This fascinating read in the Washington Post exposes the expectations the mainstream has of the multicultural and, equally, multicultural expectations of the mainstream when it comes to what a cultural brand should be named.

Emperors and Empresses fence with Chopsticks and wrestle Pandas and Dragons for top spot among Chinese restaurant names, across the USA. Imperial Gardens, Golden Woks and Great Walls hold their own against a mob of Jade Villages and several Bamboo Groves. Even this rather convenient online Chinese restaurant name generator only serves to underscore our reluctance to use our noodle in favour of the lazy familiarity of the cliché.

I guarantee very similar findings with Indian restaurants - across the world. It is a world ruled by Maharajas, Maharanis and their edifices - their Taj Mahals, their Bombay Palaces and occasionally when slumming it, by their humbler Huts, whether serving Dosa, Roti or Curry. Here and there we see a sideways leap from Kadhais to Tandoors - that's frying pan to fire for those unaware of the cuisine's argot.

It's easy to see why in a world of Stupidly Imitative™, Ho Hum™ and Same Old Same Old™, we are passionate about differentiation and why we were careful to guide our FreshCo client away from stereotypes and clichés when we went to work for them. And it's why the brand they so correctly approved and ran with - Chalo - is so right for our time and for our audience.  

Gavin Barrett is Ideawallah at Barrett and Welsh, a Toronto agency which serves as defacto Ministry of Defence in the war against cliché, whether in Arabic, English, Putonghua, Macedonian, Pig Latin or Zamboni. (Just checking to make sure you were paying attention). No pandas or dragons were hurt in the writing of this post which also appeared as a LinkedIn post by Gavin.

In March 2013, David Brown who is Managing Editor at Marketing Magazine asked me to write an article about the best multicultural advertising in the world - or to put it more simply, the best advertising in the world.

I said yes, of course, sensing an opportunity to let loose one of my favourite rants. You see, audiences exposed to advertising of Cannes-dominating stature in their home countries immigrate to Canada only to discover that they are being addressed like idiots. (If immigrants were so stupid, why would they have picked Canada?) And do marketers imagine that immigrants from the largest television and online media consumption markets in the world don’t notice their lack of commitment to connect with them in those media here — or the substandard, step-sisterly low-budget production values when they do? Etc etc.

Well, I worked myself up into a pretty lather. Probably as close as I will ever come to being the man your man wants to be aka Isaiah Mustafa.

Anyway, here's a link to the full article, on Marketing Magazine's website.
Enjoy.

And if you like to see how we carry the torch for intelligent multicultural creative here in Canada, click here to view our multicultural work on our website.

Peace.

TD Canada Trust continues to make Canadian South Asians feel welcome, as our latest spot for them shows.

The premise here is equally simple and incredibly relevant - i.e. TD makes mortgages comfortable, desi style. Instead of the anxiety of negotiating your first Canadian mortgage in a completely unfamiliar setting, TD's mortgage process makes you feel at home. With mortgage specialists who come to you, who get you, who speak the same language as you figuratively and literally.

It's one reason why the majority of desis bank with TD: TD makes mortgages comfortable, desi style.

This idea is demonstrative - TD is not just saying "we get you" it is showing it, in the ad.
(Desi = a person of Indian extraction)


The team:
Client: TD Canada Trust
Agency: Barrett and Welsh

Creative Directors: Mike Welsh and Gavin Barrett
Writer: Gavin Barrett
Art Director: Bhupesh Luther/Gavin Barrett

Directed by: Richard Picton
Executive Producer: Augusta Brook

Editor: Chris Brook
DOP/Colour: Johnny Askwith
Motion graphics: Alwyn Pereira

Music: Night in Lenasia by Deepak Ram, Golden Horn Productions
Sound design: WantedSP, Toronto

I am going to break an longstanding rule of mine and post 2 commercials made by Barrett and Welsh - in a row. The reason? They're good. And they represent a substantial commitment to the South Asian community in Canada by TD Canada Trust. The first spot is called A Longer Hours People.

What's the idea here? Well, everything is longer for South Asians.
Weddings last a week. Festivals are celebrated over several days.
Bollywood movies last three hours.
Even our favourite sport, cricket, is played over five days.
Since time immemorial, our customs, traditions, passions, work ethics, faith and values have driven us to rise earlier and to stay awake later.

South Asians are a longer hours people. And the longer banking hours that TD keeps are a perfect fit, as this commercial demonstrates.


The team:
Client: TD Canada Trust
Agency: Barrett and Welsh

Creative Directors: Mike Welsh and Gavin Barrett
Writer: Gavin Barrett
Art Director: Bhupesh Luther

Produced by Barrett and Welsh, freelance producer: Munaf Husain/Dancing Light Pictures

Editor: Chris Brook
Music: Night in Lenasia by Deepak Ram, Golden Horn Productions
Sound design: Mark Dwyer, Zoo Music, Toronto
DOP/Colour: Pasha Patriki
Motion graphics: Alwyn Pereira
Stock: Getty Images

India just celebrated the incredible, colourful, uninhibited festival of Holi. Enjoy the The Boston Globe's photo essay on the festivities from its spectacular Big Picture website. And in the words of one billion revelers, "Holi Hai!"

Let go and let yourself have some fun.
Click here to see the photo feature.


Image: Makks2010 via weblink to from Wikimedia Commobes

Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

It's a bloody shampoo, it's not rocket science!

East Indian

This extremely irritating (to Indians) term was in common use in Canada and in North America as recently as 1996.
It has fallen into relative disuse but still pops up disconcertingly, from time to time in newspapers or government documents. Its connections to the East India Company's bloody sojourn in India and its direct descent from the world's greatest case of mistaken identity (Columbus declaring his discovery of the Indies) make it unpalatable to the Indian tongue.
Acceptable alternatives are Indo-Canadian or Canadian of Indian origin - if the person or persons described originated from India. The term South Asian is also acceptable though it does not denote Indians exclusively.


Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

Indian English is English with a smattering of Hindustani - and other Indian languages - as the need of the speaker demands.

Hinglish is Hindustani (itself a hybrid of Hindi and Urdu) with a smattering of English.

That's my preferred distinction, and it's the one the Oxford Dictionary folks used to prefer.

It dismays me no end to hear the two used interchangeably, so here is an additional guide.

Indian English is India's English - the Maharani's English if you will. An exotic, richly spiced vibrant variant of the mother form, Indian English is recognized by the Oxford Dictionary. Populated as it is with an aromatic vocabulary of Indian words and quaint, rare and uniquely subcontinental English usage, it is to English what Masala Chai is to tea.

Hinglish on the other hand, being predominantly Hindustani, would be perfectly sensible if written in Devanagari script though it never is. Its quirkiest idiosyncrasy - its defining characteristic - is that it is at heart, an Indian language written fully in Roman script.

Indian English for its part, is mostly English in vocabulary and grammar albeit in a form not always recognizable to Her Majesty.
Imagine this: it's 1936, and a visiting Home Office envoy extends his pinkie, sips his Earl Grey and complains in a tone of mild horror, "My dear boy, it came here as the Queen's English but it's gone dreadfully native, hasn't it?"
Well, the reality is that it has gone wonderfully native; polyglottal India has made Indian English a truly Indian form of self-expression.
Yet, it would be nigh impossible to write Indian English in anything but Roman script.
Indian English is one of the many reasons English can claim more than half a billion speakers.

Here's a line in Indian English.
Hello sir! How is your health keeping? Auntyji is also being okay?


Here's the same line in Hinglish:
Namasteji. Aap teek hain? Aur auntyji?

For a fascinating linguistic journey through this young, extremely dynamic variant of English, click on the links below and hold on to your topees. (And at some point I promise, I will write a post on Indian words that English borrowed - hold on to your pyjamas for that one).

Click here to enjoy the BBC's take on Indian English.

Or here to read a rather thorough linguistic analysis in Wikipedia.

Or enjoy perusing the entertaining Dictionary of Indian English here.

Image via desicreative, by typographer Nabina Ghosh.

Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

Many people mistakenly use Hinglish as synonymous with Indian English - but like others who approach this linguistically I beg to differ.

There are many different descriptions for this hybridized language. This is mine - as a student and teacher of literature and language (especially in the subcontinental context), I feel compelled to take a more formal approach.

Hinglish is predominantly Hindi or Hindustani written in Roman or English script. When spoken or written, it is driven by phrasings and constructions written or driven by Hindi.


A paragraph of text written in Hinglish may be peppered with English words - especially such terms or concepts as "mobile" or "weekend" or "internet" - in this it does have commonalities with Indian English but the dominant Hindi movie titles are typically written in Hinglish - as in the example shown here. Hinglish and Indian English are both commonly used in advertising in India.

But for obvious reasons (its Indo-Aryan Hindi origins, Hinglish simply doesn't travel as well as Indian English does). Perhaps the best distinction between Indian English and Hinglish is summed up as follows:
an educated Keralite or Tamilian whose mother tongue is an Indo-Dravidian language, would not be able to follow or understand the Indo-Aryan linguistic and syntactical choices made by a Hinglish speaker.
Whereas both would understand Indian English perfectly - inserting words from their own languages into a syntax that is essentially Anglophonic.

Bollywood poster image from http://www.oldindianarts.in/
Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

A while ago I promised I would feature great ads on this blog from the major multicultural "home markets".
By that, I meant ads from India, Hong Kong and China to start with. Ads that show exactly how high the bar is in those markets and how sophisticated those audiences are. The Nike ad from JWT India I posted a while ago is a good example.

Now, my kid brother Russell (he's a Creative Director/Writer at Leo Burnett Mumbai) has given me more material for the series.

A campaign of his for Luxor highlighters won 2 Gold Lions and 3 Bronze Lions at Cannes and a One Show Gold pencil to boot.
And a NY Art Director's Gold, and 2 Silver Andys...
And got into the D&AD annual - which is surely the toughest award show in the world to crack.

Is it multicultural in any way? No.
Does it exploit an insight into the way Indians use highlighters? No.

I'm sharing it simply because it's a great campaign with a great idea behind it, and it truly demonstrates the power of the product. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing else matters.

Enjoy the ads.



Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

Bollywood is a phrase the west uses to refer to Indian movies, though in reality it only applies to movies from Bombay (now Mumbai) - hence Bollywood.

Bollywood is Singing In the Rain meets Indiana Jones. In a Bollywood movie, the good guy beats the bad guy and always wins the girl and gyrates through some pretty difficult (for Westerners) dance sequences along the way.

Bollywood is an escape from reality as is almost every other kind of movie out of India's massive film industry. It’s the largest film industry in the world because it allows a billion people a way out from the everyday struggle of their lives – three hours of fantasy.

Movie plots are fairly easy to predict.

A low-caste boy with a heart of gold falls in love with a rich upper-caste girl and they have a secret wedding. And the movie is their love story.

Or it’s about an unlikely hero who fights against the tyranny of a local feudal landowner with the help of the simple feisty village girl he loves. There’s never any sex, and in most movies there’s not even any kissing. However there’s an awful lot of sexual tension.

Or it's about twins or siblings separated at birth and raised by others. One grows up to be a rich underworld don and the other becomes a poor, idealistic cop. They battle to the death before the eyes of their distraught birth mother who finally tells them they are brothers as she herself dies thanks to a ricocheting bullet (after at least six song and dance numbers mind you).

Sure these premises are kitschy. But the movies are made and watched with a great deal of affection. People even throw money at movie screens when they watch a scene with some great dialogue or get right into a song-and-dance number.

The music from Bollywood is India’s pop music and great lines of dialogue enter everyday speech. (think "Luke, I am your father.").

Bollywood characters are clichés, stereotypes. Bollywood acting is usually over-the-top and campy.

The key characters are usually The Hero, The Heroine, The Vamp (the bad/villain’s girl with a heart of gold), The Villain (who has no redeeming features), The Daku (trans: the Bandit, or the villain’s henchman), The Jester/Sidekick (usually provides comic relief to the hero.)

The advertising for Bollywood movies is as gaudy, loud and melodramatic as the movies.

Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

Once again I am in debt to Harper's, without a doubt the best damn magazine in the world.

In the February 2008 Harper's Index I discovered that Shaadi.com, an immensely popular matchmaking site for South Asians (or "matrimonials site", as we beige folk like to say) allows listees to choose from no less than six skin tones and 275 castes.

I poked around the site and discovered they also offer a menu of 28 communities and 67 mother tongues.

Does this make it impossible to choose a mate? Far from it.

Shaadi.com estimates it has made between 800,000 and a million successful "matches".
It has over 10 million members, numbers that make it one of the most successful and most admired online companies in all of Asia.

It even lets you search for matches in the USA and Canada.

Now you know where to look if you're in the market for a wheaten complexion male Iyengar Brahmin MIT engineer with a green card or a very fair, tall Sikh lady doctor coming from a very respectable family based in Malton, Ontario.

And oh, every single shaadi.com page is in English.


Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

photo of mehndi at Indian wedding: by Riffat, via flickr
Some rights reserved.

This Nike Cricket spot is directed by Abhinay Deo with whom we have a tie-up for production in India. Abhinay is a Cannes award-winning director (it's easy to see why) and he made this spot for JWT India.

The national creative director at JWT is Agnelo Dias, a talented, quiet-spoken gentleman for whom I have a lot of time.

Talk about being on the right wavelength.
This spot hits all the right buttons.

Want to know why? Send me a note and I'll tell you.