Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Christmas not so Merry for Walmart!
Ghajini: Hope the audience dont emulate Aamir and forget the movie in 15mins!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Innovative Insults...
- Are you always this stupid or are you making a special effort today
- Brains aren't everything. In fact in your case they're nothing
- If your face had "Welcome" written on it, it would make a perfect doormat
- Hi there, I'm a human being! What are you?
- You should learn from your parents mistakes - try using some birth control!
- Well, they do say opposites attact...so I sincerely hope you meet somebody who is attractive, honest, intelligent, and cultured.
- You are proof that God has a sense of humor.
- I heard that you went to the haunted house and they offered you a job
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Striking Balance!
God was in the process of creating the universe, and he was explaining to his subordinates "Look everything should be in balance. For every 10 deer there should be a lion. Look here my fellow angels, here is the country of United States. I have blessed them with prosperity and money. But at the same time I have given them insecurity and tension. And here is Africa, I have given them beautiful nature. But at the same time, I have given themclimatic extremes... And here is South America, I have given them lots of forests. But at the same time, I have given them lesser land so that they would have to cut off the forests... So you see fellows, everything should be in balance".
One of the angels asked, "God, what is this beautiful country here?". God said "Ahah....that is the crown prince of all. India. My most precious creation. They have understanding and friendly people. Sparkling streams, serene mountains, A culture which speaks of the great tradition that they live. Technologically brilliant and with a heart of gold. The angel was quiet surprised, "But God you said everything should be in balance".
God replied, "Look at the neighbours I gave them!"
lol.. :)
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Will the Santa Claus story have a makeover this year?
Sunday, December 7, 2008
The CALL that could've resulted in a BRAWL!
- The call was from a local Delhi number
- I havent heard of calls being transfered to the President of any country without verification and other security measures
- Apparently, Indian itself had found out about this call from the US which has been seeking to lower tensions, and had sent messages to Pakistan assuring it that no such call was made
- Originality - Well this rumour seemed to have meet this criteria very well
- Fear - To a certain extent fear was created among locals in Pakistan and the rest of the world about a possible war among the Nuke-enabled countries
- Status - You could'nt as for a person with a status higher than the President of a country
- Contacts - Well, the newspapers and media in todays world would take care of this criteria for you in no time.
- Believability - In this case it was a little too much to digest or believe.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Reliance not so Reliable!
For those wondering what I am talking about, here goes:
"Airtel came out with teasers to launch its new Airtel DTH service. The teaser had just a red sofa and it said 'See you at home'. Well it was obviously an attempt to get the audience thinking as to what the product was about, create a buzz about the teaser and then they'd planned to come out with an ad that would feature celebrities like Saif Ali Khan, AR Rehman, Zaheer Khan, Gautam Gambhir, Kareena Kapoor, Madhavan and Vidya Balan. But Reliance had other plans... It literally stole the teaser by taking advantage of the red sofa teaser to release its product 'Big TV'! It came out with an ad that used the same red sofa and the audio which said 'see you at home' and then Big TV completed the AD and touted features such as 200-plus channels, 32 cinema “halls” and digital quality audio and video."
There were a lot of comments on this act by Reliance.. A few called it cheap, a few said they're unethical & even then there were a few so called Reliance patriots who called it a masterstroke by Anil Ambani.
If you thinking that this is poor advertising ethics used by Reliance then it doesn't just end there coz according to Livemint the wall street journal-
“If you (Airtel) are going to tease people, we (Big TV) are going to feed their appetite,” said Bobby Pawar, chief creative officer of Mudra Group, which created the Big TV campaign.
Big TV also notes that Airtel had no copyright claims since the teaser ads ran with no brand logo or name.
“It’s an open market and every player is expected to respond to competition. The campaign also gave us an opportunity to make specific claims on the product,” says Sanjay Behl, group head (brand and marketing) of the Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group."
Reliance have actually crashed Airtel's DTH launch party. If such unethical practices continue I seriously have my doubts on the future of Teaser Ads...!!!
Monday, November 10, 2008
Brand Obama: The only product that did well due to recession

Obama is President. Well, this is the first time I've followed a US elections closely and the brand Obama has done excellent marketing. He has changed the way elections are done, and has taken canvassing to another level.
For instance, I was watching a program last evening on cnn-ibn which was disecting the Obama victory and drawing Indian parallel's with Mayawati. During this program there was a video clip which showed Obama giving a speech in which he used the words "YES! WE CAN" frequently. What's interesting here was everytime he said "YES!", the crowd would follow-up with a chorus "YES! WE CAN". This speech was intented to pep up the crowd and instill belief that the US can recover from its current financial crisis. Man it seriously has instilled some confidence. Moroever the terms "YES! WE CAN" which in some sorts is a great slogan, has worked wonders for brand Obama. Now that is marketing personified.
Word-of-mouth, Slogans, Market Penetration, Buzz marketing, product bundling, etc etc name any concept in marketing and you'd see a great application in the Obama Story.
Consider the million regular bloggers around the world, you could be rest assured that 9 outta 10 of them would've offered views on Obama. This has resulted in a great word-of-mouth campaign. For those who remember the reception he got when he went to Berlin during his campaign, would agree with me that he literally got a celebrity's welcome! His brand awareness campaign has had amazing market penetration. Even the Coke's and McDonald's of the world took more time to be such a common household name, but Brand Obama has done it all in a matter of few months.
You know all hoopla that goes happens in India when there's an election. How many times has the Indian elections created such a hype that other countries keenly watch and analyse it? I would say none! Or take even the developed countries, the day i heard a few ppl talk about the UK elections was when Tony Blair stepped down and Gordon down took office!
The buzz about brand Obama has grown multiple folds and has done a great job. It has got people talking, writing, following it around the world. I feel marketers around the world should soon start using this as a benchmark to assess the success of their marketing campaign.
As Prof.Ray nicely put it 'Listen; The Obama story is not one that you look for in the annals of inspirational tales, instead its one that must feature in the Marketing textbook of tomorrow. It must stand testimony to the brilliance of a born marketer.'
So folks lets wait and see if Brand Obama lives up to its expectations or creates a widespread Cognitive Dissonance! ;)
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Negative word-of-mouth is good???

Word-of-mouth as all of us know is something that no one has control over. Before you realize it, the news would have jumped networks of people and reached the other end of town. Everyone of us talk about a lotta products day in and day out.
Either intentionally or otherwise we talk about stuff from say shoes to music to restaurants to movies etc and offer our opinion to everyone we interact with.
This may be either to help someone else buy, provide knowledge about the product, for self pride, just an intention of sharing, to find common ground or may be even to reduce dissonance. For any company if this is a positive word-of-mouth, then they surely would'nt have any regrets!
What if its negative word-of-mouth?
Well, my answer to this question is based on the book 'Grapevine' by Dave Balter & John Butman. Products as such are never perfect and people accept this fact. A Negative word-of-mouth can be powerful. If the company responds positively to a negative word-of-mouth, it can turn detractors into loyalists. Moreover negative word-of-mouth can bring out the quiet advocates - who can be even more powerful than everyday fans.
For instance, take the Apple iPhone. If you carefully examine it, it does'nt have a few common features such as forwarding of msg's and taking long videos BUT try talking a person(who intends to buy an iPhone) out of the idea of buying a iPhone. Well I'm pretty sure he would give you 10 other reasons to buy the iPhone and may even draw ficticious statistics outta thin air to prove his stance. Moreover the Cult brand status of Apple here is one main reason why people behave so irrationally...!
So your word could be swifter than a bird! ;)
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Buzzing the Yahoo way!





Well its been a while since the Yahoo's new product Yahoo Buzz has been around. But how many of us really use it! Has this site dedicated to buzz failed to create a successful buzz about itself? Well before we come to any conclusions regarding that, here are a few observations:
- The Yahoo Buzz website has tried to do 2 things together: Force people to write and at the same time coerce people to upload or give links to the most interesting videos/music clips/articles that they come across.
- It has a feature called the iPhone, where the top 5 stories/posted buzz items are displayed in a format that resembles an iPod display and you can navigate similar to that of an iPod.
- Similar to Google's Blogger, the Yahoo Buzz has a feature of voting for each post that you read. But they difference here is that in Blogger any annonymous person reading can vote and comment on the posts, whereas in Yahoo Buzz you gotta be a registered user on Yahoo Buzz to even vote!
- Finally Yahoo has its name attached to the new product, this was surely done in an intent to using its present brand equity to attract surfers to its site.
So guess we gotta wait and watch,
what yahoo does,
to create a buzz,
about the yahoo buzz! :)
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Microsoft using Teasers!!!
Here Jerry Seinfeld is expected to use his humor appeal to attract the audience to the teaser, moreover in the ad Jerry attempts to draw out some personality from Bill Gates to make him sound 'cool'.
The ad is meant to tease "greater things" expected from the software company.
Well, most importantly the reactions to the teaser which feature typical Seinfeld humor butted against a dry, laconic Gates who plays the straight man, has been a mixed bag from the tech community.
click here to see the teaser ad
Has the teaser been able to get the people talking about it still remains an unanswered question???
So next time around its upto Billy not to be Silly! ;)
Sunday, October 12, 2008
India not yet affected by Viral campaigns???
Well this thought about Indian buzz marketing agencies came to my mind when I was writing an Integrated Marketing Communications exam yesterday. It had this interesting question on the Levis Buzz in the US and as I got back home after the paper I came across a couple of banners based on the same Levis buzz, this forced me to search about buzz marketing in India.
That’s when I came across ‘The Flea’, India’s first non-traditional communication consultancy, in other words India’s first buzz marketing agency. Interestingly they have JUST 8 members who work for the agency!, 5 in India and 1 each in Houston, Brisbane & St Louis. Whats more they’ve handled viral campaigns for more than a handful of big clients and to mention a few of their popular campaigns:
Flea believes the following few simple rules are important to creating a successful viral campaign:
- Provide Something worth talking about
- Identify and reach out to influential individuals and communities
- Provide something worth talking about
- Identify and reach out to influential individuals and communities
- Motivate people to pass along the marketing message
- Make it easy for people to participate in the campaign
- Have on-line and off-line component
- Don't have unrealistic expectations about direct sales, but create long-term passionate users.
So the next time u want to create a buzz campaign in India. Remember your buzz can fly like the flea only with ‘The Flea’! ;)
