The role of advertising is to differentiate a product from its peers and create top of mind recall so that for potential shoppers, the marketer’s brand features in the choice set. Seems simple enough? So you get a top notch advertising agency to come up with some creative television commercials that hopefully cut through the clutter. They choose a contemporary and create a parody. The theme in question – cheating.

A little bit of channel surfing these days and you realise that there are many advertisers out there running ads that focus on this theme. There are ads for Spice Mobile (or was it Micromax) where a groom is accused of cheating at his wedding reception, then there is Virgin Mobile with the entire girlfriend making a scene about her being pregnant and her boyfriend cheating and there is Set Wet deodorants that also plays to the same tune. Even though these are quite different products (ok cell phone and cellular provider are close) the fact that they all focus on different creative renditions with the same underlying theme makes me wonder how effective they are. Especially since they have the misfortune of being aired so close to each other.

Somewhere down the line the general public will remember it as an ad that talks about cheats because that message keeps getting repeated across several ads, but the product will be lost in the clutter. An interesting thought is why aren’t there ads that show guys ranting at girls because they are cheating? On another note recently a TV serial about cheaters is being aired on one of the channels. What’s the media consumption tastes of society coming to? Go figure.