TOI Story

If you’re reading ANY article on the Times Of India website: be it murder, scandal, sports, films, technology, the scandalous murder of sports film technology or whatever, you’ll see this ad under the headline, in the top left corner. It is all very well to pepper my reading with ads: as a freeloader, and that too on the Times, I expect nothing else. But to have this mysterious ad stare at me everywhere I go? I mean, is there anyone out there who understands what’s going on here?

The Making
Ok. So Allianz paid TOI lots of money to get a highly visible slot on the website. Then they probably gave someone the task of coming up with an ad. The someone took a medium-sized advance, and then forgot to make the ad. Three days after the deadline, the client asked him where the ad was. He said he’d be at Allianz with the ad in fifteen minutes! He leapt out of his seat, took a picture of the man in the parking lot outside, wrote some copy while navigating his bike with the other hand, and reached the client’s office in thirteen minutes…. There is really no other explanation.

The Interpretation
Now if an Insurance, Asset Management and Banking concern used a scantily-clad babe, it would be perfectly easy to interpret. She’s pricey, so the bank, your wife might find out, so the insurance, and from the lots and lots of her that’s visible, you can figure out that she’s managing her “assets” pretty well. But what’s with a constipated-faced hassled man parked outside a temple and trying to save his rear view mirror from getting knocked off by a couple on a bicycle who’s obviously doing something to bug him and not letting him get out of the car? What do we make of this work of art? First the man on the bicycle…is he wearing a lungi? The passenger behind him: do his/her fingers naturally end abruptly like that? Or is he/she holding on to a big placard? What’s going on behind that killjoy blue rectangle? Why is Driver man so upset? What is the message of this ad? Is it “This is how hassled Allianz employees are, coz they’re trying to protect your assets (rearview mirror) for you from the big bad wolf of fluctuating markets (Lungicycle and Stubfinger)? Or is it that Allianz’s insurance, banking, and asset management will make sure you never have to constipatedly clutch at your car accessories in a traffic jam ever again, because you’ll be financially secure, and can buy a million rearview mirrors (you pervert) with your pocket change?