Rattle and rope

What is it about snake charming that enthralls and outrages audiences so? A look at a tricky attention getter

Outrage and obsession. They often come nicely entwined with one another in the Indian market for audio-visual entertainers. If something evokes outrage, be assured that it has a constituency of obsession somewhere as well. And if it's an obsession, somebody ought to be outraged, right?

Snake charming, at the moment, tops the list of entertainment devices that are arousing people one way or another "" to clenched fists or neurotransmitter zips. The obvious candidate for analysis, here, is the Pepsi TV commercial currently on air in India, which might have set a record for arresting the gaze of the longest possible span of ages.

It transfixes one-year-olds and nanogenarians alike. "I can't believe it," a parent proclaims in utter amazement, "this is the only thing on TV our toddler pays attention to "" he even takes a break from bawling when it appears."

A break from bawling? It obviously can't be the snaking bottles drawn by the sound of the musical been... can it?

The reason this commercial has been in the news, though, is the affront it has caused to advertising professionals and observers alike who do not see why snake charming needs to sell a fizzy drink in India. "India has moved on," says a visibly offended copywriter, "why portray the country as a land of snake charmers?" She speaks for many others who are no less rattled.

Except that Pepsi's commercial is showing no let up in its charm, and the longer it stays on air, the more it seems like something of an advertising achievement. Why? For one, because it has unnerved so many. For another, because it is indeed entertaining, and with TV spelling C-L-U-T-T-E-R these days, that's terrific news for the brand.

India may be a fully keyed-in member of the information age. But snake charming, for all it is worth, has always been a form of popular entertainment. As a hypnosis show, in which a snake appears to dance to a tune of a wind instrument made of gourd, it has been part of "oriental" folklore since the times of ancient Egypt, according to records.

And, as trends go, live shows in India have been on the decline for decades, despite estimates that over half a million people make a livelihood of snake domestication. India's Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 outlawed the outright "ownership" of serpents, but it was only in the mid-1990s "" upon stirs by public action groups "" that the Act's active implementation drove live snake charmers out of the "market" as the urban entertainment consumer knows it. The result? Unfulfilled demand.

It shows. All of a sudden, children everywhere are talking snakes, and been pipes, and gravity defiance, and the gateway to the blue yonder (okay, maybe not this, but some of the thirst buzz enroute to the Pepsi ad's climactic scene). "The ad has grabbed people," concedes the copywriter, "and as ad people we are given to 'trust the market' as a philosophical practice, so you won't hear us complaining any longer."

As advertising market philosophy, that's good. But what is so entertaining in snake charming?

"Nothing particularly," responds a market analyst, "just market maya-opia." And the man erupts in laughter. Ted Levitt would presumably have been impressed with the "insight": is this the market for thirst quenching fluids... or the market for refreshment brands?

Refreshment brands. That's the short answer and long answer both. And to Pepsi, no matter what the critics have to say, the gains are neither shortsighted nor an illusion. They are long term and real.

The commercial entertains. It refreshes. And, best of all, it snuggles the brand into memory space. For good.

All this, by daring to address a "no go" zone, even at the cost of a few outbursts of anger. Meanwhile, the actual market for mass entertainment, that of Hindi cinema, has also been up to a similar set of tricks.

In fact, among the celluloid entertainers of the season, No Entry stands out for being even more unabashed in its addressal of audiences. Even more because this rib-tickling comedy of errors doesn't just set up a labyrinthe of follies, it actually goes all the way over the edge "" to the rope. Before good sense returns.