When Words Lose Weight, Brands Collapse

I saw an advertisement recently. “Free Fridge on AC.” Immediately, two things hit me. One, you never say Fridge in a proper headline. You say Refrigerator. Words are not casual. Words define class. Words signal positioning.

The visual showed a man sitting comfortably on top of an AC. Beside him was the so-called “fridge”. Both the man and the fridge looked heavier than the AC itself. Poor AC. It looked like it would collapse under the weight of bad creative judgment.

It looked like the entire campaign was created on ChatGPT. Even on ChatGPT, the prompt engineering was not up to the mark. As they say, it is not the machine that matters; it is the man who is manning the machine who matters, who can use that machine effectively and efficiently.

And this is a national retail brand. Penny-wise. Pound foolish. The company saved a few thousand by not going to a proper ad agency.  But what did it cost in brand perception?  The brand’s communication comes across as frivolous. You pay peanuts as salaries; you get monkeys as employees. Harsh? Maybe. True? Often. Communication is not decoration. It is a strategy. It is physics. It is psychology. It is a language discipline.

And then I thought of something opposite. RES PV Ltd. Baseline: “Redefining Sunlight.” Just pause. Redefining Sunlight. In 1994-95. When even Google did not exist. When solar was not fashionable. When sustainability was not a buzzword. That is out-of-the-box thinking.

That is vision. And then came the portable solar lantern, Kuteerdeep. What did Narender call it. “Kuteerdeep – Son of the Sun.” Brilliance. Not just a lantern. Not just a rural lighting product. Not just a utility. “Son of the Sun.”

Poetic. Powerful. Memorable. Narender was our Creative Director at GI Communications (P) Limited. He wrote both the above campaigns. I was the Director of Accounts. Those were glorious days. We would debate one word for hours. We would reject ten headlines before approving one. We believed communication deserved respect. Today, software can create images in seconds. But ideas? Ideas still need thinking. And thinking still needs people who care.

Good advertising is not about tools. It is about thought. Not about software. About sensitivity. Not about offers. About ownership of language. If you respect the brand, you respect the word. And when you respect the word, the market respects you.

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