Fire And Flood

A sordid tale

Of desert storms

And some frozen blood

Strewn around

The skulls and bones

Unnoticed, unheard

Some purple petals

Of a black rose

Dead from within

Fixated

Obsessed, repulsed

By the raging flood

A Cynic, Some Cannabis And The I-Day

Sixty-three, eh? Long time on earth, you juggernaut named India.

Reams of printing material wasted in long droning newspaper articles. Some singing hymns in the might of the elephant, some 'critically analysing' where we stand today. Yet others (the coloured pages) breaking the news about how did our national lady M.Sherawat celebrate I-Day this year.

Tons of flowers plucked for gigantic garlands for our 'leaders'. The remaining plucked to be wrapped in the Tricolour before the hoisting ceremony by the most corrupt blood-sucking parasite of the locality in the capability of the 'chief guest'.

TV journalists going to inaccessible military locations once a year to show the rest of India how the 'sons of India' celebrate this day there. Empathy converts into TRPs. It's either Siachen or Shit Rukh Khan - what this day means to him and when is his new movie releasing.

A twenty-4 hour patriotism that spills over to the status messages. SMSes with flags made of hyphens, dots, asterisks and slashes. Universal, hollow wishes of "Happy I-Day".

A holiday for the whole of India.

It's a day of spin doctors. Of speeches and promises and hidden agendas. Of parades and shenanigans and hooplas.

Of shit.

So? If not this, then what? This. [link]

Oral Contraceptives For Men!

Today's ad-making event finally breathed fresh air into this about-to-go-extinct blog!

We had to select one of the four categories - tobacco, alcohol, oral contraceptives and guns - to make a surrogate ad of. For all those who had the sanity enough to not opt for a course in Business Management, I'll lay out the concept of surrogate advertising in simple terms.

We can't show an ad for a product category X. So, we choose to make a product of category Y of the same brand name and promote it on mass media. By this we expose the consumers to the brand and build associations we want to build. Classic examples are McDowell's Soda, Seagram's Royal Stag Mega Music, Bacardi Blast, Red & White Bravery Awards.

Back to the event. We brainstormed, conceptualised, shot, searched for relevant videos and images on the web, splitted the videos, arranged and joined the pieces together IN ONE HOUR. The result wasn't the most technologically sophisticated ad of the world but we hope the message got conveyed. There simply wasn't any time for it. No sexy models. No expert camerapersons. No geeks on the computer. We did it all ourselves.

Remember, the product is "Guardian Angel Oral Contraceptives FOR MEN' and we make an ad for 'Guardian Angel Helmets'.

Some nuances might get lost in the first viewing. A repeat-viewing would essentially bring forward the subtleties. Voila!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaU1d_bwgVw

Team: The Achmeds - We keel you! [Abhishek Dassani, Abhishek Joshi, Varun Kumar Gupta]

Tagline: We do not believe in taglines.