Advertising India

A bold and timely investigation into how it feels to grow up in a world where every anxiety of girlhood has been commodified GIRLS is what girls have become in the modern world. We are ornaments on display, filtered and Facetuned. We are objects, shopped for on dating apps. We are brands...

This is as much the story of Indian advertising as it is about India. Ad veteran Ambi Parameswaran looks at how advertising has evolved, reflecting the country's culture, politics and economy in the last 50 years. From sartorial taste and food habits to marriage and old age, music and language to celebrities and censorship, Ambi examines more than a hundred ads to study how the Indian consumer has changed in the past five decades and how advertising and society have shaped each other.

One of the largest consumer markets of the world, India is made up of lots and lots of small consumers―each earning and spending just a little bit that adds up to a lot. It is served by millions of small suppliers oozing innovation and customer intimacy, and is powered by digital...