When a detergent advertisement turns into a political controversy, the issue rarely lies entirely with the audience. It often reflects a gap between a brand’s intention and its creative execution.
We all remember that Surf Excel advertisement “Rang Laaye Sang” / “Daag Acche Hain” released in the year 2019. The story was that on the occasion of Holi, a muslim boy was going to the Mosque but was not able to go because many Hindu boys were standing on their balcony and ready to throw colours on the muslim boy, so a Hindu girl on her bicycle went in front of the house of those boys and let them throw all the colours on her and then drops the muslim boy at the gate of the Mosque. Both bid goodbye, and the line flashes Daag Acche Hain.
The idea behind this ad was to spread religious harmony in an environment that had been very religious.
Surf Excel has a long-term philosophy of spreading the message that stains are good; it has made several ads on this theme only.
The Controversy
The right wing claimed that this ad promotes love jihad. Love-Jihad is a concept in which Muslim boys marry a non-muslim girl, mainly Hindu girls, by deceiving them, meaning by hiding their real identity. The ad received severe backlash for this reason.
Message vs Medium
Sometimes the message is good, but the way of delivering the message becomes wrong, and this creates the issue.
The ad tried to show religious harmony in which the two kids were showing harmony, and the girl was protecting the boy. The Hindus-Muslim issue has been a long-standing issue in India for ages. The brand may have thought that it might calm some tension in the religiously charged atmosphere. The brand may not have thought about the love jihad issue, so it didn’t feel any problem in creating that ad.
The issue was not about religious harmony; it was about gender pairing. The brand’s intent was something else, but it got perceived as something else.
Ground Reality in Advertising
Any product ad’s main focus is to generate more revenue by attracting more customers. So, they always keep in mind the audience.
Any ad is termed successful if it succeeds in attracting a larger customer base without any backlash.
Any ad has the main focus of changing the perception of people and not telling their own intent.
Ads are not made for an ideal world; they are made for a world that is politically or religiously non-neutral. The main thing is to keep in mind the cultural and political baggage of the audience.
The missed opportunity
Just imagine the ad where instead of that Hindu girl, there is a Hindu boy, the rest is the same, the controversy that erupted would have erupted? Or both the characters were female, the main issue would have never risen, as we can see there are many ads of this kind, but they don’t get any such controversy because their focus is perception, not intent. I’m not saying that I’m smarter than those people writing that ad, but giving an alternative.
Any message of unity is successful when it creates conversation and not controversy.