The same backpack

Every August the back-to-school ads arrive, and every year they are the same ad.

A child, usually a boy, about nine. A backpack, new, worn on both shoulders the way no child has ever worn one. Morning light through a window or an open car door. A mother just out of frame. A percentage, large, in the corner. Sometimes a pencil case. Sometimes a laptop, if the brand is a bank.

I have seen this ad from a stationery chain, a supermarket, a telecom, a shoe brand and a yoghurt. Change the logo and nothing else changes.

None of it was written for anyone. Not for the mother in Nasr City buying for three children in three different schools. Not for the mother in Riyadh whose school is due back any day and whose list is longer than her weekend. Not for the parent at the international school whose first day sits on a calendar nobody else in the region uses. The ad is for back to school, the category, which is a line in a media plan and not a person in a school car park at ten to seven.

When everyone writes for the category, the category gets the attention. Back to school, as an idea, is thoroughly advertised by the end of August. No brand is. The mother sees thirty backpacks and remembers a percentage that could have belonged to any of them.

An ad written for her would have a first day in it. Not a school's name, a morning: the one her particular child walks in on, in her particular city, with whatever is still missing from the list. It would not look like the other twenty-nine, which is the whole point and the whole risk.

The child in the ad has no school. That is why nobody recognises him.