Each year, in April, we mark National Poetry month to celebrate poets, their verse, and role in enhancing our lives. Great poetry delights our senses, it provokes us and engages our deepest emotions. Millions of Indians have fallen in love with lyrics written by Gulzar or Javed Akhtar, which waft into our hearts through enchanting Bollywood songs. Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry can inspire us, haunt us, and move us to tears.
But does poetry have any role to play in marketing — a discipline whose primary goal is to promote and sell products and services? I reflected on this rather offbeat question during Poetry Month, which ended recently. Many marketers are quite dismissive of poetry. They would rather devote their time and energies to hard-nosed areas such as quantitative consumer research, data analysis and brand strategy. In fact, a colleague once told me that verse is “fluffy nonsense that has no role in business”. However, if you dig a little deeper, you will find that poetry permeates some key areas of marketing, such as advertising and design.
Poetry in advertising
Some of the finest brand advertising is built on the foundations of great poetry. Take the legendary Asian Paints television advertisement, “Har ghar kuch kehta hai” (Every home has a story to tell). Created by Ogilvy India, the lyrics of this unforgettable film are poetic in their essence, and the beautiful accompanying imagery makes for a magical marriage of visuals and verse. Over the years, there have been several versions of this ad campaign and they have collectively done something extraordinary — they have provided deep emotional meaning to the mundane act of buying paint for our homes, and they have embedded Asian Paints deep in our hearts.
Yet another ad commercial which used poetry to make a huge impact was Ambuja Cement’s television film, scripted by the poet-lyricist Gulzar. “Chathon se koodna” (Leaping from terraces) — the poem that flows through this lovely film — walks us through the role roofs and terraces have played in our lives, and the fond, lifelong memories which they have created for us. The campaign, launched in 2018, was designed to promote Ambuja’s premium cement, a product designed specifically to add extra strength to the roof. Its great success ensured immediate top-of-mind salience for Ambuja Cement, which operates in a category rarely associated with emotion.
Sometimes, a television commercial may not be literally based on lines of poetry, but may still create a poetic effect, using a combination of visual and musical devices. That’s poetry too, and such ads tend to give us goosebumps when we watch them, particularly if they tap into a life truth which means a lot to us. Beautifully crafted bylines and text in advertising also have the same impact.
Why do these poetic advertisements work so well? Simply, because poetry appeals to our brain in a very different way. There is beauty in poetry and deep meaning in its carefully crafted words. This combination of beauty and meaning is often irresistible. In addition, poetry can convey nuances of life and heart that resonate with us. And, finally, great poetry tends to have memorable lines which get etched into our minds. These lines may resurface to impact our brand choice when we are in a retail store, trying to choose between alternate products.
So, the next time you are thinking of developing a campaign for your brand which needs to appeal emotionally to your consumers, think of poetry. Har kavita kuch kehti hai (each poem says something to us).
Poetry in design
Sometimes, when you see or use a product, there is such perfect harmony visible, that it looks virtually like a beautiful piece of poetry. If poetry is “a composition of words set to music” (in the words of the American poet Ezra Pound), these brilliant products are “poetic compositions of design that dance in front of your eyes”.
Each time I look at my Titan Edge watch or my Apple iPad, they appear to be physical embodiments of poems. A great deal of thoughtful and inspired design work would have gone into making these products possible. In addition, I think senior marketers who envisioned and eventually signed off on them (Xerxes Desai in Titan, Steve Jobs in Apple), worked with a clear sense of perfect balance, beauty, imagination, and deep meaning — all components of great poetry — playing out in their minds.
A few other products across diverse categories and price points evoke the same “poetic” awe in my mind — for instance, the iconic Coca Cola bottle, the distinctive soft bar of Dove soap, or the remarkably simple user interface of Netflix. My lesson from these products is that while marketers may not be designers or artists, we need to develop and honour intuitive appreciation of what creates such poetry in design. This can lead to new iconic new products, packaging and services that sing and dance, just like poetry does.
Harish Bhat is Brand Custodian, Tata Sons. These are his personal views.