Derogatory advertisement by Wipro Smartlite CFL

WIPRO SMARTLITE compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) is a brand of Wipro consumer care and lighting that is a business unit of Wipro Limited. It has a range of products from toilet soaps, hair care soaps, baby care products and lighting products.

Wipro CFL has established its presence CFL (lightning market) in India. To promote Wipro Smartlite, CFL Company has roped in celebrity, Paresh Raval, and the advertisement is on air on television now a days. It tries to educate consumers about savings through switching from bulbs to CFL. The ad promotes CFL manufactured by Wipro and tries to dissuade the customer for not using inferior quality, which the ad says consumes more energy. The product is positioned as ‘money saving device’ and itself will act as a savings account (money) for the house.

The advertisement may be right and powerful, but the words used by Rawal do not reflect the same. He says a ‘metric fail’ to the person who is not using CFL or using inferior quality CFL. It is a derogatory word and he does not agree to it. A person who is metric fail can be smart enough too, he adds.

Though the spirit of Wipro places respect of individual and sensitivity at its highest vision and quotes on its website as ‘believe in a society where each citizen sees the ethic of equity, the essentiality of diversity, the ethos of justice, and is thus driven to social action. It is seeing each of us is inextricably embedded in the same social fabric’.

Which parameters did Wipro and its advertisement agency use to define that being ‘metric fail’ meant for not being smart? They are wrong here and probably should withdraw the same from the advertisement. In India, businessmen, though not being formally educated in school and colleges, have made it big in their business. Many big industrial houses of today have been set up by business men who were great, smart and probably have had, owing to some reasons, less formal educational qualifications.

As per many experts, smartness is an essential personality factor to manage things. Interestingly, business schools today tell their students that the current job market does also need being ’street smarts’. This use of word in its tagline by Wipro is wrong, and by the means of this piece I would like to draw the attention of other fellow citizen journalists and of advertising standards council of India towards this advertisement.