Catch ‘em young. Says Aheibam Prahlad, an indulgent observer & Copy Grp Head, L&K delhi
My son doesn’t know how to read ABC. He can’t count up to 20. That is because he hasn’t started learning them. He attends a play group alright but all that they do there is eat, pray and be loved when they are not singing and playing in the ball pool or the slides.
The fact that he doesn’t know ABC doesn’t mean he can’t read! Flash a bar of chocolate in front of him and he’ll scream Cadbury. It’s not that he calls every chocolate by that name. He knows the difference when you tease him with a Nestle bar or an M&M’s pack. It was when he started asking for “Kellogg’s Cornflakes” when I realised that it’s wrong to presume that the entire half of your advertising money goes waste. Seriously speaking, we…
Read More
Quod me nutrit, me destruit: Content vs. Time in the digital age
Time is finite. Content infinite. The divaesque status of the virtual space is that the content keeps coming. Refreshing, Inspiring, Connecting, Shocking, Entertaining… The impact of content in this space is limitless. Ask any disaster management team and they will rave about the instant damage control that technology, specifically the internet & mobile telephony enables. A couple of years back an American student found his way out of an Egyptian jail when he tweeted a single word, ‘Arrested!’. The message helped him network with his contacts who helped him out. Great way to rouse a movement. I wonder what Mahatma Gandhi or Matin Luther King could have done with such possibilities.
The ‘tickle and I’ll sneeze’ effect of this world, makes us so wired that it can be overwhelming how much there is to absorb…
Read More
Citizen Activism in Social Cause Brands: Selfish or Altruistic?
This is really not so much about a brand taking up cudgels for a cause, but brands getting created for a common cause. Today, many such cause-led initiatives (brands) activated in cities often build up their momentum in the social media space. And as each cause gets a fan page, it needs the multiplication of fans to make itself a success.
Can we with few measurement tools evaluate the correlation between the number of fans and those that implement the cause they sign up for? Do these causes qualify to be run again and again? Does it matter how many fans are on the page as long as people take action?
With social cause initiatives, there is only so much that one can gather to understand their sweet spots.
Curiosity on another upcoming movement…
Read More
What’s the brouhaha on fairness creams for men? Is it just a gender bias?
There was some furor recently about a facebook application by Vaseline Fairness Cream for Men. The application enables users to ‘digitally whiten their profile pics’ and ‘remove dark spots’. Facebook users can make their skin tone a few shades lighter so that they can preview their fairer look. Is it a ‘noise creation’ gimmick or a real unrest? One can’t say. But if it’s the latter I find it extremely amusing.
Fairness Creams (Rs.1700 cr market & growing at 14%. Source: ITC Portal) from the Vicco Turmeric days, have been projecting the concept of light skin as extremely appetizing. I must laud Vicco, as they have insightfully presented the brand as a must, in the most relevant situation. The wedding. In the product evolution cycle another more scientifically presented brand, Fair & Lovely, has…
Read More
What if you could not see Baywatch, but just read about it!?!
Read about Baywatch!? Aaha! For scores of beach & beauty fans, it would surely be a serious let down. It needs a literate mind to read & absorb but just a blink of an eye to imprint a memorable image. I can remember many verses that eulogize pictures. The oldest among them being: A picture speaks a 1000 words. In a book by Leonard Shlain, titled ‘The Alphabet versus the Goddess’, the author explains the peace that reigned over most ancient cultures which reveled in visual imagery. It was also defined as the time when the feminine form was revered. Often associated with the right brain it was the centre of creativity, was holistic, followed the oral tradition and was intuitive. Then wars were fought when the ‘written word’ claimed superiority over the ‘image’.…
Read More
Men are back or are they?
Whether it’s a myth or reality the metrosexual male created an entirely new code of masculinity. And the burgeoning personal grooming market has been enjoying every minute of it. So taking note of the hoopla and with a portfolio analysis in tow, I summarized that a few of the brands have slotted themselves ‘lifestage wise’, focusing on the vulnerable spots in each.
Men! Vulnerable!! Personal grooming!!! What do they have in common? Easy to conclude. The most obvious weak spot was in the mating game right? And who better to plug that gap than Axe/Lynx. As always, it picked you up at the oncoming of puberty and kept the hopes riding high.
I’d like to call this code of masculinity the ‘Don Juan symptom’. It’s really about the dreamer who wants to seduce and…
Read More
The Curious Case of two brains: The Times of India vs. The Hindu
Across most of metro India all English newspaper audits would show a skew to the Times of India (TOI). However, Tamil Nadu led by Chennai stood defiantly, with its intelligent morning fix, The Hindu. That is till TOI decided to wear its Tamilian mundu and get friendly with the average Chennaite next door. The newspaper has managed to make some decent in-roads into the mass populi in the last 1 ½ years. Including with the intelligentsia.
What clicked?
Possibly many customers wanted a balance between the introspective & perceptive ‘The Hindu’ and the lighter & news focused ‘The Times of India’. The need for a section of readers could have been to wake up to news, that captured a spectrum of happenings and presented the changing face of India and their state. With no prejudices…
Read More
Subscribe
-
Sandhya Srinivasan
Charles Victor