go ahead screw my skyline as well

There are a lot of illegal hoardings put across Mumbai by political parties. Nicknamed chamcha hoardings by the press, these hoardings welcome political dignitaries, show personal /political allegiance or have festival greetings. In any case these are illegal and I have no clue why these are even allowed to exist. Most of the time they are eye sores and have ugly politician faces on them. I guess in politics these days ‘a man is known by the hoarding he keeps.
I came across this one recently. It’s got the public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam on it. After the terrorist attacks the hoardings had all the martyrs’ photos on them. Now that one of the terrorist is sentenced to death, we have the photo of the public prosecutor on it. To give you a better understanding on the same, here is a link to a blog that will explain exactly why it makes no sense to me. http://girishshahane.blogspot.com/2010/05/todays-mumbai-mirror-leads-with-story.html. Read the comments as well.

More on hoardings – check this ad by marbonite. Shouldn’t the agency be hauled over coals?

They actually blackened the customers face? A satin on my floor is a BLOTCH on my face and is akin to my face being blackened? And then to show it upfront, like this? This advertising of the lowest standards. I don’t think it can go lower. I think an ad like this is a blotch on the face of the agency and the client. Dear marbonite owner - how about your face being blackened and shown on a harding?


Here is one by Provogue. Provogue is clothing brand which is not apparent from the hoardings. They have tied up with one of biggest duds on the box office “kites”. But that’s ok. That should not really have a bearing on the ads and the rub off that you want to create. In fact when ever I see these ads I feel the ads are designed to show the leading man’s abs and that all I take away from the hoardings. It might do Hritik a whole world of good but I can’t see the rub off on the brand. Or possibly I am the wrong target. I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing the stuff or worse still, be seen shopping in its stores. Way too filmy for me. There, the agency can now take this to the client and say that don’t worry the ad is doing well. See it’s getting noticed and the rub will happen. And don’t bother about the criticisms; this blogger is not from our target group.
Ya sure.

zoozoo

It’s already around 6.30 and I haven’t had the time to write down something. I have been in really boring meetings all day. I slept through one as well. So its been a bit off day. Add to it some office complications and some motivation issues from personnel, today has been a day worth forgetting.
So while I head home I thought I might as well upload this pic that I took waiting for a colleague at Bandra, linking road, opposite shoppers stop. This is me with the Zoozoos. Zoozoo is the Vodafone mascot that has fired the imagination of Indians. I think when they did the first set of ads in the last IPL it was a hit and a craze. This time I thought they were a bit tired though and not so funny. The novelty too had worn off. Plus I really don’t know if that helped the brand sell anything. They had targeted an ad a day the last time around. That’s about 45 ads or was that number 25. whatever…. I think that’s a lot of things to say without anyone really remembering them. I guess even if they had a high rotation, a number much less would have sufficed. But then many decisions are taken without too much rational thought. That’s advertising and marketing for you.
But one thing is for sure, the mascot is a phenomenon. They even sell official merchandise. One guy in office bought himself a mug with these creatures plastered all over it. We took his case for an hour afterwards, disowning him etc … the usual office shit that we throw at the guy.
His only defense is that he wanted a mug, he went to shopper stop and this one was the cheapest at 200 bucks. The rest were priced at 250 bucks and above. But then why would you pay to display the Vodafone brand? Why? Oh we laughed no end at his expense. His retort should have been – the same reason you pay a lot more to get a brand emblazoned on your chest – be it a shirt or a t shirt. But the guy was sweet and let us off the hook. Or he knew with five ganging up on him, he might as well take the shit.
So here is the pic. That’s me with all the zoozoos around me. I like the pic. The zoozoos look like they all have been hanged en masse or something. The zoozoos look like zombies.



For those who were probably on the moon and missed the ads – here they are from the first edition. The second edition ones were the really tired ones.

simple thinking

What we learn from everyday life is enough to teach us a thing or two about business. We probably don’t need any great management book to really tell us the secret. The Times of India seems to have sold its soul in the movie review section. They seem to be writing only glossy reviews with a view not to antagonise any parties. I have seen this rubbish before and the latest being the one on the movie ‘jane kahan se aayi hai’. Compromising the integrity, or if I were to give them some credit, compromising the quality of a simple movie review casts aspersions on general edit quality of the paper as a whole. Every small action adds up in the consumers mind. If he can’t trust your review, slowly he starts asking questions on other topics as well. Kids grow up listening to their parents rubbishing the paper. What happens to a brand that took 150 plus years to build?
Rarely we are corporates understand the huge repercussions of our immediate actions. We pay bonus and increments year on year. We focus on March end numbers. I haven’t heard any boss appraise anyone on the culture that they have helped build and hence reward them for the same. We just won’t understand. The web is teaching us today the value of public relations. On the web every opinion will be made and possibly stored for posterity. Someone will sooner or later come out with software that aggregates data and opinion and beliefs over a larger period of time. Then companies will rue that they gave customers the short end of the stick. They still don’t understand the value of the peer on the web. I see ads in new papers saying “we are now on facebook”. Well if you had an interesting idea and a reason then the community itself will adopt you without waiting for an advert proclaiming so. What a rubbish idea. The brand managers need to show that they have an online strategy and hence any rubbish – one FB page, one stupid twitter account and some other rubbish. Missing in the equation is the consumer. Err…Who’s that girl?
Forget that. Let’s focus on the movie which got a decent review. Jasmine and I were happy to go for the show at it was a morning show at the theatre next door. At 80 bucks a head no movie can be really that bad. Ritesh Deshmukh couldn’t have been all that bad. He does do a good job as a side kick. Well…. I think that’s that. He is good side kick but as a stand alone actor he has some distance to go. Add to it an actress who can’t act and a hackneyed script. But we had fun. Some stupid slapstick and we had Jispa rolling in the aisles. I guess it’s a fun movie for kids. I assumed that Jispa did not get any of x rates jokes in it (pretty corny). With Jispa as the laugh track almost anything is funny.
At home we have been seeing this really old movie ‘seeta aur geeta’. Standard twins separated at birth fare. We are enjoying that as well.
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While coming in today I heard a radio ad for Digene, the chewable anti acidity tablet. The strawberry flavour is now in sugar free version. Huh? I know everything is now sugar free and contains aspartame or some other agent which some of us suspect is carcinogenic over the long run. I try and avoid the stuff, now I will have to even check Digene for it. My first reaction was ‘incredulous’. Come on. One small tablet with sugar can’t really kill your diet and make you put on kilos. But then on second thoughts it’s a perfect brand fit. Those who eat a lot or don’t control their diet are the ones who are large consumers of anti acids and these guys are the top target for sugar free stuff. One large burger with extra cheese, one large fires and a diet coke please.

Sense and sensibility

One of the things I hear these days is the radio commercial where Red FM plays in support of the mid day meal scheme. Basically the scheme gives school going children one full meal a day. Now if memory strikes me right, when MGR introduced this scheme in Tamil Nadu it was dismissed as a fancy publicity stunt by a flamboyant politician. But the results put some of the staunchest critics to shame. I quote from the hindu business line…

“…brought to mind a visit my colleague and I had made many years ago — 1980 to be specific — to Chingleput district, near Chennai. We made a round of visits to schools in villages run in sheds or under a tree to make a study of the Midday Meal scheme launched by the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M.G. Ramachandran. Of course, the learned scoffed at the idea and the newspapers had dismissed it as a populist stunt. The Indian Express, Madras, decided to have a field survey before drawing conclusions. My colleague from the reporting team was just a year old in the profession, and was very enthusiastic about doing the assignment given to us by none less than the Resident Editor himself. We spent the next two days visiting several village schools and spent a lot of time talking to the children, the teachers and parents about this scheme. Slowly, the negative thoughts of the scheme we nursed gave way to a positive outlook. True, the cooking could have been more hygienic, the quality of the grains used better, the plates in which they were served cleaner... . but the villages were happy that their children were getting a much-needed meal. They were happier still at the thought of the kids showing eagerness at long last to attend school!
It is difficult for us, the city folk, to imagine what a morsel of food means to these children. Or to their parents, small farmers or farm labourers, who toil in the fields from morning to evening, having hardly any time to take care of the children. To cook a meal or finding food means a lot of hardship.
But entered the mid-day meal scheme and suddenly the three `Rs' of education assumed significance and the school suddenly became a place the child looked forward to each morning.” read full article here

This taught me not to dismiss politics and policy with a sleight. But understand the potential value within each. It also helps me not completely dismiss the now in vogue NREGA.
But that is not the point I want to make. I was at the radio commercial on the channel which has rightly partnered with the cause. The voice over is of a child who talks about the mid day meal scheme and the fact that he gets to go to school thanks to the scheme. It was fine and ok (though personally I did not like it) till it got to the last line where the kid urges you to support the scheme for some paltry sum of rupees. That would keep him in school. … Read it again… support the scheme for X rupees a month and I can eat well and stay in school…. Read it again… didn’t that amount to begging? Since when did we teach our kids to beg? Sure the scheme is good and the heart is in the right place but you can get the kid in question to beg on air. What message does it send? Beg for your food, beg for your school. I wouldn’t want any kid in the world to beg. Even for a schooling? I wish they had some RJ voice over in the end doing the begging instead. They talk a lot of rubbish in any case.

Angel Angel

Jispa is so besotted by Angel (my brother’s dog) that she invented a new game Angel Angel. She has taught this to everyone at her school and her other friends outside school. They play angel angel all the time. Where ever they meet, whenever they meet. Its quite a craze. Obviously it means jumping around, crawling around and getting horribly dirty everywhere. The mothers are a bit tired with all this crawling and barking. These are obviously the mothers of the core gang that Jispa has. In fact they have seriously considered banning Angel Angel. I am serious. And it’s not the mothers who are to blame here. It can get quite irritating looking at the kids panting like dogs all the time. Why would they want to play dog, god alone knows but yes in the game there are masters and there are the dogs. And it is privileged to be the dog. And I guess because Jispa can run around like a dog better than others, she kind of becomes the pivot of the game. She looks like Mowgli roaming around the house. The same tiny wire frame doing all kinds of mind numbing twists and turns.
Yesterday they were playing Angel Angel with a twist. Angel had super powers that she could transfer to her masters. Whatever!

Just then one mother told me of an ad by Surf excel and that it reminded her of Jispa . We searched the net and we all saw it. Yup.. that’s her allright. They peeped into my house and got the inspiration I guess. When we all did see the ad, Jasmine and we were worried that this was akin to showing the monkey where the razor was kept

It will come to bite you in the bum, mind it!

Sometimes I so hate being a marketing person. Most of the times I hate being a worker in the capitalistic environment but then, that’s another story. Coming back to marketing… We at the company and the agency are equally at fault for the marketing shit that we create. Jasmine and I dropped Jispa off at her gymnastics class on Friday. Having a few hours to kill we made our way towards the Crossword book store at the HP petrol pump at Shivaji Park. The option was either a coffee shop or the bookstore. We entered in to find an inadequately air conditioned store. It was quite warm and so was the store. We browse around and then make our way to the first floor section. There were around 8 – 10 shoppers around. They all seemed like book lovers in the way they sat around with their books. The AC on top was slightly better off. There is very little space to sit and read your books in the store. At around three o clock I think you would only have core readers in. after some time some of them got some corners to sit and made them selves comfortable. This is the true core essence of the crossword customer. They are comfortable and they are at ease. No one is really complaining about the lack of anything else. Give me some books and a place to rest my butt. Everyone who is there at the store is soon seated around. Soon enough the manager (if you can call that boy that) comes in. Please get up. Get up. Get up. No sitting here. No sitting there. No sitting near the shelves. People are really pissed. There is one mother with a child sitting near the children’s section. No sitting there as well. What an idiot, there is no one else at the store. No one is hindering anyone else. I have been to a lot of Crosswords. People don’t sit when there is a crowd. They realize it affects others. And when there is a crowd, you can surely get people to get up. But for now in an empty store, this is what he does. We get up and then soon enough Jasmine and I decide to leave. We only bought the books we could browse in the small time we were comfortable. As we start to go down stairs we saw this large poster at the steps.
A lovely shot of a lost customer. I lose it. I call in the boy who made me get up and show him the poster. If this is what your poster shows then why did you make me get up. Is sleeping allowed and not sitting. He had no answer. He was just doing what he was told to. What is the core of Crosswords? Why would someone pay more at Crosswords when most book buyers know that they get best sellers pirated off the road at 100 bucks or even the latest hot sellers discounted by 30% at Strand Book Stall or the like? In any case it’s the browser who looks around, becomes comfortable and then buys more than he wanted to. But this is one category that even impulsive purchases don’t have cognitive dissonance. But my bigger grouse is not that. My big grouse is the smart Alec advertising. Advertising that is smart but does not take into account the culture of the place is the real pain. Having these larger than life posters and then asking customers to get up is just not on. The in store branding at crosswords is great. They are same guys who did it Big Cinemas and Barista also. When we were in a marketing offsite this guru came in to give us a short presentation on it. He is really good. He is the one who made all these ads was showing us the case studies. I made a point to him then. This smart witty branding is very cool, but the companies do not have the patience to pull off this customer experience. They will hire and expand rapid, they will train less and they will compromise the service delivery. Smart and witty advertising just enhances the customer expectation and poor delivery widens the gap. Nobody sits at Depot or at Strand book stall. They don’t complain about the browsing experience. It is better not to have smart witty advertising that only widens the expectation gap. Simple advertising that is boring might help instead. At least that is line with the store managers and management. If they are boring regimented people who believe in targets and discipline then the advertising must be such. It has a better chance of succeeding. All banks face the same conundrum (they of course don’t see it as such). Good advertising only accentuates bad service. Better don’t advertise… or do the simple silly run of the mill adverts.
But agency will not understand this. They want creative stimulus not effective advertising. Marketing managers want CV’s and companies are lazy to know the difference.
This is more pronounced in growing economies where you can constantly get more bang by expansion than you potentially see as retention. So you just hire like crazy, forget core values and expand. Boom, one day customers don’t like you. You wonder what’s wrong with your formula, you change the ad agency but noting seems to work. There goes your plan.

This article came in today’s newspapers. How is it different from the Crosswords episode.

EK CON
The producers of Ek promise, in an ad, to return the ticket money of disgruntled viewers. Read on to know what transpired when one dissatisfied viewer tried to reclaim his money
My name is Vikky Sukharilal Ujjinwar and this is my story. On Thursday, April 2, night I went to see Ek - The Power of One, at the New Empire cinema at VT which is near my office where I work as an office assistant. I bought an upper stall ticket for Rs 55/- and settled down to watch it. Several things about the film did not appeal to me. For one, there was excessive violence, and then there were only two songs. The story line was totally faltu and the characters unappealing. By the time I left to go home to Mankhurd I was thoroughly disgusted with the film. On my way home in the train I happened to spot a Sakaal newspaper and saw an ad by the makers of the film K Sera Sera, on page no.3 which said that they would reimburse the ticket price if anyone did not like the film. Strangely though there was no telephone number in the ad so I had no idea how I should go about it. The next day (Friday, April 3) I began my enquiries and by evening I had managed to get a number for the office of K Sera Sera from someone who knew someone who knew a spot boy on some film. At 4.30 pm I made my first call to the number (40427600) and was told that the director was in a meeting and I should call back in an hour. At 5.15 pm I called again. This time I was told that the director had not come at all and I should call back the next day. At 5.45 pm I made my third call which was transferred to someone called Sanjay who told me to come to the office, give in writing what I didn’t like about the film and collect my money. At 5.47 pm I called again and was again told to come to the office the next day, he also gave me the office address. On Saturday, April 4, I went to the office at Lokhandwala in Andheri and asked for my money. After being made to wait for 45 mins someone, not Sanjay who wasn’t in the office, spoke with me. He was curt, told me the whole world had liked the film and should they make another film for me? Finally he asked me to leave the office, and come back the next day with my letter. When I went back immediately with my complaint letter he took it and said they would review it to see if they found it valid. I was asked to phone and come back on Wednesday (April 8) or Thursday (April 9) for the cheque of the amount of my ticket Rs 55/-). I cannot go back during the week and anyway what will I do with a cheque when I don’t have a bank account? I cannot understand why it should take them a week to return Rs 55/- to me. I am at a loss to know what to do next.

The ad in question

kuch bhi ho raha hai

India might be seeing the highest incidence of heart disease in the world, but this is I think stretching it. I was at a cinema hall yesterday called Chitra. Chitra is a nice renovated cinema, which is not a multiplex. The ticket prices at 85 bucks are half of those of a multiplex. Pretty rational pricing. I somehow cannot bear the multiplex pricing. My favorite line on this is that multiplex’s have killed the black marketer as at their ticket price levels they are ones selling in black in any case. What will the poor black marketer do? Ya, so we sat in waiting for the movie ‘Honeymoon Travels’ to start. An advertisement slide speared that made me jump off the seat. It was of a Hospital ( I think Balajee heart hospital) whose specialty was heart treatment, namely angioplasty, angiography and bypass. What really took the cake was that the prices of each of these were prominently put on the slide as well with the bypass tipping the scales at 99,000. When did people start choosing bypass on cost basis? Interesting. Is it now become a commodity that the only differentiator is price, that one puts it upfront on the ad like Big Bazaar? Very funny. Imagine a heart hospital ad sandwiched between Gangar optics and the trailer of the next sex comedy…. The other interesting thing is choice of media.. a cinema hall? Not a multiplex but a single screen hall in middle class mumbai (dadar)? I can just visualize the fat obese consumer munching his pop corn (highly buttered of course) and watching the ad. Chomp Chomp. Can you pass the chips please?

On the movie … I don’t know what to say. I liked it. Nice and candy floss. Boman is fun as always. Lot of random things happen. Just sit back and enjoy the jokes. No take aways.