Two Rooms of One’s Own

An unnecessary guide to being a consumer and an advertiser in these ________ (choose your own cliché) times, by Kobita Banerjee, Associate Creative Director

Wait bro, this is not about feminism, that you’d dismiss it so soon. Just because I’ve borrowed 4/5th of the title from a celebrated feminist text also doesn’t mean that this is relevant to female advertisers, girlbosses and lady copywriters only. (The future is still f̵e̵m̵a̵l̵e̵ non-binary, just saying.)

In the last few weeks while we’ve talked at length about how brands need to get through the pandemic and the shifts required, pending and happening across portfolios, very little has been put forth to help hapless human beings who work in the advertising industry make sense of the situation, at a personal level.

Somewhere here Dave Trott asked me to get to the point sooner and so here it is: it is not easy being a discerning, aware, thread scrolling, profundity spouting, internet points raking person, when the manifesto film you just finished looks like the one everyone is mocking for being blah and beautiful. It is not easy to think of how to make people remember your brand and still be a part of their life when you haven’t opened the app in a month (“good riddance,” you think, as a consumer). The struggle to find ways in which to lure people into buying more than essentials, when you the consumer is thinking “Do I really need 24 eggs for two weeks?”, is perceptible and acknowledged in closed groups and personal calls, but never beyond.

This classic ‘have I sold my soul’ crisis is not new to most of us, but perhaps it is important to acknowledge that the tension is far more palpable at the moment. The fact that we cannot afford to lose jobs at this stage definitely doesn’t help.

Kare Toh Kare Kya?

1. Acknowledge the two sides

The conservative consumer and informed citizen, and the advertiser are two different animals. It starts with acknowledging that the two sides react to different kinds of triggers and stimuli and arrive at different kinds of solutions. You’re divided and that’s okay.

2. Know That They Can Coexist

It is okay to let your pessimism or fear out in a tweet and also let your advertising acumen arrive at ways to make your brand find a door into this dark room and have a chat with similar consciousnesses crouching in the corners.

3. Separate but don’t Disconnect

Once you’ve placed the two sides of you in two different rooms with their own idiosyncrasies, remember not to shut the door in between. Build a relationship that exists between flatmates who aren’t sisters/brothers exactly, but can hold an engaging conversation and feed off each other’s insights.

Let them talk, debate, agree, disagree and then go back to their respective rooms. We are in a lockdown anyway right, we don’t need to arrive at a conclusion at the end of a single conversation.

4. Nurture Both Sides

For a conversation to be worthwhile both sides need to be equipped and informed. While the consumer in you reads the news, gets alarmed by Snowden’s prophetic statements, panics at the launch of Setu app right after, goes back to Foucault for the comfort of finding some method to this madness, it is equally important to down the endless reports on sentiments, purchase affinities and people’s expectations from brands. It is equally important to ask your brand managers for their hot takes, feelers, research and more.

Spend more time scrolling through the comments sections on brand posts/films/any communication and take copious notes on how people are reacting to those. Assume nothing, we are all reacting to things differently these days, find the patterns, note the exceptions and be open to the idea that your consumer may not exactly be on the same plane as you.

5. Wash Your Hands

Not off a project of course. Just wash your hands every time you need to switch from one room to another. The 20 seconds that it takes is a good time to recalibrate your thinking and step into the you you need to be at the time with catlike poise.

And now time for an abrupt conclusion where I make an apology for the lack of links and straight facts, conveniently call it a rumination upon a light work day and awkwardly exit (while rubbing hands, into the other room of course).