Adman and Bollywood personality Prasoon Joshi on the new trends in advertising, films and songs
Prasoon Joshi
Prasoon Joshi, ad whiz and head honcho of McCANN Worldgroup, is relaxing at the Le Meridian hotel in Kochi, a few hours after an interaction with Sachin Tendulkar at the Advertising Associaiton of India’s meet at the same venue. Sharing his visiting card, he quips, “This is my day job.” The night job that he refers to has to do with writing scripts and songs for Bollywood. “Wherever I have interacted with Sachin, I have learnt something from him,” says Prasoon. He remembers that he had interacted with him to know the mind of a sportsperson when he was doing the scripting for Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. “He is a true icon and no matter which field you come from, you can learn a lot from him,” he says about Sachin.
“Sachin never evades questions. He is not about charming the crowd or getting into cracking jokes. He says something because he believes it. And he was a delight for brand endorsing because of his consistency as a cricketer and the credibility that he brings to a brand.”
Prasoon goes on to explain how celebrity advertising has its own limitations. “As a celebrity is himself a brand, it becomes a marriage when he endorses a brand. If the marriage is not right, then people will find that their experience is different or that the ad overpromised. If people find a disconnect or if your product is not matching, you might have used the biggest celebrity, but it is going to harm the product. Good advertising kills a bad product faster. I don’t recommend celebrity advertising for products for which basics like manufacturing or service are not good. So, if you take the case of Sachin, he is not about ‘here and now’ but all about ‘long-term’ and ‘consistency’. So, if your brand is about similar values, then it will work.”
It is a challenging time because people are connected with each other like never before, he observes. “There is now something called shared content. If your content is liked, they are going to share it and if it’s hated, it will get shared for the wrong reasons. People are spoilt for choice. There was a time when you put an ad in Doordarshan during Ramayan, you felt secure. Now you don’t know who watches television at what time. They have so many channels, internet channels, Youtube…. You have to watch what you do. Nothing is small, everything is big.”
How to stand out in these times of info-overload? “When I was doing Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, people were sceptical. They said it is an old subject, nobody remembers him today. So, you pick up a subject and apply yourself. Instinct plays a big role. What is instinct or gut feel? It doesn’t drop from heaven but comes after years of experience. As Sachin said, as he went on playing more matches, his game kept getting better.”
Prasoon says that though the role of songs in films have changed, the relevance or demand of music will never wane. Aren’t films using fewer songs than before? “In Margarita With a Straw, I wrote five songs, in Taare Zameen Par seven, and Delhi 6 had nine songs. I don’t think the number is going down. The way people consume songs has changed.”
Another change, he points out, is that there are fewer lip sync songs these days. “Earlier you had your actors lip syncing. Now, it is as though their mind is singing. This change is good because it allows you to explore the actor’s mind through the song. Once, when a girl wanted to tell a boy that she wanted him to be close to her, it could not be said through dialogues because the culture did not allow it. So the poetry came into play. Now this has changed.”
What he finds disturbing are the songs that are there as a gimmick, without any relation to the story or just for promotion. “Suddenly somebody comes and dances. It is as though dancing is the main purpose of life,” he quips, adding that earlier, songs used to define the philosophy of life for people. “There are certain songs that make your feet move and certain others that make your head move. Once in a while, I wouldn’t mind doing a song that makes your feet move but I refuse to do only those,” he says. It is all a phase, he says, with hope. “People will start missing the good songs and they will ask for them.”
( Source : deccan chronicle )
Next Story
