Humans

Earlier this month, I visited India and met my parents, family, and friends after a gap of two years. My soul felt refreshed. The flight took 17 hours, but the visit was a carefully planned surprise to my parents, and when they saw me, the joy in their eyes made it all worthwhile. Meeting relatives and friends is therapeutic for me. But this time around, I was reminded also of the importance of relationships, of human connections, of the emotions we feel. Being surrounded by Covid has made me a more empathetic person.

On my return flight to San Francisco, while scrolling my FB and Insta feeds and looking at all the ads, I was struck by how strictly functional most of them were. Some of them were trying to be clever or were using slang and profanity, or a kind of music that I couldn’t relate to. Everything nowadays has to be said in 10 seconds or less. Everything has to be in your face. Advertising has changed forever, I realized. Yes, there was some cause-related stuff – diversity, saving the planet, female empowerment – but everything else was just so transactional.

Gone are the days when an ad pulled at your heartstrings or choked you up. Coke, P&G, Kellogg’s, and even the small brands created communication that reminded us of relationships, evoked emotions like love, built on themes like cultural rituals, tapped into patriotism. When I was growing up in India, advertising for Cadbury, Asian Paints, VIP suitcases, melted your heart. You sang the lyrics and hummed the tunes. In my early days in Ogilvy, we were all trying to win over the consumer emotionally and build everlasting human bonds with her.

Yes, there are some brands still doing this. I remember creating many such ads in HP over the last few years. We brought home to our consumers the joy you feel in printing a beautiful picture. But sadly, there are very few HPs. Most advertising today is either cause-driven (which is important, of course), tactical, exploiting the latest fad, or just riding on an influencer. There is also an overdose of animation and graphics to bedazzle you.?

Advertising today is all short-form, mostly impersonal, functional, and frankly, a bit superficial.

Perhaps this reflects our modern society. At births, marriages, deaths, anniversaries, we communicate through texts and posts. No one picks up the phone and calls anymore. People prefer Zoom calls to meeting in person, even in places where Covid restrictions have been lifted. We hardly ever visit friends and family these days. Vacations used to be about experiences and destinations and loved ones. I used to go to my grandmother’s house every summer for a month. Do children still do this? I’m not sure. Even kids have such busy schedules and their calendars are blocked months in advance with holiday plans. What happened to just being with other people? Do we realize what we are doing to ourselves? How did we get to this situation? I don’t know.

But I do hope that after Covid and after all the deaths and all the human loss, we begin to appreciate people once again, and start coming together more. I hope that together we will help build a more caring and humane world.?

I hope that marketers will take the lead and once again start creating content and communication that reminds us of the value of human relations, of connections, of family and friends.?

I want to see advertising again that makes me sigh with emotion. I want to see images and words and sounds that will make me want to pick up the phone right away and call my Mom and my daughter.

I’m back in California now. I have decided that my next vacation will be a visit to be with someone I care for and not to another new place that has to be ticked off a bucket list.