Category: Brand

  • One up

    While watching the nation’s current pastime yesterday, those irritating screen-side-and-bottom takeovers started happening, but there was one creative that made me smile. It had two popups (both with what looked liked an actress caricature). The first said “I will expose if the script demands it” and the second said “I will expose if i get enough money”. Guess the brand….. Sprite – Seedhi baat, no bakwas.

    I read an interesting post the other day on tag lines, about their ownability, and how integrating the brand name into the tag line makes it more powerful. What struck me when i saw the ad yesterday was the tagline of Sprite, and that also got me thinking about its competitor- 7up. As i’ve said before I was a huge fan of Fido until they started using for such nonsensical stuff as this and this. I did enjoy the female leads though. 🙂 And while this was definitely better, they regressed with this. I really wonder what they were drinking when they came up with ‘Bheja Fry, 7up try’. Why stop with Bheja, i say, maybe you could do some ambient stuff in restaurants with ‘Pomfret Fry, 7up try’ and ‘Chicken Fry, 7up try’. The possibilities are endless. 7up, keep trying.

    And while that was happening, Sprite obviously thought about the entire thing, and came out with this positioning. And as though following a script, Pepsi played into their hands and they came out with a killer spoof, that fitted their positioning completely. Sprite has to be commended for a wonderful follow up to their earlier ‘Sprite bujhaye only pyaas, baki sab bakwas’. Remember that, in turn that evolved from ‘Sprite –clear hain‘, and take a look at this. The wonderful thing for Sprite is that they have taken a completely generic positioning (Mumbai Mirror and Bangalore Mirror launched with a ‘Lets cut the crap’ line which is saying the same thing – seedhi baat, no bakwas, but with a different set of words) and made it into their own.

    With so much of beating around the bush/implying/connoting happening, they can take any subject and make a creative around it, and across media, because they have a brand promise which they can easily fulfill – quenching thirst. At the same time, note that they’ve evolved a very appealing proposition from that basic drab premise that every soft drink can make a claim for.

    Notice that both brands have their names in the tag lines, but look at the difference. I really would’ve loved to see Fido playing the brand ambassador for the Sprite line (he fits really well because that’s where he started out), but that, i guess, would be asking for too much.

    until next time, upstaged

  • Brand new lock

    We’ve seen Vodafone going through a massive exercise, we recently saw Ceat going through a painful exercise, and softly, quietly, like the brand its always been, Godrej has unveiled its new look recently.

    Godrej, Can I Win My Ex Back for me, has been about locks. That’s the product in which I’ve seen the logo the maximum number of times. Although Cinthol happened to come a close second. (Cinthol has also gone in for an entire rebranding exrecise, about which i wrote earlier.) The Godrej TVC is decently executed, with the brand shown as shaking off a stern fuddy duddy image and moving onto a more ‘likeable’ and trendy avtar. The total spend on this exercise seems to be in the tune of Rs.30 crore. But are they making better locks now might be a badly timed question, i guess.

    I’ve always wondered about the kind of money that brands spend on such exercises. The attempt is obviously to change the perception about itself in the consumer’s mindspace. But how much care do they take to ensure that the attitude change percolates down to the lowest level, and specifically the departments that interface with the customer? And as a customer, do i really expect the Vodafone employee to suddenly become chirpier and more pleasing in their interactions after their new customer care ads? The other point is that I rarely have that interaction because i can do all the things that needs to be done through the net. Similar is the case, with say, financial products.

    When i see a Shoppers Stop, a Megamart, all changing their colors/looks/shapes and going for a complete overhaul, and spending massive amounts of money and energy on these efforts, I always wonder whether the end customer really cares about it at all. Is ‘rebranding’ an exercise that’s done when brands get tired of the % off, new schemes and other tacticals and have no more stories to keep themselves relevant in the mind of the consumer? More importantly, in a constantly changing landscape, where one wrong YouTube video can wreck your brand’s image , should you be putting such a lot of eggs in one basket? Shouldn’t the focus be on customer touchpoints, be it real or virtual?

    until next time, kuch to log kahenge, logo ka kaam hai kehna 🙂

    Can I Win My Ex Back

  • Insurance Maxims

    I bet all of you guys who’ve been following IPL would know Sanju by now. Sanju, who just gets lost in his iPod music, can’t hear his wife calling him, and ends up scaring the living hell out of her. And she’s not easily scared, judging by an earlier Vodafone ad 😉 In case, you really don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look at it here.

    The Sanju situation is something that could happen to us at any point of time, and i think their understanding of the consumer mindset has been bang on target with this one. All of us, who know we’re not exactly in the healthiest of states, but haven’t done much about it since we believe in our immortality. The ad execution keeps you glued to the storyline, expecting the worst and finally delivering a ‘Oh thank God’ moment’, but leaving the message behind loud and clear. Its a story that I can identify with, and that makes it powerful.

    Its part of a series of communication from Max New York. The other two that i have seen are this and this. Though the ‘child’s dreams’ path is a heavily trodden one (HDFC’s ‘Haan, Papa’ comes to mind immediately), the other two themes were pretty good and managed to strike a chord, at least in my case. And they’re definitely a good context led follow up for this.

    The last one is the guy who’s been giving up his own dreams at various times and having his decisions forced upon him by various things like parental approval, family, its stability and security, children’s future etc, and finally during old age. The implementation is classic, as every time he almost takes a decision he sees his ‘responsibilities’ appearing before him. This one is for pension plans, and ends with its message to finally end those compromises. Again, very easy to identify with. Much better than this, for instance.

    While its easy to say that most communication these days aims for slice of life scenes, its something very difficult to execute, especially since most brands like to hog footage. The difference in this set is that it gives the story most importance, gives a context and then shows how the product offers a solution. Incidentally, I also liked the humour pitch that was in vogue earlier –  this from TATA AIG, and HDFC’s take on other financial products like Savings or Mutual Funds. I wonder why HDFC didn’t adopt this tone for insurance, maybe they felt it was too serious a subject?

    All well and good, but i always wonder about the role of brand vs performance as a factor in decision making as far as financial products go. Yes, you wouldn’t choose it if you didn’t know about it, but is heavy TV advertising the most optimal way to build equity?

    until next time, i guess TVC works as some kinda insurance 😉

  • Born tough, but advertising ruined me

    Change. Thats exactly what I’d like those Ceat guys to do about their campaign. After their TVC started airing, it took me this post to understand exactly what they meant by the ad, because I was too busy trying to figure out what was happening to notice the logo change. Also happened to see more from the same family like this, this, and this. Just because change is a constant does it mean you have to force it to happen? Couldn’t see anything wrong with a positioning like ‘Born Tough’, unless of course they either hired a new marketing head or a new agency, who, by now would wish they had the original rhino’s thick skin judging by the reviews I’m reading online.

    I wish someone could’ve explained by now what exactly has changed and why, because if i happen to see that guy on the road, I just might dip my hand into the wallet and offer him some….. change. I wonder why they didn’t tie up with TOI for their Chennai launch, after all the campaign said ‘Next Change’. The possibilities just go on – the guy sitting on a beach and the super going ‘Sea Change’, CEAT changing the model, and the old guy walking with a tee saying ‘Ex-change’, and so on.

    For a product like tyres, wouldn’t it be better if they concentrated on the product, retail and distribution, and talked about its benefits rather than talk about change. After all, the category that the brand operates in should be kept in mind before deciding on communication strategies. This kind of stuff begs something similar to that old KF-Jet-Go Air jpeg that made its rounds. In this case, MRF coming out with something on the lines of ‘No Change. Still the best’.

    Oh damn, now i can see the banner ads on rediff too!! Like the author of the post i mentioned earlier suggested, by this token, a tee should end all concerns regarding a brand’s identity change. And continuing with his take on ambient ideas, here’s one, while driving on a mountain road, you see a theatre playing ‘Darr’. A little way ahead, you see another theatre, guess what movie is playing there?

    until next time, tough luck

  • Mark diya jayein?

    Like any normal working blog, this one too is affected by the general laziness that appears around this time of the week. So, this will post will be a potpourri of sorts.

    First up, this site that i got to know about from here. (!)Yureekah, still in alpha stage, tells you where exactly brands are placing their ads online.  First request, if I have already given you my details once, please allow me to login and not repeat the process everytime i decide to visit. And no, I don’t want the computer to remember me. While it is most definitely not comprehensive, basis a couple of searches I did for Indiatimes Mail and a few other brands, I think the thought needs to be appreciated. It definitely has the potential to become a great tool, not just for knowing where brands place ads, but going a step further and analysing why they’ve done it, and perhaps in the process figuring out better places and ways to reach your own target audiences. Forget the media part, it even showed me a couple of creatives that I hadn’t seen earlier. Read more about them here.

    Meanwhile, a quick query, am I the only moron to not figure out the feed for agencyfaqs digital (not the general site feed, the digital section feed)? I’ve been spoilt by feed readers and am regularly missing out good reads!!

    The other site which i came across today is this. PracharThis, an Indian social bookmarking widget. Hmm, but first, ‘Roshini’, through ‘her’ (same) comment on almost all the sites i frequent, managed to get my attention. Whether zis (Nice Post !You should use an Indian social bookmarking widget like PrachaarThis to let your users easily bookmark your blog posts.) is a nice way of promoting the site is quite debatable. (What do ya mean I’m just peeved at being ignored by even spam? 😉 )

    Meanwhile, what does it do? Like any other widget which you can add to your blog, it allows you to add the particular site to  humsurfer, Indianpad, Tagza, all desi versions of Digg and that is definitely not something I’ve seen any other widget do. This is in addition to the regular digg, facebook, stumbleupon, del.icio.us etc that one regularly sees in such widgets. So its definitely a value add for the regular users of the digg clones, and adds a desi touch to social bookmarking widgets, but how much really is that value? I think a better understanding of the unique extra sites is required to answer that question. Any volunteers?

    Meanwhile, you can get the code for the widget (for blogger, typepad, wordpress and general websites) on the homepage itself. Good. Also, what i did find there were quite a few good links to some Indian blogs, so perhaps a nice add on would be to prompt me (when i use this widget to save a url) to visit similar urls (similar to a ‘people who added this also added..)?

    until next time, well fed?