Book Extract: Mix and match

From pristine pure English to Hindi to Hinglish, the language of Indian advertising is now a mishmash of many languages

Nawabs, Nudes, Noodles: India through 50 years of advertising
Author: Ambi Parameswaran
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 9789382616719
Price: Rs 599

Professor Gerald Zaltman of Harvard Business School lists six marketing fallacies and one of them happens to be that marketers tend to think that 'consumers think in words'. He explains: Marketers also believe that consumers' thoughts occur only as words. Thus, they assume they can understand consumers' thinking by interpreting the words used in standard conversations or written on a questionnaire. This excessive focus on words and ignoring the non-verbal cues from consumers leads to an overload of verbal content in advertising as well, ignoring the importance of other cues that may be more effective. In India too, marketers are adding words to their advertising, hoping to communicate better with their target consumers.

Linguistic experiments are being tried out even in television. Educationalists are today advocating same language subtitling as a way to speed up literacy. Hindi songs with subtitles have enabled semi-literate viewers to develop the courage to start reading. Zee Studio and Zee Cafe, two English-language channels from the Zee Group experimented with same language subtitling of English programming. This move, which may sound rather daft, ended up creating a new trend. Today almost all English-language channels are resorting to same-language subtitling. The English subtitling and Hindi subtitling serve different objectives. English subtitling is needed by most Indian viewers due to their inability to decode the diction of Hollywood films and serials. In the case of Hindi subtitling, the objective is more educational. Sociologists have shown that literacy levels can be driven up if Hindi programming is subtitled in Hindi!

What has led to all these experiments and why are consumers being subjected to these?

India is often described as a continent connected through shared values. Our languages separate us but our culture keeps us connected. The country, over the last fifty years, has seen some dramatic migratory trends. As generations move out, they are also trying to keep in touch through popular media. As the world-renowned columnist and author Thomas Friedman points out, while we all desire the Lexus in our garage, we are also looking for that specific brand of olive oil from our hometown to add that special flavour to our cooking. This desire to drift apart and at the same time keep links to the mothership has led to numerous media and linguistic experiments. As the cost of creating content in different languages keep declining, we will see the emergence of numerous types of media content. For instance, we have seen the birth and growth of Oriya and Bhojpuri television channels in the 2000s, just as we saw the growth of Tamil and Telugu private channels in the early '90s. Digital media will help boost this further as we see various dialects having their own channels of delivery. So as this changes media consumption, there will also be a growing demand for content that unites us as one country. So the future of Hindi, English and Hinglish is also relatively safe.

As we drift apart, we will also develop an ability to appreciate something that is alien to our cultural sensibilities. Take, for example, the top-grossing film of 2014, Chennai Express. The film starring Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone used Tamil dialogues for the Tamil characters without any subtitling. The director of the film, Rohit Shetty, decided that film is a visual medium and can be understood even without the spoken words. And that is what happened. One of the songs from the film is today a must-dance-to number in every North Indian wedding. The 'Lungi Dance' song must have sold several million dollars worth of lungis, and sunglasses, across wherever the Indian diaspora lives.

That we are finally one country was brought out wonderfully in an ad done for Nestle by McCann in 2014. A young couple are adopting a little girl who is from a different ethnic group at an adoption centre. Their son does not take well to this new sister who also looks different from him. He fights with his mother to keep her attention. But one day the two kids are in the garden digging. The little girl, quite bravely, pulls out an earthworm with her hands. The young boy is quite amazed at her courage but does not show it as she puts the worm in a glass jar. We then see her leading him to raid the kitchen, climbing up to the top shelf to pull out a jar of cup cakes. He is now her fan. The film ends with the two of them cozily sharing cake. The film poignantly presents the potential of adoption to change this country. And I do hope the film got a few more couples to adopt children who are not from their own neighbourhood.

Reprinted by permission of Pan Macmillan.