Then as we all know, Amitabh became invisible in an ad, didn’t help. Then he distributed Cadburys celebrations to his old friend and then the Miss Palampur fiasco. I get shivers when I even recount those ads. Drinking a beer would have been a better option. ‘Pappu paas ho gaya’ was the only ad that was true to Cadburys heart, it stood for simple and genuine moments. And add to the fact that Pappu was a stronger character than Amitabh in the ad.

‘Pehlee Taareek’ doesn’t even deserve any mention. It was as if an FMCG brand manager took the call to reposition Cadburys to a Purchase cycle activity. CADBURYS INTO A PURCHASE CYCLE PRODUCT! Holy god! I was turned into an atheist for a brief while after that.

 Hop, Skip, Jump to 2010. Our side partitioned, checked shirt college guy walks into a bus stand to find a wide eyed teen in pink munching her chocolate, which mysteriously returns back when she offers it to him, and offers to drop her home. Nice music, simple details and we thought probably Cadburys was finally thinking ‘Simple’. They stretched it a little bit with the ‘Shub Aarambh Jeans’ campaign. But still it wasn’t on your face. Diwali saw little chocolate dipped cars and refrigerators going around in the Cadbury commercial pleading you to buy Rs 10 cadbury before you brought your 6 lakh car. FINE. Positioning of ‘For a better start for the auspicious occasion’ is better than their previous positioning or lets say de-positioning attempts. But Honestly, and I mean with utmost Cadbury honesty, ‘Auspicious’ for me is a slightly complex situation to associate with a Simple purple wrapped smile inducing cocoa.

Then I saw this. And I cant believe that they are falling into the same trap as they did with Amitabh Bachchan.

-       Cadbury was about ‘simple genuine happy moments’ – trying to get the wrapper off with mehendi in hands, dancing in the field and making a joke out of yourself, Tapping your briefcase and smiling at the skies, while the cobbler was polishing your shoes. It was about ‘ Khamakaa muskuraaon, khamakaa gungunaoon, khamakaa chalta jaaon’ moments.

-       Never about crying faces, it was all about anxious and happy faces. It was the kid in every elder smiling in a Cadbury commercial. It was never about ‘ Complex, fake, overdramatized moments’.

-       And most bloody chocolatey importantly, Cadbury is not collective happiness. Never! Cadbury is small individual moments of happiness. That is where the entire exotic beauty of the brand lies.

SHUBH AARAMBH but DUKHATH ANTH. R.I.P. Did i say shubh anth in the title? No chance.

Levis dENiZEN

My regular mall stroll and I all of a sudden found the levis signature showroom replaced by denizen. Soon I realized that atleast in Bangalore where they are test marketing Denizen, they had replaced signature stores with Denizen. What a relief. Finally the brand unmurders itself.

One of the most iconic brands of all times, levis had done something very successfully that most brands would like to emulate. They brought out the same sense of joy that they used to bring when my father shopped for his jeans.  A lot of ‘yester year’ brands have just been that – Fathers Era Brands. They find it difficult to wriggle out to the new generation and gain the same sort of perception.

Levis had been as aspirational for me and you, as to our dads. The red tag that you proudly carried along was aspirational. Everyone wanted a jean. And jeans was only levis. As water is only bisleri.

Levis Strauss Signature - Deepika Padukone

However in my post, david and goliath, I had mentioned that global corporations need to take a different stratagem for India as it is not a monolithic market, the forces affecting consumer decision is not the same as others. Levis unfortunately fell into the ‘Middle Class India’ trap and ended up over extending their positioning base with Levis Strauss Signature, that catered to the lower end consumers who aspired for a Levis but could not afford one. And then there were the Fakes. Anything with two legs could get a levis tag on their jeans. Soon you saw the red Levis ® tag behind every ass, lovely or not.

Levis contributed to its share of woes by diluting its image with Levis Strauss Signature.

Levis was slowly self-poisoning itself by launching Signature. Signature served two purposes, I could own an original levis and get it cheap too. Soon the denim youth, after buying a couple of pair of Levis signature, got it subconsciously registered that a levis jeans can be bought cheap and commands a price of not more than, say, Rs 1000. Cost for the Indian youth is a big consideration as most of them are dependent on their family for pocket money and the decision to buy a jeans is an outcome of countless hours of inkling and maneuver with the head of the family. Now someone who did not think anything before buying a Rs 1500 jeans, now had another stimuli in his mind. A levis, although signature, at Rs 1000. This eroded the brand premium somewhere. and as we all know it is the premium that you add to a commodity that makes it a brand. Levis was slowly becoming a commodity from a Brand.

Add to all this that most of the youth bought their pair of jeans when there was a heavy discount season during diwali or new years or so and would get the same Levis at Rs 500 and thereabouts. Then add to it, also the perpetration of Discount stores and family outlets that landed you a pair of jeans for Rs 800 and two for Rs 1000! All this diminished the perception that the great brand always commanded.

A classic case where monetarily you are gaining but qualitatively your perception is getting hammered and nailed. In short, Marketing Myopia.

However, they realized the mistake soon enough. Soon you found out that Levis Jeans were becoming more expensive. This was a deliberate attempt to break away from the Rs 1000-Rs 1500 price band image that levis had been garnering. The price rise was maintained even when the economy was going through a recession.

Levis Curve ID

Launching a new brand denizen,priced between Rs 799-1399, is a commendable effort to undo what signature did for Levis. Whatever happens to denizen the erosion of brand value of Levis would be considerably lesser. Meanwhile Levis should continue to create a niche for itself and make it aspirational again.

Levis launched its curve id jeans earlier last month and has been successful in an attempt to create another niche for which people would have to pay a premium.

It is absolutely fantastic to see how, eventhough, with a few mistakes here and there, the brand remains to be edgy and still be classic at the same time.

Kindly Note that as an entity Signature, after it was spun off as stand alone stores,  were a profitable venture and contributed almost close to 30% of its revenues.  However, a Signature by Levis would have been much better than Levis Strauss Signature. Denizen is on the right tracks as far as branding goes.

Two cavemen are trying to make fire and one of them tries very hard to rub the rocks hard and create a spark but nothing happens. The other caveman eats some chips and spits fire and lo! Fire there is! Voice over comes and Bingo Red Chilli Bijli.

Micromax was another one during this IPL season with an annoying Akshay Kumar laugh being played all over the ad.

We all have seen a lot of ads that are just insanely stupid right? Some ads would have been thought off of being ‘creative’ if that is the word, by the agency and come out as serious pieces of badvertising. But some are simply too bad to be passed especially by pioneer agencies like the Ogilvy and mathers . O&M that handles the creative for ITC Bingo is one of them. They can not be mistakedly creating bad or rather odd pieces of advertising everytime. It seems too bad to be true. There clearly seems to be a strategy behind that.

In the chips category recently there was an ad by parle’s chips. The name I do not remember of which. (Rhyming J) I think it was smart chips. Well that ad is hardly emoting (an ad that just does not bring forth an emotional response in you), it lies in what I call the point of indifference of advertising. Whereas, bingo ads are downright stupid but they bring ‘what?’ emotion because of which it gets registered in your mind. For a category like chips, I wonder how much of a difference a smart creative ad would have bought. These are not ‘skin’ products. You do not wear them i.e. you do not really care about showing it off. It hardly matters if someone sees you eating a bingo or lays. In the end bingo is just as much of chips as lays is. There is no substantial  perceivable point of difference in the product. Hence, the recall factor has to be more. BANG ON. The ads seem to be doing that.

Similarly, my favorite, J.K Cement ad had everything that made it a 50’s ad plus the color. It was stupid. But it somehow amusingly registered. In cement again, the market is more price differentiated than on quality or perceptions. The decision maker is often your contractor and not you. You have the same ‘ strongest and most durable’ cement proposition with happy families or soiled workers surrounding the frame, in almost all the ads. J.K cement did away with all that and instead of having unattractive family or sweaty workers, they just had a girl in a Baywatch outfit! There was nothing to be remembered in the ad except the fact that it was the most outrageously low I.Q advertisement you saw and that it was of J.K Cement. And voila!  There you remember.. the brand name!

So next time before you say that an ad is stupid, just put yourself in Atticus Finch’s mind; always think from the other point of view. Know where the shoe pinches by wearing it.

P.S: By the way, read it from a FB friend’s friend that the logic behind J.K Cement ad it seems was that – from water comes sand and from sand comes cement. And the girl was cement ‘personified’ Ismein kuch baat hai, ismein vishwaas hai J

Tanishq’s targeting was bang on – a crossover family. Forward thinking but also based on beliefs and culture. Here, Parents are seemingly okay about relationships. The woman has the right to take her decisions (the mother running towards the Tanishq store without being apologetic or being condescended upon. The young lady, free to reject marriage proposals, as well as decide later that she wanted to know more about the guy.) On the same time, there was also a stress on importance of marriage and the following of an arranged marriage culture.

Even the driving was done by the lady and not by her imaginary brother or the father himself, pointing towards the notion that she was a woman who could carry on the responsibilities and the family as well as any male counterpart. There was a sense of conspicuousness about the theme of a neo-woman whose family guide them for their personal decisions but give them her own space to decide.

Its positioning was something like ‘Jewellery that makes you want to get married’. That probably comes from an insight that a lot of indian parents imagine their daughters marriage whenever she shops for gold or diamonds. It narrows down the focus of the brand even more to bridal jewellery than simply any other jewellery.

The ad took you into a conversation; made you wonder what would happen and had a decent bit of charm thrown around and all this done at a disalarmingly simple look and feel.

Something more important that I saw was that the ads exposure was not in IPL. It was more on Zoom, ZEE and 9XM. That makes sense, simply because there are some brands that are giving in a lot of exposure in IPL but are more women targeted brands. For eg: Clinic all clear. Yeah, women watch IPL but more or less it is passive and a conservative guess would be that around 80% of viewers would be male.

And finally, the girl was pretty pretty too. (My beat just skipped.. funny..skip.beat.skip.beat)

(To get back my beat to normal) What was wrong with previous commercials?

Think about the Asmi’s and the Nakshatra’s and the Gitanjali’s and the Ganjam’s. Don’t even remember in which commercial Aishwarya Rai or Katrina Kaif starred. And one of them starred Bipasha too, guess it was Gitanjali. Apart from having highly photoshoped images, the video commercials looked highly complicated with dresses flowing a mile and the celebrities draped with red all over to give a bridal touch. Dramatic music also in some. It was all about looking as stunning as the star on screen and never about ‘YOU’ or how ‘YOU LOOKED’. I don’t remember all the ads currently (and my awfully slow net connection fails my attempt to youtube them) but most of them never went into the persona of the woman, this ad did.

P.S: Don’t hate me for the level of details I went into

So, what should have Vodafone done?

There are two things that I thought they should have done.

1. Bring back the pug

Reason

Pug was an equally loved and adored concept

Refreshing change from the egg head characters, would have taken out the familiarity and sense of repetitiveness that we have become accustomed to with zoozoos

Would have built up an anticipative atmosphere for zoozoos to return in next years IPL

Fresher and more real looking ideas could have been developed around the pug rather than the zoozoo

Pug themes are more easily understood than the zoozoo ones

2. A set of zoozoo commercials in a story format

As in, say they have 25 different commercials for IPL3. Create all the commercials in such a way that they are connected to the previous ones. Weave an interesting story in such a way that after every commercial one of their VAS is also revealed through the story. Yeah I know might be said easier than done but that is something worth trying out.

Reasons

The spinoff from this strategy could be involving users to make their own storylines and submit them.

Guess what happens to the zoozoo kind of contests, Which is your favorite zoozoo themes

This concept could have lifted the zoozoo closer to the audience by building specific characters like the moma zoozoo, the kid zoozoo, teen zoozoo. It just gives more depth to the entire strategy. This could even be extended to the merchandising too.

Like last year, ads could have first been shown in Facebook and this could have led to building up of a following that would have been more interactive

P.S: On hindsight, everyone is a genius.

There was an interesting innovation visible in this years IPL, the ten second main screen ads that play in between the overs, while you are glued to the game and not channel surfing. It has been the most remarkable contribution to advertising in cricket by this years IPL. A clever innovation to break clutter – create your own space. People just dont have the option of switching the channels because its just ten seconds and is in between a match. Karbon, Micromax and Munch have used the service. I should say that Micromax and Karbon have more than had a remarkable run in creating awareness albeit at a high price but no kind of BTL activities would have lent these brands an air of being accepted as they are slowly getting.

One smart thing that Micromax did was it connected itself with something known all the time while advertising. This created a sense of ease and familiarity among the viewers and hence had a lesser entry barrier into their minds. For eg: the positioning as the FaceBook mobile. People know what FaceBook is all about and hence were subconsciously accepting the brand entry into the mind because it could cling on to a part of augmented memory of the brain i.e. to the FB link. Similarly, now they have connected it through Akshay Kumar. Although I am not a big fan of celebrity marketing but till now it seems to work for Micromax.

Another boon for the advertisers of the IPL came the partnership of youtube and IPL. It gave them extra eyeballs and somewhere along the line people are still comfortable with the same kind of advertising on youtube as on tv and do not switch in between the ads. Probably because of its novelty in the Indian markets. The level of resistance has not built up.

Even if they do they would go to a facebook page or check mails and the audio of the commercial still plays behind. Something that advertisers would be more than happy to contend with. Rather than cancelling out the ad totally by surfing channels here atleast the audience is subject to some kind of exposure.

I even liked a couple of Axe commercials,one of my favorite brands, in today’s match. Not because they were great and are cannes material, far from it, but the fact that it exploited what Axe stands for in ten seconds and got the message right across and amused the viewer a little bit. They were badly directed but the idea went straight through and the fact that they connected it to cricket further lowered the barrier to resist the commercial. The Axe effect!

Apple

Apple nurtures its brands. Let it be the mac, the ibook, ipod or the iphone. They let it grow on its own and do not forcefully tell you that it is the Apple iphone or the Apple ipod, its just simply put as ipod by Apple in their communication. There is something  that it does beautifully that many brands fail to do. It manages to glide graciously into their category extension without having to compromise on their image. Apple was only computers before 2000 but last quarter ending december 26, 2009, Apple sold 3.36 million Macintosh computers, representing a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 100 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 21 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.Source: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/01/25results.html

For ex: Al Ries in his biblical book on marketing ‘The 22 immutable laws of Marketing’ tells that a brand that loses its single mindedness and Focus is a brand that is going to be doomed. The examples are of Motorola that tried to enter computers, semi conductors after being the pioneer in Mobile telephones, the leader of which is Nokia that left its other businesses to enter and focus on only telephones.

Apple advertises its product independent of the Apple brand which just sneaks into the last frame of their ads with their company logo. Let it be the macs, the ipods, the iphones or the recent ipads. However they derive their equity form the strong brand that Apple has created. They always seem to come with a magical mixture of a good product and great marketing.  The ‘i’ has become a brand in itself but still does not disturb the equilibrium created by Apple. Nowhere do the image of Apple and ipod clash. They just weave into each other. Even within the ipod there are different ‘perceived’ brands. There is the nano, the shuffle, the touch and the classic. All these vertical extensions fail to confirm that extensions make a brand weaker. It does not if there is logic between the extensions. None gets confused between the promise of any of them. Branding does play an important part in any company or a products success but somewhere along the line its impossible to sell unless you have that perceived differentiation. Apples products are extremely well differentiated. The shuffle is only has 2 and 4 GB, whereas the nano has 8 and 16 GB, the touch is has 8, 32 and 64 GB and the classic is has 160 GB and even the price points never merge. The offering merges only at the 8 GB offering that Nano and Touch provide but they too are highly differentiated from each other.

People don’t think like marketers or say the ‘arm chair critics’. For them Apple is a company that makes beautiful devices let it be computers or music devices.

Have you seen the ads that come on the sides while watching a match. The match screen becomes smaller and moves a little towards upper right corner to make space for those banner ads that occupy the space on the left and down part of the screen A lot of brands seem to be taking a liking to them but I seriously doubt their efficacy. They are not done well at all.

There might be some reasons why advertisers are preferring this form of advertising

-          Flexibility in the message, one can have two different ads for two different banners and can easily mix and match

-          Cheaper to produce

-          Probably lesser cost to advertise

-          Catch the audience when they are not surfing between channels

-          Create a continuous flow from off the field advertising to live telecast point

And I must agree they are pretty logical reasons to advertise. However, there seems to something amiss in a big way. after a half an hour gap, I couldn’t remember any of the ads that came, barring one. Most of them had very average workmanship that allowed them to be less legible. My biggest concern still is that until and unless you use this technique (the side banner advertising) during stats presentation or during a field change, people are not going to notice it. I am not even sure if they do notice during those times but I am assuming that there is more reason to notice them when the ball is not in action. It is almost pointless to advertise when people are literally in their T.V screens. The centre of attention is the 22 yard pitch and the batsman and the bowler opposite. Typically, when the screen shifts to upper right corner to make way for the ads, The movement of the eye, involuntarily, is also in a similar manner and you tend to miss almost three fourths of the communication. I just found the WildStone side banner impactful simple because it was on a black background with big words that were contrasting and said ‘Don’t smell like a woman, smell like a man’. Apart from that, rest all were more or less insignificant and a waste of marketing spend.

So here are some suggestions if you want to take those spots:

-          Make it contrasting, don’t choose colors that blend in easily with one another

-          Do not have too many words

-          Keep your brand name at the bottom right corner, it is easier for the flow of the eye

-          Let the pictures be on the left and the words below towards the right (more or less what Ogilvy suggested for print ads)

-          Have it written in either English (preferred) or Hindi, don’t have an intercourse of hindi and English or a Hindi word written in English. Defeats the purpose.