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…
They say too much of anything is bad. And when kids watch too much TV or teens hang out all day in the online world, some marketers find an opportunity in urging them not to be couch potatoes and computer slaves . You must have read about Nickelodeon’s new initiative in India urging kids to go out and play. It is meant to encourage an active lifestyle and outdoor play. The channel, Nick will kick…
Here is a great promo idea from Walkers, UK’s No.1 crisps brand. The idea: consumers are invited to invent and choose the new flavour for Walkers. The carrot: £50,000 first prize plus 1% of future sales of their flavour! What blew me was the incentive to get a share of the ‘potential sales’ of the brand. And they have made the process simple: send in the name of the flavour and a picture of what…
A lot of the advertising & communication industry bigwigs worldwide agree that attracting and managing talent is the single biggest challenge facing us. But beyond a lot of whining, nothing much seems to be done about in a concerted manner by the industry (or so I think). In this context, comes this heartening piece of news. Porter Novelli, a leading public relations agency in the US, has created an ‘agency within an agency’, staffed by…
Stock image providers are the lifeline of creative folks. The competition among them is quite intense – I guess there are 2 or 3 top names who are used as a routine and everyone else gets into the list on a need basis. Photolibrary launched a campaign this July inviting creative folks to ‘create the world’s biggest ad’. They have now launched a viral which encourages creatives to construct a small piece of an ever-expanding…
Ads with a huge production budget usually create a jaw dropping effect. They could make you smile (Carlton’s ‘It’s a big ad’) or dazzle you with the production values (many of the Guinness as or the Super Bowl ads). They evoke some reaction. There is an ad that’s on the Indian TV screens whose production and media budget must be equal to the GDP of a small country. Yet, it left me cold. Any guesses…
Remember Sanjaya Malakar? American Idol made him a star though he was mocked about his talent (or lack of it). Simon Cowell even threatened to quit if Sanjaya won the competition. But he managed to move 13-year olds to tears on television and simply smiled through all the barbs. You couldn’t help wonder at his luck and the fact he was literally propelled into stardom from nowhere. Nationwide Insurance, which sees South Asians an an…
The other day, when stuck at a traffic signal, my daughter shouted out: ‘Mummy, Tata Sky!’. Sure enough there was the Aamir Khan-Tata Sky hoarding close by. Given that my daughter will turn 3 this November, I could not help but wonder (and be scared) at the power of visual imagery. I swear that I have not specifically taught my daughter anything to do with Tata Sky advertising. She has of course gaped at the…
My daily browsing routine includes surfing through creative showcase blogs – those that display creative work from across the world. Among the sea of creatives on view there are some that just simply stand out. And make you want to share the work. Here is one such. Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, the largest-selling newspaper in Denmark (it ran the Mohammed cartoons in 2005), is promoting debate over public issues with a print campaign that provokes the reader.…