I thought it would be a good idea to chat up with some of India’s brightest Creative Stars. So, starting this week, here’s ‘Meet the Creative Gurus’, which will hopefully turn out to be a regular column. This week, meet Rahul Jauhari, National Creative Director of Pickle Advertising. Rahul started off with McCann Erickson in 1996 and then moved to Rediffusion DY&R where had a long stint. He moved up the ranks to become Executive…
Let’s face it. While the FM Radio boom in India is a good thing, the side effects are the atrocious radio spots we have to suffer. Most of them seem to follow a template – a hammed conversation between two people – a format where any product imaginable can be introduced. The other favourite is of course the Bollywood spoof, more specifically a Gabbar spoof. Dharmendra, Rajini, Amithabh, Sanjay Dutt, Sunny Deol are the other…
Where Five Print Magazines Are Finding Revenue http://tr.im/x057 # Upcoming Apple tablet is No. 1 priority of Steve Jobs http://tr.im/x3y8 # CBS-Pepsi Max put video in print ads: the beginning of convergence? http://tinyurl.com/m2qclo # WPP profits slump 47 per cent http://tr.im/x8Ty # The 10 best silly events in Britain http://tr.im/x8TP # 25 logos with hidden messages http://tr.im/x8TU # Interpol's red corner notice, travel ban on Hafiz, Lakhvi. What good is it? Are they planning a…
Much hue and cry over an allegedly racist (hue, racist link- not intended) move to edit out an African-American and replace him with a white dude for their Polish website. Microsoft has since apologized for the incident. The net being what it is, much fun is being had at Microsoft’s expense. I am extremely offended. And I have some serious questions to ask. No, not about the racist angle but something more practical. Firstly, who…
Read an interesting article from Sampad Swain about Local Search yesterday. Funnily enough, I had to go online last evening to book movie tickets. The preamble is that my wife wanted to book movie tickets and her first instinct was to call the theatre. Since was late in the night she decided to go online and her first port of call was, you-guessed-it, Google. She was using my Mac and I couldn’t help peering over…
The other day, there was a discussion on NewsX channel, on how India’s diplomacy, specially in our neighbouring countries leaves a lot to be desired. It was a typical talking-heads variety with the news anchors asking a question, providing the answer and also cutting short the response of the guests. The guests included a former diplomat, a rep from a Chinese news agency and the security expert, B Raman (who, by the way always seems…
Everyone I have checked with seems to like the new ad for Airtel Digital TV. The jingle, in particular seems to be popular. Every which way you see it, you know it’s huge stretch – a throwback to Manmohan Desai films with the butterfly locket, a tenuous connection to picture quality…yet, there is something likeable and cho chweet about the ad. Agency: JWT, Delhi Not everyone likes it though. As far as the pre-launch hype…
Much excited about the launch of Snow Leopard on Aug 28th, I attempted a pre-order from Amazon, only to be told that they can’t ship it to India. The folks at Apple India customer care and the Reliance iStore in Bangalore didn’t have a clue about the launch date in India. ‘Sometime in September’ is all they are willing to commit. The upgrade price of $29 (approx Rs.1400) would be magically close to $61 (Rs.3000)…
CBS is planning to promote it’s fall season programmes in some copies of the Entertainment Weekly, by placing a video player in the magazine. Pepsi Max is sharing the cost of this initiative, which will include an ad for the fizzy drink along with 40-minutes of clips from CBS’ shows. It is obviously not going to be cheap. We may have not reached the levels of commercials in Minority Report yet (thankfully), but this Video…
There was a significant development for the television industry recently: Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd’s subscription revenue overtook its revenue from advertising. For the April- June Quarter, Zee’s subscription revenues accounted for 51% of their total revenues. This is a great testimony to Zee’s persistence of vision and great for the whole industry. High time that a semblance of order comes to cable subscription in India, hitherto dominated by the faceless neighbourhood cable operator. The higher…