Karbonn Mobile - Loud Nonsense !!!

After Akki spell off into that moronic laughter in that pest off an ad of Micromax, no other ad could piss me off this much as the new Karbonn ad …

KARBONN MOBILE - Loud music from seeflyingsaucer on Vimeo.

I can’t believe that this stuff is a creation from Ogilvy – the power house of creative brilliance. This is crap and pure nonsense conceived and produced by people who seem to have flushed their commonsense in the loo… and worse is the kind of Media spends that they are affording to spread the MESSAGE among the TG.

Why does a client require Ogilvy to churn out such an Ad? What is the message? What is the Idea all about?

Are they indeed advertising or trying to form a hate club?

Discredits: -

CLIENT: KARBONN MOBILE
AGENCY: O&M MUMBAI
CREATIVE: RAJIV RAO, NISHANT GOYAL
DIRECTOR: PUSHPENDRA MISRA
PRODUCTION HOUSE: FLYING SAUCER

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!

Micromax mobile- Nothing like Anything !!!!

Akshay Kumar is like wine, the older he gets the better he is whether in acrobatics or even in his histrionics, except I must say in this ad.. This one which makes him laugh like an obtuse idiot and that too for about 30 seconds in a 45 second commercial is just too much to endure. Whatever the product is and whatever the new Gamolution thing that they want to sell (like SKINNOCENCE this is a new ad word GAMOLUTION)

This ad irritates, first by the absolute lack of any bit of creative spirit, second for the stupid laugh which lurks like the one you get to hear in mad houses and third rate Hindi films and third and most important, by the sheer senselessness with which this nerve breaker is aired again and again as if they can bore, irritate and torture people to buy their stuff while people watch IPL 3 in all peace and excitement.

I even know of people who said that if IPL 3 so far has any irritant so far, it is this laughing ad.


The mobile handset market already has players such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, and these players already enjoy great allegiance and loyalty among consumers.. Unquestionably that is….. It would have been a big challenge for any new player (this guys are new in this market) to shift this loyalty to them.. a lot of work should have gone in …..A dual GSM-dual standby QWERTY keypad phone at less than Rs 5000, and such stuff that Micromax offers are definitely a thing that could have changed the game had they got into the right game…. If their advertising is any indication, it seems quite unlikely… Some of their ads are good enough to sit and watch (done then by Draft FCB) but the Akshay one is for sure a de-seller and the game seems to be lost even before it has begun …


Big brands, big budgets… Niching seemed to be the only option and guess they were into it but with an advertising budget of Rs 50 crore plus as per industry sources, the blitzkrieg is to continue and even aggravate through other media as well.. I hope they don’t carpet bomb me from the likes of Facebook and twitter…

A big thumbs down to Lowe (the agency) for the creative impotency, and sub-primary school level imagination and a ‘shame on you’ to the media planner (who cares the name) for this nothingness which proclaims ‘nothing like anything’ as its tag line.. How true… !!!

SBI- Every Indian's Banker !!!

What will happen if banks do not advertise?

Nothing ! would be the answer for most of us but when in the midst of competition, most of them are forced to full scale venture into Marketing Communication, albeit half heartedly. SBI ads in the past (Surprisingly SBI for example) was quite a misnomer for this notion and for a PSU (a public sector unit) bank it was indeed surprising for the people to see SBI rolling out ads which for the first time smelt class and appeal ….

That ,but was the spring .. a lot of trees bloomed,… it was fragrance all over…banks across the country went for an image revamp … logos got redesigned, now colors , new brand elements, new communication, celebrity endorsers and a lot of soft music… a whole new banking scene so much so that an NRI who came home after a gap of three years simply refused to step in to an Union bank of India branch seeing its new aura, little knowing that inside its all the same- the same old people, processes and procedures that reeked incapacity and incompetence and over everything a disgusting apathy to the customer( kasht se Mar..)…

But the Ads were good .. but then came the autumn season… recession and its vampire effect spilled blood… the main stream private banks which gave the public sector banks a run for their money ( and eventually forced them to look, talk and smell good in branding and communication) started falling like palaces made of cards.. branches closed down .. The 8 to 8 customer friendliness and plastic smiles vanished and notable enough, advertising virtually stopped… none of the new and improved banks thought of continuing communication with the market place during tough times…

SBI but is and was an exception… they went on in what any neutral observer could easily see as a huge communication vacuum and probably was the only big bank to be keeping talking to the people during the din and dust of a recession battle… The emptiness which others left and SBI still talked in was the best opportunity in the recent times but the ads that came out was more or less an also ran or at the max one can call it as a good idea married to poor execution( every Indian’s banker!)… Initially when the concept was fresh, it was attention-grabbing but then the drag and too much of overdoing the dish spoiled it..... Then they took the same idea from the ordinary Indian ( teacher, police man, boat driver ,street vendor and the like ) to great men like Tagore and Jagadish Chandra Bose and keeping on saying Every Indian’s Banker…

I am not saying that the ad’s are a total disillusionment but it could have been better… Agreed that Interpub (the ad agency behind this creative) is no O&M (who left SBI for Bank of India after having got accolades for its 'Surprisingly SBI' campaign) .. but Interpub in the past have shown better creatives for SBI- the 'Pure Banking-Nothing else' campaign for instance, which said ‘We could make all our offices look really plush. Instead we choose to establish 9,500 branches to serve you’. If that was a bench mark this one is making me a bit unconvinced- day after day !

Every Indian's Banker... !

My primary question is IS IT? because it is not my bank and so is my friends , colleagues, acquaintances and students.. I talked to about 25 people in a sample survey just to avoid being biased against India’s biggest bank, and no one had an SBI account…

Surprisingly? Not really !!!






My second question is even if it is SO WHAT? Should a bank of the stature and size of SBI resort to such awareness type of ads,,,? Or is it smelling of a reminder appeal that comes when brands fall into a decline stage in their life cycle?


My third question is about the kind of money that is being spend to reach across the length and breadth of India with this ad and that too continuously and that too when we are hearing cost cutting and optimization of spends….I guess of all the spenders, a bank should know the value of money than anyone else..






SBI and Interpub should rethink of "what it wants to say" before the ads become every Indian's worry !!

Tell us a story, but something new... please !

Tail piece :- 'One of life's disappointments is discovering that the man who writes the bank's ads is not the one who makes the loans.'

My Pepsi... My way !!!

Dhoni, Sehwag, Uthappa, Robin Sharma and another cricketer together doing what they are the best in doing....no no.... not playing cricket but acting in an ad film… Dhoni after being voted as the richest celebrity from endorsements has become a better actor, no matter what and how his talent in the cricket field goes… The setting is rural Kerala and the young (?) Icons (?) of Indian cricket plays cricket with a group of local kiddos on top of a kettuvallam ( a boat which is big and has large flat surface)…. The plot is simple.. the kiddos get to see the holidaying Indian cricketers and challenge them to play a game of cricket on the boat ,much to the arrogance of they masters of cricket , but much to their disappointment later as the kids win by getting all the Pepsi in a cheap but smart trick !!!!

Ahem !!! From the Pepsi 'Youngistan campaign that featured Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Kapoor( and also and ageing SRK as Deepika’s Brother ) in an attempt to create a nation called Youngistan on the lines of the classic Marlboro country. Marlboro made it for sure while the Youngistan is still a doubt… Remember that Sachin Tendulkar was dropped by Pepsi as its brand ambassador after fifteen years. On the reason that “Sachin does not fit into our brand value and our Youngistaan campaign anymore.”….The younger the better, and there came in the Kapoor boy with his sexy looks, shape age and what not… the Saavariya dance made him a national icon (?) and yet the youngistan campaign wouldn’t take off from that butt show…

It was but (not butt) fun, not the Ranbir, SRK, deepika show but the spoofs, thanks to the Pepsi/JWT idea bankruptcy India had a laugh courtesy Sprite… see it here…

Well getting back to this new piece…which is called as My Pepsi My way which I assume is a passing out of the youngistan campaign....is more expensive ( all the stars, their trip to Kerala, stay in 5 star resorts, shooting in a lake, the boats, the security the blabla, the crowd.. ) unimaginable and one should say seeing all the efforts and the brouhaha this one is not better than the first one… J ust W asting T ime is a passion for certain agencies and with clients who are never cash stripped, why not… eat drink and enjoy.... tomorrow you may die.. !

The team who made it :-

Agency: JWT

Creative team:

Team JWT - Soumitra Karnik Executive Creative Director;Amit Wadhwa, Client Services Director

Production House- Corcoise Films

Director - Prasoon Pandey

Producer - Cyrus Pagdiwallah

Just to copy an old slogan of Pepsi with a slight variation….

This ad is nothing .. Nothing overwhelming about it …. Just another ship that will pass, in the night silent and unnoticed….

Cadbury's Diary Milk- In No man's Land... !

What are the different ways of experimenting with a brand and taking it from place to place and market to market…? Ask O&M, or just sit and watch the ads they make time and again for Cadburys Diary Milk, which once was good in connecting to its right TG but has slowly lost both, the idea of who is their TG and how to connect to them….

The new ad is about celebration again (that has been the platform for years now and it is extended here again) with a 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… this ad is getting a lot of recall for the money being spend… the media agency is doing its job(!) .. a hell lot of road blocking and the ad is there everywhere....... the idea stares from the newspaper and blares its horn from the TV of course….from FM radio’s and as SMS’s every first day it pooh-pooh’s ( they have tied up with BSNL, MTV, Star channels, with HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and ICICI Bank to send out text messages to account holders on pay day etc etc)….. But the big question is: - what is the big Idea?

Cadbury’s is the undisputed leader in the Rs 2,000-crore per annum chocolate market and Cadbury Dairy Milk is its warhorse with some 34-35 % market share….. Though it is strong in bars (Five Star) and tablets (Cadbury Dairy Milk), Nestle has made inroads with its light offerings like KitKat and Munch. Worse now is an increasing health awareness, among the larger public which is attracting consumers towards lighter chocolates — a trend that will only get stronger in the days to come.

In this given scenario is this a strategy?

The conception of this new ad relates more to the old India which was socialist, stupid and loved the license Raj and famed protectionism….. Come on guys….. Take a long walk….…. The India of today doesn't wait for salary day to do a bit of indulge and that too on a piece of chocolate…. I have nothing against any brand going down the socio economic ladder as DM is doing with every new ad trying to sell to more masses, but the question is- are you retaining the original buyers..?

Is this an endeavor to move this product which is of variety seeking nature to a habitual category… Can it happen?

Is it just an effort to break the clutter? Then yes they have broken it.. but what next… is it making more people buy more than they bought before?

Is it an attempt to get synonymous with the Mithai category after being generic with the name chcolates…? If yes ALAS.. God save you guys….

Pay day is surely an occasion to celebrate but that is all? You want people to stop buying on other days… ? like I do.. every week end.. every time I walk in to a friends home, every time I visit a super market with my Kids… From every day buying to one day (JUST ONE DAY) buying? I sure don’t belong to the SEC to which you now talk to, but does that mean that I cannot be your buyer…..?

Diary milk and its ads by O&M have enchanted an entire generation and that provokes this outburst when I see the world’s most creative agency parading the wonderful brand as Radha and Miss Palampur ( in a gross under utilisation of the great Big B) and now this one.. This one for sure is better than the Radha and the Big B ads which was probably the biggest disservice to the brand….here at least (as compared to Radha) there seems to be an idea (no Big Idea still) which is let out half baked and it will lead to indigestion…..The celebration platform was and is kept intact all this years but….. See these ads from the past and then let us continue….






Now….can one compare these ads made in 1993 (or 94?) with the Radha ads? With the Big B ads where Pappu passes his 12’th grade, the Kenya ads? With the new Pehli tarikh ones?… The celebration platform is intact but isn’t the big idea missing….?

Pehli taarikh (the first day of the month= salary day) is important, I admit......I am a salaried guy and live life on the first week of ever month.. But I would rather plan, prepare and purchase a pair of jeans or a shoe on the Pehli taarikh and sing a song when I buy it…… a bar of chocolate is intuitive for me… and it has to be that way for the seller.. Or is it not..?

When you feel like eating chocolate you will have it & you wouldn't for sure wait for the pay to come to buy the chocolate......it is not such a big deal to buy a chocolate and no decision or planning is required for it….

It is surely a big deal to market chocolates.. the big players have bigger headaches... Next time when I have a celebration -Will I buy a diary milk? is the question.

Union Carbide.. welcome to heaven !

The Bhopal disaster occurred in the city of Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh here in India, resulting in the immediate deaths of more than 3,000 people and a more probable figure of 8,000 died within two weeks, and it is estimated that an additional 8,000 have since died from gas related diseases. The company is still fighting legal cases and the victims who survived the catastrophe are still languishing.

The ad that you see here promised heaven and it did for sure when the incident took place in the early hours of the morning of December 3, 1984 when the Union Carbide subsidiary pesticide plant released 42 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas, exposing at least 520,000 people to toxic gases. In what the world believes was the worlds worst industrial disaster…
What a paradox !!!

Fool the couch potato...

TV Newsreader: "Hundreds are feared missing or dead in Florida following landslides and floods caused by torrential rains."
Couch potato: "Serves 'em right. What do they wanna go around following landslides and floods for anyway...??!"

It is about disconnect and the TV viewer is like switched off.. its oft debated as to why and what and all the reasons including media fragmentation to product placements( the heights of it can be seen in TV) is debated everywhere. Here is a TV channel whose specific serial -Kis Desh Mein Hai Meraa Dil (KDMHMD) which once was popular was seeing some dips in the TRP's and hence the channel resorted to the time tested atrocity of killing a lead charecter and come out with new paper ads across the hindi belt paying obituary to the departed soul and thus keep the rating high...

While any rating above 3 is seen as kinda good by industry norms, the show has seen a dip in its viewership in the last month. As per TAM ratings (C&S, 4+ HSM), in August the show had a TVR of more than 4, which dipped to 3.6 in September and that is an official version....

The media ,print here, is hopeful and praying that this become a pattern and their bags will cling...
So what next ? Rape the heroine and launch and ad to hunt down the culprit?

Come on guys... you call it path breaking ?

The discredit goes to :-
Client: STAR Plus

Advert title(s): Obituary

Creative Agency (Name, City, Country): Purple Focus, Mumbai, India

Work type: Client work

Published: Yes

Date of publication / release: October, 2008

Hero Honda -Dhak dhak... bore to the core !!!

Bollywood glamour idols Hrithik Roshan and Priyanka Chopra, sensational cricketers Virender Sehwag, Irfan Pathan, Suresh Raina, Gautam Gambhir and Ishant Sharma as well as ace shooter and 2004 Athens Olympics silver medallist Rajyavardhan Rathore … I am not giving a list of youth Icons here… it is the celebrity endorser list of the 3 min ad film that FCB has crafted for Hero Honda on their 25 th anniversary. The three-minute ad has it all — icons from the Mumbai film industry, heroes from the world of cricket and an Olympic medal winner. Hardly ever before has such a galaxy of stars been seen in one single advertisement…. Now some one dare to beat this seems to be the challenge…



It is a jam of celebs, this ad titled “Hero Honda Dhak Dhak Go”, serves just one purpose…. catch some wrong attention for the profligacy (Shot at five different locations across the country and abroad, including Mumbai, Jaipur and Kuala Lumpur, the project was spread over a period of two months… and all the stars, cricketers and an Olympian doing nothing ) and also for the road blocking as a media strategy with which this pitiable stuff was thrust upon us with impunity and no sense of how advertising works.

Dance, drama, chase, fights, fire balls, and a barmy mad script ( did they have one? ) and some cheap gimmicks that would have worked when Ramyaan and DD was on air…it is difficult to even believe that this company once gave us the “Fill It, Shut It, Forget It” campaign and such stuff..

“The idea is to celebrate this milestone in our journey retaining the brand’s core values but present these in a youthful manner.” Claims the company ....but how many people who see it will feel so?

How many of us will connect and make some sense out of this jamboree of celebs.. This naked parade of well known faces, who walk, dance, jump, play and do everything but connect the brand with the TG on a positive note…

The music track has been composed by Ranjit Barrot and is complemented by the voices of Shankar Mahadevan, Sukhwinder Singh and Shreya Ghoshal with its sufi touch makes some impact, one must admit but that is it…

You may have money and have a reason to celebrate… But where the hell did you pick up the idea that you can bore people to buy your stuff..?

And the Ad agency (FCB in this case) my salutes for this dare devilry...This ad is going to be a case study... How not to make celebrity advertisements... they are going to call it...

Chevy traverse... switching sides ?

The sensitive music, the topless guy ironing (with a pink iron), making a 6 month anniversary reservation…”it’s useful, it’s beautiful, it’s everything you ever wished for and then some” gones the music and the shot is cut to the guy cleaning a toilet.
Ladies, is this really the perfect male?
It is the question that bloggers and critics have flooded the American air space with during the last two weeks...
male chauvinsim -said the women who found the ad cute and why not.. the guy ( hot one, that too) doing all the ironing and cleaning is a clear welcome proposition for them albeit in real it may be a bit too hard to ask for..
The men (predictably)found it hard ,creepy and too GAYISH to be true and got offended by women who said it is cute... Reverse gender stereotyping - the analyst will call it but for the common man its like two ends that simply wouldnt connect......
Chevy went on air during olympics and have for sure got a lot of eye balls to see it again and again thanks also to the discussion ...In fact this is an ad which is much ado about nothing and yet being seen like it is something great.....
Will people buy a chevy traverse after the ad? Or atleast get induced..?
Is their information about the product any better after so much of repeated exposure to the
advertising? who knows and who cares??? As of now the pink guys and the ad is hot and Chevy is having a laugh.....

Last heard some where in the net :-
Don't know who the actor is -- but the commercial is VERY effective. A hunky guy who does laundry and cleans the bathroom! Every woman's fantasy. Makes me want to buy the car even though I know the guy doesn't come with it. Sigh.
offensive or not , when the auto guys every where seem to be bothered and want to sell their stuff of fuel and its efficiency, this is a shock that Chevy gave America and they shall remember it... so will be the guy but was that the objective...???

Intel inside: confusion outside...!!!

A black kid goes to school and notices that the teachers treat the white kids better than the black kids. So he goes home and paints himself white and shows his dad.
"Hey dad look I'm white!"
His dad kicks his ass, and says "alright go show your mother".
"Hey mom look I'm white!"
His mom beats the shit out of him then says "go show your gradma".
"Hey gradma look I'm white" she beats his ass and sends him to his room.
About an hour later all the family comes to his room and says "have you learned anything from this?"
The kid says "yeah I've learned I have only been white for an hour and I already hate 3 blacks.......

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



What is the problem with this ad?

How insensitive is this and how insulting is the depiction of the black community ?

How irritating was it that it created a furore and the company had to withdraw , apologise and unleash a PR war to damage control?

But that was enough to make people deeply disappointed and cry from roof tops....

See a sample....

Even if this ad were created by person(s) with social autism and/or no comprehension of how this ad would be perceived in a former slave nation such as the U.S.A., I still cannot find a single positive attribute to this ad... said one in an angry mail shot to Intel guys who were for sure caught in a whirl of surprise....

It is true that the “Sprinters” aren’t ready to sprint; their heads are down.....they aren’t running anywhere, except perhaps into each other or into the person in the center and the person in the center seems to have no purpose other than to either lord over the “Sprinters” or express satisfaction of the “Sprinters”.... see the smuck in his face... the white bossy smuck!!! BUT does that make an ad insensitive??

That is one side but why an obvious mistake when you could see it...?

How can such a non creative (it is ) ad pass through the first levels of approval and reach the client and gosh, get even their nod and reach the print stage..?

Forget creativity, wasnt it written across the ad ( with some commonsense it could be read) that it had huge potential to explode???

Arent the executives taught to see the ads in 'objectivity' and strip them threadbare to see whether it carried any chance to be misconstrued by the viewer,later on?

This is what Intel had to say about this fiasco in their blog.. a PR attempt to damage control...

Intel's intent of our ad titled "Multiply Computing Performance and Maximize the Power of Your Employees" was to convey the performance capabilities of our processors through the visual metaphor of a sprinter. We have used the visual of sprinters in the past successfully.
Unfortunately, our execution did not deliver our intended message and in fact proved to be insensitive and insulting. Upon recognizing this, we attempted to pull the ad from all publications but, unfortunately, we failed on one last media placement.

We are sorry and are working hard to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Nancy Bhagat

Vice President, Director of Integrated Marketing

This is not just the INTEL story... remember Benetton and the likes...

Of course when the Marketer spends millions in money and hundreds of personnel in its marketing strategy development, luxury of making mistakes shouldnt exist, couldnt be affordable..... Somebody working on the ad should have had seen the fact that despite the intentions, the piece does have a subliminal and concealed connotation and there could be reinforcing of stereotypes.....

Discussion of racism, which has proven potency of hydrogen bombs, would simply had not been there if atleast one looked Chinese or some thing else...... see here some ads which celebrate culural diversity and multi racism without hurting any one... they may not be the creative best but atleast they give and leave behind some positive feeling to the TG...

So that ostensibly means that people don’t feel offended for no reason and if they do,it is not the advertisers job to create controversies.. After all, there is no room for cavalier dismissals of anyone’s delight or offense at various subjects......

Advertising is not allways about logic or exact interpretation.... it never was and never shall be.... what kind of depiction is displayed is not the bone of contention here.... Instead, the perception and feeling the audience takes away with them in a 3-5 second viewing is central to effectiveness and effectiveness is the core. Here the inexorable reality seems to be the plight of a black man in a bowing position to a white male. If the annals of the business of slavery and the imagery used by the advertising of the past were different, this juxtaposition would have been a non-issue.... just see some ads here , to confirm this aspect...

After taking some time to really read all about the Intel advertising campaign,( if you really care) one will get to see the point Intel was trying to make—although it took some time and eye-squinting for it to sink
in.....

A typical scene goes like this...

(The audience seeing the picture for the first time) “hey—are those black men bowing to a white slave owner?!”

( He looks closer) “No wait, when I look closer I see they’re all runners ready to sprint, but then…why are they all black sprinters? Why not mix up the runners with non-black individuals?”

(looks even closer) “Oh wait..I think it’s the same black guy photoshopped 6 times over an over again. Was that laziness on the part of the producer?”

(Reads public statement by Intel’s VP) “Ahh..I see.... they photoshopped him in an effort to visually represent the multiply computing processes aspect of the ad…I get it ,,,,multiply the runners…”

Any ad that entails and calls for that much research and delving in, on the part of the viewer is an incredibly pitiable and dimly executed advertisement.....

Where did these marketing guys and the ad agency folks go to school??

Tail piece:...

"... the hydrostatic paradox of controversy. Don't you know what that means? Well, I will tell you. You know that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way. And the fools know it...."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) American author and poet....

BSNL.. where ignorance is a bliss !!!

The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has happened !!!!

It is basic stuff and no great thing I am going to reveal here in today's sermon.....

You can't persuade your audience if you don't know much about them..... Knowing your TG helps you to shape your message in a way that's most likely to gain their acceptance. That's all the more important when your goal is to persuade, and not simply to inform, your audience.....
So what.. you say?? we all know this ...you say??? ... well read on...

Persuasive communication aims to convince people to take some form of action says the text books...after all, you must get your TG to change their attitudes and belief or you must reinforce the attitudes and beliefs they already hold. That means you must have a thorough knowledge of your audience before you prepare your communication.rite? They should feel like...yup.... wow... they r talkin to me....

The series of BSNL advertising that have been going round the air, for quitesome time,made me think...
What do they mean? Do they know what they want to sell, say and sit at home relaxed after that? A celebrity can make half your job done, but in this case, the atrocious waste of that resource, is so appaling and awful that one shudders to think that the industry isnt aware of the basics...?
The guys at the agencies that made them should go back to their schools, at the earliest....


Of course the pretty Zinta gal had been there , an unmatch though, jumping ,dancing and singing, holding phones with funny BSNL sub brands glaring out of them vying for attention in the previous ads (?), now here celebrating stupidity,refusing to marry a guy who dont have a BSNL at home ( That is the latest in the series of " Be Indian Buy Indian" tamasha) and alas.. telling the Indian folks dat BSNL is the best (oh yeh...?)It is an abysmal ad.. like all of the predecessors and if one goes by the anticedents, it isnt going to get any better.....
Any number of factors can affect how your TG will react. These can include their experience, education, job or professional background, age, gender, ethnic background, cultural differences, and more..... more and more... competition for eg...
How long can BSNL ASSUME that they are superior and worse they are the only player???
How long can they keep self admiring about the reach and network ( forget the GSM to CDMA transition and the delay that is so typically public sector like and the capacity crunch that adds to the pandemonium) and stop being innovative and inspired?
How long can Grey world wide and EURO RSCG keeps their eyes shut to the reality that the PUBLIC SECTOR scene is changing and hence discern the need to be sensible and creative ?
And that they now are and will have to compete with the private players????


You'll need to address your listeners at the level of their existing knowledge and that is just basic stuff boss... in this game of marketing communication, the right quantity and quality is the game and the rule of the game... Yes the rules havent changed dude but the game has changed..
See the above market pie for instance.. see the complexity, the number of eaters, and the way the cake is divided... see the way its growing and growing.. see for Gods sake, how its getting murkier and murkier.. and see how your brands (BSNL broad band, BSNL landline,BSNL internet,BSNL mobile,BSNL MPLS-VPN,PCO,Shoppe, TRIPLAY ,VSAT, Connecting india.. oooophhhhh) sounds stale, slow and slouching..... see the CDI and the BDI ...jargons they are, just in case simple talk dont make eyes open......
Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear said Gandhi the Mahatma, but who cares... eh..?
It is plain... sit and watch all the ads that are on air in the category and then see also yours...
Still if you think urs is some thing WATCHABLE then go on....
After all the truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.......
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Tail piece: What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy??
I don’t know and I don’t care

Airtel.. from novelty to nomans land..!!!

I wonder ,would be there any one who have not loved this ad... and even went for the brand seeing it.. its power of communication.. and the sheer magic with which it hooked us as made us flabbergasted.. saw a wow.. now that is touching my soul and senses... and this one.... which was a sequel which still stayed good and enriching...



And this one with the Rahman magic, which was one rare ad which the folks wanted and see..again and again...shifted channels and reached channels where the ad is shown....



and now this one.... what can I say....you would have seen it and may be have got shocked by the sheer callousness with which the whole
advertising is conceived and made...If you have a celebrity, then any things seems to be ok,the market will have to sit and watch...


What a fall ... From class to crap.. from creatives to crass.. and the latest, from novelty to the no mans land ads....keep watching...!!!

What an idea?

Idea had been saying " an idea can change your life" for quite some time now........
For 12 years they have resisted the 'celebrity route' and yet remained good and got noticed. The jingle and the tagline contributed but Lowe Lintas has finally dragged them into the clutter and din where already there are too many players, all looking the same with celebrities vying and vouching and vomiting for the brands....Idea somehow remained away but alas, now they too have jumped into this grinding machine....

I hate this ad, inspite of its seemingly good ideation which may look creative on the surface but will not do anything much for the brand.

Abhishek is over used and has himself become a brand who stands for everything and thus has got diluted.. No..... he may not create any vampire effect per se but he may not sell the brand either...Like father like son, how good it was if we could associate him with only a couple of brands.. but then who am I to decide how much money he should make?

But Lowe..? have they all gone bonkers? what is all this hype about"leveraging the actor’s cool quotient" when there isnt any existing in the first place and even if some is left to be extracted, does the brand require this U turn now?

Idea’s brand qualities – youthfulness, spunk, energy, irreverence, smartness and intelligence – were found to be the same as those espoused in Bachchan’s screen persona. The brief from the client was rather open-ended. Lowe was encouraged to reinvent the brand, taking off from the last thematic campaign in 2006, ‘Monkey’, which leveraged significantly on the Idea tune.....reports the media... From Monkey to Mr Bachan........Three cheers to the brains behind this....

Its a creative blunder with 8 digit mobile numbers paraded and to ask a very simple question which the creative honchos in Lowe and the Brand wizards in Idea never seems to have asked themselves before getting their one ass lift up, for this not so pleasant idea to spread its foul smell.....

What is more easier to remember ..?..A name or the phone number ..?..and that too not of one person but of the whole village....?

And sitting in Kerala, Manipur or Kutch, poor Indians get to see pathetic and pitiably dubbed versions of the ad which stares at us, makes fun of us ... scoff and scorn at us with impudence...

An idea can change your life... even bad ideas can.. for the worse , but.....

HCL ...touching my antipathy !!!

HCL is in a repositioning spree… and FCB ulka (yes the one who earler did the talking numbers campaign)is the advertising partner in its attempt to” connect with the public”…….

Now that you have seen the ad…….here are some doubts…..

You work for a $4B company (according to the Ad), they are sending you in a helicopter to go “overseas for a “life sciences project”…

* Why does the helicopter wait for you in the middle of wilderness ?

* Why does the company expect you to beseech a ride? Can they not send you a cab?

* Can you fly overseas in a Helicopter? (from India at least)

* When he has an internet connection is getting a taxi so difficult for the “intelligent “HCL guy?

* The i-banker guy is driving a SUV which in this story is a sign of prosperity from stocks and shares and yet he reacts like a kid when the gifted and sharp hero tells him about the stock crash?

"As a technology company, we had a tendency to be nerdy and it reflected in our past ad campaigns. But we wanted our ads to connect with the public." This is what the present ad, labelled the `Touch Technology' campaign, attempts to do”, said HCL Corporate Vice-President - Strategy, Mr Saurav Adhikari.

Good thought sir, late but good, but I guess you still have a tendency, the hero at the end simply turns out to be a nerd, a geeky egoist who will take the brand to nowhere better…..You come back to square one…..

Its there everywhere and in every channel and the more I see it, the more I feel bad about HCL, about whom I didn’t know anything. I have started to feel that it obviously is a group of self appreciating morons……

Is that what you are spending your millions for?

To buy the viewers antipathy?