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

Teach India : Wish I Had Thot Of It

There often comes an idea you wish you had done it/ thought about it. The Teach India campaign from TOI is one suck kick-ass idea!

Brutally simple, yet immensely powerful and so sorely needed for India.

"Teach India" is an initiative by 'The Times of India' to help provide an equal opportunity for education to underprivileged children.

The aim of "Teach India" is to provide a platform to educated Indians to provide assistance in basic education to the unprivileged children.

"Teach India" will connect educated individuals with the specialist education providers.

'The Times of India' has tied up with select NGOs in the field of education in multiple cities across India.

Participants have to devote just 2 hours a day to teach underprivileged children, either in a formal environment or even informal teaching like story telling.

There were mote than 10K responses on day one. Some companies are volunteering batches of 50 employees for this...I just signed up!

Vodaphone Throws a Bouncer

On the back of a strategically sound ad campaign for the Hutch name change comes this unlikely bouncer from Ogilvy! Maybe there is more to follow, but the first burst leaves me cold...

1. Beats me. What does Vodaphone mean by make the most of now?? The consumer hardly knows the brand. Why should he/she listen to this rather patronizing tone...

2. Suddenly the warmth and the simplicity of Hutch is gone! Kaput! This is not the continuation of the 'brand switch-over'? And if Vodaphone had to do such a dramatically different campaign, why did it blow up crores of rupees on the 'pug campaign' till last week??

Maybe, I am suffering from 'premature enunciation', but this doesn't make sense as of now...

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...

The City In A Loop

BPL's now not so new 'In the Loop' campaign grows from strength to strength. It's grown from the teasers to a multi-media(print, radio, OOH; haven't checked the net for any sound bytes though...)

1. It's very colourful and loads of gettyimages but what's the point!!

2. Don't think the young TG that it's meant to woo are really buying it. Had a chat with a couple of them. Small sample, but they think it just isn't true of BPL. All this loop hype...

3. The other funny thing is that brand BPL is completely lost. All the ads promote is Loop. Unless they want to kill BPL and construct LOOP. Then it works:-)

Must talk to more BPL consumers and figure out how they view the campaign. I might be a bit too biased. Although, I like the art direction. It's fresh. But still a lot out of loop if you ask me!