Lack of will to accept new ideas?

Here’s the ad in SET MAX for IPL 3.0. View the ad by clicking this link.
Just check this Coca-cola ad for Beijing Olympics 2009 here.
What do we lack in India? Creativity? Or the will to accept new ideas? This is something which has always been eating my head since my advertising days and now on [...]

Tu Tu Mein Mein of Detergent brands

The whole world has talked about it already. Yet another occassion, where I delayed in relaying my comments. Could find at least three significant pieces. Here, here and here. Here are my views:
Showing competition is always a relative issue. Unless there is a clear demarcation on why a product is better than another or issued in [...]

Advertising Agencies – A series to understand their functioning

Most graduates getting out of premium B-Schools in India would have done a million case studies while in campus, but seldom do they get the knowledge of how an advertising agency operates. Management graduates specializing in Marketing and opting for a career in Advertising almost always find themselves chasing artworks for the first couple of [...]

It pays to be quick!

It is a very important characteristic in Marketing to be quick when it comes to ‘time to market’. And more often than not, it is one of the most difficult pieces to fall in the jig-saw.
I witnessed the chopper flying over the (maxi)Mumbai city with a HUGE (I really mean it kind of huge) banner [...]

Lazy Marketing Worked! :)

I had in my last post chided a financial services organisation for exhibiting some lazy marketing. I have been made to eat my words!
I find the phrase ‘aall eeej welll’ across FB & Twitter and it seems to have clicked for them. Well, they seemed to have placed their bet on [...]

Lazy marketing – A new high

I have not been a great fan of celebrity endorsements. Some categories lend itself to having celebrities promoting the product. For instance beauty products. Honestly, I can’t figure out the difference between a Fair & Lovely, Neutrogena, Olay etc. I must either be blind or a man, and that I certainly am!
But here’s [...]

So, who actually said it …

“I know I waste half the money I spend on advertising. The problem is, I don’t know which half.”
attributed to department store pioneer John Wanamaker
attributed to Lord Lever Hume, the founder of Lever Bros
attributed to a ‘fellow named William Lever’ or is it ‘William Hesketh Lever’

Online Advertising 102?

My colleague on this blog Mr. Karthik Kumar had written about how current marketers ‘misuse’ online advertising and hence squander a fantastic opportunity to engage the customer.
I follow Mr. Anand Mahindra on Twitter (@anandmahindra), and I would like to share one of his tweets with you. Pardon me Mr. Mahindra for a minor ‘copyright violation’! [...]

Public Service Campaigns by the Government

After a long time, I saw a ‘public service’ campaign in mainstream media. While the last high-profile campaign in this category was to promote AIDS awareness through usage of condoms, this has not hit the feverish pitch that the earlier campaign did. And of course, the H1N1 hero campaign which was as much a whimper as [...]

Online Advertising 101

In recent times many advertisers who have been advertising offline are getting online. One would think that hosannas would be called for. Alas, the lack of intelligence on display in advertising online, is a poor advertisement for online advertising!
At its worst, this new breed of online advertisers seem to see online advertising as one would a hoarding – [...]