Found this awesome advertising campaign on TheCityFix. Ads (including the below pictures) originally posted here.
With traffic jams becoming a harsh reality (nightmare?) of urban life, it would be interesting to explore what services could be offered to (at the very least) minimize the poor user experience for the commuters who’re stuck in never-ending traffic jams?
I’ve personally experienced that listening to the Radio/Music or catching up with friends/colleagues on the phone (while you’re stuck in a jam) are couple of ways of minimizing the stress. What keeps you going?
Well, it wasn’t quite a “break”, but nevertheless…we’re now back to blogging after a long gap. Lots to catch up on and lots to share. Will try and do that over the next few weeks (“try” being the operative word).
Anyways, here’s an ad for Reliance (one of India’s largest mobile service providers)’s promotion for their mobile blog service. This ad has been playing across literally every TV channel for the last several weeks, to the point of irritation (almost)!
But why I’m blogging about it is the huge publicity/promotion that blogging, as a concept/phenomena/culture, is getting thanks to these ads! It will be interesting to see how this ad impacts or increases the overall blogging trend in India over a period of time (assuming the ad does work, of course).
A banner ad on Facebook for SimplyMarry.com, a mirror of what’s part of day-to-day life/culture in most parts of India…(I especially like the use of the word “Mummy”)!
O&M’s talking about how their advertising for Motorola’s flip-phone in India has resulted in the product featuring in the Top 10 “hot-selling phones” in the country for the first time (the other 9 are monopolized by Nokia).
The challenge for O&M and Motorola was that India is largely a ‘Nokia’ country. People thought you were stupid if you bought any other phone. O&M decided to flip that around and make it seem that if you were brave, you would look beyond Nokia, which, in the words of O&M executives, was a “mushy world”.
O&M targeted youngsters, who have the maximum urge to prove themselves and show themselves to be brave. They also form the group that likes to experiment. O&M pitched the Motorola versus Nokia war as ‘desire’ versus ‘morality’. In essence, O&M wanted to be the “corrupter of young minds” by being “bad company”.
MotoFlip looked deceptively high-priced with its styling, while it was actually quite affordable. So, the phone was pitched as a phone that you could flaunt. When people see a person with an object beyond his means, their tongues wag. This formed the basis of the communication, and the agency rolled out an ad which had a guy having tea with his parents. The latter question him suspiciously about his whereabouts and whether he has been doing anything illegal, all because the mother finds a MotoFlip in the boy’s room. The tagline goes, ‘MotoFlip. Dikhe itna mehnga, kuchch to log kahenge (Looks so expensive, tongues will wag).’
While this article talks about the success of the phone (especially it’s advertising & marketing), I wonder how much of this positioning was conceived right when the phone was conceptualised. While the ad is clever and gets the positioning across in a subtle-yet-humourous way, it would be way too presumptuous to think that the advertising alone did it for the product. I wish the article shared some background on the other key aspects (possibly, the conceptualisation & product design) of the success story as well.
Beverages major, Coca-Cola India, will use the might of Mumbai dabbawallas to lure customers to sample its orange juice drink, Minute Maid Pulpy Orange.
According to a Coca-Cola spokesperson, the company is in the process of distributing free samples to introduce the customers to the product. For Mumbai, the company is planning to enter into tie-ups with dabbawallas. This is part of the company’s 360 degree consumer activation campaign executed by Leo Burnett.
While the ‘dabbawalla’ success story is quite well known now, Harvard seemed to have a balanced view…
“…The dabbawallah’s service was cited internationally by management scholars and industry executives as exemplary in supply chain and service management as well as delivery reliability. However, many observers now expressed concerns over the future viability of the dabbawallah’s service given the difficulty in duplicating its delivery network elsewhere, the emergence of other lunch competitors in Mumbai, and an array of environmental changes affecting both its customers and the workforce.”
Last week, it was picking up passport application forms while grocery shopping. This week it’s “apply for a job while at the coffee shop”! Accenture has placed this drop box at Barista on 100 feet road, Indira Nagar (and I’m guessing it’s at other Barista outlets as well) for folks to apply for a job. I’m guessing you can drop your business card (in case one doesn’t have a resume handy!).
The strange thing is…the box is tucked into a corner, indoors inside the coffee shop. So, many of those who are seated outdoors wouldn’t get to see it. Beats the whole point?
Anyways, this is yet another pointer towards the increasingly cluttered recruitment space (especially in the IT industry) in Bangalore. Companies are now trying all sorts of things…I’ve seen URLs on the back of autorickshaws (Oracle’s not-so-attractive ad…I need to find a picture of that), mobile billboards/hoardings that are positioned right outside well-populated ‘technology parks’ (so the ‘target audience’ sees a huge ad for jobs at a competitor’s, as they walk out of the office) and now it’s drop boxes in coffee shops. HR is (trying to) get creative!
Moving on, here’s a picture of a crowd that gathered randomly to watch a Kannada film shooting that was happening in the Barista’s in Koramangala (I know it’s beginning to sound like, all I do is hang out at Barista’s)!
Nothing out of the ordinary, considering Bollywood and cricket celebrities have always been the first choice for marketers in India. Seems to make business sense, considering laptops seem to be selling really well in India now…
With prices of laptops crashing to desktop levels, PC makers in India expect every second computer sold to be a laptop in the next four to five years.
At present, the ratio of laptops to desktops in India is 20:80. However, in West Europe, Middle East and Singapore, the ratio is 60:40, in favour of laptops. In other markets like US, the ratio stands at about 45:55 for laptops to desktops. “The ratio will become 50:50 in the next few years with more and more users preferring laptops for increased portability,” says Hewlett Packard (HP) India director (consumer products) Rajiev Grover.
Live Search powered by Microsoft is India’s first mobile search consumer offering. All you have to do is to key in what you are looking for, and Live Search will display relevant results in a fraction of a second.
The ad for Live search lives up to the reputation of the Hutch commercials. Check it out:
Overheard in a conversation (while checking out few ringtones on the cellphone), “Don’t play that ringtone, it reminds me of my ex-boss!” With many folks using fancy/crazy/outlandish ringtones these days, it’s not surprising we now associate ringtones with the person after some time. Which made me realise how we associate sounds and other senses with people, objects, incidents, brands, etc.
Of course, music has always been a popular marketing tool. Found this piece of info on the some of the most well recognized sounds in marketing history…Intel, Microsoft and THX.
Austrian KLF fan Walter Werzowa had never heard of Intel when they asked him to compose a 3 second jingle for them. Last year alone (2004), they spent $350m promoting the sound he created in his home studio by paying PC companies to use it in their ads. It’s played once every five minutes somewhere around the world.
…
Ten years ago, Microsoft spent $300m launching Windows 95 (just under $3 per copy sold). A tiny slice of that money went to Brian Eno, who recorded the startup sound on a handful of ageing synths in his studio.
Seems like a full fledged industry by itself! With the rapid boom of the cellphone ringtone business, I can only see this trend becoming more significant.
Thinking back at the use of music/sound in the Indian media over the years, Coke’s recent ad (in India) really tries too hard to associate burping (of all things) with drinking Coke. How weird is that? The Britannia sound (at the end of the ad) is one of the older brands in India that’s got good positive recall. And, who can forget the ‘Malgudi Days’ theme music? (I hope Coke does some serious re-thinking with that ad.)
Wife & I going on movie date 1st time after our son was born 11 mnths ago! Amazing such "normal" things become significant in a new context! 5 days ago
Finally saw #Ishqiya! Was it @RajeevMasand who said see it for peek into real rural emerging (north) india? Very true! Vidya Balan terrific! 5 days ago
