There is one aspect of advertising, where India is far behind many of the markets abroad: execution and attention to detail in print ads. Whether it is the Clima Bicycle Locks or the Cannes Grand Prix ads for Ariel, the faultless execution makes them standout. Among the Indian ads, the Luxor Highlighter ads this Clinic ad come to mind as examples of good execution. But most of our work in print is standard stuff. Here…
The most memorable thing from last year’s advertising for Indian Cricket League must be ‘Jujubi’, the parting shot in the Chennai Superstars ad. The theme ad for ICL the brand or what it stood for is perhaps missing from public memory. In contrast, IPL set the tone for the tournament with their ‘Karmayudh’ ads and then let the individual teams do their numbers. This year, there is an attempt by ICL to give a thematic…
There’s much hue & cry in the blogosphere about one facet of the ‘I am PC’ ads. Apparently a part of the ads were created using a Mac by the agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Microsoft had posted some pictures from the campaign on their site – four of the images display the designation “Adobe Photoshop C3 Macintosh” when their file properties are examined. A Flickr user originally posted the data and apparently the data…
When speaking about blogs and new media to some of the advertising industry folks, I have been asked this question very often: how do I get people to talk about my brand or advertising on the internet?. Well, the answer is simple: they must want to talk about it on their own, you can’t get them to. This attitude is also common to those who rely on traditional media – it translated into putting pressure…
TechCrunch recently completed this year’s TechCrunch 50 – a competition of sorts to pick out the best startups. The winner: Yammer. Yammer is like Twitter for corporate networks. I remember Microsoft Messenger having an option of this nature on its Mac version. Apart from Hotmail, one could connect to the corporate LAN (if there were other Mac Messenger users on the office network). I used to wonder if that’s the next big idea in social…
By now you must have seen the familiar red & white hoardings of The Economist in India. It’s tagline ‘Interpret the World’ captures the inherent duality across life, politics and business. There is much more to an issue than what is immediately apparent, is the idea. They have now followed this up with a TVC using ‘print in motion’ – a more sophisticated technique than our old static slides as TV ads. Rest of the…
Maybe as a counter to the new Microsoft ‘I am a PC’ ads, Apple has upped the visibility of its online work. In another edition of ‘going beyond the web banner’. The first ad directly pitted Leopard against Vista. This one takes a cue from the growing public opinion in the US that people are switching to Mac in large numbers. You can see the earlier banner ads here.
The second phase of the Microsoft Windows campaign is out. This one is taking Apple head on. Almost like, ‘You dare to make fun of me, Mac? I have got a billion smart & everyday people proud to say that they are a PC’. You can watch all the 3 commercials here. A competent set of ads alright – like all testimonial ads it uses contrast of some kind. In some it could be the…
AIG Financial Products Corp, a subsidiary of AIG has sent out mailers in the US recently. On the cover is the question, ‘When disaster strikes will you have the protection you need?’. Talk about timing. Forget protection, the company wouldn’t have been around if not for the US Government. AIG has been running a set of commercials in the US since 2007, with the tag line ‘The strength to be there’. These ads were running…
News is rolling in that Microsoft plans to drop Seinfeld from their advertising- after a long run of er…two weeks. It is being played out as something that’s already planned -the Shoe Store spot and New Family were meant to be ice breakers, they say. What gives? Is a 2 week burst enough to set a platform for achieving the larger objective – make PC ‘cool’? I think Microsoft is giving up too soon. The…