Hari Sadu - Redux falls to Weber Curse

Its done damage earlier. Its done it again. Its the Weber curse.

First, the law. Weber's law states that the ratio of the increment threshold to the background intensity is a constant. So when you are in a noisy environment you must shout to be heard while a whisper works in a quiet room. And when you measure increment thresholds on various intensity backgrounds, the thresholds increase in proportion to the background.

Naukri.com had a brilliant commercial in Hari Sadu, Round I. Real funny stuff. Then they bring version II. Its falls flat. Hari Sadu, redux isn't funny. Worse, I couldn't even figure what the commercial was about till a magazine article explained it to me. For Redux to have worked, Hari Sadu and the story line had to be funnier. It wasn't. My bet is, give it a few days, the plug will be pulled on the commercial.

Let me now venture a guess on why Hari Sadu redux, or for that matter most reduxes fail. Creative ideas flower out of a process. Wallas' creative process, for example, consists of four stages, namely, Preparation, Incubation, Illumination and Verification. My guess is, when the agency working for Naukri started on an idea for their client, they started with a clean slate. They must have gone through the kind of stages Wallas' talks about to arrive at Hari Sadu and the story line. But the next time around when asked, the agency didn't have a clean slate to start with. They must have been briefed to build on Hari Sadu and ensure the communique centers on 'jobs being back'. With such a 'restricted' backdrop, creativity suffers. In fact the mind starts to turn more rational. Moving away from a zone of creativity, the mind now wanders a structured plane, thus losing out on an ability to be original. The result, is out there for all to see.

Hari Sadu, Round I made us laugh. Hari Sadu redux has us scratching our heads.