Flashback

Retro advertising may have started out by breaking through the clutter, but it's past its sell-by date.

"When all think alike, no one thinks very much"

Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

Lippmann was an American journalist writing about international peace (in his book The Stakes of Diplomacy), but he may well have been speaking of the Indian advertising industry.

Ardent followers of the herd mentality, at present they're all worshipping at the altar of retro. Flick through your cable channel offerings and you'll see ad upon ad of black and white and sepia-toned visuals, old-fashioned nasal intonations and soundtracks from the golden oldies.

But retro's been in for so long, it's out. What started as an innovative, eye-catching trend by Nestle India for its mint brand, Polo (the beta, sweater peheno commercial) and was followed quickly by news channel Aaj Tak (a series of award-winning radio spots and black and white television ads in end-2003), has now become a run-of-the-mill notion.

The list includes Nestle's Kit-Kat, Hindustan Lever's Close-Up (Kya aap Close-Up karte hain?), Cadbury's Halls (a brand earlier owned by Warner Lambert) Coca-Cola India's flavoured drink, Vanilla Coke, the Playwin lottery and most recently, McDonald's and Tata Tea's Tetley brand.

In the case of Polo, the idea was to mock the existing society. So an ad with a retro feel was an admirable fit. But what was supposed to be a clutter-breaking idea a few years ago is now just cluttering television space.

Hasn't retro outlived its sell-by date?

Opinion is divided. Hanoz Mogrelia, creative director, Saatchi & Saatchi (the agency that created the new Tetley ad), disagrees that retro is a fad.

Says he, "It's all very well to say that when you have nothing else to show, go retro. But going retro is not that easy. On the contrary, it needs guts on the part of the brand to go for a retro look because it is difficult to execute."

He adds: "Retro was never a fad. Whichever time period you live in, there are some periods that will always be golden. So retro advertising is here to stay."

But Mogrelia appears to be in a minority; more people hold the flip view. Says Partha Sinha, head of planning and strategy, Ambience Publicis and Publicis India, "It is a fad and will go away eventually because most agencies continue to use retro as just another form of expression.

Unless you are able to unearth the core purpose behind using the retro theme in a campaign, there is no point." Adds Milind Dhaimade, creative director, Everest: "When retro is done on a mass scale, it does not work because people fail to see the reason behind the retro look. It thus loses its uniqueness."

The reason retro advertising works, say most marketing consultants, is the humour. Ads that take a sepia-coloured view of products tend to rely on the inherent comedy to make their point.

The trouble is, consumers end up remembering the ad, but not the product. Which defeats the purpose of the communication.

Still brand marketers and several advertising executives defend the trend towards retro saying it is all about rediscovering the past. Not so, dismisses Kamlesh Pandey, former creative head, Rediffusion DY&R; retro advertising, he believes, is driven by "sheer laziness".

"There is a paucity of fresh ideas in the industry. So people find it easier to follow the trend and jump on the bandwagon because it's safe, rather than trying to create something new," he declares.

Retro advertising, says Pandey, is more of a virus then a fad.

At the same time, a lot of people believe in the school of thought that retro happens when nothing else works. Seconds Pandey, "Otherwise, why would everyone be following it? But the formula by itself is not enough. You should know how to use it," he added.

There is another perspective to this. According to consultants, advertising agencies play the retro card when the brand is devoid of any USP (unique selling proposition).

As one consultant puts it, "The fusion between old and new era is essentially beneficial in fun categories, which don't have a clear USP."

Interestingly, the trick that worked effectively in the old days was, "If you have no USP, sing it". "A jingle always came to the advertisers' rescue," says Pandey.

So, when does retro really work? Sanjay Purohit, marketing director, Cadbury India, is of the view that "retro" is just another type of creative execution of an communication idea.

"So you can't really say when retro will work or not work. Whether an ad will work or not depends on whether the execution is engaging or not, whether the communication idea is sound and in line with the brand values. It's as simple as that."

"The concept has to make sense for the brand being advertised. The consumer views an ad as a piece of entertainment. If the style fits his/her idea of entertainment, while passing on a brand message, so be it," he adds.

Companies appear to have different reasons for opting for the bygone look. Television news channel Aaj Tak, which was one of the earliest adopters of retro, had a rather prosaic reason.

A consultant points out that Aaj Tak was short on both time and budgets and so chose to go in for a black and white look.

Nevertheless, the Aaj Tak campaign managed to break the clutter. Explains Everest's Dhaimade, "In advertising industry where creativity is the norm, retro is just one of the ways of breaking the clutter. Aaj Tak's use of retro was successful because it conveyed the promise of the brand effectively using the 1940s era."

The retro element, according to market observers, also helped the Aaj Tak ads become more favourable because they spoke of corruption and other such issues.

But Aaj Tak was then. Fast forward to brands such as McDonald's, Tetley and Vanilla Coke that jumped on to the retro bandwagon rather recently. At first glance, there isn't much connection between a Mac meal and the good ol' days.

But McDonald's' agency Leo Burnett found a connect. The client's brief to the agency was simple "" to reinvent the Rs 20 "Happy Price" meal. One of the insights reinforced by Leo Burnett's research is the eternal fascination for prices.

This lent itself to the black and white tone campaign, featuring lookalikes of yesteryear actors. The message: while McDonald's offerings are relevant in today's times, they still bear price tags of the yore.

Explains Rameet Arora, brand director, Leo Burnett, "There is this nostalgia for prices where one is often caught saying at one point or the other, how low-priced things were in the old times."

Similarly, Tetley also cashed in on the current fascination with Mughal-e-Azam for its range of flavoured tea bags.

Says Mogrelia, "The tea bag category had not witnessed any major changes in terms of positioning. So rather than going the beaten track of showing before and after effects of having a flavoured tea bag, we got the retro twist where it says Chai mein twist, life mein twist."

It may be too soon to predict whether Tetley tea bags will succeed or not, but one campaign that couldn't quite cash in on the retro rage was Vanilla Coke.

Vanilla Coke's take on Elvis a lá Vivek Oberoi lost its fizz rather rapidly. But market observers are sceptical whether it's the drink or its advertising that failed.

Marketers and agencies are quick to say that the loss or gain in brand's marketshares or sales can't really be attributed to their advertising. In retrospect, it's all about brand salience and recall.

(Additional reporting by Aparna Krishnakumar)