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MEDIA: ADVERTISING
Reality Check
Advertisers are using ordinary people in ads to
infuse some realism in their campaigns
By Methil Renuka
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NO FRILLS: Ordinary-looking models now crowd ad
agencies
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When he was on the
lookout for an elderly woman to model in an advertisement for a Delhi-based
jewellery house, Akash Das, consultant creative director and photographer
with Mudra and Ushak Kaal Advertising, spent over a month sifting through
more than 80 portfolios. The search finally ended when he found Saroj
Oberoi. The 76-year-old, silver haired and wrinkled "mother of three,
grandmother of five" was just the dignified face Das wanted. But
Oberoi is unique in more ways than one: she is also a practising doctor,
working as a skin specialist at a charitable organisation in Delhi.
Having featured in nearly 50 ad campaigns, including
Maruti, NIIT, Pantaloon and Indiatimes.com, Chetan Sethi, 32, is a busy
model. And an even busier tax lawyer with a flourishing practice in the
capital. Rajni Nijhawan, 34, is vice-president, business development,
with an immigration consultancy firm in Delhi. But most people recognise
her as the housewife with the "glowing" face in the commercial
for Hindustan Lever's Dove soap.
Mid-career switches? Not at all. Oberoi continues
to see her patients at the charitable clinic. Shuttling between shoots
and his practice, Sethi insists that modelling is not his bread and butter.
"Law is monotony, advertising is creativity," he explains. And
Nijhawan, who has modelled for Amway, Dabur, Nestle and Safal, among others,
has a full-fledged involvement with her career. She took up modelling
only because it allows her to be "creative".
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PRACTISING MODELS: Oberoi (top) is a doctor while
Sethi (bottom) is a tax lawyer
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Presenting the deglamourised face of Indian advertising.
These are not your regular Milind Soman, Madhu Sapre or Rahul Dev. The
model is not someone off the catwalk. She could be your grandmother. Advertisers
and advertisement agencies are increasingly using ordinary people as models
in advertisements to infuse a sense of realism in their campaigns.
Greying grandparents, bored office-goers, housewives
with time on their hand and pesky brats are peddling wares more than ever
before, cutting across socio-economic and psychographic demographics.
In the process they have shattered stereotypes like the brawny, 6-ft-tall
dude or the sculpted, glamorous girl.
Much of this shift could be due to the growing
need to bring consumers closer to the product being advertised. Using
deglamourised models to endorse a product is to make the consumer associate
himself (okay, herself) with the person in the ad. "The big trend
in advertising today is reality," says Kenneth Augustine, creative
director, Lowe Lintas & Partners.
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