Category: India

  • Coke and Bull

    At the risk of being questioned about what i had for breakfast or about my recent smoking habits, i have decided to post this absurdity.

    Saw the new Coke ad yesterday featuring HR (no, not the unfriendly department kind or the topi kind, but the Roshan kind). According to agencyfaqs, research stated that a lot of youngsters, after their regular nightlife go to street food joints, thats true for most cities, and since coke goes with most food, that right there, was the thought behind the ad. Fair enough. The line now is ‘Jashn mana le’ as opposed to ‘Piyo Sir, Uthake’ (er, something like that).

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    Meanwhile thats not the absurdity i was talking about. Since HR and Ash are both citizens of Cokistan, how much fun would it be to do an MTV style spoof on the song ‘Jashn -e-bahaar’ from Joe Tha Akbar (copy error, ignore), with a video to match, and use it as a brand ad for Coke?

    For those who have concluded that I’ve lost it, wonder what you’d have thought if i shared the other idea that also involved Celina Jaitley, the brand ambassador for Jashn, an ethnic Indian wear brand.

    until next time, I’ve not been on coke!!

  • Virginity

    In this great land where virginity does command a premium, Richard Branson does a tango with Tata Teleservices to offer Virgin mobile to the ever growing Indian mobile subscriber population. The mechanics of the partnership has been explained quite well here. For the lazybums, Virgin is globally a MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) i.e. it buys spectrum time from operators and then sells it under its own brand name. Thats not allowed in India, so Branson said Tata. Its good for Tata Indicom because even with  (or should i say specially because of) Kajol aunty, the youth haven’t quite taken to Chindicom.

    Virgin has launched with a dhamaka offer of paying 10p/minute to the customer for the incoming call, which can be used to avail of other Virgin services. Many publications here had a frontpage takeover with a red ‘Zara Hatke’. An offer, they say, will make the competition see red. Me thinks maybe those Eveready guys should get into OEM services for Virgin batteries. Gimme red? 😉

    Now that we have the facts out of the way, lets get back to the scope of the blog. The weekend also saw a liberal splashing of the new TVC. Though it reminded me of an old forward, it was done extremely well, and was definitely ‘zara hatke’. It had spunk, a positioning that steered well clear of the regular mobile service provider brand ads and an execution that will easily grab eyeballs. Can’t seem to find the TVC anywhere, so lemme know in case you guys suddenly discover it on you tube or someplace else. They’ve also (in association with Channel V) shot the short movie Andaaz Apna Very Hatke. If you are a Neha Dhupia fan, you can read about her special appearance in it here. Branson and Dhupia almost got themselves a Richard Gere-Shilpa Shetty there.

    While the Indian mobile market is already in a highly developed state in terms of at least number of players, i think there’s still room left for clever positioning and lots of ground to cover on services being offered. Virgin Mobile interests me because of two of its other partnerships in India

    · a minority stake in Fever 104 FM (with HT in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai). At this point only Big has entities in these two hot but diverse entertainment platforms. This is tiny in comparison, but i think, relevant.

    · the venture with Studio 18 and UTV Software in publishing, TV, gaming and film. The potential of the last two items on a mobile platform is phenomenal.

    If they are able to evolve some kind of synergy on multiple platforms, we’d have some really fun Virgin services.

    until next time, lets talk about virgin territories 🙂

  • Viral Fever

    I happened to read from here and here about this, a ‘viral’ from makaan.com. As said on WATblog, it rehashes the Lagaan mixture of two of India’s most influential properties- cricket and bollywood, and not exactly in an earth shattering new take either. So, what’s it about virals that seems to have forced Brand Managers across categories to make it part of their regular campaign ‘things to do’.

    A good viral can definitely do the trick for your brand, there are many examples, most of them are of international brands though. I think the problem starts when we try to force a viral. If its supposed to work as a viral, through Word of Mouse, i wonder how much of force feeding can be done. All you can do, if you’re the brand manager, is to take a good idea, and seed it. I, for one, when reviewing any proposal sent to me, use two conditions to check whether it can work – one, does it somehow connect with what my brand represents, and two, is it good enough for me to forward it to my friends, and not necessarily in that order. I think it has worked for me, because i have junked all the ‘viral’ ideas that have come to me.

    More importantly, i think the reason why good virals are so tough to find is because of the non-adherence to the entire philosophy of the way these things work. Its based on a good idea, true, but more importantly its based on the brand’s willingness to lose control, which is something i see very rarely. For word -of -mouth to truly succeed, the brand has to trust its user, and the more brands think of their user as an end game, and not as a collbarator, the lesser chances for this philosophy to succeed.

    On a sidenote, i rather liked this viral effort from ICICI Prudential and this TVC, from 99 acres, the link being that one is a viral, and the other operating in the same vertical as makaan.

    until next time, lets hope you catch it right

  • Connecting Ads

    A couple of posts back, I’d written about the possibility of brands getting together to make a TVC. And Hallelujah, they’re listening :). Airtel and Nokia (and SRK and Madhavan) have teamed to bring us a combo ad, which though begins as if a lot of people are suddenly having heart attacks, has been done quite well. See, SRK really meant it when he said thoda wish karo. Oh Okay, i was just being mean 😀

    While these were two completely related products (mobile handset and service provider), what I’d like to see is an ad featuring products whose only relation to each other is the target audience they’re aiming at, and the way the brands fit into their lives, either by say, time (Gillette + Kelloggs) or geography (Woodland + Vodafone). Strange, but fun.

    Meanwhile, i read on agencyfaqs that Simply Marry has tried a viral approach to marketing. I had a look at the site, and while the animation and music is pretty decent, i felt the entire concept is too frivolous to become a viral. In fact, I’d like to pitch another thing to them. Why couldn’t they just buy over a property like this, and then start making episodes of these with more and different characters. Meanwhile, also make it multi platform and offer downloads of mobisodes, if the idea is also for 58888 to make money. They can even do an entire reality series based on this and air it on Zoom and Times Now. Even if not a TV reality show, this can be an MMS based mobile reality show. Connect to a Reliance/Vodafone/Airtel or even that insufferable Tata Indicom (free couple available with brand)  and they’d be happy to partner, i guess. Promotion shouldn’t be a problem with the group’s immense newsprint strength. Considering this is a ‘metromonial’ site, I’m sure all these media are toppers in their respective genres. Yes, all except ‘Isko Dekho’, though statistics and niches can be found, i bet.

    until next time, howzzat for connections? 😉

  • Stan is young

    Does that make sense? At least as much sense as Youngistan? Unless you’ve been living in outer space, you couldn’t have missed Pepsi’s latest TVC featuring *hold your breath* *Bhansali meets Farah* a combo package of Bollywood’s latest finds – D Pad and R Kap. Hey, ain’t i allowed to use youth lingo? :D. In fact, if you’ve been in outer space, there are better chances of catching the resident of Youngistan.

    This blog has been a fan of Pepsi, and the blogger had a huge attack of guilt followed by remorse when he equated the earlier work of Pepsi (My can, featuring John and SRK) to some customisable toilet devised by Pepsi. He couldn’t even blog about it till now. But we digress.

    That Pepsi has managed a casting coup of sorts is a no-brainer. But have they been used well? I think not. While Youngistan has a catchy twang to it, the ad per se has a very ‘leave your brains at home’ feel to it. That too would have worked fine, if Pepsi had decided to do a combo spoof on both the movies starring the trio. A sort of ‘Spy Hard/ Hot Shots’ approach to Bollywood. IMHO, its exactly the kind of ad that’ll make the ‘youth’ go ‘Phooey’. I know I am not exactly youth anymore, but hey, remember the Pepsi ’18 till i Die’ commercial, with Amrish Puri? The ad, me thinks, falls in that huge space between the stools.

    So Pepsi, Youngistan sounds cool, can we have a better storyboard please? Apparently, some 30 scripts were rejected before this one, and the idea was to show the ideas that the youth come up with when they improvise on the spot. If this idea is a representative, i fear for the country. Meanwhile, wrt my last post, maybe, just maybe Tata Sky could’ve been co-branded in this ad? 😉

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    pic courtesy : agencyfaqs

    until next time, yeh dil maange more