Koo is a micro-blogging platform launched in March 2020 for the Indian market. A plus point in comparison to Twitter is that the app allows for posts in several Indian languages (aside from English). While social media platforms have facilitated posts in major Indian languages, Koo plans to allow posts in regional languages such as Konkani and Manipuri. Its founders are serial entrepreneurs who previously built businesses such as TaxiForSure (a cab hailing service acquired…
Do brands and enterprises need tag lines? As with most questions pertaining to marketing & advertising, the precise answer would be ‘it depends’. The death of the tag line has been written about in trade portals for years now. The thinking behind this approach could be the need for ‘flexible branding’ – in which they present different identities to express their range or a targeted brand strategy, in which they target specific brand messages to…
1. Gillette: Assisted Shaving Razor It is so refreshing to see a long format, web film which is anchored on the product. We have all seen many such initiatives where one is left wondering about the tenuous link of the brand to the theme advertised. This film, launched to introduce TREO, the ‘first-ever razor designed solelyfor assisted shaving’. The film is a touching story of a son taking care of of his elderly father and…
‘Digital media usage time is exploding right now, and it’s predominantly being driven by mobile apps’ says the 2015 Mobile App Report from Comscore. The report goes on to say ‘mobile now represents almost 2 out of 3 digital media minutes, and mobile apps alone now constitute a majority’. Apps dominate the mobile web in time spent – mobile app users spend 18x more time on apps than mobile web visitors. Mobile apps have become…
The list of trending hashtags on Twitter is meant to be reflect what the Twitterati (or the world at large) is talking about. Very often events which create a buzz in real life are reflected on Twitter too: live sports or entertainment events, natural disasters, big political events come to mind. So when we see trends of such on Twitter it seems natural, real and a true reflection of what is occupying the hearts &…
Facebook Canvas is being rolled out this month and its creative examples got me thinking about the lack of a standard, winning creative unit in mobile advertising. Every advertising medium has a unique characteristic. TV is an audio-visual experience, a billboard is a fleeting medium, radio is great as an in-the- background audio medium…and so on. Most of these platforms have been around for decades and were extensions of of a previously existing medium or…
There is a lot of talk recently about the need to drop the word ‘digital’ in marketing & advertising. The reason: it sets up an artificial separation – as if there is ‘regular marketing’ and ‘digital marketing’ when There is merit in that argument and in my view, it has nothing to do with the digital age. Marketing has ALWAYS been about reaching out to a brand’s most relevant audience in a profitable way using…
Many brands have jumped into the mobile app brand wagon only to face app discovery issues, low download counts and lack of repeat usage. Should brands or services invest in a bespoke mobile app? As I mentioned in an earlier article, a brand needs to evaluate whether it can add value in one of the key ‘mobile moments’: bored now, urgent now and repetitive now. However, not all consumer brands need a mobile app. When…
Consider the facts: 78% of CMOs think custom content is the future of marketing; 82 percent of B2C marketers and 95 percent of B2B enterprise marketers use content marketing. The numbers aren’t surprising given the content explosion we see around us. The C word has entered common parlance of all marketers and agencies. B2B marketers, especially have taken to content marketing in some form. The belief (rightly so) seems to be that marketing to their…
I was watching a segment of a TV show on marketing & advertising and heard a global leader of a well-known digital specialist agency say something like ‘…because the consumers is in charge’ (implying brands aren’t). Sigh. Catch-all phrases such as this and the other all-time favourite ‘brands having conversations with consumers have not gone out of fashion six years on? I feel advertising & ‘digital’ industry insiders are doing great disservice to themselves by continuing…