Tagging the Tags

Recently one day, while lazing my way through the inexhaustible repertoire of Google Images, chanced upon a couple of Playstation 2 ads and simply got hooked to them. Copies were at their wacky best. Biting, funny, witty, and also seasoned with a pinch of cynicism may be, though all in a playful strain. And the way the copies were designed. The hilarious letterings and all. Simply superlative. Kudos to the creative team. And you the lazy bone who is reading this piece right now, in want of something more worthwhile to do, are grimly advised to check them up for yourself.

Jokes aside the thing that will immediately set you off about the ads is their common tagline. It reads: BECAUSE YOUR GIRLFRIEND BORES YOU SHITLESS. A swell line, no doubt. But the innovation lies in that though positioned as a tag, it is headline, punch and tag all punched in one. Coz the bodycopy which is about all the nonsense his girlfriend is yakking about makes sense only in relation to the tag.

So like that sparked off my recent interest in tags. In the space of next few days, I made note of a number of tags that came my way, some very good and bad ones among them. A few like Cadbury_kuch mitha ho jaye or Sprite_all taste no gyaan floated up from memory, the fact that alone attests to their success. In fact in the ideal scenario that is what a tag must achieve, its inseparability from the product/ brand. Like the by now classical tag-phrase ‘Surobhito Antiseptic Cream BOROLINE’ (I was aggrieved to find recent Boroline ads doing away with the phrase and also the famous signature tune/ jingle). Or the no less famous Amul catchline ‘utterly butterly delicious’, coined way back in the 60s by the then ASP creative director Sylvester de Cunha (the recent Amul tag taste of india is quite good, too).

Among the recent ones, the tag I liked best is the YouTube one which is broadcast yourself. It is simple, succinct and successfully communicates the most exciting feature of the product. And all in two words. Similarly, NOKIA_connecting people is a success, too. Although, it looks simplicity and succinctness alone are never a guarantor of a good tag. The LG tag life’s good which looks like a complete failure, is a case in point. So is DoCoMo_do the new. Both the phrases are equally blank and fail to trigger any positive response.

Often also the tags in Hindi (or Hinglish) come as banal and vapid ones. FordFusion_go fida, MTS_badlo life ka plan, HDFC_sar uthake jio are few random picks. I don’t know, but it seems that the only good tags in hindi are those that are written in a humorous strain, often using the ‘tapori’ version of hindi like the Mentos one dimag ki bati jala de or Sprite_seedhi baat no bakwaas (my personal favorite- it is perfectly in sync with the cool, level-headed, no-nonsense attitude the product playfully builds its image around). The Cadbury tag mentioned earlier also uses a homely, intimate version. Of course, it must vary with the products, but formal/ normal hindi seems to be a disconnect with most of the products. Or is it only a failure of the copywriters?

Also there are times when an otherwise good ad gets somewhat marred by a bad tagline. This happens with a fordfusion ad that I spotted the other day. The ad was good, had an interesting headline- Some Cars Have Great Ads, This Ad Has a Great Car but the Ford tagline makes everyday exciting is too long, cumbrous and does not sound exciting in the least bit. Neither am I a big fan of the Telegraph_get life started tag. Especially when it comes with those ‘Before I Start I Stop by the Telegraph’ snippet ads. The ads are a hit with me. The diffuse gray-scale images nicely conjure up the languorous note of early morning and the call-to-action tone of the tag just sounds out of sync.

A few other tags I found interesting were World Movies_one world. one channel(now they have changed it to the world’s greatest movies- just whose idea it was?), Adobe_better by adobe, McDonalds_i’m loving it, Nike_just do it (came to find that Nike is using the tag for more than 20 years and it is still going strong- fabulous, huh?), and FedEx_relax, it’s fedex. The ones I found consistently bad were the banking sector ones, HDFC_we understand your world, ICCI_hum hein na, Bank of Rajasthan_dare 2 dream and so on. And there was one (Verna_feel it) which was so bad that it almost seemed a parodistic take on all bad and pointless tags. But then there was this little eatery, too, named Baked’n’Fried that I found in Ballygunge Place. Tagging along was the line ‘compulsion for connoisseurs’. It was a happy surprise.

But then as always, for the very best in anything you must look away from reality for a moment and turn to fiction. So it was here. The latest Shahid Kapur-starrer on the block Chance pe Dance, released just this week, has Shahid as a struggler (he is an aspiring hero, of course). The struggle phase on, he appears for a, yes lungi-commercial. The tag reads for easy air flow.

[if you will like an extensive list of tags, this guy at http://junksteronomic.blogspot.com/2008/02/tagging-d-punch-lines.html has a real nice collection.

The Playstation ads you can find at http://runningwithfoxes.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/ps2indiaad1resized.jpg and http://globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/indian-playstation-2-ad-1.gif ]