Indian Television Commercials in Transition: A Study of
New Emerging Practices
Sandeep Kumar Gupta
*
, and V. Santhi Siri
Department of Electronic Media and Mass Communication, Pondicherry University, Puducherry- 605014 India
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Introduction
Advertising, being a significant and an integral part of media has
an important role in the communication field. Advertising influences
not only the marketing strategy but also the communication strategy
as well; in marketing strategy to the promotion of the product or
service, and in communication strategy to construct the opinions,
thoughts, beliefs, and mindset of the people. The messages of ads
have potential to influence the attitudes and behaviours [1-3] and
they are often powerful, persuasive and influential in shaping the
attitude and behaviour of consumers [4,5] and this potential get more
effective in case of television medium. Therefore, it becomes
important that the message should be good, healthy, positive and
deeper insight idea to get a favourable approach towards itself.
Television, an audio-visual medium, is a popular and effective tool
for advertising due to its pervasiveness, impact and targeting abilities.
The television channels are flooded with advertisements, and if we
look at ads, we find that they laud the product specifications and harp
about the product over and over again in general. Commercials are
product-centric in general, that ingeminate the product and its
features repeatedly; which could be the reason that audiences have
the avoidance behaviour towards ads. These commercials are often
showpiece with a photo of the celebrity holding the product and
harping specifications, for example, Wheel surf, Harpic cleaner, Fair
and Lovely cream, Colgate active salt, Revital capsule etc. Television
commercials, in general, are boring, silly, offensive, misleading, and
not good enough to watch them [6-8]. In addition, Saiganesh and
Parameswaran [9] studied the avoidance behaviour of audience
towards television advertisements, and found that audiences do not
watch the advertisements if they are irritating, uninteresting and
meaningless; obscenity and too much of vulgarity in the ads which
are not relevant to the product, and such disgusting ads are disliked
by audience. They further stated that to get the returns the ad
creators should focus on the quality of the ads, and should be
created with likeable factors, which are watchable again and again.
However, a few changes we are coming to see from the past
decade; changes in the content and message quality of commercials,
has been valued more or the less. The quality of a few commercials’
content is developed considerably over the past 10 years, and it is in
a continuous process towards the betterment. It has emerged a new
practice of qualitative ads, which can catch the attention of the
audience towards television commercials; and this is the creative and
sensitive power of an ad. Ads are coming with great stories with
sensitivity and meaningful information that are worthy of their time.
The Father of Advertising, David Ogilvy, attributed to Howard
Gossage, said that “Advertising justifies its existence when used in
Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism
Research
Volume 11:3, 2021
ISSN: 2165-7912 Open Access
*Address for correspondence: Sandeep Kumar Gupta, Department of Electronic Media and Mass Communication, Pondicherry University,
Puducherry- 605014 India; Email: sandyreporter12@gmail.com
Received: February 07, 2021; Accepted: February 21, 2021; Published: March 08, 2021
Copyright: © 2021 Gupta SK, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license which permits
unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.