Fake IPL Player, Real Conversations

Spent the last 30 minutes browsing through the Fake IPL Player's blog. It's incriminating, it's salacious, it's bawdy gossip at it's best/ worst!

Now whether it's a (a)real fake guy, or (b)a marketing ploy(I hope) or (c)an actual player blogger(rarefied chance), this guy/team knows how to create smutty buzz and generate conversation! Aren't you amazed at his site traffic and the thousands of comments from visitors and followers!

For quite some time, I have been arguing the case for conversation as brand content. But it mostly goes over the head of body-copy-only guys. Well the fake IPL player comes to my rescue.

Here are a few random thoughts which are floating in my little sleepy mind post lunch...

1. Context is Everything. The fake IPL player's blog gives a lot of inspiration to creating engaging alternatives to vapid 'Hilaa Denge', 'Dhikha Denge', 'Bataa Denge' ads on TV. He/she shows how gossip, locker room talk, the management vs. the player jibes can be engaging content as well. Maybe brands like Sprite, Levis, Axe can do more niche social media stuff which can draw lessons from this guy!

2. Don't Control the Conversation.Most Indian brands try to control/ avoid the conversation in the blogosphere/ social media and read too much into the controlled conversation(read FGD). This guy's posts have a thousand plus comments!! Comments by readers, visitors are part of the conversation. They add flavour/ spice to the conversation(even though here it degenerates into uncontrolled bitching:-)

Maybe brands like Mentos, Sprite(again), some of the bike brands(Pulsar for instance) could encourage a more intimate conversation with their niche audiences instead of merely pummeling the great looking, expensive ads. (Okay, I love the Tarsem(?) made Pulsar ad, but after the 13th viewing I now reach out for the remote/ or better still close my eyes. Instead guide me to the making of the ad web-site or the making of the bike(to the more engineering inclined DTSi variety)

3. Celebrity is One Of usWe knew(for some time now)that celebrities are not always on a pedestal. They lost some of their halo when they signed their 10th brand contract:-) But didn't know really that he/she is merely one of us.

The celeb can be reviled(SRK is called Badshah Dildo on this guy's blog- now how worse can it get from here). In contrast,the big brands largely treat celebs in an anachronistically sugar-coated way replete with a fake smile, fake swagger and fake talk!!

And the funny thing I feel is that all this bad talk and gossip from blogs like these won't really harm the celebs. But they will just make the Dish TV, Hyundai and sundry other badly made fake-talk-fake-smile ads even more boring for some of us!!

Celeb bashing might be more interesting than celeb grovelling!!

Well hats off to the fake IPL player and his blog!. You are giving us all real-time lessons in generating conversation(even though it's smutty). We need more brave brands and a mutant strain of journo-copy-writer-gossip-columnist to perfect this art for Indian brands.

Bhagwan Aaye Bluetooth Se

We are currently doing this blue-tooth enabled promo on bus shelters for our client Cycle Agarbatti in Bombay. Essentially one can download ring-tones, Ganapati wall-paper, the cute Cycle Agarbatti radio spot(it's got a non-commercial ring to it) on the mobile phone...The bus-shelter also plays the aarti tune twice everyday.

Grateful to Suresh, the CEO of Telibrahma and his team for being the technology partner on this...

In isolation, it's not a big deal/ promo but it's good learning to play with technology ...Next is what:-)

P.S. More about this promo here

Who Needs Advertising When You Have a Nano!

By now you must have heard & seen it all. The Buzz. The Bytes and the hottening Bazaar for the Nano.

The giga byte Nano surround sound!!

I can't remember when was the last time I really got excited about a car launch(actually any product)!!

A friend called me excitedly as CNBC broke the launch story from the Auto Expo...

In the evening I caught up with a high-decibel and a not-so-high quality debate on NDTV with Suhel Seth, R K Pachauri(noble winner), Sunita Narain(Centre for Science & Environment) and Medha Patkar...

Had a debate about the Nano with my wife in the morning over chai! Thought about it(about the road congestion, about buying it, about gifting it:-) about getting it's ad account) all through yesterday!!

Sample the headlines in the various dailies today...

HT - H/L : Small wonder
Body Copy : It is green, it is global, it is Indian. It costs a lakh and it
is called the Nano.

TOI - H/L : Tata Reinvents the Wheel
Body Copy : Others said No. Tata said Nano

HT Mint - H/l : Tata Small Car Throws a Big Punch
Body copy : Ratan Tata's personal quest ends in a winner!

ET - H/L : Nano Second to None
Body Copy : Dream car's brush with history

Indian Express - H/L : 1 lakh car drives 1 billion dreams
Body Copy : Little Nano, the big thing!

As I open my gmail in the morning, my friend and benevolent spamster - Ramakant has already sent me a Nano pix and sound bytes & another friend has sent some stories about the making of the Nano!

However, in sharp contract to the Giga Buzz, the paid ad by Rediff(Full Page in TOI) was quite mediocre(though the car looks beautiful in the layout), low on energy and perhaps quite unnecessary!

The Rediff Nano ad reads...
H/L : It's here. The new Tata Nano
To end all speculation, debate and talk!

Okay, thanks for telling me that!! But Mr. Advertising Agency, you are 24 hours late, got nothing new to tell and need a better copy-writer. Try HT, Indian Express...

Of course, I maybe too immersed in the Nano; but so is the nation...And as communications people, who need to have a pulse on the nation's psyche...this ad should have been done differently(if at all)

Quick thoughts on how I wud have done it...Actually, no why give ideas for free:-)

But the point is it would have paid(like hell) to take into account the context of a national frenzy around a dream car. Plug into the conversation of the people. And I don't mean higher SEC people who e-mail, search, blog, twitter, orkut, facebook it only!

Plug into even the choupal conversations, the adda, udipi, nukkad conversations...(Maybe it's all coming around the corner. Maybe this rant is a bit early...)

But for God's sake, add something to that conversation. However, Nano it might be or get out of the way and save some precious media budgets!

Let TOI, Aaj Tak, Dainik Jagran, Punjab Kesari and Saamna do the job well.

Nano is a small car but a big paradigm shift! Can advertising build a philosophy around the car?

It's not so much about positioning. In the long run, it's more about the new priorities and the complex questions (environmental, ethical, etc.)that the Nano will throw up!

Can Nano be the desire to celebrate 'Less is More'. Of reducing the carbon and other foot-print, of using less resources....Then communication has a role!

Otherwise, to sell a cute 1 lakh car, who needs advertising!!

The Future of Entertainment

Just read my blog friend Neil Perkins's detailed post on the 'Future of Entertainment. Since many of the trends 2008 pieces in the Indian media-sphere have been quite vapid and vacuous, catching up on this post was quite a relief...

Neil, allow me to quote from your post and salt & pepper it with my India-centric thots.

1. Entertainment is becoming more fluid and flexible, interactive and active, individually defined, networked, varied in time, location and place...

2. Growing affluence underpins higher expectations. Even children have increasingly sophisticated demands. They are not confined by traditional constructs of consumption!

Just this morning, my 4 yr old son, Neo asked his Nani for a 'real mobile'. He was specific & assertive - 'Khilona nahin chahiye. Baat karna hai'!! Our own expectations from customer service, vacations, lifestyle, fashion & technology brands have grown exponentially and continue to do so...

We are all on a hedonistic consumer treadmill. We need better experiences to give us the same or less kick!

3. There is a powerful role for the shared collective experience (seen currently in the growth in live music, and strong demand for sports viewing).

This is one area where we cud spend some time in 2008. Brand conversations, activities and planned actions largely happen with a one-to-one marketer mind-set.

4. Networks of communication are already ubiquitous but our understanding of their full potential and operation is still pubescent. But huge potential exists beyond the blogging phenomenon and current popular networking sites for evolving forms of creativity and expression.

Ad agencies will take a while understanding the potential of community communication here in India. My guess is that media agencies, digital out-fits and new web based entrepreneurial companies, small and mid size will show the path. Then maybe the large networks will wake up and shake up!

5. A growing proportion of the population is and will be consistently multitasking. According to this research, people are currently fitting in more than 7.2 hours of additional activities into the average day!!

- How do I calculate how many more hours did I pack in my day in 2007??
- So do we do MGFs(Multi Tasking Group Discussions) now to elicit new behavioural patterns?
- And how do we measure attentive eye-balls!:-)
- How does it impact the 30 sec commercial, or the viral video.
- Do we need a new guy, say called the Media Landscapist to do the thinking around this subject...

6. The ‘new meaning of luxury’ is about time oases and getting away from it all. And reinforces the long term demand for the ‘bring it on’ realm of media-delivered entertainment on TV and magazines, as well as creating interesting links to the ‘cult of the home’ with home as primary site for downtime, in our busy, choice-overloaded daily lives...

- Hey, this trend I had predicted in 2002-03( pre blogging days). Had written a piece called the 'Division Economy' back then. Maybe it was ahead of its time. LOL
- Will this new time oasis be age dependent?
- Is it a big enough business to leave my planner job and jump into? LOL

Thanks Neil for getting me thinking as always and Happy New Year buddy!

Vinod Mehta Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai

Just read a good speech by Vinod Mehta(editor-in-chief, Outlook group of publications) on afaqs. Since it's getting harder and harder these days to read/ view good content in the Indian media-sphere, any good content must be re-purposed and circulated:-) May the tribes of men/ women like Mehta increase...

You can read the full article on agencyfaqs here...

Snack bytes
1. He touched upon the media’s myopia regarding how its credibility is being eroded. To the extent that journalism today is often confused with being part of the entertainment industry.

2. Once you treat the media as if it is no different from running an ice-cream parlour, journalism loses out to commerce.

3. As journalists we need to remember that a newspaper’s credibility is like the virginity of a woman. You can lose it only once.

4. "I say this with much humility, but brand managers, with honourable exceptions, are congenitally incapable of understanding the nature and purpose of journalism. They simply cannot understand it by virtue of their background: which is sales in order to maximise profits. They can never understand that content is more, much more, than what readers want. It also has a social dimension. Thus, content is a mix of what the reader wants and what he does not want. The trick is to marry the two and make money."

5. Ladies and gentlemen, in my nearly 30 years as editor, I have heard a lot of nonsense talked about journalism and its role in India, but this piece of nonsense - 'The reader is King and give him what he demands' - is outrageously and self-evidently absurd and dangerous.

To demolish it is urgent. To let it become the benchmark of our profession is to put in peril everything we have worked for in 60 years.

6. We must lead readers, not be led by them. Really great journalism must do more than merely give people what they want. There has to be room for the unexpected, for stories the public has no idea it wants until it sees them.

What Mr. Mehta rants about is not a phenomena restricted to print or TV media. This senseless and gut-less pandering to 'this is what the consumer wants' ails advertising as well. Read a related post here...