Shah Rukh Khan lolling in a tub strewn with rose petals...Aamir Khan dolled up as Manno Aunty.... Camp clever or heroic comical? Rhapsodic or oxymoronic? Though the ad world is still figuring out the perfect bling quotient, the new mantra of tele-commercials is to go as flashily over the top as you can, opines Geeta Rao

Gender benders, mewling metrosexuals, psychedelic garba to summer of ’69 remixes, ‘Ghar aya mera pardesi’ to hip, hop and rap, video games that influence designer wear, technology spewing out its erotic side...this seems to be the bling bling brigade’s silly season.

Etymologically, the word ‘bling’ comes from hip hop and gangsta rap to describe the flashy diamonds and fake rocks worn by singers of the genre but now it has suffused all vocabulary to describe anything that goes OTT or over the top. Against the flash and flamboyance of the new chic, call it BoHo, SoBo or simply New Nautanki, the zircon blingness of all things seems to have refracted onto the advertising scene as well.

Television has been an early purveyor of over the top bling. Overlays of sindoor in three shades of red, orange and maroon and flashing diamonds from every orifice – or at least every seen orifice – define the television serial housewife. Look behind her ear and under her chin. Tempers, bindis, infidelity, chudis, toe rings, nose rings…everything flashes. Now, ads are working harder to break through this diamanté clutter.

And, flashily over the top, is Pepsi’s latest commercial of the moving body parts and undulating bottles against a garish Arabian Nights-meets-Bollywood set that then morphs into Kabuliwallah meets-Urban Spice Girl. It is the ultimate chroma trip where greens, blues and turquoises get a boost and Pepsi bottles get a life. The dialogue between the teens of undulating things and the snake charmer are over the top and corny to the point that you are seduced haplessly into this faux witty world.

Earlier this season, there was Coke’s camp offering with Aamir Khan as Manno Aunty, padded bosom et al. But if this was the case of the other guy blinged, Pepsi seems to have out flashed Coke. But it is not all camp. Adip Puri, national planning director, Saatchi and Saatchi, says campy ads and so called OTT ads are few and far between. In the search for witticisms and to break clutter, creative teams are trying humour and one of the manifestations of humour is camp. “Thai ads,” says Sumanto Chattopadhya, group creative director, Ogilvy, “are over the top too, but fashionable in the West, unlike Indian OTT ads which aren’t seen the same way. But that’s the West’s problem, shrugs Chattopadhya, a metrosexual dreamboat with gorgeous pecs, a beard and yes, he is in touch with his feminine side – he works on the Pond’s business.

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