Saturday, January 29, 2011

Controversial Indian Ads from the 90s (NSFW)


A later campaign of Kamasutra featuring Viveka Babajee and Inder Mohan Sudan.

By the end of the decade condoms were advertised something like this:



Year 1993 Ad for MR Instant coffee (hence "Real pleasure does not come in an instant") featuring Malaika Arora and Arbaaz Khan. First appeared in Bombay Newspaper - Mid-Day. Too obviously inspired by Kamasutra campaign, and in bad way. The ad was not appreciated. But the company was happy.
Agency: Art Advertising
 
 


 Year 1995 Tuff Shoe Ad featuring Madhu Sapre, Milind Soman, two bad pair of shoes and one shy python. First published in Cine Blitz and G. But the controversy started after the image appeared in a news item for Sunday Mid Day dated July 23, 1995. A women's group protested outside Madhu Sapre's house and handed her father saris. The matter later went to court.



Year 1998 Ad featuring Bipasha Basu and Dino Morea for Switzerland based underwear makers Calida. The copy carried captions: `You can see why we also remained neutral during the two world wars'; `And you thought your appetite for indulgence could only be whetted by Swiss chocolates'. This one also went to court. Agency - Nexus.

The next decade started with a controversy grounded in a more familiar turf of surrogate advertisement  for liquor (but ad is for apple juice). Year 2003 TV Ad for AC Black, with the tag line 'Kucch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai'  and a case of magically plunging neckline, was later take off air due to political pressure.




Image from a deck of AC Black sponsored playing cards.

The one that started it all. October, 1991. One of the first ad for Kamasutra Condom featuring Pooja Bedi and Marc Robinson. More dare bare ads appeared in girlie magazine Debonair. 
Here's something interesting about these ads: 
Madhu Sapre and Milind Soman were in a relationship at the time they shot their infamous ad. Bipasha Basu and Dino Morea were seeing each other at the time of their ad. Malaika Arora and Arbaaz Khan apparently met for the first time on the set of their Coffee ad and a couple of years later got married.

Prabuddha Das Gupta was the photographer for Kamasutra, Tuff and Calida campaigns.And in between these ads, in 1996, he came up with a book of portraits and nudes called Women.