In most Indian cities and small towns, billboards are part of the urban landscape. Over time, they have proliferated to become an eyesore. Several initiatives have been mounted to control & regulate the myriad hoardings in city centres. Cities like Chennai have banned hoardings outright. In this milieu, this hoarding for Volkswagen Beetle, turns this apparent disadvantage into an advantage. Agency: DDB Mudra. Image source: afaqs Does it add to the eyesore or is it…
SpaceNK is a chain of outlets whose avowed philosophy is: to source and offer a carefully edited selection of high quality, original and effective beauty products from innovators and specialists around the world. The packaging for one of their brands, LifeNK is doing the rounds of design & packaging blogs. It’s not hard to see why. Via: Lovely Packaging I loved the little squiggles of the bear cueing the individual product benefits. I loved the…
So another brand is dead. WorldSpace India is winding up services from Dec 31 this year. Around 300 of it’s employees in Bangalore have been given the pink slip. The 450,000 subscribers have been left in the lurch too – with many of them (including yours truly) having paid for a year in advance. And having to wonder what to do with the hardware which is rendered useless suddenly. A lot of the brand’s woes…
Parodies are very common in movies: either trashing a particular genre (like in Scary Movie or Airplane!) or paying tribute to something that is timeless – ‘I’ll be back’ dialogue or scenes from The Godfather. In advertising too, parodies are common. Popular iconic brand campaigns – Absolut, MasterCard’s Priceless series, Apple’s Get a Mac and Benetton ads have been spoofed. But most of them have been done by end consumers – fans, detractors, activists and…
Campaigns which don’t aim to sell the product but hope to creative a positive imagery are quite limited in the telecom category. What sticks in the mind are campaigns urging you to talk more (even walk more) and increase usage occasions – call your mum, stay connected with your friends online and such like. The public service advertising that comes from them is usually to do with mobile etiquette – don’t use a phone in…
The proliferation of social media and services that call for your ‘conversation’ has it’s downsides. There are so many of them demanding attention, it is impossible to use or remember more than a handful. There are times when I sign up for some new service only to be told that I have already registered with them a year ago! One such was Posterous, which I have begun to like of late. The reason: it combines…
An article of mine was published in the Financial Express today. Here is the link to the article. And a newspaper view of the same from the epaper edition. A couple of thoughts on the article and the topic: The article wasn’t meant to be a rant of ‘how bad things are’. I don’t know if readers (if any) got that impression. It started off as a review of the digital scenario in India and…
I was quite intrigued to see the new ads for eBay India on TV. They stood out from the clutter and actually made me stop my magazine reading-web surfing-channel surfing-routine. Yes, the format is different and helps break clutter. But is ‘let’s do a spoof of the good old Doordarshan days’ an idea by itself? I think not. Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, India. The rest of the ads in the series are here. The trick…
I remember seeing something similar quite some time back. It must have made such a deep impression on my mind that despite the thousands of creatives I must have seen since then, I could recall it immediately. The ads for ARTS Channel, New Zealand make for great reading. Agency: DDB, New Zealand. Via: Ads of the World The opportunity presented in an Arts Channel – writing about the great artists & painters takes some literary skills…
Pepsi is going to pull out of the upcoming Super Bowl event, in Feb’10. Traditionally, the advertising on the event has been a talking point in itself – the general public and the marketing community keep a close watch on the ads. The ads made specially for the Super Bowl usually have a bizarre quality about them – the logic being that since it is a one-time airing the spot must be clutter-breaking, fun, entertaining…