Ad nauseam

Sometimes too much hype about a forthcoming event can lead to an equally great anticlimax

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement, said Dr Johnson. But what happens when the projected promise is too large for the advertisement? Or, conversely, the advertisement too much for the promise?

Say, a mega blockbuster movie is announced. The all-star cast is led by an icon of the industry whose face and name are indelibly imprinted on the collective public psyche by ever-recurring exposure through a blanket bombardment of advertisements, in the press, on TV, and kiosks and hoardings, for all products for all people, from paan masala to penthouse apartments, from A-class automobiles to Ayurvedic treatment for piles (getting to the bottom of your problem).

The screenplay for the film has been scripted by a writer whose inexplicable omission from the roster of winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature reveals a lamentable lack of discernment on the part of the judges.

The musical score for the epic has been composed by a maestro who, had they been around today, would have given Tansen and Tchaikovsky a run for their melodious money.

The director of the film has been hailed by critics as being a worthy successor not only to Satyajit Ray and Sergei Eisenstein, but also to Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers and The Three Stooges.

Finally, to a rising crescendo of drumrolls and clashing of cymbals, the long-awaited movie is released. As audiences stream out of the theatres their comments are solicited.

“I never actually saw the movie. I went to get popcorn in what I thought was the interval, and I saw everyone coming out, so I went home.”

“I was too busy talking on my cell to Auntieji about all the celebs who were there, to look at the screen.”

“It was fantastic! The best cure for insomnia ever invented.”

Sometimes too large a promise can turn advertisement into hadvertisement. As in, make people feel they’ve had enough.