Wieden+Kennedy, London have done it again for Honda. The agency is known for some great work for the brand in the past, across media. According to the agency blog: we want to bring to life Honda’s other side, the side born from a racing heritage and thirst for innovation. The strategy was to showcase Civic Type R, the ‘wild child alter-ego of the Civic hatchback’. We all know of Honda Civic to be a ‘regular’…
Imagine selling a TV script for a pension brand like this: ‘it is a montage of visuals where people from various walks of life sing aloud about their expectations from a retirement plan. And oh, it set to catchy music’. The magic is in the execution. As the production house, Nice Shirt Film explains: Only the brilliant Jesper Ericstam could make a pensions commercial this fun, weird and catchy. The many concerns of everyday Swedes…
Loved this new set of ads for Copic Markers highlighting their ‘Thick+Fine’ variant. Simple, focused idea rooted in the product and an execution which brings a smile. Agency: FCB Will we ever see good print ads in Indian mainstream advertising again? Sigh.
I liked the central idea and the hashtag campaign of #BendTheRules for HP x360 as it is anchored on the product. Personally I thought the ‘stories’ of people who have achieved something extraordinary by ‘bending the rules’ was a tad disconnected as the product had nothing to do with those stories. Of course the benefit to the brand is through association but as a relatively new product this particular model had no role to play…
As consumers, are we rational or emotional? Many marketers believe that appealing to the rational mind is the best bet to get consumers to make a buying decision – be it brand switch or entry into a category. We can see it across categories – be it FMCG or retail. A price off or a freebie along with a soap is believed to deliver results and often does. Retail brands hope to entice foot-falls through…
After witnessing the recent marketing blitz by Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon and Myntra,I was reminded of a rather well known saying in retailing, “If people went to stores only when they needed to buy and bought only what they needed, the economy would collapse.” While this was originally coined for brick & mortar retail, it has now manifested itself for E-commerce in India. The unprecedented revenues that the players in this marketing jamboree are claiming and…
The author of this post is Anand Narasimha – Professor-Marketing & Strategy, at IFIM Business School, Bangalore. With three decades of global experience spanning Marketing, Advertising, Consulting and Academics, his mission is to ‘unbox’ management education. Recently, while I was designing a course on ‘Strategic Management’ for our Executive Program in Business Analytics, there were two things I decided I will not do: use PowerPoint and throw jargon. Suddenly, a line of thought triggered. While…
North Face is a an apparel, footwear and gear brand that ‘inspires athletes to never stop exploring’. In Seoul, the brand created a stunt in a pop-up store and the video (currently at 6.5mn views) has gone viral. Agency: Innored Needless to say, it is a fantastic idea – with the product at the centre and an execution which reinforces the brand proposition of ‘never stop exploring’. While many brands attempt such activations and promotions…
Loved the new ad for Haig Club whiskey. It has all the hallmarks of a premium lifestyle brand but none of the bland montage advertising. Like many lifestyle ads, this too is set to a sound track (Left Hand Free’ from Mercury Music Prize winners Alt-J. Left Hand Free) but the similarity ends there. This one is a riveting ad with a hint of mystique. In fact, I was reminded of many high-end luxury brands’…
Sometimes I wish Twitter had patented hashtags and charged brands for using them. Hashtags are everywhere – in Breaking News blurbs on TV channels, print ads and of course, the dreaded Twitter contests. I can understand media houses trying to hashtag everything – they have content which can get updated by the minute and hashtags help to highlight a featured story. TimeNow of course has taken it to a comical levels inventing hashtags to push…