Rediffmail, the email service of rediff.com has reportedly run into trouble with its latest commercial touting unlimited storage space. Sun TV, according to a report in the Hindustan Times, has refused to run the commercial, terming it offensive. And the Advertising Standards Council of India is also said to have received a few complaints.
The commercial has two women in an office suggestively discussing a tiny colleague’s big attributes. “Is it true about Raju?” Even the boss bends across the urinal with his eyes fixed on the lower half of little Raju’s anatomy. And in the final shot, the guy in the cubicle next to Raju’s asks him pointblank, to which tiny Raju says, it is not big, it is unlimited.
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CHETAN KRISHNASWAMY says he too found the ad crass and tasteless. Did you? On the other hand, if the whole point of advertising is to create awareness and get people talking about a product, has it succeeded? Or is the ad indecent and unbecoming of a portal set up by one of the co-founders of India’s most creative ad agencies?
Cross-posted on sans serif
churumuri 
Yes, it is in poor taste. The creators of the Ad could have conveyed the same message without the use of distasteful references of human anatomy however oblique they might be.
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It is certainly in a poor ‘TASTE’ ..however I was wondering how it would have sounded if it was in KANNADA . Gosh …cant imagine . Siva Siva
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Somehow, we should stop trying to crack these ‘wink-and-nudge’ jokes which British and American comics mastered a half a century back.
It just looks and sounds juvenile and stale.
Surely, a country with a couple of thousand year history of satire, word play and parody can come up with far better than wannabe American sex jokes about sexual organs, sexual orientation and sexual misunderstandings.
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But isnt advertising itself a crass thing ? Thanda matlab whatever is as stupid as this is. Why use a different yardstick- as long as there isnt any overt racism/ discrimination/personal innuendo, which would make them sick, all ads would just fit onto a spectrum running from silly to downright inane.
Is it just me or have anybody seen any scintillating ones at all?
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That’s one ad that gets my goat for its high rating on the CHEAP scale.
I don’t know which Penis thought of it? What’s worse… which Penis approved it!
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What? Did you forget the OK Sabun ad of the 1980s?
“Suchmuch kaafi bada hai!” :-)
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There was one other ad recently (don’t know whether it is still playing) for a deodorant where two guys are watching a girl playing tennis and wonder whether she is wearing pink or black.
The pink or black apparently refers to the two varieties of the newly-introduced deodorant whereas the camera angle and the lewdly suggestive talk of the teenagers suggests her panties.
Highly deplorable ads.
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Deplorable or not, the ad surely succeeded at conveying the message. Guess, it was just to build up the curiosity factor – ditto for the deo ad Goldstar talked about.
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I totally agree with Alok. To take the AD matter further, I was in Australia for two weeks and crisscrossed the huge nation. I never found AD’s by the highly successful cricketers of Australa. Why do we use Cricketers in India?? Can anyone elighten?
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So, what is wrong if sex is used in advertising,what is wrong with sex or any sexual organs?The “1000 years of satire and word play” has lots of examples of it.If anything has to do with sex or the “organs”,it necessarily doesnt become cheap.
The thing about Sun Tv…its owners pledge allegiance to Periyars’ ideals and ideas.Well,they conveniently forgot him,and what about their own history in broadcasting…sun movies,music…they really had lots of “cheap” stuff to get viewers during the early years of cable TV
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See KP. You put it on your blog and got so many people talking about it. Crass or no, I guess rediff got what they wanted out of the ad.
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