In a similar vein, I see HUL's ads - most of which I find rather distasteful. The most recent one is Rin ad. An entrepreneur who is about to open an industry in a seemingly rural area, asks the local people if there are any English speaking people there (this is what I understood). A girl very a very white dress (to imply that she washes her dress with Rin) emerges from the crowd and tells the entrepreneur in English not to judge a book by its cover.
Now, the reason for my distaste - if the girl had been shabbily dressed or even wearing normal clothes I would have felt, it went with the spirit of the ad. But she was in sparking clothes. Which seemed to marry her knowledge of English with her cover.
There have been plenty of HUL's ads where the theme is that confidence comes from clean clothes (washed obviously by Surf or Rin) or silky long hair (from the use of Clinic shampoo) . The implication being that it is essential for the cover to be good. Unless of course HUL believes that having nice hair and / or bright clothes is about content and not cover.
It is not just HUL which does it. Other companies, that are into toothpaste, Feminine hygiene also have ads where they claim that success in life comes from sparkling teeth or an extra dry napkin. Now, a toothpaste company has gone one step further and claims that you are protected from cavities for 12 hours after brushing with their paste - no matter how many chocolates you eat. I hope women, who feel they have not succeeded in life despite using these companies' products, sue them.
One good news:
I had earlier written about the latest ad by Tata Docomo about "more" involving a peacock. They have changed the peacock to buttermilk ("mor" in Tamil) - now the Docomo ad in Tamil makes sense.
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