Celebrities or Conmen

A couple of months back, I saw a billboard on the way to work. It was an advert for Dove soap and the model was strikingly familiar. It was driving me crazy as I was sure I had met this girl but was not able to place her. None of my friends are from the P3 circuit, so how come she seemed so familiar? I racked my brain for a week and was almost going to give up when a friend called and asked if I had seen the Dove ad and if I remembered that girl. I had been introduced to this girl at a party by this same friend a few months back.

She was studying architecture from my alumnus. A petite girl who was well under 5 feet despite her 3” heels. Being born to a Pathan father and a Punjabi mother, she had a porcelain, blemish-free complexion (with or without the use of Dove soap). She had a tight-lipped smile as she was conscious of the wide gap between her front two teeth. But the billboard shows her grinning flashing the gap and yet making her look super-confident.

This is the latest trend in advertising. The models are no more hunks or hot chicks with chiseled looks and a body to kill for but your next-door boy or girl with less-than-average looks and even a bit of flab and even freckles. The billboards of Uninor show such people to strike a chord with the public. The idea behind this that when the commoner looks at such a billboard, he/she relates to that person more than if it were a celebrity. A celebrity with size-zero figure and blemish-free complexion only drives people into desperation about their own shortcomings.

Sports stars and actors who raked in millions with endorsements as their first career are coming under fire for endorsing products without knowing the ill-effects of their use. Ajith, a popular Tamil Actor, outright refused to promote a popular fizz drink and instead chose to endorse a coffee brand. Do we have such conscientious stars left in the world?

After the recent Tiger Woods fiasco, popular brands are giving a serious thought on whom they choose as their brand ambassador. Accenture had to hastily terminate its contract with Tiger Woods to save face. My sister, who is with Accenture, told me that all their presentation slides which had Tiger Woods in the background had to be removed before sending it to their clients. One purging for another’s folly!

The Supreme Court has even gone as far as to say that it will verify the tall claims of the products such as Maggi which says “taste bhi, health bhi” or Horlicks that promises children growing much taller on drinking it regularly and penalize the companies if their claims were found to be false.

A guy recently filed a case against the popular deo brand, Axe, because he never got lucky with women not once even after using the product for more than six years. While in the recent ad, the axe effect not only turns on the woman in the elevator but also a man and a transvestite.

Do we blame the celebrities for refusing to check the authenticity of the products they endorse or are we to blame for getting so carried away by the false claims? As they say, as long as people are willing to get conned, there will be conmen.