Where Has Creativity Gone?

Advertisements, especially those on television have long been a powerful tool to convince consumer into buying a product or a service. We used to have good television commercials such as the one by Peugeot showing how great a Peugeot car is without a single model. None! It only showed how every car in the street backed off and those in the parking lots shivered just because the Peugeot was passing by. That advertisement was really focusing on the car alone and on its best qualities.
Peel Fresh used to make refreshing television commercials. It showed each of a family member grabbing a glass of Peel Fresh juice according to their liking. The young ones picking up a glass of blackcurrant juice, the teenagers went for orange juice and the elders chose apple. They were happy and joyful, feeling refreshed after the drink. And the tag line was ‘If you want any fresher, peel it yourself’.
Now there is nothing to look forward in a television commercial. All of them come down to only one point, sexual appeal. It revolves only around the intimate relationship between a man and a woman. It doesn’t vary at all. From a diaper commercial showing a baby boy not feeling confident with his diaper until a baby girl introduces him to the brand she is using, up to an Islamic banking advertisement that ends up with a guy picking a star, turns it into a diamond, put it on a ring and proposes to his girlfriend.
Worse than that, our new commercials lack moral values and ethics. There is a commercial in which a husband commented on how rude the current newspaper vendor is compared to the last one and the wife only responded that ‘time has changed and people are advancing’. Later when the mother commented on the new look of the newspaper, the husband quotes his wife. There is nothing wrong with the tag line but what was associated to it. Does it mean that when time has changed and people are advancing then it is alright to be rude?
A detergent commercial non-verbally had suggested that stealing is not a bad behavior as long as you did not get caught just because the owner is an old man and he cannot see you clearly because your shirt is so white that he is not able to differentiate you from the white sheet on the line.
Another commercial shamelessly showed a foreplay by a couple when the lady tied her husband eyes with a necktie and asked him to guess what she was going to feed him. He peeped and in returns, she showed him her mother’s picture for him to kiss. This is an insult and beyond courtesy especially for us in the east.
Many other commercials that we have today are erotic and sensual. We have commercials on condoms and other sensual products showed in a very direct way. What has happened to creativity? I believe our creative directors can do better than that.
We must bear in mind that television is not only watched by the adults. We have children watching as well and mind you they probably are the die-hard fans of television. If we keep on showing these low morality and unethical what will this children start thinking and how will they react in the future?
Commercials should sell a product, not exploit the model least the society. If producers are confident enough with their product, they will have given enough information to the creative director and the responsible creative director will work solely around the product creatively and not move outside the locus that there is no apparent connection between the commercial and the product.