A Real Butthead Commercial From Kohler

The boss at Kohler India must be a real butthead to okay an extreme British accent for the company’s “hands-free hygiene” commercial.

Doesn’t s/he know the mleccha reputation the Brits have here?

Or was the choice made with just that in mind?

Kohler’s designers must have surely noticed that shit splatters, usually, directly into the region of the toilet bowl where they’ve placed the “hands-free hygiene” spout.

Only the first person to use it after a cleaning will escape a shit douche, and that fortunate soul can expect to have his/her bottom singed with residual chlorine or acid product. 

There is also the larger philosophical question of whether a squirt of water can, in fact, clean your bottom or merely redistribute shit.

The reason hygienists advise people to lower the toilet lid before flushing is that the usual gush of water sends a spout of microscopic shit particles up to eight feet into the air.

Then there is the clincher: if you got some shit on yourself would you clean it with a squirt of water or scrub it clean with your hands?

Finally, where does Kohler come off trying to disassociate play, share, joy, and love from the genital area?

As some of my friends from Brooklyn would say, ... well, perhaps that's better left unsaid!

 

Another Nitwit Commercial

Voltas has joined the ranks of corporations airing totally brainless commercials.

It has as pitchman a South Indian, identified as such by a broad accent and pidgin Hindi and English.

He tells how the installation of a Voltas air-conditioner in his home convinced his wife Meenakshi to brave the heat of Delhi and move to the capital.

It is not just that the commercial is airing when most Delhiites are shivering through a bitterly cold winter.

I wonder what the brass at Voltas hoped to achieve with the ad. Did they think that a South Indian speaking pidgin would:

1. Move hordes of other South Indians to buy their product?
2. Prove an irresistible pitch to a horde of North Indian customers?
3. Leave everyone wondering what idiot(s) thought up this commercial?

It is also worth wondering what is behind the recent trend towards the use of grating regional stereotypes in commercials and “Bollywood” films.

Someone somewhere is obviously putting a lot of money into an attempt to reverse the seamless integration that has, in the last six decades, obliterated the sharp provincial sensitivities the British created while they ruled here. 

In the context of the surging communalization of politics, that should set off alarm bells in our security agencies. 

At the very least, it should draw down closer scrutiny of the finances of the ad agencies and the Bollywood actors/producers/directors involved.