Throwback Thursday: Bombay Dyeing's spy thriller of an ad from the 80s
On Thursdays, we revisit old ads from the yesteryears to see how much has changed in the ad sensibilities
The year is 1984 and Indian textile giant Bombay Dyeing is looking to venture into the fast-growing world of television advertising.
A year ago in1983, the Indian government had sanctioned a huge expansion of Doordarshan by setting up several transmitters across the country.
TV serials like Hum Log had become immensely popular in households that could afford a television set.
Sensing the growth of the television craze, the government also imported 50,000 colour TV sets from Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai ahead of the Asian Games. Indian customers were ready to spend anywhere between Rs 8,000 and Rs 10,000 on TV sets.
Clearly, TV mania was poised to grow.
Maureen Wadia, who was overseeing advertising for Bombay Dyeing since 1976, wanted an ad campaign that could showcase the sophistication and style of the brand's polyester suiting products -- Wardene and Kapitan.
She also wanted a charismatic lead with sharp features and an air of elegance. Her quest led her old friend Ardhendu Bose.
Bose was none other than the nephew of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and was doing well for himself as a leather technologist. He was also an accomplished martial arts fighter.
The suave Bose with his sharp features and strapping personality was, dare we say, tailor-made for the role. As fate would have it, he agreed to star as the swashbuckling protagonist of the ad.
Released in 1984, the film 'The Day of the Marksman' is a 1-minute 34-second campy spectacle full of spy-movie elements set to a piece of pulsating background music. It's got katanas, guns, pet leopards, bad guys, femme fatales, high-speed chases and intrigue. At the centre of it is the James Bond-eqsue hero on a mission to bring the bad guys to justice.
In the years that followed, Bose came to be known as the Indian James Bond. According to internet lore, Bose eventually grew weary of playing the gun-toting hero in the ads and passed on the legacy to Karan Kapoor, actor Shashi Kapoor's son.
This ad is wrongly believed to be India's first television ad, but that honour belongs to Gwalior Suitings' ad released in 1976; however, there's no trace of it online.
