By Malay Desai
By: Taproot India
A boss gives her two subordinates an unrealistic deadline, which a bearded man in focus takes after a failed protest. As he rolls up his sleeves and begins working after dusk, the boss leaves the office and calls a ‘Rohit’ to ask him what he’ll have for dinner. She’s later shown at her plush home, cooking an extensive dinner, followed by the man at office getting a call from ‘wife’. As she shows the food she’s cooked over a 3G video call, it becomes apparent that the boss is the bearded man’s wife. ‘Kabhi kabhi bas ek smartphone life mein thoda magic la sakta hai,’ the voiceover says toward the end.
Do we like ?
Yes we do, primarily because a mainstream ad portraying unusual gender roles is being talked about not only on marketing forums and blogs but also on Buzzfeed and Twitter. So much so that we even read an Economic Times article in which the agency came out and defended the ad.
The film has come bang in the middle of the ‘hawa badlegi’ wave of advertising that this column has been talking about. It has the key ingredients of the wave –strong woman and subservient husband, but has raked up a hot debate as it shows the woman ‘boss’ eventually doing what women in the ads of 80s and 90s have been doing – cooking.
Some voices have found this regressive, sexist, assuming the message to be ‘you may be a boss at work, but you must cook to please,’ and we won’t be surprised if told that the clever guys at Taproot were expecting this reaction.
First, let’s give our short take on it – there’s nothing misogynistic in this, the boss-wife evidently cooked to make up for the extra work load she handed to Hipster Man, which is evident in her empathetic expressions as she leaves work. Let’s not voice our pseudo-feminist thoughts and forget pragmatism of every day metro life; it’s a norm among many DINK (double income, no kids) couples that whoever reaches home first, cooks. Besides, isn’t feminism about choices too?
Let’s rather look at the loopholes such as despite the swanky cabin and expansive home, this mega-boss does not have a cook. Or the fact that an HR manager friend of this writer points out –no firm allows couples to share departments. Oh wait, and what’s this ad about again? Apparently it’s about ‘Airtel hearts smartphones’, which we missed because the ‘3G video call’ bit was just a side dish in the hawa badlegi main course.
That said, the last time we wrote about Airtel, it was a web film whose idea was copy pasted from a beer ad. Going by that standard, well done! PS: Want a telecom ad without baggage? Look up the beautifully shot ‘Selfie by Banglalink’.
To watch this film, feed this link in your browser - bit.ly/ViewTubeAug4
SOCIAL NEWSFEED
A farewell party in Bangalore.. for Orkut!
Wait, so this isn’t about a bunch of disgruntled love-less boys giving their most favourite ‘frandship’ network a fitting goodbye, but it’s rather a cool excuse to party on a Friday night by a Bangalore-based digital agency. We chanced upon an event page on Facebook and were amused by the details: ‘Orkut is going to leave us soon.. Presenting CiaOrkut – a farewell party. Just write a simple testimonial for Orkut and win a ticket to the partyyyy’ (sic) reads the description. We also saw some serious tributes to the about-to-go network starting with words such as ‘It was seven years ago when..’ Now a bigger point to report is that Ittisa, the agency is an all-woman agency, which makes it perfect as many guys would want to participate in this contest to win and go make frandships at this party. PS: For an Orkut obit, read this writer’s Backbeat piece from the July 7 issue!
Ram Sene does not like this
Out now - Twitter’s Transparency Report
July end was also the time when Twitter’s bi-annual transparency report was out. For the uninitiated, it’s a compilation of trends in government requests for account information, content removal, copyright notices and more. Sifting through it, we spotted how Brazil sent a high number (77) of requests for account info, while Japan sarkar topped again with 192, besides a court order asking Twitter to remove several defamatory tweets against it. Turkey topped the list of ‘tweets withheld’, with a total of 186 requests for removal by its sarkar or police agencies. Interestingly, 2014’s first half has topped all-time charts for copyright notices, ranging to 9,199 from Jan to June; the number was just 6,680 in the previous report.
Aam Aadmi Party likes this
A hectic week in filmy launches
Just when we were shutting laptops last Thursday night, Mr Raju Hirani and team decided to spring a surprise, by unveiling the first look poster of Aamir Khan’s upcoming film, PK. Not that any new Aamir film poster needs gimmicks, but the producers here made sure it was splattered over all the internet and beyond in the night before the print version came out. Next day, they also launched a motion poster, which to our opinion is one of the most pointless trends in Bollywood today. Other launches included YoYo Honey Singh’s new track (yes there’s one every week it seems), Aata Majhi Satakl i from Singham Returns and the tedious trailer of Tamanchey, whose graphics seemed to be made on PowerPoint though we didn’t mind looking at Richa Chaddha. Lastly, if you haven’t watched the latest trailer of Interstellar, Chris Nolan’s next, do so. And leave those expectations behind before that.
Rohit Shetty likes this
