This Too Shall Pass

Stock photo agencies such as Getty Images supply advertisers with the images they need to get their message across. A few advertisers don't bother with either buying stock photographs or sending out their own photographers to do the job and use pictures off the internet which may well be unlicensed. All this is fine as long as the piece of communication does its job. Sometimes though, while the message may be clear enough, the images used can hijack the whole communication's intent.

This was the case last January when India's Ministry of Women and Child Development published an ad on the occasion of 'National Girl Child Day' . It carried a Pakistani Air Force Chief's image as purportedly being a 'son of an Indian mother'. This led to hue and cry in the media which left the government embarrassed not because it had used an image without proper permissions but because it didn't check if that particular image can damage and undermine the objective of the communication exercise. The damage was done because that one image went completely against the grain of the message - projecting images of successful Indian male icons and their obvious debt to their mothers.

The latest Frontline magazine's back cover (above) carried an advertisement for the magazine 'Competition Success Review' and informs of some attractive subscription offers. Right at the bottom they have this image of a well groomed man giving the reader a thumbs-up and a raised eye brow - an anthropomorphic representation of 'success' I presume. The communication does work at the basic level, except the man's face seemed familiar. His name is Stephen Colbert - an American satirist who does a killer impression of the over-confident, self-indulgent, conceited right-wing politician on Comedy Central's show 'The Colbert Report' - a character that is enormously funny but not one to emulate. In the Indian marketplace though, where he is a non-entity - this advert will pass under the radar as have many others before it.



Links:
http://www.colbertnation.com/home
http://www.exchange4media.com/e4m/news/fullstory.asp?news_id=39575&section_id=1&tag=6400