This is about the very famous Rin vs. Tide ad. I am unable to understand why so many people are crying foul over it. It is competition in its best and truest form. If I have a better product why should I shy away from proving it to the rest of the world and more importantly to my customers? Hindustan Unilever has done exactly that and smashed P&G black and blue in their face. It is a smart ad that is aggressive, to the point and without any pretensions. It is reflective of the generation that we belong to. Come to think of it, are we all not like the Rin ad? Look at the type of TV shows we watch, video games we play and attitudes we carry. We are the children of Maya who want the best of everything. Convenience is the buzzword of our generation. We all somehow do not understand the meaning of the word ‘sacrifice’. If any of you do not agree with me, look at the society around you and take a look at yourself again. You, me, we all – including the baba’s, the priests and the yogis are materialistic first and idealists second. In fact, we all are as blatant as the Rin ad.
Ok I am veering away from the topic. But I want to. We all love freedom. We all dress in the best of whites that we have, go to the Independence Day and Republic day celebrations, get a laddoo and come back. But what is independence to us? The idea of independence is linked to the idea of sacrifice because true independence only comes by sacrificing for the common good of the society. Look at Shaheed Bhagat Singh and you will understand what I mean to say. The question that I want to ask is- Do we have the capacity to sacrifice for the greater good of the society?
Today, I don’t see anyone who wants to do that. When it comes to emissions, we shirk away responsibility by saying that we are a developing nation and we cannot stop polluting as our economy will suffer. We all attend thousands of talks and seminars on protecting the environment, conserving water, saving tigers and all the blah in the world and treat it as such. BLAH. The usual excuse is that we do not know what we as an individual can do to save environment. However, if you have to buy the latest cell phone you as an individual will go through hundreds of websites and check thousands of reviews before buying one. True freedom is doing the same for the issues that confront us as a society today. There are thousands of methods of protecting the environment, all we have to do is to open our minds and laptops and click a few buttons.
We as a nation are so tied up with big ideas that we forget to do what was taught to us in class two. All we have to do is to be a little honest, little forgiving and a little generous. If we can do that, we will be able to solve half of the problems that we face today. The HLL attitude is great but we need to apply that straightforwardness and truthfulness to things that benefit the community also. If we can do that, we will do just fine.
Well said Deepansh…
Our generation is characterised by the no-holds-barred attitude and it must reflect on issues of collective importance too.
But an independent third party must ratify a product/service to be better than a specific competitor’s offering, before any company advertises it to be so.Else the company has to face the ire of ASCI…