KJ_Farhad

Fun loving, loves to live life on the edge, in general loves good things in life. A graphic designer and does Visual Graphics & Karaoke.
Lives Life King Size.

[Karthik 🇮🇳 @beastoftraal]

Safed detergent's latest ad is a monumentally problematic and sanitized counter-narrative of the Jantar Mantar police action. It reminded me of Pepsi's ill-fated 2017 Kendall Jenner ad.

In the new Safed ad, students are protesting and want the minister to respond. A lady cop, stationed on the minister's route, reaches out to the students and offers them breakfast (just one tiffin box, for all of them!). The minister arrives and asks why the cop is behaving as if they are her kids. She responds that they are indeed someone's children.

What really happened... we all know. The cops did not behave like this at all (in Delhi, and then in Jharkhand). And because the ad's emotional protagonist is a policewoman, the very institution that is implicated in the conflict gets to become the source of moral resolution!

Even the minister's response in the ad is almost benign: "Why are you supporting them like they are your children?". If the ruling regime's ministers had actually responded to student protesters with something along the lines of, "These are our children too, and therefore we need to listen to them", then the ad would be celebrating an existing civic ethic. But when the real political rhetoric is "anti-national" and "foreign-funded", the advertising story becomes almost an aspirational rewrite of the state's response. Politically, it becomes a very convenient way of laundering (via Safed detergent, probably) the uglier reality that we saw.

In the Pepsi ad, the product itself was the mechanism of reconciliation. In Safed's ad, detergent isn't what resolves the protest. The protagonist's maternal empathy does. The brand then metaphorically appropriates that quality.

So, Pepsi made protest into a stage for selling reconciliation through a can of cola. Safed makes protest into a stage for selling empathy through a mother's instinct, while largely removing the violence, the political grievances and the state's nasty response that made the protest necessary in the first place.

Watch the Pepsi ad here: https://t.co/sFIXoaHBwV

#advertising #marketing

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

@san_x_m They all deserve to be hung.

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

Just posted a photo @ Botanica - The Greenhouse Bar https://t.co/JdsZt6IOzB

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Just posted a photo @ Aufside at Hotfut https://t.co/IJ2C7cLbeK

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Just posted a photo @ Midtown Bar & Lounge https://t.co/5MKR8sZaqW

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Just posted a photo @ Aufside at Hotfut https://t.co/H5pMykGGB6

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

@theburgerbarncafe where #karaoke rocks.

#fridaynight glimpses @ Burger Barn, Fc Road https://t.co/DkTa1BfKe2

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

Just posted a photo @ Burger Barn, Fc Road https://t.co/0C2ywRnwYG

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Just posted a photo @ Chaurahe Ke Paar https://t.co/PnTiwfuLVl

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

Just posted a photo @ Chaurahe Ke Paar https://t.co/nAjllPZAjL

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

Just posted a photo @ Aufside at Hotfut https://t.co/1wpPSjLcTP

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

Just posted a photo @ Raasta Pune https://t.co/TE61oz41qW

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

Just posted a photo @ Aufside at Hotfut https://t.co/f6bFn5yi5H

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

Just posted a photo @ Chaurahe Ke Paar https://t.co/pMZ39NjyFI

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

Just posted a photo @ Botanica - The Greenhouse Bar https://t.co/Cy18HSrB5A

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

Just posted a photo @ Aufside at Hotfut https://t.co/oQayAOVNTl

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

Just posted a photo @ Raasta Pune https://t.co/hBhuyOX8uS

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

Friends who karaoke together, stay together.

Midtown Karaoke tonight is your final destination.

Karaoke nights now in Viman Nagar on Monday's - 8.30 pm onwards. @ Midtown Bar & Lounge https://t.co/nOKDhGbHxJ

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

Friends who karaoke together, stay together.

Midtown Karaoke tonight is your final destination.

Karaoke nights now in Viman Nagar on Monday's - 8.30 pm onwards. @ Midtown Bar & Lounge https://t.co/Pkp1rHUbVO

[KJ_Farhad @Farhadpatel]

It's party time folks

@aufside. Come rock. #karaokenight🎤 starting 8 pm. @ Aufside at Hotfut https://t.co/pjjfe3eeOW