Posts from — December 2008

It’s getting hard to find inspiring stories these days. The stockmarkets are down, Mumbai has been hit by the worst terror attacks in the country’s history, Chennai had its worst spell of floods in November and it looked as if the world just turned upside down from that fateful news of Lehman Brothers going under on September 18th.

Grim-faced news announcers talk of another spell of layoffs at another prominent company. Nobody’s buying. Nobody’s selling. It’s as if the world is mired in stasis, waiting in terrified anticipation of the next downturn. Company share values have declined to less than the costs of their plants and still, no one’s buying.

What has changed? The appetite for risk. The US just sold zero interest rate bonds and they were lapped up. Doesn’t it make more sense just to leave the money where it is? How do you get people to dream again? That’s going to be the problem for governments the world over. It’s weird. People are scared and they do not know what they are scared about. Looks like we are back in 1929.

Paradigm shifts are now a little outdated, a little like synergy was overused and abandoned a few quarters ago. It’s now the season of tectonic shifts, the one that moves the plates on which whole continents or land masses rest, to portray the machinations of the stock market.

In a world seeking the boson or the ‘God’ particle, analogies get created all the time. To describe the size and scope of the quest, as it were. We need affirmation that what we are doing is grand, overarching, magnificent. Exaggeration is the norm, not the exception. The problem is that in this age of Viagra spam, our preoccupation with size is taken to ridiculous lengths. And breadths.

I have yet to see a book that has been made into a film. It’s always a ‘major’ film. Adjectives are the first resort of the aspiring copywriter. Which is why when I see an ad that is effective and still does not exaggerate, I say a silent prayer. To the creative person who conceived it. And to the client who had the gumption to approve it. Like this one from Max New York Life.