The times, they are tho changing.

My God. What have they done?!

Poor Dylan. I wonder if he knows what our ad-world is doing to his classic?

The latest Reliance ad features the tune of a song that’s so familiar, it infuriates you that you can’t get it. Maybe it’s the just the terribly boring singing, I don’t know. The lyrics have, of course, been suitably changed to tell some story (ridiculously relevant to the product, I’m sure), but it’s the final line that’s the absolute clincher!

“The times, they are *tho* changing!”

Dear God. Is nothing sacred anymore?! Why would they do that? Why would they take a classic like that, and butcher it mercilessly? Why? Why?!

And it wasn’t even nicely done! I mean, the vocals are so dull – were they trying to mock Dylan? Was it supposed to convey their attempt to stay true to the song? I have no clue. I don’t even know how effective it’d be, really. No one’s going to pay attention to the lyrics, the visuals don’t particularly stand out, and really, I think the whole point of the ad was to just convey the line. Pathetic.

But you know, that’s what sucks about advertising nowadays. Almost everything you see has been done before, or is just not… um… well… nice! I mean, they don’t really speak to *me*. Does it really help develop the brand’s image to be associated with some crappy communication? Yeesh.

Have you seen the equally-if-not-more-so stupid rediffmail ad? The one that seems to say “Spam is good!” and “Please send more pointless chain letters, because they *do* make a difference to that kid in the Andes with a so-rare-it’s-never-been-heard-of disease”? Now, this one I paid attention to (as opposed to spending twenty seconds going, “Aw, no, come on!!!”) so I can give you a quick synopsis: Man tries to protect lady from eve-teasers, gets butt kicked, and then decides to send some crazy forward to the entire community saying “Stop the eve-teasers” and the entire society comes out to the street to kick eve-teasing butt. The final VO even says something about “Send a rediffmail and see what happens!”

Yeah, like, that’s accurately depicted.

Who thinks up these things? Does anyone *actually* believe that you can make a huge difference by just sending a mail? And even if you can believe that (I assume that the world isn’t full of cynical b*stards like me), how the heck does this make any sort of impact for Rediffmail? I know I wouldn’t use their mail service because of “the power of a Rediff-mail”; would any of you?

But, to be fair, I’m sure there are tons of people out there who would. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’ll be optimistic, and assume that there is some kind of rational thinking that goes behind all these bad ads on Indian TV, and that’s really the only rational explanation I can come up with to explain it.

Although, I have to admit that I’ve liked at least one of the ads I saw today on TV. The mentos ad. Although it’s a rip-off (they’ve practically lifted the *entire* concept from the Fatboy Slim Right Here, Right Now video), I still thought it was done decently enough. And, above all else, it at least was in-sync with their tagline. Story’s simple enough: You have a lazy ass being drawn along by a monkey. The ass takes a nap, the monkey has a mentos, evolves into man, who then makes the ass draw him along. The evolution-animation was done pretty decently too, if you ask me. Gives it a nice, unique feel.

And they didn’t ruin the original song.

…

(Edit: Turns out, this isn’t the first time The Times, they are A-changing has been used in a jingle; it was used in the ’90s for a Canadian bank – or so wikipedia tells me. (Ah, wikipedia.) But I’m sure they’d have done a better job!)
(Yeah, okay, so I’m biased.)