Wake Up Call

Last week was eventful in the Telecom Industry at least from a communication perspective.
Two of the largest telecom companies moved their creative agency.
Airtel moves from Rediffusion to JWT
Reliance moves to Grey
Is there a signal? Some observations:
Problem 1: Both brands have not had a great ‘last few campaigns’. Personally, I think it is because Airtel & [...]

Is Brand a Marketing Responsibility?

I believe that Brand Management as a responsibility should come under the marketing organization. Brand Management and strategizing for the brand has to be led by the Marketing organization both in terms of the thinking and the execution. However, I believe that Brand is not a Marketing Responsibility.
The position ‘Brand Manager’ is one of the [...]

PR & Brand Building

Having broached PR in my last post, I wanted to take up a related theme, with a brand perspective.
Many of us would have witnessed press briefings either as part of the company, media or at least on TV. If yes, then it is possible that you would have seen a backdrop which is just a grid [...]

PR as a function of Marketing – a few experiences

I started off as a sales guy in a Yellow Pages company after a graduation in Physics. Can’t get any confusing right? Okay, I concede. But I have considered myself to be a people person and found a decent foothold in Tata Press Limited selling Yellow Pages space to retail shops across Mount Road in [...]

Pester Power – Some views

Around the mid 80s and the early 90s, the liberalization era had not started and there was very little choice when it comes to products and services. We had only one telecom service provider – the government run BSNL / MTNL. So it is not surprising that advertising was very different. Especially the ones targeted [...]

Rural Marketing – A few learnings

Only when someone is humble enough to say “I don’t know” does (s)he learn. And I am happy to say I don’t know. I am happy that this has helped me learn a bit today. About Rural Marketing!
My first brush with Rural Marketing was when I was working with Lintas. A colleague of mine used [...]

Be a conversation Creator – Anil Nair (Senior)

So, we have the next interview lined up. Some people may not be able to accept ‘interviews’ in a blogathon. After all, I am supposed to write. Well, interviews are not easy either. It requires work (some, if not hard). The thought of asking a stupid question to a specialist will always play on anyone’s mind. [...]

For strong teeth, laugh your heart out!

I just couldn’t help but LMAO when I saw this ad. So I am just planning to do a simple ad review and also probably go a bit behind in trying to understand what the brief would have been!
To begin with… watch the ad. Then you will know the reason for my first statement.
Here’s what I [...]

Start up – Its either the brand or you!

I have been a start-up man almost all my life!
I have always wanted to work with a great brand and on cutting edge (cliché?) brand management work using every tool required under the sun. But I have always been in places which have either been start-ups or functioned like one! They were either new branches [...]

An interview with Kiruba Shankar

I had mentioned in my ‘commitment post’ that I would attempt to have at least a couple of interviews of professionals from both the online and offline world. Here’s the first one.
Kiruba Shankar – who was once referred by Gul Panag as a Twitter Superstar was kind enough to answer a few questions.

A few pointers [...]