Blog: Bollywood making idiots out of automobiles

Visualise this. Amitabh Bachchan, playing a simpleton, just retired from service, walks past a car showroom with his wife when he stops to admire one of the cars parked outside. He knows that he cannot afford it, but hey, there are no costs for admiring a car. An eager, friendly, car salesman coaxes him to take a test-drive, which Amitabh is not very keen to do as he knows - and I have already told you so - that he cannot afford the car. But, being a human being and persuaded very convincingly by the car salesman, he reluctantly agrees to take a test drive. Test drive over, the unrelenting salesman again tries to sell him the car through attractive finance schemes. Our simpleton Amitabh is apologetic as he cannot afford the car, really, and I don't doubt him, as even my retired government official dad cannot afford a Rs 15-lakh car. Now this is where things go nasty. The cheerful Dr. Jekyll of a salesman suddenly turns into Mr. Hyde and starts uttering profanities against Amitabh. Not stopping at this, he then proceeds to slap and shove the old man around.

Holy cow! Pause. Rewind. Replay. Now that was a Ford India showroom and the car was a Mondeo.

Now you know why the Accord sells so much and the Mondeo finds it tough reaching double-digit sales. “They beat up people at Ford India dealerships,” not a statement that I ratify, but precisely the unfortunate message that came out of this movie sequence. The movie in question was Baghban, which was released a few years back and was a moderate success.

On a serious note, my friends in Maraimalai Nagar in Chengalpattu down south wouldn't even have noticed the movie, and even if they had seen it and felt infuriated, they could hardly have done anything about the issue. For, when once a movie with such a thoughtless sequence is released, the damage is already done and there is no point in raking the issue. Actually, raking the issue is just snowballing it into a controversy and getting the movie more eyeballs and ensuring more damage to the product. Most often the long reaction time of the judiciary to take up such issues will see to it that major damage has already been done to your company's repute even before the court can decide on stopping the screening or making necessary changes to the movie. Anyways, it is difficult to raise any objections against a movie on grounds of misrepresentation of products or a company and be taken seriously.

Ironically, I have a feeling that the director didn't even think twice before going ahead with the sequence. Ford India can take comfort in the fact that they are not the only victims of this Bollywood automotive ignorance. Most of us will remember the 'Road' sequence where a Tata truck catches up with a Tata Safari.

That's why they sell more trucks than Safaris.

I guess they would have accelerated the Safari Petrol programme after the sequence in Road came out. Such apathy towards, otherwise sound vehicles, has been common in Bollywood movies with numerous sequences of dogs, monkeys, horses, hero-on-a-cycle, hero-on-a-tonga, hero-on-a-bullock-cart and even hero-barefoot chasing sleek, fast cars and catching them, much to the horror of automobile marketing executives across the country.

There was this sequence in the recent multiplex masala madness 'Main Hoon Na' which had Shahrukh Khan on a cycle-rickshaw catching up with the bad guys running away in a Mahindra Scorpio. Sure its diesel and not that fast but catching a Scorpio on a cycle-rickshaw is a bit too much. To add to the insult, Shahrukh catches the Scorpio, not once, but twice and then takes one of the doors off its hinges in one gunshot. Now why didn't they use a Hyundai in place of the Scorpio, considering his wife was listed as the producer of the movie and Shahrukh endorses the brand?

In fact, Main Hoon Na would count as one of my all-time favourites in terms of making idiots out of automobiles. Where else, but in St. Paul's in Darjeeling in Main Hoon Na would you find the whole college, including the hero, riding LML Freedoms.

Freedom from studies, Freedom from teachers, Freedom from logic…Package deal or what?

On a serious note, its hardly product placement, it's a sheer mockery of the audience's intellect.

One just has to look at a James Bond or Lara Croft movie to see what effective product placement is. The product has to be subtly placed and should not occupy every frame of the movie. So when a pensive Zayed Khan absent-mindedly surfs channels and stops for just five seconds at a particular one where a LML Freedom commercial is on, it just isn't subtle anymore, not when the audience has had 250 frames of the LML Freedom already. Think of it, that's a lot of LML money and brand goodwill down the drain, all thanks to sheer Bollywood ignorance on automobiles and their placement. On second thought, maybe it's just a lack of common sense.

That may be just one of the reasons why LML's plant is under a lock-out.

More than that, the product and movie (or the character) should match each other in attributes. You could associate the Cadillac CTS and Matrix II, you could also co-relate Lara Croft and the Land Rover Defender. Now try co-relating Lara Croft with the CTS and Land Rover Defender with the Matrix II - I hope you get what I mean.

Taking this topic further - and by now you must be aware that I have a warped sense of reasoning - I propose that car companies start using product Bollywood movies as marketing weapons. Imagine this. Shahrukh gets out of a car, any car, as long as it's not a Hyundai. Preity Zinta, standing on the kerb, squeals, “Raj, How could you drive this stupid Leo Weasel. I only go out with guys who drive Bigfoot Yetis.”

And for the next three minutes they discuss the features of the Bigfoot Yeti while thoroughly trashing the Leo Weasel. All this time, the Leo marketing guys will be busy pulling their hair out because there is little they can do otherwise.

What they can do is to have Hrithik return the favour in the next blockbuster by thoroughly trashing the Yeti and glorifying the Weasel.

Now if some of you voice murmurs of dissent and talk of business ethics, I would like to point out that automotive marketing executives sold soft drinks in their last jobs.