1. Advertising, History, Changing Face and Ethics 2. Scanning Advertisements 3. Advertising Media, Agency Impact 4. Sex in Advertising5. Advertising and Potrayal of Women 6. Impact of Advertising on Rural India 7. Targeting the Consumer 8. Importance of Business Communication Index

In the last hundred-odd years, advertising in India has given us life-altering stuff. It has attempted to make men Fair and Handsome. It has battled to make women 18 Again. And to both men and women it has given Tinder loving care. It has made us realize that we like pizza as much as the next Italian - as long as Domino's puts keema do pyaza on it and tempts us with 'Hungry kya?' It has made us re-evaluate our life choices and ask thought-provoking questions like 'Kitna deti hai?' of our cars and 'Kya aap Close-Up karte hain?' of our countrymen. In short, it has enriched our lives with quirky quips, unforgettable characters, inter-brand scuffles, clever insights, virtual lures and jaw-dropping controversies. In A History of Indian Advertising in Ten-and-a-half Chapters previously published as Stark Raving Ad, you'll find the best of case studies and unbusiness-like stories from Indian advertising through the ages - the hits, the misses, the also-rans and the banned. An engrossing read, this book will inform as much as entertain all readers.

This book is classified into two major sections viz. Perspectives and Plots. While the Perspectives section majorly speaks of the conventional gender portrayals in advertisements over the years in India and abroad and mentions certain unethical practices being executed when it comes to presenting women in ads, it is the Plots section that extracts some path breaking ads from Indian advertising annals that have stood the test of time not just because of their content but the way the ads portrayed women. Such ads were found to shatter conventional wisdom about women and expectations from women in an exemplary way.This book can well be considered as a reference material for students pursuing MBA programs in Marketing at various B-schools. It can also be of help to Research Scholars pursuing doctoral research work in areas of brand communication and of course content writers engaged in content development on marketing and branding practices.

This cross-cultural content analysis (which merged traditional content analysis method with semiotic concepts) compared advertising in the United States (a highly individualistic and low-context culture) and India (a highly collectivist and high-context culture). The study examined the characteristics, differences and similarities in advertising strategies and expressions. A stratified random sample of advertisements for consumer products was selected from nationally circulated news magazines and business magazines of each country between January 1993 and December 1994 (Time and Business Week from the United States; India Today and Business India from India). This study found that there were significant differences in the way the two cultures produced advertising messages and that differential cultural values were reflected in their advertising expressions. The findings revealed that the U.S. advertisements utilized direct rhetorical styles, individualistic visual stances, sexual portrayals of women and comparative approaches more often than their Indian counterparts. The Indian ads utilized indirect rhetorical styles, collective visual stances and stereotypical portrayals of women more frequently than did the U.S. ads. The evidence of specific cross-cultural differences suggests that perhaps the proponents of "standardization of international advertising" have promoted an oversimplification. This cross-cultural study suggests that caution should be exercised when considering standardization in advertising and other forms of promotional communication between divergent cultures. Click here to preview the first 25 pages in Acrobat PDF format.