It was 2006 when I had first seen the Australian tourism ad and I remember it to date. The bold copy caught my attention and it also was quite unlike any overly-crafted-full-of-beautiful-things tourism ad.
This is what my mind registered of the ad since the precursor to this ad was an article titled - curse at them, they will come? The title of the article was the lense through which I perceived that ad. Having done that, I started spinning my own yarn.
What a quaint way to get people to their country…compare this to the effort launched by the Indian tourism authorities, preaching all and one to treat the guest as God, this was rather bold !!!
Why would someone go to their country I wondered? They are a plain-speaking and friendly lot. Maybe that is what they wish to project through the advertising.
And that is how most communication gets decoded.
A thought experiment on communication decoding
Fast forward 17 years, yesterday morning I randomly watched the Rajasthan tourism ad (complete coincidence it was about tourism again :)
After a few seconds of watching, the thought that crossed my mind was
Pehle woh giri, ab yeh bhi girega (First she fell, next he will). I couldn’t stop laughing. I wanted to change the Monday morning mood for a few of my friends and sent it to them.
A fitness enthusiast said
“This guy has to be incredibly fit to carry her all through the honeymoon”
A senior citizen said
“40 years after marriage, you’ll start wondering…Aisa bhi hota hai kya?!!
A brand-led growth specialist said…
TG: Rich NRIs, so they got that right.
It begins with her ankle breaking so you get hooked on. And they’ve stitched different parts of Rajasthan nicely in the story. Showing how he cares about her brings up emotions. Music and lyrics are typical and boring in Rajasthani style, but people will remember khamma ghani which is the signature they want people to remember.
Tg part- by showing an NRI girl with a white guy, they’ve made it relevant for NRIs, white people and Indians
Someone who works with underprivileged girls to restore agency said…
I think the ad only caters to people who want to splurge and get married in Rajasthan. And it doesn't quite capture everything Rajasthan offers. The art is missing entirely, it's only romanticized as a 'love destination' which is so reductive.
Of course, there's the damsel in distress and saviour narrative too, which is cringy, but theek hai, at least they look like they're in love and nothing wrong with that too. Bachara itna mehnat कर raha hai.
Tourism का ad kam, Made In Heaven season 3 का ad zyada hai.
A storyteller and a documentary filmmaker said…
Bandish Bandits
Do you see the connection between the ‘who’ and the ‘what was said’
Bottom line - we see the same stimulus using the lens that matters to us the most and we spin our own yarn And that is how most communication gets decoded. This lens might change depending on the shift in values, what is top of mind or a trigger situation or an unforgettable memory and the same person might think of the same stimuli differently at different points in time depending on which fragment of thought he/she pulls out of his/her subconscious mind at that moment. I have seen this happen even when people read print material - books, posters etc - the same message gets interpreted differently.
Memory is not static, memory is constructed - subtly different each time you recall an incident. Likewise, reality is also not static, but a construct of our mind.
In my case, I had a foot fracture on a holiday a few years ago while walking down the steps! And my mind could not ignore those steps in the Rajasthan tourism ad.
Why I say most communication and not all, is because there is another interesting way in which communication gets encoded - which is playback. But that takes a big fat media budget and the same message being heard/seen over multiple exposures. That is why we still remember
Sunday ho yaan Monday roz khao Anday - a tagline from the 1980s when life and media vehicles were uncluttered.
I have seen the instrument of ‘playback’ working very well these days, not in the context of communication but in the context of narrative building that happens through the informal flow of information that moves across social media vehicles, endorsed by celebrity opinion leaders and regurgitated by individuals who simply buy into that story without verifying the fact. Since that is the beauty of playback. Superfoods that come as pills and capsules - remember Ginseng?
When a big company tells its unsuspecting consumers that its bottled spread is full of the freshest fruit with the goodness of vitamins, most of India believes it since subliminally the message seeps in and gets reinforced and hardwired over and over again - unless you have reason to doubt or question it.
Coming back to the Australian tourism ad which I misinterpreted. It was actually something like this…
The ad begins with characters saying: "We've poured you a beer and we've had the camels shampooed, we've saved you a spot on the beach ... and we've got the sharks out of the pool."
A bikini-clad woman then asks….
I hope this is a story you will not forget. So the next time you are planning to use your communication budget, if you know in advance whether it is a playback you are expecting or a spin-a-yarn in return, that could change the way your communication is designed.
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