 "Congress copies Modi's ad tagline: Now ad biz will suffer more")
The Congress in general and Rahul in particular have been mocked and ridiculed thanks to the first ad of the Congress campaign being proven to have lifted a headline from a 2011 Narendra Modi campaign, which also said, “Main nahin hum.”
The Congress and Rahul Gandhi are the wrong targets - the butt of the jokes and the ridicule should have been the advertising agency that created this ad, Dentsu India.
In such a situation, the client can never be the one responsible. It is NOT the client’s job to worry about whether a thought or a script or a headline is original. Indeed, the client presumes that any work presented by the agency is the agency’s original creative output. That is why the agency is hired in the first place; for their skills in creating original, clutter-cutting communication.
[caption id=“attachment_1358859” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]
The Congress ad which copies the slogan from an earlier Modi campaign.[/caption]
How did this ad ever see the light of day? They’ve forgotten the basics, which is to study the communication of the competition. If that had been done, this headline would never have been presented at all.
The headline is so simple that the chances that someone else has thought of it earlier are so high that it should have been thrown into the dustbin anyway.
There is an ongoing discussion on social media that it is likely that the line was forced by the Congress onto Dentsu India. If that is the case, the blame still falls squarely on Dentsu’s shoulders - they should have resigned the account immediately if that has happened.
This ad does more harm to the advertising industry in India than it does to the Congress. For the past 10 years, the agency business witnesses shrinking margins as clients see it as a commodity rather than as a consultant or partner.
After this ad, do you wonder why we’ve reached this sad state of affairs?
Anant Rangaswami was, until recently, the editor of Campaign India magazine, of which Anant was also the founding editor. Campaign India is now arguably India's most respected publication in the advertising and media space. Anant has over 20 years experience in media and advertising. He began in Madras, for STAR TV, moving on as Regional Manager, South for Sony’s SET and finally as Chief Manager at BCCL’s Times Television and Times FM. He then moved to advertising, rising to the post of Associate Vice President at TBWA India. Anant then made the leap into journalism, taking over as editor of what is now Campaign India's competitive publication, Impact. Anant teaches regularly and is a prolific blogger and author of Watching from the sidelines. see more
