Docomo - the new silly !

I have been teaching marketing and Advertising for quite some years now.. Even yesterday I was waxing eloquent about the first mover advantage and the like… Does Marketing theory anywhere talk about a last mover advantage? If not I guess its time that some one makes a theory of it and about it… Seeing DOCOMO doing a new every time, I feel like being the last to enter (in spite of all the barriers and scope of falling into a clutter) has its own merits as well…

Much has been written and blogged (already) about how the timing ( IPL and the world cup), about the charm and personality of Ranbir Kapoor, India’s young and fastest-rising Bollywood icon and how he is Refreshingly Different and hence all fit and perfect match for the brand persona… Much has been said (again) about how this ad reminds us of the great stand up comedians like George Carlin and our own Raju Srivastava ..I doubt that part though !

Ranbir for sure has a charm which is unique to him and his style and wit simply gels perfectly with the selling idea ‘keep it simple… silly ’. Among all the brands he now endorses ( and that includes Hero Honda (from February, 2011), John Player, Nissan, Virgin Mobile, Pepsico and Panasonic India)- this one seems to be a perfect endorser personality – brand personality fit . It focuses mostly on how Tata DOCOMO make things easier for the average telecom consumer, by providing differentiated products and services (?) …Again I doubt about the so called perfection that this guys offer.. To my knowledge all of them are the same….. 

Each individual advertisement starts by illustrating a complexity in the category, and presents the Tata DOCOMO product and/or service as a means of simplifying things… as of now, this series of ads are simple and silly… and hence reaching where it is actually intending to… the viewers minds… !

Three cheers !!!

Part 2 of Scene I , take I....

Continued from Part I .......

Tril was supposedly a path breaker with Endura007 which cleaned the clothes, killed germs and gave sparkle like no one else did… It still wasn’t sinking into the jug head Indian buyers mind set that India and its dirty clothes needed German help to sparkle… The Indian detergent market was not the same like Europe from where Tril came from if it was P&G ‘s Ariel which ruled the charts , in US it was Tide and no Ariel would be available… definitions of premium varied and so did the varieties of Tide or Ariel that one got in their respective markets

The Rs.5,700 crore detergent market in India which is segmented into two product categories - powder and cake was one tough nut for Tril to crack….. Sub categories like concentrates/compact (variants of Surf, Henko, Ariel), premium (variants of Surf, Henko, Ariel), mass premium/mid price (Rin, Mr.White, Tide and regional brands) and popular (Nirma, Wheel, Chek) made it difficult for the brand managers and the advertising agency to decide where to enter and where exactly to position. Tril after careful analysis decided to take the mass premium category and that is why this actor from the south was chosen to come all the way and dip dirty clothes, take them out and show ho it sparkles…research said she had the appeal… she was loved by the mass and yet had a premium appeal… she looked premium and yet was mass like material…

The first Tril advertising (launch ad) which Ram and co had made with no famous star in it had shown the offer of this unnamed product for maximum whiteness effect…. The sparkle and the clean which no one else did gave,….. The house wife tries the product and lo and behold, she gets the promised whiteness. After which the product's brand name appears from heaven as Tril….

The competitor was not to be left behind…. He had to prove that this unnamed detergent powder that is offered for trial does not provide that super whiteness and even if they do the unnamed new fellows cannot be trusted…. And they showed a lead female actor who wore cotton saree to look like an ordinary bharathiya nari waxing about the super whiteness of the time tested age old brand while unnamed detergent gets pushed to the background by a group of women talking about the excellent performance of the old brand…

What could Tril do but get another star to counter propaganda..? And the research luckily agreed to the very obvious… get the competing star to kill the other one….

The phone rang again….

Hello … said Ram….

Hey Ram…. We are on the way… said Guru….is everything ready?

Ram didn’t say YES… it was understood that when the unit was there since early morning they would be ready and tired of waiting….

Ram let out a huge sigh of relief … he had his plans for the ad shoot and release… had to rush back to Chennai after the post shoot works… had other brands in his kitty competing for his attention… The life of a client service director was in soup… the more clients in his kitty the more was the confusion… the bigger ones got the better attention and the smaller ones were never happy with that fact of life… the bigger ones weren’t happy either with the divided attention that they got… after all they paid through their noses for listening to them at least ,full time…

The phone rang again….

Hey Ram ..said some one… this time it was not Guru…

Khurana here… I have sad news for you and Tril…..

What is that? Asked Ram

The other guy is reducing its price by half… said Khurana who was head of the research team back in the Chennai agency office…

That means?… asked Ram visibly annoyed

That means now Kite detergent powder will be available at 23 Rs and not 43… said Khurana…. They call it as the biggest ever consumer advantage transfer…
My foot …..said Ram…..

He knew what it meant to his brand… Tril…. It was a price war that was launched… and quite unexpectedly,,, the whole shoot now became futile an effort.. after all the strategy was to talk about value for the mass premium segment…

A car came and the whole unit stood up….

Like a dream which came true, the star descended from it…

Red tape - old style seduction !!!

Now this is my answer every time I find a marxist/anti liberalisation expert (self declared or other wise) waxing about how after the 90's with the influx of foreign ideas, the whole of India got corrupted, its values saw a fall and how marketing and advertising( foreign style) landed you up in your bed with strangers !!!

Last day as I was speaking on globalisation and advertising to a global world, the same allegation came up and this was my answer..!

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 !!!

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... !