The Great Indian Ad Archive

The Vintage Indian Advertisements series is taking a break, even though Season Two is far from over. Scanning, editing and uploading requires quite a lot of sand to pass through the hour-glass and I during the last many days was seriously short of that silicon stuff (don’t even think of Pamela Anderson).

Whatever I was doing all those days required me to visit a lot of corporate websites, and to my delight I found that a lot of them are a treasure house of advertisements. Being the underzealous ad buff that I’m, I thought of initiating a section (since this is a blog, it’ll be a category/label) wherein you can find links to a huge archive of Indian advertisements that is there on the World Wide Web for you to see. Of course I’ll try to recommend the worthwhile views, to save you from the bother of going through all of them.

I had initially thought of making ‘The Great Indian Ad Archive‘ a new and exclusive blog dedicated to the world of Indian advertising, but then I wouldn’t have been able to do justice to that. My jottings even on this personal and primary blog is at best erratic. Therefore I thought of putting them together as a single category/label within Cutting the Chai, which would be updated from time to time, as when I (or any one of you) come across new stuff on the internet. For the ones which aren’t there on any other websites, there’s always the Vintage Indian Advertisements.

The Great Indian Ad Archive is simply a collection of links featuring television commercials (TVCs) and print ads. Nothing original on my part. Just an aggregation effort. Here’s the first batch.

1. Company/brand: Reliance Communications (previously Reliance Infocomm)
Sector: Telecom
TVCs
* Link 1
* Link 2
Comments: Downloadable MPEG files. 46 ads on the last count (November 6, 2006)

2. Company/brand: Dabur
Sector: Health care, personal care
TVCs
* Link 1
* Link 2
Comments: This is what I call a HUGE archive with about 150 TVCs encompassing almost all of Dabur’s brands. But doesn’t include those old Dabur ads that are etched into our memory from the Doordarshan days.
Downloadable WMV files.

3. Company/brand: Tata
Sector: Conglomerate
Print ads
* Link
Comments: The Tata name is undoubtedly the most trusted amongst the brand names in India, but not many Tata ads have remained unforgettable. The ads are a series run by group in the print media from 2000 to 2005.
Detailed viewing will require Flash Player.

4. Company/brand: Godrej Consumer Products Ltd / Cinthol
Sector: Personal care, skin care
TVCs
* Link
Comments: This is a real discovery. Women (of all ages) start drooling, the page includes some real vintage Cinthol advertisements featuring the heartthrob of the seventies Vinod Khanna, the dashing Pakistani cricket captain who won more hearts than matches in India – Imran Khan, a bare torsoed Milind Soman, his marriage would have shattered many a dream. There’s also Shah Rukh Khan, and following his Dad’s footsteps Akshaye Khanna and ladies especially for your eyes – John Abraham (if only he could act).
The ads are in Flash and not directly downloadable.