What does one call this? Activation? Event? Flash mob? Whatever it is, this too exemplifies the new advertising [like this one?].

The actual event was staged inside a stadium in Canada, witnessed live by a few thousand fans. But thanks to the internet it travels globally, watched by a whole lot more people and I guess adds to brand likeability. Now imagine such an event in India – perhaps a Ranji Trophy cricket match and a stadium full of cheering fans? Or a football match? I guess filling the stadium would blow up the year’s budget for activation.

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The late Mr. Bal Mundkur founded Ulka in 1961 – he felt that there was a need for an Indian agency that would challenge the then agency stereotype. The agency, now known as DraftFCB Ulka completed 50 years in 2011. As part of the year-long celebrations [which included the launch of a book - Brand Building Advertising Concepts & Cases] the agency has unveiled a coffee-table book for existing and potential clients and other stake holders. The book aims to bring alive the agency philosophy of ‘Building BrandWealth’ – a philosophy best explained as ‘making brands famous, making clients rich‘.

Spanning 8 chapters, the book covers the agency’s history in India, and touches upon some iconic campaign cases for brands such as Amul, Tata Motors, Ceat, Zandu Balm, Nerolac, Sundrop, and Tata Docomo. The book is also packaged attractively – lots of interesting graphics, fun copy, some useful stuff like stickers, bookmarks etc. Herewith a few images of the book:

Some of the campaigns covered include: Bombay Dyeing, Binaca, Mumbai Traffic Police, Nerolac, Godrej Storwel, Zandu Balm, Amul Manthan, Sundrop [remember the cartwheeling boy visual?], Santoor, HCL, Minto Fresh, Tata Indica, Sunfeast, Tata Docomo, Voltas Washing Machine, Naukri.com, Whirlpool, Zee Cinema and Captain Cook Aatta among others.

Some of the old classic TVCs can be viewed here.

Even the sections introducing the agency offerings are embellished with fun copy. The section talking about research done to understand women has this headline.

The book is more than just a coffee-table book – its a trip down the Indian advertising memory lane. It is also a great testimony to the power of enduring brand properties. Going through the book it brought back memories of so many powerful advertising concepts that I was last exposed to many years ago but still stay fresh in my memory. What more, the concepts are hardwired to brands: ‘Fill it, shut it, forget it’ [Hero Honda], ‘Doodh, doodh [National Dairy Development Board], Born Tough [Ceat], the Zodiac man…to just name a few. A great effort both on the brand building side and the book creation side.

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The common reaction to The Hindu’s ‘Stay ahead of the times’ campaign has been positive. The ads are seen as funny and as a right response to the ad war started by The Times of India in Chennai. I too liked the ads as they identified the right chink in TOI’s armor – of being seen as overly commercial and promoting the Page 3 culture. Some have called the TVCs a copy of the ads done by DNA for After Hours edition – which followed a similar vox pop format. My view is that while both follow a similar format it’s unlikely that the Ogilvy team would have willingly set out to copy the campaign idea – let’s just put it under ‘creative coincidence’.

Will The Hindu ads actually make the TOI reader re-consider his brand choice? Unlikely. In Chennai, the TOI reader is in any case a minority [the brand is likely to be a 2nd paper in the household]. It could be the paper of choice to recent migrants to Chennai for whom The Hindu could be a little too staid, even boring. So the ads work more towards reassuring the readers of The Hindu about their ‘intelligent’ choice. In markets outside Chennai, The Hindu is unlikely to be a dominant player in any case. In those markets will it create dissonance about the TOI? Again, unlikely. The TOI is popular for several reasons, including [a] it’s a habit [b] herd mentality – follow the leader [c] it caters to mass needs.

On the subject of habit, newspapers are perhaps the most habit-bound of categories. It’s very difficult to change habits in this space, unless the lead brand continuously alienates it’s core readership base through its content. I know of many erstwhile TOI readers in Mumbai who have moved on to another newspaper simply because they found the content sensational or the marketing efforts too intrusive [vertical strip cut away ads and so on].  They did not need an advertising campaign to create dissonance about their brand choice.

Most new newspaper brands attempt to enter into a household as the 2nd newspaper, get readers hooked on to the content, create a habit and then hope to be the lead brand. Marketing tactics like price offs,discounts, freebies are used to this effect. So ad campaigns can only help so much and cannot be the only weapon in the marketing armory of a challenger brand.

Also inherent in The Hindu campaign is a ‘holier-than-thou’ stance. It tries to convey that The Hindu carries only news with gravitas and it’s not important to be abreast of trivial stuff like Bollywood. Can The Hindu decide that? Going by what consumers prefer to watch on TV and read in newspapers, Bollywood is mainstream news. And to prove the point, The Hindu did give coverage to the SRK-Shirish Kunder episode, quite like TOI. So the stance is like a double-edged sword.

The print ads have a nice tone to them – while the TVC evoke that ‘Ouch, that must hurt the TOI‘ response, the print ads are a bit more subtle and clever. But drive home the point nevertheless.

Do comment in with your thoughts.

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The quirky ‘Ramesh, Suresh’ characters are back not just on the TV screens but also through an YouTube channel. In an interesting use of the channel [another recent one being Airtel] we have a movie called, ‘The Date Fillum‘ in episodic form – the story can be taken forward by clicking on one of the two options at the end of every video.

The first video [The Adventure Begins Here] has over 300,000 views as of date – a pretty healthy number. The other videos may no thane barn-burning numbers yet but overall the series, thanks to its episodic form seems to have some traction [as they say in conference rooms].  There is an element of predictability in the format [where you know that the protagonist is likely to have temporary amnesia in a situation] but the twist or the unexpectedness of what follows keeps the viewer going. Some of the videos may be just a tad dragging but overall a great initiative to go beyond the 30-second TVCs.

As an aside, I was thinking of the longevity of  advertising characters created for a campaign [as against created for a brand]. The list of American Advertising Characters [created mainly for the brand not just a campaign], includes some which have lasted for decades. In contrast, characters created for a campaign seem to last a few years. The Mac vs. PC campaign ran from 2006 to 2009 – it was mighty effective earning the Grand Effie in 2007. But it was more of a tactical move from Apple to create dissonance among PC users. Back home, the Asian Paints ‘brothers’ characters have been on air for a bit now – again to promote the guide book. Nestle ran the ‘neighbors’ campaign in the UK for a bit [adapted through the Deepika-Purab ads here]. I am sure there are more such ‘campaign characters’ which I have missed out. Many years ago, Trikaya Advertising created the character of a coolie for Aristocrat Luggage. An actor, Harish Patel was cast as the coolie. But within months the campaign had to be re-thought because the actor had put on so much weight that he was unrecognizable. Issues like this crop up when it comes to campaign characters. Who knows Ramesh-Suresh may have to be re-cast in a few years from now.

Any other good use of advertising characters for a campaign? Do comment in.

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Competitive advertising can be fun. The Times of India fired the first salvo against The Hindu in Chennai recently. In my blog post I had noted: ‘the needless skin-show (not just in the city supplement) even in the mainline articles, the celebrity gossip in city supplements and the prominence given to ‘Page 3 culture’ you have ‘sensationalism’ as a residual brand association‘.

The Hindu has identified the same chink in TOI’s armor and have produced enjoyable repartee:

The casting and acting is spot on – I also liked the fact they did not succumb to showing the ‘after’ i.e. showing a smart protagonist. The sting is very much in the tail [tale?] and is well summed up in ‘Stay ahead of the times’.

It reminded me of the 2006 ad war in South Africa. BMW released an ad saying:

Congratulations to Audi for winning the South African Car of the Year 2006. From the winner of the World Car of the year 2006.

Audi responded:

Congratulations to BMW for winning World Car of the year 2006. From the Winner of the Six Consecutive Le Mans Races 2000-2006.

For some strange reason Subaru joined the fight and said:

Well done to Audi and BMW for winning the beauty contest. From the Winner of the 2006 International Engine of the Year 2006.

Watching all this tamasha from the sidelines, Bentley responded in inimitable style:

So did The Hindu just show the finger to TOI? I loved the ad. As an aside, should The Hindu, as a leader in Chennai have responded to the TOI ad at all? Or simply ignored it? I think responding in a manner that paints the TOI as a superficial, empty-headed brand works for The Hindu.

Do comment in your thoughts on the TOI-The Hindu war.

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So, Samsung has released yet another ad poking fun at the Apple fan boys. This time, the turn-by-turn navigation feature in the Samsung Galaxy S2 is the whip with which the Mac community is sought to be beaten. The earlier efforts were on similar lines [no pun intended] touting the bigger screen or some other feature as superior to the iPhone.

Lets see what the campaign has done. Nowadays, there’s nothing like a country-specific campaign. Even though these ads were meant for the US market these went went viral globally. So, Samsung achieved a global audience with this campaign. What else? If these were meant to make the current Samsung/Android community feel good about their brand choice [and by extension, about themselves] these are resounding successes. Comments on the online forum are indicative – the Apple fanoys have got their knickers in a twist and defending Apple. The Samsung/Android fans are enjoying the discomfort and having a laugh.

The ad itself is a bit corny. Which Apple fan is likely to say ‘We got Samsunged!’? If the attempt was to bring the term ‘Samsunged’ into parlance there could have been classier ways of doing it. But then we aren’t talking about Apple here [hehhe]. That aside, if Samsung believes that they are going to shake up the Apple community into questioning their brand choice they have got it wrong. Here are the reasons:

1. The Apple experience is not driven by individual features. Most of the tech world is driven exactly by that. In Android-dominant markets like India, that’s even more true. Most tech buyers compare a 5MP camera to an 8MP camera in a phone, worry about the storage capacity, expansion and all the technical features. I am not suggesting that they are not important. Apple believes that its about the end user experience and the features are just the means to achieving it. Again, I am not suggesting that Apple is superior on all counts – competing brands are superior on many counts. Apple also delivers products that don’t come with ‘essential’ features [lack of copy-paste in 1st generation iPhones, lack of camera flash in the earlier versions etc.]. But for the Apple fan these are immaterial. Call it being an iSheep or Walled Garden or whatever, to the core Apple fan the whole  is greater than the sum of its parts.

In markets like India, there is a new Apple fan – the newbies. They got introduced to Apple though the iPods. And then the iPhone [unlike the Mac-iPod-iPhone route]. Many of them are actually fence sitters. To such an audience these Samsung ads may hold appeal. But not to the die hard Mac fan.

2. Advertising is about providing the right stimulus to evoke the right reaction. In competitive advertising on’s got to be doubly careful with that rule – as an ‘attacking’ brand your tone of voice, the messaging is that much more critical. In the past, market leaders have welcomed new competitors with a ‘condescending’ tone of voice [let me show you who the leader is] – the ad created by BPL Mobile to welcome Hutch in Mumbai [1995] comes to mind. And then there are brands staking claim to a leadership stance or poking fun of the short comings of an image leader [like these Samsung ads]. When the claim is pure hyperbole is incredulous you get laughed at [a recent Micromox ad which claimed that they were a cheaper iPhone 4S].

In Samsung’s case they do come in from a position of strength. They are volume leaders, revered by many, have an impressive product in Samsung s2. So they are best placed to call ‘Apple’s bluff’ if they chose to. US may be the right market to do this as the Samsung halo is relatively new there and Apple is a very strong brand. But will it make the iPhone user feel cheated? And consider switching to Samsung? I have my doubts. Or should I say iDoubt?

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Unilever is launching a new fragrance of Axe and its for women. Yes, the brand pitched squarely at men and promising to transform all men into ‘chic magnets’ is now introducing Anarchy – a fragrance for ‘him and her’. The launch involves, not just conventional advertising but a graphic novel whose plot can be shaped by consumer contributions. That in itself was interesting. But the execution takes it to another level.

The campaign includes not just plot suggestions from readers but even transforming contributors as characters.

Barak Obama and Angela Merkel together in a summit to save the World Economy, and then … anarchy!

I want to see Anarchy break out in a zoo. What effects does it have on animals?

I thought this in a way represents what the new advertising is all about – where the lines between digital, advertising, ‘brand experience’ and content get blurred. The team includes BBH, Razorfish, Aspen Comics among others – all coming together to produce a seamless campaign.

As an aside, there was some debate in 2007 about the inherent ‘hypocrisy’ in Unilever running both the Dove and Axe ads. Dove was seen to be promote healthy self-images for women while Axe was seen as ‘sexist and degrading’. I wonder if the end consumer even sees them as coming from the same company. And the target audience for Axe – adolescent young men and that of Dove – young and mature women do not overlap at all. Nevertheless, each brand must do what is right given its set of marketing & business objectives, which in any case are dynamic and fluid.

Do comment in with your views.

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Must hand it to W+K. They have consistently produced great work for a diverse set of brands, Lurpak being one of them. They first had ‘Saturday is breakfast day’, followed by ‘Kitchen Odyssey’. Common to both were outstanding production values and a mouth-watering visual feel – great food advertising.

Their latest work for Lurpak Lightest is equally mouth watering – albeit showcasing vegetables – justifying the ‘healthy doesn’t have to be humdrum’ claim.

According to the W+K blog:

With this campaign we want to banish the sad image of health food, and instead celebrate a colourful, textured and exciting world.

I also liked the visual mnemonic on the web and static media: its a rainbow made from all kinds of fresh, healthy food.

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When I saw the extension of the ‘Har friend zaroori hot a hai‘ theme campaign into short films, I thought it was a brilliant idea. Slicing the many types of friends [who were anyway portrayed through vignettes in the montage of the theme film] into little stories brought alive the insight even more. The ‘kanjoos friend‘ TVC was a killer among that lot.

The thought has been taken further in a series of ads on YouTube. But it’s just another channel over there. I really liked the fact a lot of effort has gone behind ensuring that the channel looks different, encourages interaction and has incentives. One is asked to ‘unlock’ the videos by watching them and then tagging friends. There are goodies like a Nokia Lumia 800 and trip to Ibiza on offer.

What makes these videos work is the unexpectedness of the ‘character type’ that is revealed. Much like the ‘Kanjoos’ ad on TV but a bit more edgier. I thought the ‘Subtitle friend’ and ‘Tubelight’ were quite LOL.

See all the videos here.

Agency: Taproot; Credits: Copywriters: Chintan Ruparel and Kaushik Iyer; Director: Piyush Raghani; Production House: Old School Films; Music: Amartya Rahut

What I also liked was the attention to detail: each video is not lazily titled [like Airtel HFZ video] – it follows the pattern found in most viral videos. The title is inviting, intriguing: for example the ‘subtitle’ one is titled: ‘Open challenge – comprehend in one go’. The ‘bhukkad’ one is titled: ‘Tummy video – best video ever’. Consumers use such words when searching for tags on YouTube and chances of these videos showing up in results are high.

One observation though. Given the nature of the business where consumer complaints are likely to be high [network problem, billing issues] maybe they should have turned off the comments options on these videos. The comments section has consumers complaining about the brand’s service.

Airtel please Concentrate on improving the quality of service not on Ads….day by day the Broadband service and mobile service is going to dog.

Consumers see this as forum to vent their frustration – never mind if the section is meant for comments on the video. Nothing new in this – people comment about India & Pakistan in totally unrelated videos. So, maybe this was to be expected.

Overall, nice extension of a campaign idea and a refreshing use of YouTube as a marketing channel. What say?

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There was a clear pattern to online activities of Indian brands a little while ago: create brand website, drive traffic to it through web banners in mass or niche portals. The content on these brand websites too followed a pattern: information about brands or the current campaign, videos of ads and the mandatory wallpapers for download. Sometimes I wonder why anyone would think that a user would replace his current desktop wallpaper of a nature shot or that of his favorite celebrity with a wallpaper from a toothpaste brand. Anyway, things seem to have changed now.

I think it dawned on all concerned that its an expensive proposition to [a] attract traffic to your own web property [b] its difficult to create content that would make your consumer come back every day to your website [c] even more difficult to create engagement & provide ‘brand experience’ on your brand website especially for brands that satisfy regular, mundane everyday needs. Consumers could interact with a brand website on a regular basis when it comes to banks or a telecom services. Or when you are on the lookout for a consumer durable – a laptop, camera or some such. But if its a floor cleaner, mouth wash or a fragrance its rather difficult to justify repeat visits to a brand website.

Nowadays, the Facebook fan page seems to be the favorite port of call for brands when it comes to online activity.  The logic: fish where the fish are. Since consumers are flocking to social media website everyday as a habit, one might as well engage with them over there. In a 2010 article, AdAge noted that for many US marketers, Facebook fan pages have become their largest web presence.

2010 data. Source: AdAge

In India too, several brands have fan counts running up to millions on Facebook: [Tata Docomo - 5.2 mn; Dove - 4.4 mn; Fastrack: 2.5 mn]. In my view, the reasons for their popularity are varied:

- the brand category [how relevant & exciting the category is in consumer's lives]

- the brand’s equity [arising either out of its heritage or recent marketing activity]

- quality & reputation of its products

- quality of their content on Facebook and other social media [ads on YouTube, posts, contests].

Not all brands have the wherewithal or ‘newsworthiness’ to emulate or replicate this. But making a beginning through a Facebook page where some consumers can engage with a band seems to be a better option than creating a brand website which no one is aware of. In the aforementioned 2010 article, AdAge notes that the Starbucks web page continues to garner a high level of traffic alongside its Facebook page. But that’s Starbucks. And the quality of content on their website.

When P&G re-launched Ivory recently, the URL Ivory.com was simply a conduit to re-direct you to their Facebook page. Several popular apps on the iPad use Facebook as ‘support pages’. In India, in the near future, brand websites will continue to exist simply as a means to provide detailed information about brands & the company. Or to link it with a current TV-led campaign [a la 'Hum main hai Hero']. For many, Facebook presence has become de rigueur.

Your views on this? Do comment in.

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