Advertising is something that I just can't escape. Whether I step my foot in a train, a bus or any remote place you could think of. I step in a train and voila!I witness advertisements from underwears to sex clinics , from haldiram ki bhujia to 100% placement guarantee institutes. I haven’t seen so much diversity in any other place as far as advertising is concerned. Enter a bus and voila!I see brand new seats with Tata Sky advertisements at the back of all the seats. Advertising provides thousands of people with 2 waqt ki roti but to me, it provides a lot of things. It provides amusement, anger and embarrassment and whether I like it or not, I have to bear with it.
Advertisements irritate me after every 10 minutes while watching my favourite sitcom on TV. Sure some are really funny and are a treat to watch again and again. Teleshopping ads just crack me up. They can give any TV program a run for their TRP's. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of them. I get terribly irritated watching ads of similar concepts. Soaps, toothpastes, washing powders come under this category. Almost all of them have an extra ingredient which apparently works wonders. So the toothpaste I use has extra salts which make my teeth whiter and the soap I use has certain chemicals which will make my skin fair. Not that I desire such a skin.
Sometimes, TV ads just disgust me. I get disgusted whenever I see a toilet cleaning ad(Harpic!) on the TV while I'm eating my dinner!
Some ads are ingrained in my brain(aap PSPO nahi jaantey?). Sometimes ,I get embarrassed whenever I'm watching TV with my family and suddenly, out of nowhere, a condom ad comes up! The only thing on my mind after that ,is to change the channel!
There are some ads I just can't understand(don't be a balti! , yeh toh badaa toing hai) and won't be able to understand and the countless number of "guy impresses girl because guy uses a xyz soap or a xyz hair gel or yada,yada..." type ads are the ads I completely hate.
The informative ads on Doordarshan are some of the ads that must be commended for creating an awareness about different social issues although, it would have been much better had it been made in a better way. They all look ancient now and bad actors don’t really help their cause.
Love it or hate it, the fact is neither I nor you can't escape it. I'm all for anything that creates employment and advertising ain't no exception. So, I'll continue to bear the various advertisements.
