Little Drops of Joy. A Torrent of Money Wasted

The most lousy ads that I have come across this last month must be this Coca Cola corporate spiel!

In an environment of general upper middle class cola-apathy, this just is so out of place...

I guess there are other ways to highlight the good corporate citizen-ship work that the cola majors are doing. Good work. A bit underplayed by a cola-bashing media. Helping the government in some water-table/ irrigation related issues and else...

So why this terrible campaign? Why should anybody in their right mind believe this piece of manufacture statement - Little Drops of Joy!!!

In any case it looks like a rehash of the old Kinley tagline - Boond boond mein vishwas, which at that time made sense, was in a context and was a reasonably nice campaign...

I mean a good percentage of the country is/ was under floods. 70% of the Indian population lives off Rs.20 per day and here's this global brand telling us that its largely sugar-and-perhaps-not-so-pure-water, aerated drink gives us Indians joy in our daily lives..

I have not been able to figure out which is worse, the strategy or the creative campaign...

Visual Post Its : Ganpati Marketing

Every year, Ganpati is getting more and more immersed in marketing...Few samples from this year!!

And if you have better/ bizarre/ innovative examples do share...

Spatial Reach of Brands and Us

Have been down with an eye infection which has severely curtailed net-surfing or substantial reading...Bored I figured book-surfing a better way to kill time!

Was flipping through 'Revolutionary Wealth' - the Alvin & Heidi Toffler book...Stumbled upon the chapter on Spatial Reach(chapter 11, pp73-77)...Found it quite interesting and relevant.

Some quick mental notes before the eye starts hurting again:-(

1. The Tofflers talk about the increased geography of our travel reach. We travel between countries as our parents travelled between cities...

2. Then there is our new on-line/ virtual reach. What co-incidence...I just discovered(through Google Analytics) that this blog reached 23 countries over the space of last week. Of course the bulk of the visitors being from India...What an amazing Spatial Reach we have today. Toffler says in 12th century Europe, the average peasant in his entire life-time just travelled in an area of about 15 miles around his village...

3. The spatial reach at the workplace is also global these days. I often respond to a mail from Singapore in the morning, then check for updates on the 'Digital Sparks' Ning site(which has members from all our 14 offices across Asia. There might be a stray comment on the blog from another city. A chat with my brother during the day on Google Talk. Another with a quali researcher from Bangalore on a collaborative project.
Quick phone calls with my planners in Delhi and Bangalore...A mere click on the blogroll transports me to US/ UK/ parts of Europe...What a fascinating web this personal spatial reach has become. Unimaginable a few years back!!

4. And what about Brand Spatial Reach? Today, we have access to brands, it's marketing and marketer's POV across geographies...It's both a boon and a challenge. Because with the growing spatial access, people also communicate about their brand relationships as much as the brands can reach to different parts of the globe...

It would be really cool to draw my personal spatial reach...I hope a software exists somewhere to do this. Maybe Google can help:-)

Twenty20 : Observations of a Couch Potato

What a match!! What a befitting final for the twenty20 game...Wonder what the TRPs have shot to!

This is the raciest format of cricket on the planet, and as a couch potato, there is never a moment to slouch save for the ads, the best of which appear so repetitive and boring!

As I watched the matches up to the final, few thoughts passed my mind. In no particular order...

1. Multiple Creatives. I wish marketers and us agency types quickly root for multiple creatives. If our messages are repetitive, in the racy Twenty20 format, they would be all screened out by the viewer!! Even the SRK starrer Pepsi ad became a headache after a while(and that when I am a die-hard SRK fan)

2. Entertainment Quotient.. I guess we now need to rate all our ads on EQ and not just messaging objectives! Only the ones that have an EQ comparable to the twenty20 game ought to be aired:-) The rest will be noisy irritants, filtered by the couch potato! I ignored all of them!

Guys, at best we are creating branded interruptions. The public might just appreciate if we make them really entertaining.

3. Category fit.I feel certain categories are a total mis-fit with this racy, non-stop, edge-of-the-seat format of the game. I remember I saw an ad for Amity B-School. The message and the creative execution was clearly out of place with the twenty20 environment!

If your product category doesn't fit in this breezy format, one would better stay away and save some money!

4. Media Innovation. If you ask me the best media innovation would be to air shorter TVCs. If the overs have reduced from 50 to 20, shouldn't the TVC duration be reduced to 5 seconders or some such thing:-)

Twenty20 is transforming the game of cricket as the overs reduce from 50 to 20. It is less cricket and more like a 'Bollywood entertainer'. I think our humble ads need to change to fit in this new game...

Bang On, Big Bang But Very Expected!

Of course I didn't watch the Hutch(oops Vodaphone) TVCs on now the much hyped Star TV block. There are more interesting things like the Twenty20 on the tube!

Hyped as a major media innovation( although I fail to see why it's an innovation.)It's a big budget ROAD BLOCK rather than a Great Idea.

Well, finally Hutch - the country’s fourth-largest mobile service provider has changed it's identity yet again. And I think it has done it the right way. Almost too right I feel:-)

1. Retained the cute, lovable pug as well as the two animated characters (the girl and the boy)

2. Promises to retain the tagline - "Wherever you go, the network follows" especially for the network related ads.

3. “Hutch was a well-loved brand, and all the things which the customer found endearing will continue to be projected,” said Harit Nagpal, the company's marketing and new business director, on agencyfaqs.com. Well, that again is the most sensible thing to do. Indian marketers I feel are too trigger happy with change. Very often change for change sake!

4. The company insists, Vodaphone will be a more mass brand, offering value-added services, in all the existing 16 circles rather than maintaining an up-market brand imagery from it's international lineage...

5. It's among the most humongous brand name changes in Indian marketing, affecting the lives of almost 35 million customers across 400,000 shops! And looks like the client and the agency have done a great logistical job!

From the little that I have seen of the name-change, it's bang-on and correct but somewhere my expectations from Hutch( sorry Vodaphone:-) and the agency Ogilvy in particular were a bit higher...But it's still early days!

Ogilvy has a habit of surprising everyone with great advertising particularly towards the year end:-)

The Hidden Rules of Coolfacture 1

Read a very interesting and academic article on the subject of Cool in the Knowledge@Wharton series(also covered in the Brand Equity yesterday)...

Some gleanings from the same mashed-up with a couple of my own home grown observations on this very interesting area of 'Cool manufacture'...

1. New research(from the Wharton studies) provides insight into how consumers use products to signal membership in social groups, but swiftly abandon those same products when the original message is diluted as other groups co-opt the trend.

Most visible in fashion perhaps...

2. People make inferences about others based on the products they buy, and when lots of similar people adopt a product, it can gain meaning as a social signal.

3. The Internet with it's 24X7 connectivity makes the signaling process faster, product trends can explode across mass markets more rapidly than ever before. At the same time, the enormity of those markets can also turn off the original customer base quickly.

This has implications for youth brands. Every marketer wants to do a 'cool viral' these days. But we must understand that our product/ product category must be amenable to a 'cool' communication. Plus there is always the danger of over-doing it...

Coolfacture is an art which the likes of Steve Jobs have perfected. It does not follow mass market rules.

The recent Pepsi commercial with both SRK and John Abraham is a nice, entertaining ad. Better than the average stuff Pepsi generates these days. But it may not be cool for the edgy youth!!

4. 'Cool variants'. Today, cool may come in many variants. 'Desi cool' for the masses, 'Global cool' for the classes. 'Cross-over cool'. And each market may be substantially different from the other.

Going forward Indian and Asian brands need to re-interpret the definition of cool.
While 'Coolfacture' might never become an exact science, its good to generate some rules when dealing with the youth categories....These are interesting times. All old tight-definitions need to be re-looked and over-hauled!

iPology

I first came across this term - 'iPology' on Steve Chazin's web-site! Read the post on Marketingapple.com!

In Chazin's words - "All the Apple marketing gets dwarfed by Steve's apology for cutting the price and undercutting his early adopters - so much so that MarketWatch's Tom Bemis invents a term for it, sure to be taught in business schools everywhere - the iPology.

And all this does is ensure that Apple doesn't have to spend a dime on its traditional marketing when the popular press does it all for them, at much greater reach and value.

In fact, by my calculation the value of the free advertising Apple received (this blog included) is greater the cost of the $100 rebate times all the iPhone sold to date.

Folks, you are living through what has to be the Golden Age of marketing and Steve Jobs is its king."

In fact check out another iPology story on AdAge called - Steve Jobs, My Fruit Vendor and How to Keep Customers!

It's amazing what the power of a simple apology can be. Am puzzled why more marketers don't use it when things go wrong!

Thakur Ka Inteqam, Webchutney Ka Kaam

Yet another kewl viral video by Webchutney...Just when Ramgopal Varma has managed to get 'diminishing returns' on the Sholay meme, the guys at Webchutney have cracked another winner. Simple, loveable and pure viral fun!

Maa ki Tongue

A kewl video for the yahoo language chat...Check it out(if you haven't already)!

The Changed Face of the Angrezi Dawakhana

Was at Asian Chemist(Bandra)last week. Have often wondered how the once clinical interiors of the medicine shop now give competition to the grocery store...

At the muhalla level, the chemist shop shelf space has morphed beyond recognition.
Diapers jostle for space with Digene,
Gilette with Gelusil
and extra large packs of KS with Crocin!!

And the good ole 'Angrezi Dawakhana' has become 'Angrezi 7 Eleven'!!

The Bland(?) & the B E A U T I F U L

Among the better OOH communication this month! Although, I find it a trifle bland for outdoors...

The visuals and art could have been more lustrous, with more sheen and shine like the hair they are talking about...

But then again Dove is a mild brand in its essence, packaging and communication!
And who knows what women want:-)

Last Mile Stories 2

Kapil had shared this loo photograph of the Novotel Hotel in Bangkok...Smart LMI(Last Mile Idea:-)

On the subject of last-mile interaction, I feel the humble post-it can be put to great use. Many companies(especially the small retail stores) can gain immensely by using post-its at the Last Mile for instant feedback. Instead of giving those boring, lousy feedback forms...What say?

Of course. Agreed, you can't process the feedback quantitatively. But do we always need to process data quantitatively. Often I feel a combination of experience, gut feel and random but in-depth feedback from a few passionate shoppers serves the purpose just as well!