In her book Are They Selling Her Lips?, Carol Moog writes, “Back in 1974, Foote, Cone & Belding’s advertising, developed for Levi Strauss & Company’s 501 jeans, included a man in a wheelchair in one of its genuinely engaging, musically excellent, shamelessly imitated, sales-soaring ‘501 Blues’ commercials. In the spot, young people are dancing, jogging, playing double-dutch and here’s this guy happily popping a wheelie in his chair...” http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/vY7NR2nL948fOtSAgcdHuJ/Advertising-and-the-differently-abled.html Probably for the first time in advertising history, a disabled man was featured in an ad, not as an oddity or in an apologetic manner, but as a person like any of us, having the time of his life, on his wheelchair.
Interestingly, reports tell us that the term “differently abled” was coined by the US Democratic National Committee around the mid-1980s, and The Los Angeles Times reported in 1985, “In a valiant effort to find a kinder term than handicapped, the Democratic National Committee has coined differently abled. The committee itself shows signs of being differently abled in the use of English.” In the US, the term in use till then was handicapped and across the Atlantic the term was disabled. The new term differently abled has gained momentum and today we are seeing a growing sensitization of normal people to the issues facing the differently abled. Coming to India, here too, a man in a wheelchair had a stellar role in the Raymond ad done during the early 1990s. A dapper young man, in a suit, probably foreign returned, goes looking for his long-lost friend, only to find him on a wheelchair. After a moment of disappointment, the ad filmmaker lets the human emotion of togetherness take over—the two friends are then shown laughing and enjoying themselves on Mumbai’s Marine Drive, with our hero being pushed along at top speed on his wheelchair by his recently returned friend. The Hero brand of motorcycles used Pankaj Kapoor in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a blind father who guides his son towards buying a Hero Splendor motorbike; the blind father being used as a metaphor for the blind faith that millions of motorbike users have in the brand. Then there was a Tata corporate film in which we see a group of young boys playing football in the rain, with one of the teams having a polio-afflicted boy, in crutches, as the goalkeeper. The ad ends with the differently enabled goalie diving to save a sure goal, and the match, for his team. In the last few years, Indian ads have started celebrating differently abled consumers with full gusto. Several of the ads one has seen over the last few years are not apologetic about disability. One of the biggest efforts was probably the deaf national anthem done for Big Cinemas. Crafted to perfection, the national anthem, performed by the deaf and dumb children, brought alive the fact that you can be differently abled yet have the same pride and joy for one’s country. In the past 18 months alone, numerous ads have used differently abled characters to deliver their sales message. The Nescafe ad featuring a stammering stand-up comic was one such stellar effort. Lux used a blind photographer to showcase film star Katrina Kaif’s beauty. Vatika hair oil used the issue of hair loss associated with chemotherapy to create empathy with its core consumers: even if you lose all your beautiful hair, you still don’t lose your inner beauty, especially if you have friends who stand beside you. The use of differently abled characters by regular brands has had a strong effect on health insurance brands. While they have traditionally stayed with happy days kind of advertising, of late they have also started to present the real challenges of debilitating illnesses. HDFC Life ran an ad early this year where a loving father is helping his daughter, who wears an artificial limb on one leg, to realize her dream to become a dancer. It was a throwback to the real-life case of dancer-turned-actress Sudha Chandran (see her play her real-life role in the Telugu film Mayuri, remade in Hindi as Nache Mayuri). In its latest campaign, HDFC Life has used real world cancer survivor Lisa Ray to say, “Fighting cancer isn’t easy. Financially preparing for it is.” While our advertising has made some small moves, as a society we have a long way to go in sensitizing the general populace about the differently abled. Recently, the Xavier’s Resource Center for the Visually Handicapped conducted the Antarchakshu Workshop, a sensitization and awareness workshop aimed at creating a preview for the sighted into the world of the visually challenged. Those of us who were in the workshop came out of it with a somewhat different view of the visually challenged. The term differently abled was coined to take the stigma associated with the terms employed earlier. The differently abled tell us that they don’t need our charity, sympathy or pity; they ask for our understanding. That is not too much to ask for. Ambi M.G. Parameswaran is executive director of FCB Ulka Advertising and is president of Advertising Agencies Association of India. He will take stock of consumers, brands and advertising trends every month. The opinions expressed here are personal. -- Avinash Shahi Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
