Last night I saw an odd Indian tourism billboard in Times Square.
It read, ‘Get to know yoga from its mother,’ and the visual style reminded me of old-skool ‘An Ideal Boy’ posters.
The blurb in an advertising publication says the ads aim for kitsch, but IMO they fall into the chasm between kitsch and cheese. The colors say ‘An Ideal Boy,’ the visual style is fun. But the elements don’t work together. The slogan is lame, its font evokes Dances With Wolves, and the tagline in ultra-serious Bodoni strip it of wit. Indian tourism needs to hire whoever’s penning the witty Citi ‘Live richly’ campaign. I hear Rushdie’s available.
Even the campaign description is off:
Prathap Suthan, national creative director, Grey Worldwide, explains why this campaign stands out: “The difference lies in the expression which, according to me, is very Indian. Where one normally uses photography for billboards, which is a Western expression, the style used to communicate in this ad is the kitsch look… Opting for the kitsch look is based on everyday observations from all over India. These images have been drawn from village folk art and common imagery seen across India, images that bring to mind the colours, uniqueness and diversity of India.” [Link]
Kitsch, like cool, shrivels in sunlight. Trying to explain it kills it. Reading about it in dorky ad pubs kills it. Nonchalant, off-radar irony is the point. Calling it ‘the kitsch look’ voids any street cred. It’s painful even to read. I’ve lost all my Williamsburg karma by writing this paragraph.
Chantal, book me for a fauxhawk. The three hundred dollar kind. Tell them I want highlights, I’m feeling verklempt.
There are three other ads in the series, and each has the same problem, nice art with lame slogans that just don’t translate well. It’s like ads and manuals for Japanese autos in the ’70s before they started using American copywriters:
… there are four billboards at Times Square… the Mecca for global outdoor, and gigantic hoardings and display wraps at Cromwell Road in London and at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. The other outdoor initiatives were through display panels on city buses in London and a huge LED display panel at Montparnasse Square in Paris. The entire media spend on the outdoor is estimated to be in the vicinity of Rs 5 crore across the three cities. Later, the campaigns were also taken to Zurich and Davos for a week during the World Economic Forum (WEF). [Link]
The visual style reminds me of:
