Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall Indonesia’s advertising Industry which is one of the youngest in the region, is almost at its adolescence trying to come to terms with all the rapid changes that it faces as it comes of age to find its own well defined personality and identity. A philosopher rightly said about life “We see life not as it is but as we are”. This seems so true in advertising too. Advertising should draw upon people’s emotions in order to strike an emotional relationship with their audiences. It is said that advertising is suppose to reflect society.
This means that advertising should be representative of the society’s cultures and values in which it occurs. Advertising should also be representative of genuine situations within its society. And for the audiences who wish to see their own reflection, the advertising that depends on drawing from international campaigns has no role to play. Trend however in most similar advertising markets is that it takes a while before a country comes out of the shadows of western advertising and put its own stamp of style on the world advertising map.
Japan, Singapore and Thailand have done it in the past from Asia. India is one of the latest countries that have started developing their unique advertising style. Is finding a country’s unique tone in advertising just another way to stroke creative egos in an industry full of Ego maniacs? Not really. The biggest advantage of this phenomenon is that it pushes up the overall creative quality since the advertising starts working at a different level for the audience.

It also improves the acceptance of path breaking creative work by the marketers because they start believing in creativity looking at the success of some bold creative work. The creative becomes more bold instigating tougher competition in the industry as a result of which the bar goes higher for creative standard and everyone benefits. The changes in Indonesian advertising, as the readers can see in the displayed samples where the ads have a distinct Indonesian tone, have started showing in Public Service campaigns and some specific product ategories leading to creation of some most memorable and impactful campaigns. This, as I see is the onset of a new era in Indonesian advertising. An era when a consumer peeps into the mirror of Indonesian advertising and utters the magic words ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall…’ he sees nothing but reflection of his own self. Abhay Kapoor The writer is the Group Managing Director With one of the biggest Indonesian communication Groups, DM Pratama Group.