Posts 101 to 107 of 107

LET'S BEGIN BY CALLING THEM STREET DOGS
November 11 2005 (09:42:00)


(Published in Hindustan Times Mumbai on November 17, 2005)


..And not stray dogs. Most of the dogs that live on the streets of Mumbai are not completely ownerless. Many of them belong to slum dwellers, construction workers, and pavement shopkeepers. They share in their meager meals by day, and guard them and their babies by night. Their owners do not read English newspapers, or any newspaper for that matter, and by and large have no say in this ‘stray dog issue’ that is taking up far too much space in these pages these days.

Then let’s begin to get our numbers right. Five lakh dogs is the figure being bandied about. One begs to know, who has bothered to do an actual census, where has this gross exaggeration come from? If there were truly five lakh dogs in this city, that would mean one for every 26 people, or one for every six families. Look around you. Even in the slums and the suburbs, where the sterilization program has not yet got off the ground fully, there couldn’t be more than one dog for every 100 people. Including the hopefully sterilized housing society dogs.

Many of the readers of this paper have written to say, that besides the compassionate viewpoint, this issue itself is not anywhere as big as other problems facing our city. Problems which, if properly attended to by our Corporation, would make this one go away too. The danger of making a mountain out of a molehill is something not many lay people realize.

A number is not just a number. Not when it’s a life. Placing a demand to increase the number of canine sterilizations per year from 8000 to 20000, without adequate infrastructure backing can itself lead to far more cruelty than extermination. There are NGO’s with heart, and there are NGO’s with figures. I have seen many animal welfare organizations that follow all the guidelines laid down by the Central Government, drawn up by Maneka Gandhi herself, which stipulate the kind of catching methods, the surgical routines, and the feeding and release practices to be followed. May their tribe multiply. And I have also seen NGO’s who chase a ‘target’ much like one would an annual sales target. They operate on the dog the day it is caught (the catching itself a highly traumatic and exhausting experience and no fasting rules are adhered to), get in contract vets who will operate like an assembly line, forty or fifty a day, obviously without sterilizing any of the equipment properly between operations, and leave them practically unattended to post operatively. Leave them to literally die on the streets when released later. Do we want to encourage this kind?

Let’s not forget that a dog feels even more pain when she has her insides chopped at than you or I do, because at least we know what’s going on and why we need to be opened up – she hasn’t a clue, and in addition to the physical pain, the mental anguish of being taken off the streets for while, is something that many of us humans choose to turn a mean blind eye to. This therefore is a call to all citizens and journalists – stop exaggerating the situation. It won’t help us and it certainly won’t help the poor dogs.







Runaway Dogs
November 07 2005 (08:29:00)


Bobby was my first dog – a gift from my family for my ninth birthday. She was a four year old brown and white Corgi whose owners didn’t want her anymore because a human child had come into their family and Bobby would try to eat from his plate. Her first night gave me a childhood introduction to separation pangs. She sat at the door and whimpered pitifully, not understanding why she had been left behind by her owners in this strange house. My brother (then fourteen and familiar with dogs having grown up with Tinker the bull terrier) sat by her side all night. When he took her out for her morning walk she made her first unsuccessful attempt to run away.



Since then, we have kept several dogs, some from puppyhood, some as grown ups who were lost on the street, or given away by owners who had tired of keeping them, or from an animal shelter. We made a rule in our home. Once a dog comes in, he or she stays for life. Whatever the price – missed holidays, holidays only in places where dogs are allowed, too many days of casual leave when sickness or old age steps in, investing in homes in four parts of the country and dog friendly cars. When you have heard a dog wail when he misses his family, skips his meals, gazes wistfully out of the window, runs to the door every time a familiar sounding car honks, and is still willing to put his trust in you even though he does not know whether you will abandon him too, you learn that no price is too high to pay.



Bobby never stopped running away. Nearly a year after she came home, she ran half way across the city of Ahmedabad, in search of her old home. My father and I went looking for her in his car, while my brother rode off on his cycle. He eventually found her running in front of cars in high traffic on the middle of Gandhi bridge. When we moved to Pune, she ran away there too, in attempt to follow me to my grandmother’s house. This time my aunt and brother cycled around the area making enquiries till someone reported having found her and taken her in to offer her some water. After that we got used to shutting the door carefully, and keeping her on a leash every time we were out of a house, a practice we followed thereafter for all our pets.



Tinker the bull terrier ran all the way from Kolhapur half way to Pune. My family were taking their annual holiday and had left him behind with the cook. He escaped from his kennel, caught the scent of my father’s car, and made his way down the highway, till a family friend chanced to spot him. When he arrived at my grandfather’s house, I am told there was as much surprise as admiration for the tenacious little fellow, who I have met only in photographs.



Chimpu was a Tibetan spaniel my brother brought home because his colleague’s wife from Madras didn’t want to keep a non vegetarian dog inside a Mumbai flat and so kept her tied up all day and night in the balcony. Though mild tempered (our family vet delivered a breeched pup by sliding his hand inside her without even tying her mouth) she dominated all our other dogs. Within two months of settling in, she came on heat, ran off down the streets in search of satisfaction, and was unceremoniously chased after, picked up and scolded by me. She responded by seducing Candy, our alpha dog with an unlikely name, had three pups, one Caesarean, was sterilized and lived with us till she was fourteen. Unlike Bobby, she never attempted another runaway after the sterilization.



Chimney, a black Cocker spaniel was one of my favourite adoptees. His owner was a batchmate who had given him as a gift to his girlfriend. Once they got married, she no longer wanted him, and pleaded with me to take him away. Why is it that time after time, the man of the house will bring in a family pet, only to succumb to the insistent demands of his wife to give the poor creature away – because at the end of the day, she is the one left having to do all the work? Thank God my mother was the exact opposite. Over the years, my brother and I brought home no less than seventeen dogs, all of whom were accepted and loved as little brothers and sisters. When my brother got married, he took home three mini poms and two dobermanns. Not surprising, his wife gave the dobs away to her brother, one of the mini poms to us, and the rest to her sister. Thankfully, none of these appeared to show any separation pangs, neither did Chimney.



My most poignant runaway dog story however is of my current girl, Gemma, an Afghan hound. She was stolen from her owners in an autorickshaw by some slum dwellers, who kept her chained in a filthy little hut. Though extremely mild in appearance with hardly any vocalization, this breed can be willful and cunning, having been trained for thousands of years to catch and kill leopards. Her several attempts to escape were accompanied by severe beatings. When she was ultimately rescued by a gentleman from National Geographic Channel and taken to the SPCA Parel Hospital, her body was covered with maggot wounds, her long silky coat matted, and her right elbow battered. She also had a deep anal wound, which one can only imagine what could have caused it – I think I know, and my mind refuses to accept the possibility.



After four months of treatment, the SPCA asked me to take her to my own shelter in Goa, since an Afghan needs a lot of care. When I first met her, there was no sign of her silky coat which had been shaven off to treat all her wounds, and she weighed only 18 kilos. Though I visited her with treats every day, she refused to acknowledge my presence in her kennel for at least a month, then surprised me one day by yelping in delight when she saw me. Another month of wooing, then I took her home to Goa, where lazing on my verandah under the trees became her favourite pastime. I brought her back with me to Mumbai, since I don’t think she and I can bear to live without each other – the separation pangs would be on both sides for sure.



After three years, she is a beautiful dog with grateful eyes, but still suffers the aftermath of her trauma both mentally and physically. Sometimes, when she is lying down at my feet in deep sleep, her own feet twitching as she chases the neighbourhood cats in her dreams, my mind conjures up visions of her on the roads, running, running, her grand coat flying in the breeze (an Afghan in full speed is a sight to behold) dodging in and out of the traffic, trying to flee from her captors, her mind as tortured as her body is beautiful, and I reach down and hold her close to me and kiss her lovely long nose and think, Gemma you are home, you never have to run away again. And then she nudges her nose against my hand in a curiously horse like gesture, and looks at me with her seven thousand year old eyes, and I can surely hear her whisper, “Lady, you are home too”.











Comments

Hi, Ran a google search on 'seperation pangs' on a bleak winter morning and came on your page...and as I prepare to navigate away, there is an unsuccessful attempt to hide the tears..One simply does not cry in office, you know.. :) Never owned a dog..urban lifestyle with everybody out of home until 7 PM made it impossible..but had several at my maternal grandma's home and their horizon of trust is so wide...that I feel so demeaned and small to be human. Thanks for making my morning..thanks for taking my mind off my selfish musings and fuse it with the liquid eyes of Gemma..wish could stroke her lovely fur this second.. Thanks again...:) Friend!
Posted by Kite on 01/11/2007 05:08:27 AM

Just noticed the date..this is way too old post..:) Is she still with you? Gemma i mean..
Posted by Kite on 01/11/2007 05:09:24 AM


CARVING OUT A NICHE
November 02 2005 (08:14:00)


(Published as my colum in Business World on November 28, 2005)

There are over three hundred television channels circling the skies nowadays. Of these, between 60 to 90 descend on to our television sets. Some of them deliver fare for undifferentiated target groups – usually referred to as ‘mass channels’ like Doordarshan 1, Star Plus, Zee and SET in Hindi, Sun and ETV among the regional languages. These few channels pick up the giant share of viewing – close to 70%. The rest is split across a myriad of diverse special interest offerings ranging from music and movies to adventure, sport, fashion, news, children’s, spiritual and education. News and movies enjoy more viewing than the others but here too, there are differences in appeal across socio economic groups.

A few years ago, the mass channels garnered more than 95% share of audiences. As Indian viewers mature, the sky boutiques have carved out attractive niches for themselves. Advertisers looking for superior targeting and minimum waste are drawn to these channels. Justifying their inclusion in a media plan remains a qualitative hunch, since the ratings that we presently use cannot pull up enough of them in a sample for any meaningful analysis.

Developing a suitable model to assess the effectiveness of niche channels is a crying need of the marketing community. They cannot continue to be measured by the same yardstick as mass TV channels, and indeed need to be looked at as differently as magazines are from newspapers. Many niche channels still use TAM data to estimate their reach or to profile their audiences. They are doing themselves a huge injustice.

Take a look at some analysis that Intellect, Lintas Media’s research and technologies unit, drew out of the September TAM data. Would you believe that 50% of all ads telecast drew zero ratings? This thankfully was a little lower on the weekends at 43%. But still, nearly half of all the spots telecast were watched by nobody, at least according to the TAM sample. These do not include the channels’ own promotions, just advertiser booked spots. At TAM estimates of cost, this added up to 13% of all the money spent – but could well be much more since advertisers buy packages of airtime, where costs are averaged across various kinds of spots.

Even for the mass channels, as much as 20 to 30% of spots have no viewership during weekdays. While that could be a matter of concern for advertisers and agencies and indicates that better scheduling negotiations ought to be done with the channels, that is not the point of this article. What is of tremendous concern is that according to TAM, 79% of all the spots aired on the English entertainment channels are watched by nobody, and account for 67% of the money spent on these channels. Does this mean that only desperate advertisers advertise with Desperate Housewives?

What about the news channels that are much in the news today? 58% of spots aired on these channels have no viewers, and account for 27% of the money unwisely spent on them …..or so the current ratings would have you believe. Calling for an investigative story of its own, wouldn’t you say?

What I would say is that TAM cannot and must not be used by the niche channels to sell themselves, price themselves or compare themselves with each other and against other genres. At weekly reach levels of less than 1%, the number of targeted individuals being touched in the TAM sample by these channels would be in the region of 50 or less – too little to make too much sense with. Yet viewer identification and involvement levels with these channels are much higher, as conclusively proved by individual studies done by many of them. Making them attractive choices with no numerical backing….yet.

As an industry we need to collectively put our heads together and come up with a fairer measure of how these special interest channels are performing, and what makes them tick with their audiences. They already command 30% share of all viewing, and this figure is rapidly on the rise. Time is of the essence, unless of course no one feels guilty about spending hundreds of crores of rupees on spots that ‘nobody’ watches.




THE TELEVISION RATINGS TRAP
October 28 2005 (06:37:00)

(Published as my column in Business World in May 2005)


Consider these figures.

1. According to various reliable industry estimates, the television industry is worth Rs 12000 crores. Of this, the television networks themselves earn Rs 4500 crores by way of advertising revenue and another Rs 3000 odd crores from the subscription fees that they are able to draw out of the cable operator system.

2. The media planning and buying agencies who recommend and place advertising time on these networks earn an average of 3% of advertising costs for their efforts – so that’s Rs 135 croresor less.

3. The television viewership ratings, or TVR’s, measured in 5000 peoplemetered homes 24 by 7 cost about Rs 21 crores to deliver annually.

Who pays for this rating service? Is it the advertiser community who uses the service to ensure that the Rs 4500 crores they put up is ‘well spent’? Is it the television community who make a sweet packet from the advertising revenue they earn by using the ratings to sell their channels, time slots and programs? Or is it the impoverished media agency go betweens – who help the clients buy and the networks sell all those thousands of crores?

Internationally, the seller funds the system. Over 80% of all television rating services worldwide are funded by the networks. By comparison, the readership surveys too in most parts of the world are almost entirely funded by publishers. In India however, 60% of the TAM (television audience measurement) service is paid for by agencies, and only 40% by the networks. This means that here we have a Rs 130 crore industry putting up 10% of its revenue because a Rs 12000 crore industry cannot collectively rummage up even Rs 10 crores for an efficient, credible ratings service.

TAM justifies this anomaly with the argument that reducing dependency on the broadcasters is better for the system so that no undue pressures are placed on the research. With more than 150 channels operating in a free market, are we stupid to assume that competition will not even out these ‘undue pressures’? Do we not have a twenty year old successful precedent in print?

No one is happy with the coverage of the existing TAM product. 5000 sampled homes to represent 45 million TV homes is a bit of a stretch. The ratings are usually believable, but that could be because we have got used to what to expect. The old adage – you believe what you have been programmed to believe. But even the sharpest media planner and the most astute brand manager, not to mention the savviest time salesman, has got to be asking himself – do 450 peoplemeter homes in Mumbai really and truly capture the television viewing kaleidoscope of 13 million Mumbaikars?

Lintas Media did an analysis of the breadth of television viewing that TAM, in its current form, cannot even take a sniff at. Limited to 75 towns, the TAM sample can at best be projected to 33% of all Indian TV homes. The sad truth is that these 64% of homes not captured account for 74% of all the time spent nationally watching TV. TAM currently does not even measure a quarter of all the television that is viewed in the country.

Not that TAM cannot. As always, the road block is cold hard cash. Give them another Rs 20 crores and they claim they can cover another 5000 homes more representative of mera Bharat mahan. But who is going to put up this additional money? My vote goes wholeheartedly to the television networks – it’s high time they took up their fair share of the burden.

A few weeks ago, the most read newspaper in the country (Dainik Jagran with a readership of 16 million) launched a TV news channel. The might of their legacy in the Hindi heartland, coupled with their grassroots contacts, is unmatchable. I told them – you will get viewership, plenty of viewership – it’s a great pity though, you won’t get the ratings. Why? Because TAM is simply not geared to measure viewing in the place where you will get viewed.

Sadly, India is still a country where tv ratings are not equal to tv viewership. And only the networks can do something to change this. But will they?


(This article appeared in Business World, May 2005, and the world has subsequently changed for TAM. I did not expect the fallout to take the shape it has. .oh my God, the power of the pen is frightening).




THE HUMAN MEDIUM
October 28 2005 (06:30:00)


(Published as my column in Business World in February, 2005)


On August 12, 2004, a thirteen by four column story in the Times of India went by without much fanfare. The headline read, “Lever’s Lakme loses urban sheen….according to AC Nielsen, Modi Revlon is leader with 28.6% share”. Within a short span of a year, and an ad spend of well under Rs 2 crores, Revlon had succeeded in knocking the number one lipstick seller in the country, Lakme, off its top place. Notwithstanding the fact that Lakme spent more than twice that much in media on lipsticks, besides enjoying the rub off from their spend on other colour cosmetcis, skin creams and so on.

A remarkable achievement, by any standards, made even more laudable by the complete lack of publicity and media hype around this – no fashion shows, no awards, no interviews, no public posturing. Revlon lipsticks continue to sell very well, despite the stiff premium they command. The company still resolutely stays away from television, that darling of the cosmetics industry. We show them competitive spends information every month, and encourage them to stay firmly on the path they have chosen. I have taken their permission to share with you their special beauty secret – the art of making a lasting impression with your customer, without spending unnecessarily.

Revlon have discovered what many other advertisers have – that, used well, the human medium can be more powerful than any box of electronics.

In 2003, Revlon decided to take the store-in-store strategy adopted by most international cosmetic firms forward by training and employing beauty advisors even in smaller markets and for stores much smaller than the department store. They increased the number of such beauty advisors by nearly ten times in less than a year, from a base that was reasonably big to begin with. This was at a time when its key competitors were reducing the numbers on their own beauty advisors. Believing that this strategy has worked for them, Revlon have now embarked on a program which will train and empower even more women in even smaller markets.

Not surprisingly, market share has now touched an even higher 31%. As for share of ad spend, it’s still at a nice low of 15%.

Initiative investigated this interesting phenomenon further. In exit interviews last month, we met women who bought lipsticks at the Revlon store-in-sore, and those that had bought any brand elsewhere. Not surprisingly, the former group rated their brand significantly higher on important image parameters like classiness, trust, look and feel on lips, safety and so on. The revelation was that these women were also great word-of-mouth media themselves.

Every year, Initiative and BBC World join hands to study advertising avoidance behaviour in our country. The most recent one, done in the last quarter of 2004, painted a fairly dismal picture. We know that the advertising and media industry enjoyed a prosperous year with 18% growth, but that means that clutter levels also grew – by 70.4%! The average Indian views more than 450 TV spots a week, and that excludes all the channel and program promotions. This places us among the top ten ‘cluttered’ countries in the world.

The Initiative BBC World Adwatch found that only 31% of people don’t attempt to avoid ads. That implies an overall waste of 69%. It gets worse. Ad avoidance is highest on the media we use the most – as much as 78% on television – and among people we usually want to target the most – young people, upmarket upwardly mobile people, people with overall high levels of exposure to media. And yet, we keep pouring crores and crores of rupees into the mass media and they guzzle it all up like a bottomless pit.

But wait a minute. The point here is not to flog the media – after all they are doing well to deliver more and more of better and better audiences each year. Rather, it is to question the role of blindly scheduling truckloads of inventory (ie, ad spots) into channels, to futilely measure GRP’s that a peoplemeter captured but the eyeballs did not.

A very senior gentleman, head of one of the largest advertisers in the country commented last month, when we shared this concern with him – “Ah maybe we should be making ads that don’t look like ads!”

But of course, how many informercials and vignettes and in program promotions should one negotiate for, before the viewer gets tuned off these too? Instead, move on to the Revlon Beauty Advisor …and there she is. She doesn’t look like an ad, and yet she does. She is well turned out, she is a right-where-you-are spokesperson for the company and the brand, she tells you what’s good for you, you can go back to her if you’re not satisfied, you can interact with her, get your friends to meet her. And then you become the ultimate spokesperson for the brand yourself – a loyal, satisfied customer. You become a walking talking ad. Marshal Macluhan comes full circle – the medium is the message.



AUDITING THE IMPOSSIBLE
October 28 2005 (06:28:00)


(published in Economic Times on September 22, 2005)


The Audit Bureau of Circulations is a respectable not-for-profit organization that represents advertisers, advertising agencies, and publishers. Its goal is to audit the net paid circulation of member publishers – through a rigorous process of rules, procedures, mandatories, documents, reports, checks and surprise checks – with a view to delivering every six months an authentic certificate of paid up circulation.

Several years ago, when print was the dominant medium, the weighty ABC tome was the Bible of the media operations department in an ad agency. Its yellow and white pages spoke with authority, and its users took pride in memorizing their contents well enough to be able to rattle them off before the account executives who would later use them before their clients to justify a publication’s inclusion or exclusion from a media plan.

Much has changed since then. Print is no longer the dominant medium. Indeed in order to survive and grow, savvier publishers have successfully moved the distance between price and value perceptions – creating packages and offers for their consumers (both readers and advertisers) that go well beyond the traditional rupee cover price or advertising rate card.

Circulation has ceased to mean much to the advertiser or media planner, whether total, paid, net paid, or net net paid. In the past ten years, readership data has grown in availability, frequency and richness, and media planners have come to rely upon them more and more. In today’s media exploded world, even readership is looked upon with greater scrutiny, and is sought to be qualified with better indices of loyalty, involvement, interactivity, affinity with special interest groups and so on.

Research is now done to estimate readership for specific pages and sections in newspapers and magazines, not just the entire paper. Going beyond readership, research now even tries to predict a reader’s likely response to the placement of an ad – by page, day of week, size, shape, content, context, and so on. All of which leaves the earlier dependence on a simplistic overall circulation figure far behind.

So where does this leave the ABC? From a once hallowed body, has it ceased to be relevant? Or worse, has it ceased to even command the respect it once did?

Marketing strategies to woo readers in the face of stiff competition, not just from other publications but other media too, have left the ABC and its stringent audit rules far behind. The ABC in its purest form recognizes only those copies which have been fully paid for by the purchaser or subscriber, at predetermined trade terms. Anything beyond this done to ‘induce’ purchase, by giving huge discounts, attractive promotional offers, or straight gifts along with the publication, are frowned upon, and given what I like to call a ‘below the belt’ status. The ABC certificate declares an average net paid circulation in bold at the top of the certificate. Below the weekly or monthly details, which are blocked off in a ‘belt’, are given details of copies sold at less than permissible trade terms. The copies that diehards in the ABC sneer at.

Most media planners and advertisers, however, do not how scoff at these below the belt numbers. I receive a copy of the Economist every week courtesy Sri Lankan Airlines. I don’t value it any less because I don’t pay for it. On the contrary, it increases my good will towards both the airline and the magazine. Our initial dipsticks in Mumbai show that while the introduction of Mumbai Mirror into a Times of India home may be free, it has helped to draw in the younger readers in the household, who earlier couldn’t be bothered to read a newspaper. Shouldn’t advertisers be interested in these new readers, even if the ABC doesn’t think they warrant being counted into their certificate?

On the other hand, there are also instances where several homes in some states have subscribed to newspapers only for the daily coupon offers on regular household products – the monthly value of which far exceeds the cost of the newspaper itself which is sold off unread, but well cut out, at the end of the month as raddi.

It’s high time that this august body peopled by highly seasoned and senior members of the publishing community woke up and smelt the coffee. Large publishers have withdrawn their membership, and refused to be audited by a set of rules the market can no longer live by. Smaller local and regional publishers who would benefit from the sanctity of an ABC certificate now fight shy of being audited because the entire audit process is too unwieldy for their systems to accept.

Of late the ABC has been trying to rejuvenate itself and adapt itself to market realities. For one, training programs for media planners have been held in Mumbai and Delhi to reacquaint them with the value of knowing circulation data. But much more needs to be done about the audit rules and processes themselves. Internationally, the ABC is as respected as ever. All forms of marketing strategies are recognized, measured and audited – even electronic editions. Memberships of the ABC run into thousands. Here in our country, where the print medium still commands the maximum share of the advertising pie, and more than 2000 publications are advertiser supported, it is sad to see the ABC down to less than 400 audited publications, with some of the highest read publications in the country not even bothering to get audited. Losing relevance is one thing – and can be corrected. Losing respect is quite another – and that’s what we have to work at to arrest.




ANIMALS IN ADVERTISING
October 28 2005 (05:25:00)


(Published in DNA Adzip on October 21, 2005)


Aamir Khan looks striking in the new Toyota Innova ads. Unkempt and unshaven, a far cry from the stylishly haired Titan watches man. But so much more winsome and appealing. Then he goes and puts his arm around a wide eyed, slobbering black Labrador sitting in the boot of the car…and poof, he is completely overshadowed.

That’s what happens….add any animal, especially a dog, into the picture, and magic walks in. This is probably why the men who make the Raymonds ads decided that a hunky Great Dane was needed to convey the thought of presence being felt not announced. Or that soft white puppies personify the warm personality of the Raymonds man better than the cloth itself.

In pet food ads of course, dogs are natural heroes. But my favourites in this category are the ads for Pedigree, in which its the little girl who steals the show, especially when she tries to teach her puppy to read.

Chico, the pug in the Hutch ads, has made advertising history of sorts. When he was on air in his first appearance, the ad was the most liked and recalled one in several polls. The podgy little mutt had unseated the likes of Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar.

These days, an organization called PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has attempted to turn public attention towards an altogether different aspect of animals used in advertising. Creative directors have rapidly latched on to the draw that celebrities and pets add to an advertisement. So now you see them all over the place. Sadly though, while celebrities and models are pampered, the same cannot be said for the animals in the shoot.

I was horrified to learn that the rooster who sits atop a man’s head in the Pepsodent toothbrush commercial actually had its legs tied together for the length of the shoot. While most of the dog food people claim to follow the humane rules that their parent companies internationally adhere to, the same cannot be said of other companies and ad agencies using animals in their commercials.

Indian law requires that any advertisement intending to use an animal needs to be registered with the Animal Welfare Board of India prior to the actual filming, and a representative of this Board or any of the SPCA’s (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) or of PETA must be present at the shoot to see that the animal is properly fed and watered, rested between takes, not tied up for long periods, and allowed to relieve himself occasionally. This is really not too much to ask for especially since the poor creature cannot ask for it himself.

Agencies do look at this as an unnecessary irritant. But until we can all be sure that Chico did get attended to after he took that little fall in the Hutch commercial, it would better for these rules to be followed, so that we can all feel happier knowing that the animal, who makes us smile when we see him in an ad, was smiling too when he posed for us.



Showing 101 to 107 of 107
SmilingDolphin