BMW Vs. Audi Outdoor Skirmish

Ajay, our Tribal planner mailed me this nugget. It seems new fighting between BMW and Audi has started in Santa Monica, USA!

AUDI hung up a commercial on the main street with the text: "The entirely new AUDI A4. Your move BMW."

BMW thought about it for a week and hung up on the next building a much bigger advertisement hoarding, "Checkmate!"!! (source: interesting-thingz.blogspot.com)

Jeetey Raho

Some of the better ads on TV never get the due attention because many of us are busy debating the craft and the cleverness in our business! I have the ICICI Jeetey Raho TVC in mind...Maybe it's a little late in the day but let me finally park the whirling thoughts in the head...

Saw it 1-2 times on TV. Loved it for the following reasons.

1. The interplay between a modern day husband and wife is very nicely captured...I am tired of the old cliches that are no longer true! Ever so quickly there is a gender role shift happening in our towns and our lives...Accelerating every year!

The bread-winner, the decision maker, the influencer, the soft task and the hard task master, the dreamer and the doer are all roles which are getting re-defined, re-negotiated and re-packaged. Most TVCs once again lag LIFE!

2. Just the other day, was watching an old Sanjeev Kumar flick, where the heroine in a song sequence is touching the feet of SK. Fast forward to this defining imagery and the line 'Jeetey Raho' with the wife giving the 'token ashirvaad' to the husband.

3. Again it's hearting to see a girl child in the TVC. Looks like a nuclear family with one kid. And this time it's not Rahul or Karan or Ravi bete...
There is an underlying code in TV advertising which is mostly respected. When it's one child, show a boy, if it's two show a boy and a girl...

We mirror our society's fondness for boys...It might be a small thing in a 30sec commercial, but most of us fall prey to it. This ad doesn't and that's why I loved it!

Like with everything around us, ads with 'Batti Gul Ho Gayi', 'Hawa Nikal Gayi', 'Pant Khul Gayi' often end up being the most debated commercials with ad gurus voicing hoarse their coarse opinions, while its commercials like these which make the mark both in terms of sales and sense! May their tribe increase...

(Read Ankur Jain's nice analysis)as well!

P.S The hoarding near reclamation shot through the window pane of a moving cab on my mobile camera. Am ignoring my Nikon these days:-)

The Beach and the Thoughts on Kiosk Advertising

In my new role as the weekend papa, I took Neo and his cousin Ved to Juhu beach. In fact like most such excursions, this one too was initiated and co-ordinated by my wife...

So early morning, we trooped in a cab to Chaupati beach. The beach(like much of this hyped city - Mumbai) itself was too dirty to be enjoyed. The water was muddy and there was poop in generous dollops all around!!

But Neo and Ved had a ball of a time...Building sand castles, throwing water on each other and generally frolicking around.

Among the muddied water and two energy-filled kids, managed to spare a thought about two outdoor signage(I think I am losing it...I manage to think about my next post in the most unlikely of situations:-)

The first was on the long mocha wall opposite the beach. It was a Provogue signage. In fact multiple repeats of the same message all next to each other. It was cluttered. Jarring to the eye. And purposeless. What could 10 signages achieve that a single one cannot?
>Clearly when it comes to OOH( out-of-home) messages, people don't realize that diminishing returns of exposure set in with every needless extra unit!

The next on linking road were the Exide pole kiosks. Again I feel, in year 2007 with
'an acute shortage of consumer attention' and a general filtering of commercial messages by the common man, logo assaults of the Exide sort seen in the picture are an utter waste of money!Okay, so we know Exide, now what are we supposed to do? Yet another case of visual pollution and little else.