Mahindra’s follow-up to the earlier 2-page spread announcing ‘Rise’ is today’s 10 full page print advertisements in The Times of India. Perhaps nothing explains the extent of Mahindra’s take-over of today’s Times of India like the view on the ePaper, where the ads are shown as a separate section (see the right side menu in the screenshot – click to enlarge – below).

Here are some questions – I’m just thinking aloud, incidentally.

1. What purpose do these ads serve? Visibility? Awareness? Possibly? But why do they also trigger intensely negative sentiments – in me and for many others, at least on Twitter? Sample some comments.

That last one, in particular, is interesting. ‘Very good feedback’ from which kind of ‘all’, I wonder. Is it easy to listen to only positive feedback from pro-Mahindra folks and completely ignore other opinions, even in the age of ambient opinions all over the net?

3. Consider seeing 10 new Mahindra billboards on your route to office, on the road? Would that annoy you? It won’t, at least for me. Reason? I don’t expect anything besides an advertisement in a billboard. But we/I expect news (primarily) and views (depending on which party’s payroll the publication is in) in a newspaper. Ads are *usually* supposed to be incidental. Supposed to be…but I guess we’re looking at a different model with Mahindra and other brands who believe in multiple roadblocks.

4. Mahindra’s earlier 2-page spread to announce ‘Rise’ had an interesting footnote, in the middle of the page. It said, ‘Join the conversation at mahindra.com/empower‘. It should have ideally read, ‘Read more about how Mahindra does in X, Y and Z and show your appreciation for our efforts on social networks’. But, possibly in the interest of brevity, all that was condensed into one word – ‘conversation’. And to think that page has a few videos…about Mahindra, a few articles…about Mahindra and a few random words that we are supposed to vote for based on what we think the word ’empowerment’ means. I’d tend to question all this with a ‘Why should I even care?’, but that’s just me, I guess. There may be others who may jump into the exciting opportunity to vote for words that mean ’empowerment’ to them.

5. Intrusion advertising/marketing is definitely not dying. The Mahindra ads today demonstrate that beautifully. Just that they perhaps ignore the stupendous rise (yes, Rise) of The Opinion Economy. No, the voices in The Opinion Economy are not as loud as Intrusion marketing/Attention economy, but the people who participate in the former do form a good enough chunk of people who shell out money to consume products and services. Perhaps that connect needs to be considered before marketers intrude, if I may add, rudely.

Note to the pro-Mahindra trolls: I’m not anti-Mahindra, just anti-intrusion in a place that is meant for something else. And read this too, where I seem to be praising Mahindra. I’m also actively deciding between  Mahindra Xylo (my choice) and a Toyota Innova (wife’s choice).

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