Let 'Em Buy Chocolate Souffle

The last few years have seen advertising that responds to these changed needs. The popular has become mainstream, and the local idiom rules. Whether it is the Coke farmer, Fevicol carpenter or the Alpenliebe grandmother, the rustic is now embraced by advertisers. Coke is thanda and Cadbury's is meetha. Today's advertising speaks to people as they are in a language they actually speak. Aspirations are still important, but now these are within reach, at least for parts of urban India.

The need for entertainment drives much of advertising today. Humour is the preferred mode of communication and the message has become less obvious. Celebrities are used because they help make brands cinematic; the true power of celebrities lies not in their credibility as endorsers but in their performance as entertainers. Celebrities magnify the promise of consumption; in a world where the consumer today believes in the magical transformation of her life, celebrities represent the alchemic power of brands.

The most common advertising promise of the day is 'Live Life Fully'; all kinds of products ranging from insurance and cosmetics to beverages and apparel use some version of this theme. It is easy to see why this strikes a chord; from a time when we saw life as a condition to be undergone often with gritted teeth, today we see life as an arena which we must fill with as much pleasure as we can.

Advertising today also speaks to the newly discovered sense of social and economic mobility. Fair & Lovely today connects fairness not with snaring an accomplished groom but with succeeding in a desirable career. Kellogg's advertises itself as a mental tonic while Intel sells the computer as a way out of the circumstances one is born in.

The future is likely to see the emergence of two new kinds of consumers. We are likely to see a savvier top-end consumer whose growing comfort with the once-new categories will see him seek a more sophisticated level of branding which can serve as an identity badge. The excitement will shift from acquiring new categories of products to those brands that best reflect one's desired self-image.

The other consumer segment to emerge will be the entry of those who are currently just beyond the ambit of consumption. This is a class whose motivations are really not understood by the advertising industry and will perhaps mark a fresh discontinuity in the advertising discourse. As the India Shining campaign has taught us, Electorate India thinks very differently from Market India.