Swarajya

Thanks for the visit. And for your  comments, Ye, let us not remember death !! Regards

LIC has to sell its product only by projecting the misery caused to a family by death.One may call the ad as morbid but there is no way out to impress the need of Insurance without talking about death.Deccan Challengers are at the rock bottom.Probably they have too much alcohol from Vijay Mallya.I have my sympathies for Rahul Dravid as he is a great cricketer ,but presently in doldrums.What is the use of remembering death ?Eat,Drink and Make Merry.

tunnelvision

(i replied just now. it did not get registered!)

Thanks for your views. I am glad you feel the same about these ads. I will read your blogs and get back to you laer. regards

Palahali,

I agree with your views about morbid advertising.

Most of ads to promote car, motor cycles and colas promote irresponsible driving habits too.

It seems that the creative juices of our advertising gurus have dried up long back as all of them are copying each other’s trash.

You are invited to read blogs/stories:

Target London (Part 4)

Cricket: The National Fix

 For the sake of honor (Part 2)

Regards,

More over these guys have no sense of social responsibilities and there are not controls to tame their weird sense of creative freedom.

pksundar

I am terribly sorry I was wrong about the author of that book. It is  actually  VANCE PACKARD and not studs TURKEL.  Here is what amazon+ says aboout the book :

One of the best books around for demystifying the deliberately mysterious arts of advertising."--Salon

"Fascinating, entertaining and thought-stimulating."--The New York Times Book Review

"A brisk, authoritative and frightening report on how manufacturers, fundraisers and politicians are attempting to turn the American mind into a kind of catatonic dough that will buy, give or vote at their command--The New Yorker

Originally published in 1957 and now back in print to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, The Hidden Persuaders is Vance Packard’s pioneering and prescient work revealing how advertisers use psychological methods to tap into our unconscious desires in order to "persuade" us to buy the products they are selling.

A classic examination of how our thoughts and feelings are manipulated by business, media and politicians, The Hidden Persuaders was the first book to expose the hidden world of “motivation research,” the psychological technique that advertisers use to probe our minds in order to control our actions as consumers. Through analysis of products, political campaigns and television programs of the 1950s, Packard shows how the insidious manipulation practices that have come to dominate today’s corporate-driven world began. Featuring an introduction by Mark Crispin Miller, The Hidden Persuaders has sold over one million copies, and forever changed the way we look at the world of advertising.
Regards

srinath girish

thanks for reading the blog. You are very correct in that death is a surefire attention catcher. It is the first time in the last 6 months that my blog got so many hits !!!. Regards

pksundar

Thanks for the visit and for the comments. I do remember ' The Ugly American '.but I have not read SARKHAN.  I will try to read it when I  get a chance. What  you say is true and very interesting. As I get older I have also gotten into the habit of looking at the OBITs - partially sto see that my friends are not there and may be more importantly to see that I am not there ! This is similar to what people say about seeing a dead body. It is supposed to be a good omen. This is again something like - Glad it is not me there !.
I agree that the ad apart from being morbid,   is poor also. There is a writer (you may know about him) called Studs Sturkel. He writes well about various aspects of life. He  wrote a book called THE HIDDEN PERSUADERS where he talks about the advertisements and people who write them  Thanks for the links to your blogs. I will read them later. Regards

Death - and the fear of it - is a surefire attention catcher, Palahali! That is why the insurance company advertised in the first place. But what you said is true - it leaves a bad taste!

Socrates

Thanks a lot for the visit and for the nice comments. May be they will take way my LIC benefits ! Regards

William Lederer and Eugene Burdick (their book Ugly American is more famous) have written a book called Sarkhan which is actually an imaginary country in the Far East. The prince of the country escorts a visiting professor to the royal palace. The entrance of the palace is a long corridor whose walls carry paintings of hell on one side and scenes from heaven on the other side. At the end of the walk, the prince asks the professor to describe a scene from heaven. To his surprise and embarrassment, the professor realizes that he has looked only at the scenes from hell. The prince consoles him saying that is the usual case with all the visitors.

It is human nature to look at morbid things because we are driven by fear – fear of death. Sometime back a blogger had written about the habit of people to look at the obituary column in the newspaper first thing in the morning. It is nothing but a sub-conscious prompt to satisfy the soul that “it is alive”.

As for the ad itself, it is not only morbid but also very poor because the events do not lead to the punch-line “ be ready for anything”. It is, like most Indian ads, a meaningless drama. I have written two blogs on the subject.
pksundar.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/01/bad-mad-sad-ads.htm
pksundar.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/01/less-you-have-more-you-have-to-boast.htm