die alone

If there’s one problem i have with the ad agencies today is the spate of depressing ads shown off late. I mean yes people get old, yes things get taken from you, life slows and you settle down with what you have saved for so many years, taking up some hobby as shown by Harsha Bhogle, actually scribbling on the canvas, getting better as he retires (has he retired?). But why show that in an ad. The running theme of these insurance ads seems to be to scare the living daylight of a healthy earning member of the family,  making him feel he might be dead if the bill for the water heater is not paid for the next 20 years. Every ad will have a shock value, a scene where the character has to give this grave mute expression, and then come up with the solution, being the investment. Two ads that really stick out like 2-sore-thumbs-up-god-knows-what are the HDFC Standard Life Insurance ad where they didn’t even leave the little boy, playing with a car, out of the inevitable miseries of life. I mean, the sentence “Agar aapke papa gum gaye to?” is probably engraved on the boy’s mind till date, giving him recurring nightmares, having to checkup on his dad every night, instead of it being the other way round! The other ad, who’s name fails me, which again has me checking the pulse and breathing of every sleeping relative, is where this wife come home after shopping and sees her husband literally passed out on the verandah chair, still, with the paper lying open next to him. She approached cautiously ,fearing the worst, just to find him startled to life.

But everything’s not so grey after all. The Asian paint’s ad, with the elderly couple reminiscing about a cycle incident about their child or grand child,cant really figure out, is so sweet that if that could some how be used as an insurance ad, it would be the silver lining to the dark grey clouds that are the insurance ads today.