The Fun Gun !!!

It is the month of August, on the shores of the Black Sea. It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. It is tough times, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.
Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town. He enters the only hotel, lays a 100 Euro note on the reception counter, and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one.

The hotel proprietor takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the pig grower.

The pig grower takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the supplier of his feed and fuel. The supplier of feed and fuel takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the town's prostitute that in these hard times, gave her "services" on credit.

The hooker runs to the hotel, and pays off her debt with the 100 Euro note to the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there.

The hotel proprietor then lays the 100 Euro note back on the counter so that the rich tourist will not suspect anything.

At that moment, the rich tourist comes down after inspecting the rooms, and takes his 100 Euro note, after saying that he did not like any of the rooms, and leaves town.

No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now without debt, and looks to the future with a lot of optimism.

Recession time money flow is what keeps the world flowing.. anyways enjoy the week end folks...recession will go soon, enjoy the week end....!!!

Ad Funda --- Hyperbole ?

This section is new in Adformula and is here from a class room question I faced.

What is a Hyperbole?

I will explain it but before that let me say that this will be a permament feature in Adformula hereafter....

The AdFunda series.....

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.














It is fun in some products and categories (condoms for instance) but when for more complex products where the buyer is in higher involvement and there is a significant competition between brands for the consumer mind space, HYPE may be counterproductive and lead to a calamity...

Enough of funda, now with a simple example let me wind up... here we go ...



If you are done with it, read my previous posts about the same topic here.....

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!!!

A man joined a big Multi National Company as a trainee.....


On his first day, he dialed the kitchen and shouted into the phone:


"Get me a cup of coffee, quickly!"


The voice from the other side responded:

"You fool; you've dialed the wrong extension! Do you know who you're talking to?"

"No" replied the trainee.


"It's the Managing Director of the company, you idiot!"


The trainee shouted back: "And do you know who YOU are talking to,you IDIOT?"

"No!" replied the Managing Director angrily.


"Thank God!" replied the trainee and put down the phone.

Have fun guys !!! blast but be safe....

Videocon- Oscillate and be bald !

“Harsh necessity, and the newness of my kingdom, force me to do such things and to guard my frontiers everywhere.” Says an ancient quote…

It seems the latest in the new logo- new identity- me too modern bandwagon, Videocon is a bit confused…. Dull that they always were in their ads and communication, no matter the Shahrukhs and Dhoni’s who danced and exchanged their roles to promote the brand , now this new logo and the logo logic looks more boring and mundane than one could imagine….

In the past we have seen a parade of new logo unveilings and all the logo logic..Everytime I see a logo change, I laugh… the guys behind will have a tough time designing it, placing it, selling it, reaching it to the people, selling its logic and yet the general feel is the same.. all the banks who did such change in the past-Canara bank, South Indian bank etc etc are still the same as far as the customer is concerned…well leaving that and taking on the Logo logic part, the Uniliver logo logic was the biggest one and yet the most convincing… Union bank of India too did a reasonably fair job, Axis bank was wonderful .. Hutch to Vodafone was awesome.. Even India post did a better job than this VIDEOCON thing,,,,




Not that the new logo is bad, but the way the ads are made out, and the way the logo logic appears in media… Videocon ostensibly has poor PR, no media management and absolutely have never heard of 360 degree communication….

Aspiring to get international ..? ahem ahem… !


Until October 2006, Videocon called itself "the Indian multinational". When O&M came on board in January 2007 (taking over from R K Swamy BBDO), the agency opined that the tagline, although suitably corporate, did not strike a chord with consumers. ( New Agency as a matter of rule will replace everything and anything that the old agency has left behind... ) Thus the Indian MNC got the "Whatever role life gives you, play it big’'.. I doubt whether the guys at Videocon understood it because by May 2008 they started searching for a new bed partner.. O&M really became the mistress who fell out of the masters favour.

The reasons were plenty ,including an incredible amount of management churn at Videocon, with an exodus of sorts coming into play. In the midst of all that chaos, Videocon expressed dissatisfaction with its agency and called for a pitch. Even as the pitch progressed, Videocon was struggling to put its marketing team in place... and by the time they put a team in place O&M lost the account and Satchi& Satchi won it...The stud that Videocon is, now I am told that Satchi is sidelined into a few divisions and the corporate brand per se is handles my TAG Mccann... The rest is history...

The new symbol of Videocon asserts its passion for global impact, and the two ‘E’s on either side represent the Group’s wide spectrum of interests ranging from ‘Electronics to Energy’. Along with the steely glint, this communicates the group's global ambition, its strength, sterling credentials and innovative drive. A symbol that proclaims a paradigm shift. A sign that represents the new force that is Videocon. Thus recapitulating our principle of reaching out and touching the lives of millions of people. Worldwide.


Goes the Logo logic……. why is simple thing called life made complex by certain people..

What is that ad all about? What is it trying to say? Will some one from TAG or Satchi or some one new,,,(?) please explain...?


"The biggest challenge for the agency will be to retain the business,” told a friend at that point of time when Satchi won the 250 cr account, because “Videocon tends to be fickle with its agencies. ..."


My kids surely giggled and got amused seeing the cartoon stuff but is it why Videocon spend all the money through their bleeding ass to revamp its brand identity?


Who is to blame?


There was a rich old man...in his late 40's who got married the second time to a young beautiful but poor lady. After the initial rosy days the young lady started repenting....She wanted the old man to look a BIT more young... she plucked his white hairs one by one ,in what she thought as the best idea to make him look young.

The problem was just to begin. The man's first wife discovered this and thought that he should be really taught a lesson... strangely but ,she too saw the man's hair as the problem... she when he lay asleep pluck all his black hairs....

Oscillation, guys make people bald !!!

Some one is listening?

Also read... My previous post on Brand revamps...

Bank on me !!!