Soft Porn – Bring it on

I remember ‘Advertising’ classes by Santosh Sood during my IMT days. Nothing sells anything better than SEX & RELIGION. Only our advertising industry has taken the former too seriously. It is not a recent phenomenon though. One would obviously remember the MR Coffee & Tuff Shoes ad blasting from the past. Today it is a [...]

A trip to the Byculla Zoo

If you are wondering what a Zoo is doing in a ‘Brand blog’, I would strongly suggest that you visit Singapore Zoo. That said, this is NOT a comparison between an ailing loss making government venture and a successful, profit making, world renowned… guess what! Government venture! Yes. The Singapore Zoo is also a Government [...]

A hard look at my media habits

Many a times when we marketers are in the process of planning media for a campaign, the sword of dilemma hangs perilously close to our head. Our personal preferences!
It is true that many times the best sample size for a market research activity is ‘1’, but can we really do that when we choose media? [...]

Social Movements as brands

Building a social movement brand is an awesome experience as well a tiring one. Many such brands have been able to garner unconditional support in the recent past and some have even been able to get a lot of money pledged for the cause. Many times it depends on who is the man (or woman) [...]

Video killed the radio star. Twitter killed the blogger?

Apparently the first video run on MTV was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. It was supposed to be a signal of times to come.
It was true for a long time. People ended up seeing music rather than just listening to it. Music Videos were a rage. They could see the stars in [...]

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 [...]

Price Discovery And Web 2.0

Back in 1996, when I was working with Tata Press Limited, I happened to experience my FIRST flight journey. A bit of a background! I was among the top two sales persons in Chennai branch and was selected owing to my knowledge and interest towards printing as a subject. The job was to travel with [...]

MTV changed the world? Eat this!

It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes
You’re paralyzed
‘Cause this is thriller, thriller night
And no one’s gonna save [...]

Me, my boss & myspace

“Whaaaaa??? You are not on Twitter?”
“Nope! I have heard it all the time. Twitter is not just online anymore. I get to read tweets from celebrities on every newspaper”, my boss said looking at me without raising his head.
“Yeah! Almost all newspapers have a twitter beat now”, I said with total abandon. Half the newspapers [...]

Traditional Marketing is dead. Long live traditional marketing!

This article is on a related note to my earlier post.
My father used to tour a lot as part of his work and for time periods like 15 days at a stretch. Those were days when having a phone was a ‘luxury’ and the favourite mode of communication always used to be India Post.
If I [...]