ITC- class mates - big ideas !!!

Class mates as a brand is advertising on TV after 6 long years and it indeed left a smile in me.. Not the fact that they didn't show their ads for 6 years but the fact that when they did , they did it in style...This new ad is fun, creative and different, in spite of two celebrity's whose presence looked artificial for me...

All of us who have been students have gone through a phase where books, especially note books become our essential companions , a kind of soul and place to vent out feelings and yet when it comes to choosing a brand , I guess we didn't care. At the most one looked was the cover page, for his or her favourite actor smiling from the cover was reason enough to choose a brand.

ITC class mates made a difference in this category and has made stationary products also anchored in brand thoughts of the target groups and hence make them ask for a class mate next time they buy a note book... I have ( I am sure all of us have) gone through similar situations/ scenarios that this ad shows in the Library... I have a bundle of such instances to quote and the moment I saw the ad I liked it (and I repeat I liked it) ,in spite of the celebrity presence.... The witty idea to use book titles and pass the message across without harming the decorum of the library is NOT out of the world and never seen before but I guess that is what was required for the brand, to talk to its TG at this juncture...

Classmate has recently expanded its portfolio with the successful launch of a range of complementary stationery products such as pens, pencils and geometry boxes and have made made sure that the famed distribution magic across India through its vast distribution network works in this case as well..... as far as Classmate is concerned , it is the leading player in the Rs 5000 Crore market for stationery products comprising notebooks, pens, pencils & scholastics which is today growing at a rate of 9-10% .... Now that is phenomenal... ads , promotions, customer contacts and all such stuff to follow.. IMC in its best form for otherwise what was a habitual buying product.. Good job guys... But now let me ask the question which is paining me...

Why Yuvraj and Soha? I have nothing against this two amazing people.. per se I have nothing against celebrity endorsements as well.. But see this ad again.. once more.. If there was no Yuvraj and Soha, would it have made any difference? I even feel it would have made that ad even more watchable and all attention would have been in the fun/theme/situation than on the celebrity... Here they don't steal the attention and lead to a vampire effect but they for sure divert attention for the first time viewer and stand between the ad and the viewer every time he sees the ad........

Here is the company logic ... Chand Das, chief executive of ITC’s Education & Stationery Products Business (ESPB) says , “Classmate aspires to be the leading and most trusted student education and stationery brand. It’s a brand that believes in and nurtures the “big ideas” that reside in each one of us and encourages young minds to realise them through exploration & perseverance. Both Yuvraj & Soha are vibrant icons for the youth of today. They have believed in & pursued their own “big ideas”, and today, both stand tall in their professions with multi-faceted personalities."....

Ahem ! Now that is something that we get to hear every time a famous face is signed for endorsing a brand... Even Mysore sandal guys said similar stuff when they signed Mahendra singh Dhoni....

Good ad, no creative brilliance but stands out... Kudos to Rediffusion Y&R Chennai and the ITC Class mates team for the come back.. Hope to see more ... !



Credits

Project: ITC Classmate's TVC
Brief: Encouraging young minds to be original and think BIG.
Client: ITC ESPB
Creative agency: Rediffusion Y&R, Chennai.
National creative Director: Minakshi Achan, Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar
Creative director: Kishore Karumabaiah
Copywriter: Kishore Karumbaiah
Client servicing: Nachiket Sant
Production house: RDP (Ramesh Deo Productions)
Director: Shujaat Saudagar
Post-production studio: Pixion
Date of publication / release: April, 2010

Tiger Woods-The worst a man can get !!!

Every time I decide that I will not again write on celebrities and their role as brand ambassadors, some one comes out of the woods and drag me into this.. Well there is a pun there and I must confess that it just came in a flow.. The topic is Woods and all the brouhaha that surrounds him as more and more women appear from the woods ( ohh the pun again) proving that the ace golfer had a huge fascination for holes, on the green turf and otherwise..

It’s a classic case of brands failing… Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods or simply Tiger woods was a brand by himself – a great performer and a real consistent one at that and no matter what now his play boy like image is, till last month he was the most revered icon for the sports world… … High performance delivered every time and for years now.. and that is the profit that his brands (the ones he endorsed) reaped from his aura.. Accenture for years bet on him and him only, portraying his ability to key putt or chip out of the rough and said “High performance delivered” ….Accenture has successfully used Woods to personify its claimed attributes of integrity and high performance.… Now Accenture was the first to forsake the star whose one flaw ( integrity was his other name !) seemingly has become the single most rallying point for the whole world…

It is not woods alone.. History of endorsements is laden with examples of erring celebrities putting brands that depend on them (some cases entirely on them) into disarray… Michael Jackson, and Mike Tyson , to Ben Johnson and Hanse cronje , Britney spears to as recently Micheal Phelps ( for smoking bong -a variant of marijuana, Kellogs dropped him from its endorser list) .. Phelps was dropped not withstanding the fact that the packets of Kellogs with his pics were an instant hit and became a collectors item..

For Accenture the golfer is "no longer the right representative" after the "circumstances of the last two weeks." Said the embarrassed Accenture…The move ends a six-year relationship during which the firm credited its "Go on, be a Tiger" campaign with boosting its image significantly…. Woods was an exception to the serious brand dilution that celebrities were going through.. Not that he was very choosy.. he came for Nike ,American Express, Gillette,General Motors' Buick, Electronic Arts and Tag Heuer watches but for Accenture he stood tall and almost the axis of its entire advertising and when in bad times, this sole dependence has landed the brand and its agency Young and Rubicam, in a tight soup.. they now want to replace all the Woods ads- Tvc’s , hoardings etc… but with what? No alternate strategy was ever in place, with Woods in ….

Woods was so special for his brand owners.. so much so that he appeared with the Nike Swoosh on Accenture ads, his golf bag features a Buick logo even while he endorses Nike and so on… whether this was a proof of brilliance of Nike's Tiger Woods arrangement that other advertisers didn’t mind the presence of the swoosh in their ads or was it simply because they had no option and if they want to use Tiger, they had to turn blind, is still debatable but in the new and changed Wood world it all seems irrelevant..

Gillette and its ads said “the best a man can get” and again Woods was the right match… Now that he has reached a point which certainly is not the best a man can get and where no man ever will want to be, brands one by one are dropping him like hot potato… this is the peril of celebrity endorsements ….

Forbes just a month back described tiger woods as “it's no secret that Tiger Woods is a marketer's dream. The appeal of the good looking, clean-cut, articulate, scandal-free golf whiz is just amazing”…. Now with this fall, which is more personal than professional, (Remember Woods haven’t cheated in his game of golf like a Hanse cronje or Ben Johnson) ads and brands that bet their entire purse on one person, simply because he/ she is a celebrity will think twice .. at least more and serious thoughts of clubbing such endorsement deals with moral clauses attached would be seriously talked about..

Not that a moral clause would have made a Woods to think twice every time he went for an escapade, but that the brands will have lesser losses , financially ,when the enodorses errs… (For the uninitiated, Morals clauses are standard contract terms that allow advertisers to renege on their deals with celebrities if the stars behave badly and ruin their ad plans — as Tiger has done.)…

Wishing Woods a recovery from this personal calamity and hoping to see him again in his turf, playing Golf and endorsing brands.. after all coming back can be more sweeter… and as per his own statement “You can always become better.”

Wishing all the brands that he was with, a smooth transition period …