There’s something unsettling about many of today’s smartest, most creatively packaged advertising campaigns. They are beautifully shot, sharply scripted, and frequently award- winning. They sell useful products – things we genuinely need in our lives. But look closer, and a pattern emerges: they’re selling these good products by embedding bad assumptions about our society.
From CEAT Tyres to Eureka Forbes to Urban Company and Allianz Insurance, recent ad campaigns may be doing more than selling goods – they may be reshaping what we accept as normal. More dangerously, they may be eroding the idea that citizens should demand better public infrastructure, public health, and public accountability.
Let’s unpack what’s happening.
“It’s Monsoon. So Change Soon.” – CEAT Tyres
Monsoon is here. Streets are flooded. Potholes are everywhere. CEAT Tyres comes in with a practical, well-targeted pitch: change your tyres before the rains hit. After all, better tyres mean better grip on bad roads.
From a product perspective, it’s smart. From a citizen’s perspective, it’s sinister.
This is not just a tyre ad. It’s an implicit absolution of civic failure. The roads are unsafe? Well, of course. Don’t complain – just upgrade. The State is absent. Adapt or skid.
The subtext: bad roads are normal, and it’s your responsibility to adjust to them. A citizen becomes a consumer navigating systemic collapse with private purchases.
When did we stop demanding pothole-free roads in Indian cities, especially in metros where municipal budgets run into thousands of crores? When did seasonal civic collapse become so normalized that it's now a feature in tyre commercials?
The Filter Race – Water Purifier Ads
Now let’s move to something even more essential: clean drinking water.
Walk into any urban home and you’ll likely see an RO purifier. Ads from Eureka Forbes, Kent, Urban Company, and others compete over filter life, purification technology, or subscription plans for maintenance.
Again, all very useful. But what is being left unsaid is even more important: we have completely normalized the idea that clean water doesn’t flow from taps.
In ad after ad, there’s no questioning of why the public supply is unsafe. No discomfort with the idea that potable water is now a personal responsibility, not a civic right. No one even blinks at the fact that this is a service the government was always supposed to provide.
We’ve bought into this so completely that we now gift water filters at weddings and housewarmings. Clean water has gone from being a basic human right to a middle-class accessory.
The ads don’t just sell purifiers. They sell a story of survival in a failing system.
“The Tax Monster is Here!” – Allianz and the March Madness
Every March, we’re treated to an entire genre of advertising that treats tax season like a horror film. The villain? The Indian tax system.
The solution? Buy insurance. Claim deductions. Escape the “monster.”
This year, Allianz Insurance gave us a literal “Tax Monster” – a cartoon beast that chases a panicked man down urban alleys.
Catchy? Sure. But pause for a second.
What does it say about how we view taxation – a fundamental pillar of civic responsibility? Taxes fund the very infrastructure we complain about: roads, hospitals, sanitation, education. Yes, we need more accountability on how taxes are used. But demonizing the very act of taxation while benefiting from it is, at best, short-sighted. At worst, hypocritical.
Imagine what a generation grows up thinking, if every tax-related ad equates it to a threat. We aren't building financial literacy – we're spreading financial cynicism.
Apple’s “Privacy. That’s iPhone.”
It’s not just India. Globally, we see similar patterns.
Take Apple’s famous “Privacy. That’s iPhone.” campaign. It’s sleek, confident, and full of shots of people using their iPhones in intimate moments – banking, messaging, and browsing.
But what is the ad really selling? A device? Or a workaround for broken digital regulations?
By promoting privacy as a feature of a luxury product, the ad implicitly accepts that digital privacy is not a public right but a private upgrade.
This is the same narrative logic we see in water filter or tyre ads: the system won’t protect you. Buy something that will.
It’s brilliant branding. But it normalizes the idea that safety is not systemic – it’s exclusive.
Google Maps’ traffic congestion feature ads are often celebrated for accuracy and convenience. “Stuck in traffic? Just take an alternate route!” But what if this brilliance actually helps normalize urban chaos? We stop expecting public transport reform, efficient road design, or traffic governance. Instead, we simply learn to “navigate around the problem”—literally. It’s a brilliant product built atop broken systems, subtly teaching us that personal optimization is the only solution, and collective fixes are a lost cause.
The Cost of Normalizing Dysfunction
What’s common to all these ads? One theme: they don't just reflect civic failure – they normalize it.
These campaigns don’t merely highlight problems. They help us cope with those problems – by consuming our way out of them. And over time, this coping becomes compliance.
We stop asking:
– Why are our roads unsafe every monsoon?
– Why doesn’t clean water come out of taps?
– Why is health insurance a necessity, not a safety net?
– Why should we dread taxes instead of demanding value for them?
And this is where marketing crosses a dangerous line. It stops being just about storytelling – and starts being soft propaganda for apathy.
From Citizens to Consumers
These ads, though clever and well-meaning in isolation, gradually shift our role in society. We stop being citizens with rights and expectations, and become consumers navigating a broken landscape with better products.
This shift is subtle. It’s silent. And it’s deeply damaging.
Because the more we internalize it, the less we expect from the State. And the less we expect, the less it delivers.
Soon, we’re not outraged by potholes. We just book a wheel alignment. We’re not worried about contaminated water. We just schedule a filter change. We don’t question urban flooding. We just buy waterproof shoes.
We’ve adjusted. And in doing so, we have accepted.
An Exception: Tata Tea’s “Jaago Re” Campaign
Not all advertising works this way. Some campaigns have the rare ability to awaken the citizen, not suppress them.
A standout example is Tata Tea’s “Jaago Re” campaign.
Launched in 2008 and revived in several waves since, the ad didn’t sell tea by mocking civic decay. It sold tea by urging people to wake up – literally and metaphorically – to social and political issues.
One memorable ad showed a young man refusing to bribe a government officer, followed by the slogan: “Ab sirf uthna nahi, jaagna bhi hai.” ("Now it’s not enough to just wake up; you must be truly alert.")
Another wave of the campaign urged people to vote, tying personal action to public accountability.
This is what responsible advertising looks like. It uses mass media not just to sell a product, but to restore the relationship between the citizen and the State.
It tells us that while private solutions are important, public change is possible. That tea may refresh you – but awareness empowers you.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I am not calling for preachy, joyless ads. Good advertising must entertain, inspire, and sell. But it must also respect the audience’s intelligence and moral imagination.
Here’s what I hope more brands and agencies consider:
– Don’t sell products by normalizing public dysfunction.
– Don’t treat civic failure as a punchline.
– Do question the systems your product works around.
– Do empower the viewer to be a better citizen – not just a better shopper.
And above all: remember that every ad shapes not just desire, but expectation. What we think is possible. What we think is normal.
Brands don’t just sell goods. They sell ideas. And sometimes, those ideas linger far longer than the product itself. CEAT Tyres, Eureka Forbes, Urban Company, and countless others sell indispensable goods. But when the messaging behind them erodes public expectations, we must pause and ask: What are we really buying?
Because if we keep letting advertising reshape our relationship with public life, we may wake up one day surrounded by world-class products – and third-world systems. It’s time to demand better. Not just from the government, but from the stories we’re told. Let advertising not just sell better. Let it mean better.
