Merry Xmas and Happy new year !!!!

Adformula wishes a joyful season to all its friends... Njoy... !!!

Coca-Cola - fresh and new...

Imran khan and his freshness has added value and reason to this new Coca Cola commercial...  good idea, and great execution..!

The Fun Gun!!!

My sister had been ill, so I called to see how she was doing. My ten-year-old niece answered the phone.

"Hello," she whispered.

"Hi, Honey. How's your mother doing?" I asked.

"She's sleeping," she answered, again in a whisper.

"Did she go to the doctor?" I asked.

"Yes. She got some medicine," my niece said softly.

"Well, don't wake her. Just tell her I called. What are you doing, by the way?"

Again in a soft whisper, she answered, "Practicing my drums and trumpet." 

Now that some fun for the week end.. Do come back people....!!!

The Fun Gun !!!

"Honey," said this husband to his wife, "I invited a friend home for supper."

"What? Are you crazy? The house is a mess, I haven't been shopping, all the dishes are dirty, and I don't feel like cooking a fancy meal!"

"I know all that."

"Then why did you invite a friend for supper?"

"Because the poor fool's thinking about getting married...he said... I thought let him come and see for himself..."

Some people will learn only when they experience... anyways its week end again,,,, experience life people.. Njoy...! 

When u are wrong accept, when right--shut up !!!

O

One day, while a woodcutter was cutting a branch of a tree above a river,his axe fell into the river.

When he cried out, the Lord appeared and asked, "Why are you crying?"

The woodcutter replied that his axe has fallen into water, and he needed the axe to make his living.

The Lord went down into the water and reappeared with a golden axe. "Is this your axe?" the Lord asked.

The woodcutter replied, "No."

The Lord again went down and came up with a silver Axe. "Is this your axe?" the Lord asked.

Again, the woodcutter replied, "No."

The Lord went down again and came up with an iron Axe. "Is this your axe?"the Lord asked.

The woodcutter replied, "Yes."

The Lord was pleased with the man's honesty and gave him all three axes to keep, and the woodcutter went home happy.

Some time later the woodcutter was walking with his wife along the river bank, and his wife fell into the river. When he cried out, the Lord again appeared and asked him, "Why are you crying?"

"Oh Lord, my wife has fallen into the water!"

The Lord went down into the water and came up with ANGELINA JOLIE "Is this your wife?" the Lord asked.

"Yes," cried the woodcutter.

The Lord was furious. "You lied! That is an untruth!"

The woodcutter replied, "Oh, forgive me, my Lord. It is a misunderstanding. You see,if I had said 'no' to ANGELINA JOLIE , You would have come up with CAMERON DIAZ .Then if I said 'no' to her, you would have come up with my wife. And I would have to go home with all the three...!!!!

The moral of this story : Whenever a man lies, it is for a good and honourable reason, and for the benefit of others.......

A gentle man named Rajiv Sabharwal of a frontline advertising agency (then and even now) told me this story some years back. (Now don’t ask me.... if he was a gentleman, what the hell was he doing in advertising...)

Rajiv was an excellent story teller and I’m not, still I have to tell you this...

The client was an egoist (I bet you knew this..) and an IKE type ....... Rajiv and his team in the Account management/CS , wasn’t too happy with the type of client they had had but had to cling on for want of a better choice...Their Agency in that city had only one major client worth to be called as a client, and so it went on. The agency did a study(almost a life threatening exercise) on the feasibility of the clients produce, which was a ready to eat stuff, mostly vegetarian and traditional. The packaging was archaic, the logo was close to primitive, the mascot belonged to the stone age......

Study ..you ask.......? With so much of clear reason what is there to study?

Advertising is where clear reason has no place according to Rajiv.....and hence the study went on to find out the obvious...to unravel secrets which even the tea boy at the agency knew...to discover insights with which street kids across the agency played....

And the finding... nothing great and everything as expected...the city had grown ,it said and people have all become modern..the garb of tradition and filter coffee mania has disappeared...The young lot has taken over and old things are out.....old images......old culture......old habits... including (sigh!!!)the clients primeval produce...

The client refused to accept it..the agency was vociferous..was argumentative ( for a change..!!) Spat and squabble followed and the client won. As in marriages it is always the other party who has the last laugh finally....

The findings were replaced by something new-fangled......since the client and his primordial products couldn’t be touched, and since the agency couldn’t also blame itself for the quandary that they were in, what left was to be blamed was the consumer..it was the paradigm shift in the consumer attitudes that they got to blame...

Every one was happy.....
The client -for his football size..oops..stadium sized ego remaining untouched, even glorified...
The agency- for the extended lease of life, until the next campaign also flops and people still refusing to buy ....

It went on...

Rajiv says ...There was a hanging in the walls of the agency which after this incident he thought was the synonym for the ultimate irony in the business of advertising...

It read so...

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee to ever-widening thought and action......

Rajiv says that the best lesson that the agency learnt (in a hard way of course) was that the client is always right..and when you are wrong admit it..when you are not wrong also admit that you are wrong, and if at all you are right, shut up...

Tail piece:-

 
Patient: Doctor! You've got to help me! Nobody ever listens to me. No one ever pays any attention to what I have to say.
 

Doctor: Next please!

FUCA AWARDS 2010 !!!

Hearty appreciation to Sathish Kumar, Joselin John , Ajay , Venu , Thomson, Dhanya , Madhu ,Shyam and Dileep Narayan... 

Kudos folks !!!!

Muslipower Xtra - copy cat !!!

Sex and drugs for sex  have been a category that sells by itself since time immemorial..… and Kunnath C Abraham knew that very well… just another man before he realised his big brand dream, he but had the power of looking to the future…. He is the one with a bit more forethought ....... he knew that drugs like Viagra should run for a hiding because of the many health apprehension these drugs are connected with. That did exactly happen to sex drugs, especially in India, when sales did drop and then… THEN came the now often discussed Musli power Xtra, ‘the saviour of Indian manhood’.. !

His pricing strategies are/were different (you cannot buy a Musli tablet alone, you have to get a pack full and pay some big money for it), facing the allegations (mainly from a jealous competition) he had them issue a threat ad where he (yeah that’s right the man himself) announced that anyone proving that is product has banned substances in it will get 5 crores and the like.. He even won some additional brownie points when he realised that the law is going to catch up he by quickly dropped the impotence-cure tag and adopted vitality tag instead… and then he took it to everyone… selling sex to making you healthy and vital with the one and same drug… One ad said (the old man in the ad said that is..) now even old people can use it… it gives me SO MUCH of ENERGY.. Whatever it means..  

And then this ad, for the weak hearts… 

******************************************************

Now some history from another part of the world…

Somewhere during Mid 2001,  an ad agency calls a Zurich director, to make an ad for Swiss TV.... The client was Microsoft XP and the idea to sell - password protection......

So what you ask...?… keep going guys.. !

The ad was shot inexpensive, and in less than a day..(ahem).

As far as I can conclude (it’s my assumption and don’t hang me if I am wrong), the ad never ran on any TV and other media (where it should have) considering that it is a TVC. Someone who saw it somewhere posted it online somewhere, somehow and then its history. It went on until Gates saw it and got red in anger and had it pulled.

The content is sexy and even outright lewd for our standards but again was not the case for half of the world... Things are moving along satisfactorily hot (!!!) until the couple reach one of those archetypal tests of manhood, the brassiere disentanglement (or as the Swiss friends used to put it, the dégagement de soutien-gorge.) Even though the gentleman choose for the conventional, competent, better-safe-than-sorry, two-handed release his efforts are unanswered and his desires, so very oathtically dissatisfied….(alas ! )

The fact that the ad makes us smile is testimony to its creative brilliance but nevertheless it wasn’t seen much on public space…Microsoft seemingly didn’t think that it would efficiently sell software, or Microsoft was annoyed that the ad they paid to produce was seized and usurped by the online world….

For me but the video’s winning split second transpire about halfway through the run; watch the devious, nuanced expression on the girl’s face as she realises what is going on, literally, behind her back…. For the ad makers ( Chris Niemeyer- a lessor known Swiss director and her crew) but the winning moment would be now, if and when they comprehend that 'far across the distance and spaces between them' (inspired from the Titanic song) some other unrelated brand had ditto and shamelessly copied their idea which  any ways Microsoft didn’t find much useful. 

Imitiation is the sincerest form of flattery but this has gone beyond the limit.. Even the sly expression of the girl is …!!! 

Tail piece:- The difference between a bad artist and a good one is the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does…..

Diary Milk - Shubarambh se not so Subh anth tak!

Running a campaign is like having beer, it’s rare that the second one will taste as good as the first one, and the third one as good as the second…. (This however is not a rule and even if it is, as with every other rule, this one has exceptions as well…..)

Cadburys diary Milk is a brand that always amused me – and since today (as I write, )I am in a golden hangover of having seen and heard it all from the man himself – Piyush Pandey who came to Kochi and talked to us on how Cadbury's made it .. The hangover is intact even now and yet I cannot resist myself from my humble duty of evaluating and putting my view on ads in the limelight...

Diary Milk and its oscillation is part of marketing history. As Piyush himself admits, brands have to say stories and have to change them (keeping the soul intact) as per the changing TG that you talk to. Some times such change is triggered by the market needs/ marketing needs of the brand (like the DM case when they first repositioned it from just being a kid’s stuff to also for adults stuff… See to here…) And many times even when the market or marketing needs don’t want you to change the communication, the agency does for want to avoid getting bored.. Classic case of you getting bored with your own creation before the viewer does.. Thus Pappu pass ho gaya, Radha and the Miss Palampur ads ( a crime!) and then after a long foray into the ups and downs of positioning roller coaster rides , the Pehli tarik ads with the song 'Khush hai zamana aaj pehli tarikh hai, Meetha hai khana aaj pehli tarikh hai” which just means sing and rejoice, it's salary day today… (Nothing great!) ,,,,

Then came the Shubarambh one - cute, sweet and hitting right at the spot.. There were critiques for this one as well but that’s part of the game.. The first beer bottle for the thirsty (deprived of good beer for long, that is!), it was refreshing and so very tasty.. In fact too tasty to be true and I used to wonder, how they will retain the cuteness element in its successive ads, if they are going to prolong the Shubarambh campaign… Whether it is due to the need that the variety loving market place throws in, or simply because the agency gets bored of its existing work, it takes some guts for a new campaign with a new tag line, tone and tongue to be launched … It takes but more than guts to make it look and taste better than the older one… The cute teenagers in the bus stand was the fresh chilled beer for the thirsty soul, the oldies in jeans was the second one (getting dull) and now the young gal eloping with her beau  only to be encountered in the car with her family, sitting there to share a piece of  DM is the third.. 

The third beer never tastes as good as the first one, but that simile is no excuse for getting it worse than the predecessor every time and this one so far is the worst. How I hope they get back to something sensible and saleable than this or at least stop cobbling up such bits and pieces to question the commonsense of the average viewer…

May be they have met a family somewhere who met her daughter in her boy friends car and saw her off with a DM and thus got inspired!!! 

May be they want to now expand the celebration platform and make even elopement a reason to celebrate!!!

May be after all the gaps and holes that they have identified and ventured into(refer to market expansion strategies by Kotler )this is the only one possible hole where they can NOW sell some chocolate ….

From celebration to celebration of trash .. Bankruptcy at Ogilvy? ….

Kerala Adfest 2010

Kerala Adfest 2010 is opening at the picturesque Ramada Resorts in Kochi with a grand Lunch tomorrow... Big names and a lot of fun awaiting.. Piyush Pandey, Bijou Kurien and Meenakshi Madhvani among others participating..

I am there through out and will be reporting...

Watch this space for more....

The Fun Gun !!!

 

A Young  boy and his dad went out fishing one fine morning. After a few quiet hours out in the boat, the boy became curious about the world around him.

He looked up at his dad and asked "How do fish breath under water?"

His dad thought about it for a moment, then replied, "I really don't know, son."

The boy sat quietly from another moment, then turned back to his dad and asked, "How does our boat float on the water?"

Once again his dad replied, "Don’t know, son."

Pondering his thoughts again, a short while later, the boy asks "Why is the sky blue?"

Again, his dad replied. "Don’t know, son."

The inquisitive boy, worried he was annoying his father, asks this time "Dad, do you mind that I'm asking you all of these questions?"

"Of course not son." replied his dad,  "How else are you ever going to learn anything?"

I am reminded of a brand services director who had DONT KNOWS than KNOWS and yet he rose and rose to stardom...

Have fun guys... God bless all..!

The Fun Gun !!!

Five Important Qualities that men should look for in Woman !

1. It's important to have a woman, who helps at home, who cooks from time to time, cleans up and has a job.
2. It's important to have a woman, who can make you laugh.
3. It's important to have a woman, who you can trust and who doesn't lie to you.
4. It's important to have a woman, who is good in bed and who likes to be with you.
5. It's very, very important that these four women do not know each other.

Have fun poeple... God bless !!!

"Nike Curse" - of phobias and superstitions..! (part I)

What is common between Tiger Woods scandal, Wayne Rooni and his sex scandal, Henry’s infamous handball that took France to the last world cup, the Indian teams poor show in T 20 And Roger Federer loosing his cake walk in Wimbledon this year? 

For many the answer would be vague, for others (you) would have guessed it already… all of them are (were) celebrity endorsers of Nike and got INTO SOUP and thereby spoiling Nike image, this year.. They call it the Nike Curse and that made me sit and ponder a bit more on superstitions that rule my beloved industry… what the hell the brand has to do with the mistakes/errors/goof ups that its endorsers end up with?

A lot many factors affect (negatively) business performance like paraskevidekatriaphobia—(well that is fear of Friday the 13^th) if you go for a survey among people in the western world. Their fear and love (at the same time) of superstitions are well known secrets….But friends with experience of having done business with Americans tell me that a sizable number of the western folks have this fear. I searched for data and it says in US alone about $800 million to $900 million in business revenue is lost on that ‘ill-omened’ date. Indians aren’t that bad you say? Well let me tell you more…

In all probability all of us have in some ways or other, have indulged in some kind of superstitious behavior in a business settings and otherwise, be it starting to meetings on auspicious moments ( Muhurat ) , scheduling an important meeting in alignment with a our horoscope or by wearing a auspicious set of clothes to an interview. I know people who wear the same set of stuff for days together to win clients, their stars may smile at the them but the stink will stare the clients off for sure. It may sound irrational but it seems this whole lot of seemingly irrational stuff has reason behind this, according to psychologists. 

I had a friend in EURO RSCG who strongly believed that having a cup of coffee from a particular vending machine would help us win accounts… he not only propagated this ridiculous belief but also could win over followers with his evangelism. People made fun of him and yet when a D day approached the LUCKY vending machine had a long queue in its front …strange but true!!

I was never a proponent of such stupidity, I felt that pitching is won on merit and hard work, and some greasing and back door activities of course, but having coffee from a certain machine would be the last factor in getting an agency win an account.. I knew this, so did many others, and yet we all did the coffee ritual and the logic was,- Crazy or not, you feel better having done it/them… I admit to have had the coffee a couple of times and have won accounts,,,, HUH !

Just like Friday the 13 th is a bad day, there are some good days as well. Iceland air, for example, ran a promotion in 2007 allowing customers to add on excursions for $7 each, provided they booked by 7/7/07. Now that speaks how much ‘7’ is a lucky number. Another example of the clout of ‘7’ is Wal-Mart's "Lucky in Love Wedding Search," which granted seven couples a free wedding ceremony and reception for 77 guests on the lucky date. Bharti chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal and his fascination to the number 23 is famous. 

The more apt example in Indian scene would be of  jewelry sales and purchase of gold which rockets by at least 15-20% during Akshaya Tritiya, a day considered auspicious for the Hindus but lesser known till a couple of years back (at least in the south) ..Similarly during Dhanteras last year the car sales in India went up three times.. Good examples of how Marketing enters into a marriage of convenience with beliefs /superstition. 

In the west, hundreds of millions of dollars are lost on Friday the 13th because people (even the well read ones) are logically risk-averse. Just like in India people don’t like to buy metal on Saturday, so car sales ( and any metals) are usually low on Saturdays …I still remember that at my first agency in Chennai, the boss had wanted me to go back to office and start again after we had reached the main gates of our office , for a client meeting… the reason- a black cat which waded across our path unabashedly and seemingly unconcerned about Lowe or its client Saint Gobain…


Foot note :- I thank my lucky stars I’m not superstitious!
 
To be continued...>>>>>

Dream Job ad- job ads need not be boring !

Here is a touching testimonial of a worker whose occupation is not regulated, has no trade union support, doesn’t get weekends off and he works up to 14 hours per day!! Poor guy right? ...... see it....

And I thought my work was fun...... 

This is a campaign for Dream Job a job portal website in Brazil.....Bikini-clad Brazilian models are what most men would dream of being with and yet the worker is completely dissatisfied with his job ( HUH..!!!). The catch is when the worker claims that he’ll quit this nightmare, a clever insertion of a statement that there are “more than 140,000 job positions—one of them will make you happy.” appears.. !

I haven't seen many job ads here that are that creative and worth remembering., Hari Sadu may be an exception, of course...This one is creative and fun to the core.. !

Credits :- 

Advertising Agency: BorghiErh/Lowe....... São Paulo, Brazil
Creative Directors: José Henrique Borghi, Erh Ray, Edgard Gianesi
Art Director: Fabio Nunes
Copywriters: José Henrique Borghi, Kiko Mattoso
Producer: Sagaz Filmes
Producer Director: Cláudio Cinelli
Fotography director: Scalante
Editor: Cláudio Cinelli
Sound: Comando S
Post production: Sagaz Filmes
Agency Producer: Márcia Coelho and Elisa Pamplona
Client Services: Priscilla Carvalho and Daniela Biazoto
Client Approval: André Vasconcellos and Pupo Neto
Aired: April 2009

Adfunda - Hyperbole..!

For my class where the ad funda's are being taught NOW......!

What is a Hyperbole?

Hyperbole as per wikipedia comes from ancient Greek "ὑπερβολή" (meaning excess or exaggeration) and is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is rarely meant to be taken literally.

Hyperbole is used to create emphasis. It is a literary device often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech. It is also a visual technique in which a deliberate exaggeration of a particular part of an image is employed. An example is the exaggeration of a person's facial feature in a political cartoon.
 

Needless to say ,in Advertising hyperbole galore. Adguys are the masters in exaggeration- some time justified but most of the times totally unjustified and out of the world.... BUT it sells...may be I sound like a moron here but it really does ! Being Hyperbolic aint a crime ,at least in Marketing and Advertising it is'nt... It helps to be different, to be seen, to be heard , to stand out in the crowd... but some times it is like farting in public, the moment you do it you are different, heard and seen but that is not what you had wanted ,,,right?

It is not that the Crime is done by Ad guys only....The movie industry also bangs on heavily on the power of hyperbole. Whenever a film or television program is released, the guys behind will use selected quotes to hype their products: "Mel Gibson gives the performance of a lifetime!" They may shout from the roof top.... It really doesn't matter if Mel Gibson gave 'the performance of a lifetime' three times last year.

Without hyperbole, advertisers, storytellers and publicists would probably be looking for other lines of work. People but generally know that Hyperbole or HYPE in a common man's parlance is part of Marketing and its communication...

Hype is a short sighted business choice.....

It makes a dangerous assumption that the fool who buys what he buys would not if he is aware of the truth - in which case the sellers should not be selling the product in the first place!

It also assumes that customers are there to be exploited , and not your partners in business.For all the great theories on customer centric marketing, it is disrespectful by meaning and implication, and bestows lower on your customers in comparison to your acumen, when defacto the truth may be the other way round.

                                                            

Tail piece:-

"Ladies and gentlemen, I've been to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than all of them put together."

The Fun Gun !!!

Ram was so excited about his promotion to Vice President of the company he worked for and kept bragging about it to his wife for weeks on end.

Finally she couldn't take it any longer, and told him, "Listen, it means nothing, they even have a vice president of peas at the grocery store!".

"Really?" he said. Not sure if this was true or not, Ram decided to call the grocery store.

A clerk answers and Ram says "Can I please talk to the Vice President of peas?"

The clerk replies "fresh peas, canned or frozen?" 

Now that reminds me of ad agencies where  they have more Vice Presidents than courts will have Lawyers... 

Have some great fun this week end folks,,,,,...!

Navrathri Wishes !!!

Adformula wishes all its readers  blessed Navaratri days !!

Nike - Running Running.. !

Its one of the very famous and famed Nike running commercial ( yes there are aplenty) created by W+K for Nike and glorified as the offspring of a succesful matrimony between the client and the agency.. Phil Knight and Dan Wieden , to be precise... All was well until Nike realised that in the sneaker segment things are rosy but not so in the runners arena.. Not only that they were trailing behing the formidable Adidas ( the runner ads again) but even behind the new comers and small fries like Asics, a Japanese brand...

So..? what else... W+K was shown the door( partially though), and came in Crispin Porter + Bogusky, with the bag and baggage and the brauhaha of having Coca Cola and Volkswagen in their kitty among other famous brands.. and their strong point..? Digital advertising, where the other team lacked and where Nike felt it should do more.... fair enough!!!...

And what we get????



Alex Bogusky , has said somewhere after the release of this ad that they wanted this NOT to look like a Nike commercial, but instead, wanted people to say WHAT is THIS?...

I said the same.. so did many others whom I know...

Does that ring any bell?

Kerala Tourism - Mexico flavoured !

Its now ages since Kerala Tourism has come out with its new international campaign ( this is the digital world every day is a month,and every month is year ,) so I am like a year late with my take on the  ‘Your moment is waiting’ video that has demonstrated  intense reactions like a swaying coconut tree caught in thunder storm….. .

I belong to Kerala and have always felt proud of the fact… It was always a blissful feeling to hear and see praises heaped on your home by people, especially when one lived abroad and I have felt it more often than I could afford...

It pays to Advertise !!!

The fish, it never cackles

'bout it's million eggs or so,

The hen is quite a different bird,

one egg-and hear her crow.

The fish we spurn,

but crown the hen,

which leads me to surmise:

Don't hide your light, but blow your horn.

it pays to advertise

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Why should I advertise?

Can you do business without advertising?

It looks familiar, often asked questions ,considering the fact that advertising money is spend on a virtually immeasurable platform.

See this story....

"A man lived by the side of the road and sold roasted chicken.

He was hard of hearing so he had no radio. He had trouble with his eyes so he watched no television and read no newspaper, but he sold good roasted chicken. He did however, advertise in the local newspaper telling people how good they were. He stood by the side of the road and cried, 'Buy roasted chicken sirrrrr 'and people bought. He increased his orders and bought a bigger stove to take care of his trade.

Indian Railways - wonderful !!!

CWG and all the mess that it created, the negative energy and the media debates, the last minute efforts, dogs and snakes, fallen bridges and fallen hopes……

Everything  turned into a bright ray of hope as the day came to an end on 3 rd Oct 2010.  As the world watched in awe, as India unfolded its unparalleled history, geography and myths before the world in all grandeur and blush, in its infinite variety, any one who would have seen the show, at least for a second would have wanted to be an Indian….

I sat glued to TV and after ages  Doordarshan (India’s national channel who had the exclusive right over the CWG show)  amused me and after some hours I was trying to calculate the number of years of mine , where I would have had nothing to do with the first TV channel of ours…

The show was awesome as you have seen and read it all, but Doordarshan had to live up to its nick name Kroordarshan.. … Commercial breaks with no logic and sense.., an array of ads that were nothing but irritating (largely of the Public sector and hence irresponsible), and poor visual and miserable sound quality…. And to top it, you never knew when the break appears, suddenly cutting short an event in the thickly packed stadia making India curse its national TV….

I was too lazy to pick up a remote and sat idle when I saw this …a group of men playing a train like we all used to do as kids, singing and going galli galli and house after house.. 10 seconds into the ad I knew it was something worth watching and when it ended I had goosebumps all over..

I am in love with this ad because ..

1. It is from the Indian railways, I would have never expected them to come out with such a stuff.. (My apologies for the earlier “public sector and hence irresponsible statement”.)
2. It was different in terms of concept, so very near to all of us- (all of us would have played a train) and yet so very different, it can grab attention and hold you in its grip and make you feel proud of the biggest railway network of the world..
3. It has a Potent strategy in it, it stands out and has a strong selling idea and more over ,it is relevant and can be build into a campaign without much efforts…

Kudos to Indian railways, Nirvana Films and Prakash Varma…. It is a sea change from what the PSU ads looked and stared at us like…


After note :- in case you have read the post already , this info came to me late as my contact with Prakash Varma just buzzed me saying, the ad had a Piyush touch in it.. Not entirely the idea but parts of it and the song to its entirety... so Kudos to the great Piyush Pandey as well...

The fun Gun !!!

A lady dies and goes to heaven.

She's chatting it up with St. Peter at the Pearly Gates when all of a
sudden she hears the most awful, blood curdling screams.

Don't worry about that,' says St. Peter, 'It's only someone having the
holes drilled into her shoulder blades for the wings.'

The lady looks a little uncomfortable but carries on with the
conversation. A few minutes later, there are more blood curdling
screams.

'Oh my Goodness,' says the lady, 'now what is happening?'

'Not to worry,' says St. Peter, 'She's just having her head drilled to
fit the halo.'

'I can't do this,' says the lady, 'I'm going to hell.'

'You can't go to that nasty place,' says St. Peter. 'You'll be raped
and taken advantage of.'

'Maybe so,' says the lady, but I've already got the holes for that.....

Now that is a real answer.. have fun folks... blast the week end.. !

Non Gandhian World of Advertising

I was browsing through my Fav tweet message and got stuck in Shashi Tharoor's message.


His latest column,(Gandhi Jayathi special )on our non-Gandhian world: Got excited to read the article, two reasons: Mahatma is my hero and I like Shashi Tharoor's style of writing. But when i clicked and landed on the page.


Now there are two ads and one news content. All the three pieces of information go well against the spirit of Gandhism. This shows the sad part of consumerism.

It is high time Deccan Chronicle (where the ad and article appeared) take some serious steps on content based advertising. I mean there is very little chance of someone who is into Gandhian philosophy will browse through thousand of Indian singles in ignighter and start flirting but then they might be looking for a new house. I did not browse the ignighter but read the article. It is well written. Link to the article. As Tharoor said it is really a non Gandhian World (of Advertising)

The Fun Gun !!!

Ram went to the doctor complaining of always being tired. The doctor examined him and couldn't find anything really wrong. So he half jokingly said, "Ram you're going to have to cut out half of your sex life".

Ram answered, "Which half. The talking or the thinking?"

Reminds me of Ad men who keeps talking and thinking and never Doing IT.... 

Have fun people... !

Idea and Abhishek - language doesnt matter.. !

“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”

IDEA Cellular has launched this new ad under the popular What an Idea, Sirji! Campaign series, to demonstrate the power of telephony, in a country where 850 mother tongues and 22,000 dialects are spoken…most of you would have seen it for sure and when I saw it amused me for the fact that it is so far the best in the series… remember all those various avatars such as the sarpanch, tourist guide, school principal, politician’s aide, doctor, and even a tree…... 

Sirji this time has come up with an idea to sell Idea to people who have lucrative job offers (from far flung cities in India- most jobs these days are far flung...) The setting is quite familiar and all of us have gone through the same scene, in spite of the offer exciting us, the thought of living in a place where a different language is spoken, makes one unconvinced and uncomfortable. 

Adformula had been a critic of some of the ads in the series (in the past) but this one for sure catches the attention of the average viewer in the TG….. India and its possibilities/ opportunities for the young, PLUS the challenges (language barrier for instance) is ably displayed in this ad. The diversity and vastness, at times, create an impediment in the growth of this country…. Not that Sirji has a solution for all that but it is one ray of hope for a nation kept purposefully fragmented for narrow political gains…

The new ad is yet another improvement in the series of Idea’s campaigns with the popular tag line – What an Idea, Sirji! ,this campaign has all the elements of what a picture perfect campaign should have… a new Idea (which keeps improving every time), a tagline which enjoyed such massive recall, and a celebrity who matches the brand and its charm ( except for south where the small B isn’t much of a charm). .. no wonder why the subscriber base of Idea has hit such heights in the last few years…

The happy brand said so… (as per media reports). “Almost every Indian has gone through a situation where one has struggled to communicate with another fellow Indian just because of language. The new Idea campaign offers a Champion idea to address this concern of our society, through the power of mobile telephony. We are confident that the new brand campaign will build a strong connect with the audience and further grow Idea’s over 70 million subscriber base” and why not… as said again and again, the longer clients stick on to its agency, the trust base gets stronger and the quality of its creative output goes up…… there is no substitute for long lasting and strong client – agency relationships in advertising… Here the credit goes to the client an well as Lowe , the agency behind… 

The preceding campaigns – ‘Championing a world without caste’; ‘Championing a world in which no one suffers from the disability to communicate’; ‘Education for All’, ‘Participative Governance’, ‘Walk When You Talk’, and the recent ‘Use Mobile, Save Paper’ campaign – all abide by the essential brand promise of providing a simple, fresh and imaginative solution to a complex problem of the society… and now this one which is no different and in fact better…

In a campaign , each succeeding ad should be better than its preceding one… It is like having beer… the second one should taste better than the first one , and the third one should taste better than the second one and so on…… As said by John Steinbeck … .Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

What an Idea Sirji !!!

The Fun Gun !!!

A man is riding aimlessly through the desert on a donkey. He is not hungry or thirsty, because he has a bottomless bowl of fruit. He wanders for about a week and eventually gets pretty horny. He gets to the point where he can't stand it anymore. 

So he decides to try and have s*x with the donkey. 

He drops his pants and positions himself under the donkey. But, to his dismay, the donkey walks away. 

Only slightly discouraged, the man decides to try again. He walks to where the donkey is standing, positions himself under the donkey, and right before he goes for it, the donkey walks away again. Now the man is getting frustrated. 

As he prepares for his third and final try, he sees a vision. A beautiful, naked woman appears out of nowhere. She approaches the stunned man, who until recently, believed that he was the only person for hundreds of miles. 

She smiles at him and says, "I would do anything for that bowl of fruit you have." 

"Anything?" he says, getting fairly excited. 

"Yes, anything." she replies. 

So he says, "Will you hold the donkey?"

Have fun people... God bless !!!

Yardley & Katrina - imperfectly perfect !

Yardley as a brand is one of the oldest in the world .Established in 1770, with its classic promise of exquisite beauty, lingering fragrance of English Lavender and English Rose, it has everlastingly enthralled men and women alike with it’s well-mannered, old world charisma, so pleasing yet indefinable…. Yardley in India and its roping in of Katrina Kaif seems to have raised many a blogger eyebrows but I insist that I have to write a piece on it as well.. So here I go…

The London bred Katrina, who will be the first Asian celebrity endorser of the age old brand, is supposed to have sophistication, eyebrow-raising magic weaved into her, poise, and some English royalty like refinement that makes her a perfect choice .. a perfect marriage when one sees it all of a sudden…or is it not?

Katrina has in the past endorsed brands like Pantene shampoo, Slice juice, Oil of Olay, Kodak and Panasonic and now she is seen selling Yardley. If it gives the impression of being an expected choice then I guess the Yardley guys {WIPRO is its new owner,.. to be precise Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting (WCCL)}haven’t done some home work before the actual marriage took place…

The reason for the flop show as I see it are as follows..

1) The actress has lend her name and face to an umpteen number of brands and her face has got so diluted , that this new one even fails to register… Yardley and the mere mention of Katrina's name will NOT have fans flock to stores to purchase the stuff….her name and face still will be associated with other brands that she is with…. Remember the rule.. Thou shall not employ a celebrity, who is there, everywhere.

2) They say, thou shall not engage a celebrity because everyone else is behind him/her…. Here again the brand owners have coined a huge jumbo-bumbo in support of their reason to choose the lady which sounds so very same, clichéd and heard for ages. In fact, the reality that Katrina was chosen for Yardley had raised some positive interest but the actual ads make me think otherwise.

3) Katrina connect with the brand for sure (the London connection and the connection with the youth) and her persona and the brands match but, it is not only the gelling between the brand and the celebrity that matters, it is also about the equal weightage given to both so that the star do not eat on the brand (vampire effect) … here alas, due to poor execution (plus other factors), Katrina remains but not the brand…

4) Yardley is in an attempt to build up on its aspirational brand position.. (A brand that people think is a very high quality brand, which will give them a higher position in society if they buy it is called an Aspirational brand) this ad but is a vain and poor attempt in that direction.. It doesn’t give the premium feel, the first step to achieve aspirational equity , even for people who have used the original Yardley for years now…. As my friend from London says, In spite of this ad, IF the guys who already know Yardley buys it, it would be a miracle……

5) Before aspirational positioning, brands should think of achievable positioning … Wipro already holds Santhoor and in its category it has some real good locus of positioning.. Yardley first have to find its locus, know the people who are there, get their permission and then fit in.. A Katrina may not be required (or may be) which depends on what you see in that locus.. The brand is more important, it existing charm is, and not the face that will today launch a million ships, and tomorrow forget into oblivion…

Some right media planning by Zenith Optimedia Mumbai, is taking it to the right people in some right dose and cheers for them , but for the lazy execution, thumbs down to Situations advertising Mumbai, the agency that made it .....

The rest is said and hence, I rest my case..

Foot note:- Hard work never killed anyone, but why chance it?