In a world of fakes, it’s hard to keep it real

Thru’ the Looking Glass

Last Sunday, eagle-eyed newspaper readers were jarred out of their morning reverie by a front-page ad praising the economic progress of Uttar Pradesh under the Yogi Adityanath government. Those who were paying attention soon noticed something amiss: an iconic yellow Ambassador taxi on the bridge in a key image. Where else could it be but Kolkata? Twitter erupted into a furore as the bridge was identified as eastern Kolkata’s Maa Flyover.

Predictably, the bungle provided fabulous political fodder. Opposition parties and their supporters were quick to point out that they had seen through the “false claims” of development using “fake pictures of flyovers and factories”. But what about the many other false claims and misleading images so common in advertising in India?

Real estate developers get first prize for creating exaggerated ideals of utopia. “A smoking hot rendezvous”, one hoarding in Mumbai promised, with an image of a foreigner couple having a barbeque against a backdrop of a verdant meadow. Never mind that the upcoming apartment complex is being built next to a main road. There were steaks cooking on the barbeque as well. To add to the absurdity, they looked suspiciously like beef!

Another ad for an under-construction apartment complex in Mumbai featured a similar wide-open meadow, except this time it came with a girl dressed in formal riding attire and a huge horse. “What does every child crave for?” the ad asked. Too bad if it is a horse and grasslands to gallop through, because no amount of imagination is going to materialise such things in the city’s concrete jungle.

And then, there are companies that use unauthorised images of celebrities to promote their products. Remember the scandal back in 2016, when James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan appeared to endorse an Indian paan masala brand? “Class never goes out of style”, the ad claimed. Pierce, in return, claimed he’d been grossly manipulated as the product’s brand ambassador. According to his contract, he’d agreed to promote a natural “breath freshener/tooth whitener!”

Photos of Indian celebrities frequently show up in ads without their knowledge or consent. Most recently, Olympic medalist P V Sindhu is said to have sent legal notices to several brands that capitalised on her win by associating themselves with her image for moment-marketing. The road to recourse can be long though, usually making such opportunistic actions easy to get away with.

I’m not a celebrity but my foreignness is sufficient for personal photos of me to be taken from the internet and used in advertisements. One day, I’d had enough when a mass distribution brochure for a local Mumbai paint company arrived in the mail and, much to my shock, on it was an image of me wearing a saree. Where was the relevance? I wasn’t even holding a paint brush! I decided the company owed me an explanation, and perhaps some free paint. So, I indignantly marched into their office to demand it. (My earlier days in India were ridiculously dramatic at times).

Instead of being apologetic, the owner was excited I’d paid him a surprise personal visit. “Madam, you should be flattered that we’ve used your photo. An Indian woman would be happy with the attention,” he proclaimed. The showdown was on. Once he realised I was indeed serious about my complaint, he proceeded to defend himself by saying that the advertising agency chose the image. He was not responsible.

The UP government ad blunder was blamed on the inadvertent inclusion of a wrong image by the newspaper’s marketing department. Doesn’t the client approve the ad before publication? Whether it’s bridges, meadows or foreigners, it’s mindboggling how far ads stray from reality at times. Quite often, it’s a game of separating fact from fantasy.