{"id":1267,"date":"2014-10-28T23:24:06","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T17:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/?p=1267"},"modified":"2014-10-28T23:24:06","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T17:54:06","slug":"ten-minutes-in-the-kitchen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/2014\/10\/28\/ten-minutes-in-the-kitchen\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten Minutes in the Kitchen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My blog is at risk of sounding like a\u00a0paid promotion for Philips. A day after writing about buying Philips LED bulbs, I am now writing about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.campaignbriefasia.com\/asia\/2014\/10\/ogilvy-mumbai-and-philips-spre.html\">their new ad campaign to promote self-examination for breast cancer<\/a>.\u00a0Rest assured, though, that it&#8217;s just a coincidence, and do consider that\u00a0I have been blogging so little that I\u00a0don&#8217;t think Philips would even bother paying me.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway. I saw the campaign\u00a0being mentioned on social media about a week ago, at which time I quickly scrolled past. Then I saw a print ad on the weekend, and successfully ignored that. However, this evening, I heard\u00a0a radio spot, got intrigued, and came back to look for the video spot. Here it is.\u00a0It combines some of my favourite things: communicating without speaking, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/2008\/10\/15\/why-is-there-no-yuppie-programming\/\">yuppie couples<\/a>, and kitchens.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/t133BmnGCe0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The radio\u00a0ad I heard this evening isn&#8217;t quite as impressive. For starters, the husband\u00a0in the radio ad seems far less competent. Unlike his counterpart in the TV ad, he can&#8217;t just make food by himself. He calls up his wife to ask for the recipe for dal. This left me wondering:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Why on earth do you need a recipe for\u00a0dal of all things?<\/li>\n<li>If you have to call up your wife to get instructions for making dal, don&#8217;t you end up wasting\u00a0almost as much time of hers, and possibly more, as you save by making dal?<\/li>\n<li>Seriously, why couldn&#8217;t he just look up <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BIFyn9W9L6w\">YouTube,<\/a>\u00a0any of the multiple food\u00a0channels on television, a cookbook, or just search the internet for a non-video recipe?<\/li>\n<li>Will this incompetent chap who doesn&#8217;t even know how to learn how to make dal eventually\u00a0follow\u00a0in the noble footsteps of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flipkart.com\/married-man-s-guide-creative-cooking-other-dubious-adventures-english\/p\/itmdk8vcsftahhsb?pid=9789382618805&amp;otracker=from-search&amp;srno=t_1&amp;query=samar+halarnkar&amp;ref=3377dba3-2408-4dc9-bbde-b0ce327105b1\">Samar Halarnkar<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maxdavinci.com\/blog\/\">Max da Vinci<\/a> and become a married man in the kitchen\u00a0on a frequent basis, or is he just going to do this whenever his wife needs to self-examine?<\/li>\n<li>What about lala couples who have domestic help to do all the chores anyway?<\/li>\n<li>What about ladies who\u00a0are widowed, have husbands\u00a0who are living away from them, or aren&#8217;t married at all?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And, along with all of this, well, good for Philips India, but what made them\u00a0decide on this good cause in particular?<\/p>\n<p>I suspect\u00a0that\u00a0the whole point of the campaign is not to get more women\u00a0examining themselves for breast cancer (though that\u00a0would be a nice and positive side effect if it happened), but to get more husbands doing chores (which is valuable for its own sake and would also be excellent if it happened).<\/p>\n<p>Now, telling husbands to do chores only for ten minutes a month may not seem like a lot as far as the wife is concerned. There is of course the possibility that the husbands will discover (to their own surprise) that they like\u00a0doing things for their wives on a regular basis, or even that they enjoy doing the chores for their own sake. (Don&#8217;t knock that last possibility. Ironing is extremely relaxing.) And even if they don&#8217;t really enjoy it, maybe\u00a0husbands will do it out of sheer competitiveness if they see other husbands doing it and bragging about it. Let us wait and watch.<\/p>\n<p>Why, though, does Philips want\u00a0husbands doing household chores? What&#8217;s in it for them?<\/p>\n<p>My conspiracy theory is that they are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, a desire for less breast cancer, or a desire for more equitable marriages; but to sell the household appliances they make. What Philips is probably counting on is that husbands who have never done\u00a0chores before\u00a0will, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/2007\/08\/22\/design-for-servants\/\">once finally exposed to actual housework,\u00a0realise what their wives have been going through<\/a> and then rush to\u00a0automate all these tasks as much as possible. Having realised the difficulties involved in getting\u00a0ironed clothes, warm daal, or clean floors, they will at long last get better tools to achieve these, and immediately purchase mixies, vacuum cleaners, air fryers, or steam irons; to name but a few products in the Philips India range. Meanwhile, their wives, who had been wanting\u00a0better equipment all this while but couldn&#8217;t convince them, will probably roll their eyes, grumble a bit about how long it took for the husbands to wake up to reality, and\u00a0afterwards, hopefully, enjoy the benefits of increased automation, even if not the benefits of their husbands doing the work regularly.<\/p>\n<p>If my conspiracy theory is correct,\u00a0clearly somebody at Philips India is extremely subtle and patient in expanding their market size. Respect, I say. Respect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My blog is at risk of sounding like a\u00a0paid promotion for Philips. A day after writing about buying Philips LED bulbs, I am now writing about their new ad campaign to promote self-examination for breast cancer.\u00a0Rest assured, though, that it&#8217;s just a coincidence, and do consider that\u00a0I have been blogging so little that I\u00a0don&#8217;t think [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,58],"tags":[2518,2507,2521,2513,2517,2510,985,2512,2509,2511,2520,2516,2523,2522,2519,2515,2514,2508],"class_list":["post-1267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arbit-fundaes","category-domesticity","tag-air-fryer","tag-automation","tag-breast-cancer","tag-dal","tag-food-processor","tag-gradwolf","tag-home-appliances","tag-indian-sign-language","tag-married-man-in-the-kitchen","tag-maxdavinci","tag-men-of-iron","tag-mixie","tag-public-health","tag-self-examination","tag-steam-iron","tag-vahchef","tag-vahrevah","tag-womens-empowerment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7AOU2-kr","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1268,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions\/1268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}