophic times of nose blockages.And what follows is some idiotically silly tagline, the so called icing on the cake. You may wonder why I seem to have a grudge at this.Perhaps , you'll get a hunch in what follows. Upfront, as and when I saw this advertisement for the very first time, it placed in my thinking an inconceivable correlation between mothers and analgesics, which technically is non-existent. So much was the profundity of this advertisement, that , I, then a boy aged 8 years, had embibed an unshakeable belief that perhaps, the effect of analgesics and the so called motherly affection , were variables that always went hand-in-hand, not to forget here the non-sensical belief, that analgesics may prove effective if-and-only-if they're applied by moms. These very notions were thwarted one night, when my white blood cells almost gave up, and I had to succumb ,quite inevitably, to the most irritating diseases of all in-humanity: Common Cold. Coincidently, mother wasn't at home that night.With mummy having night duties, twice a week, dad had to be my only company. I remember myself being the sole victim of his cooking dexterity which somehow always ended up in unpalatable disasters, and then, by the virtues of a unanimous consensus on the ramifications of gulping those unpalatable disasters , we ended up dining at the nearby restaurant. That night, dad being the only help at home , had to make up for mom.The best he could do then was to threaten me to take the analgesic, while I backfired and threatened him of telling mom, that my common cold, was a possible consequence of his forcing me to try "kulfi" , which according to him is by far the best thing one can buy with money, but of course this was only one side of the "forced Kulfi" story, and I better not reveal the other half. As skeptic I was to let dad do the honour of applying the ever iconic Vicks, I was as much confident of its irrelevance, for the preconceived notion of having mom around in common cold catastrophes had haunted my mind ever since I had watched the advertisement. What happened , wasn't much less than a revelation. I actually felt better and there I stood wondering at the audacity of these capitalist giants to try and fool eight year olds in believing the unbelievable. What more can an eight year old feel other than his own "silly"ness of assuming with folded eyes all that is told to him , while others hear his opinion and laugh at it.
Such is the misery of capitalism, which hasn't obscured from exploiting the power of human emotions, Human Sensitivity , so to say.
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