Karthik S | beastoftraal.com

The Kurukshetra war between Saregama Carvaan and Shemaroo for Bhagavad Gita speakers

October 2, 2019 by Karthik S

Let me start with a disclosure, first. I have 2 Saregama Carvaan players – a Carvaan Mini Legends and a Carvaan Go. I got both as gifts and while I did listen to the former a bit, I haven’t even opened the…

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One country, one language: Hindi zindabad!

October 1, 2019 by Karthik S

Hero and Honda advertised last Sunday across multiple editions of The Times of India, for their 2-wheelers. Here are the Honda ads, across 5 regional editions (click on the image to see it in full size). And here are the Hero ads,…

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Takeaways from PRAXIS8 – the Twitter version

September 30, 2019 by Karthik S

In the 2018 PRAXIS in Hyderabad, I only conducted a masterclass workshop on building one’s personal brand using social media. This year, for the 2019 PRAXIS at the Grand Hyatt Goa, I was there for the entire event. The location does matter,…

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A Visible typo as a clever marketing gimmick

September 27, 2019 by Karthik S

I had written earlier about Amazon picking an intentionally self-deprecating hashtag to attract attention. It was literally a call-to-action to people to go, “Hey look, they made a blunder!”. See: . Here’s another brand using the same tactic really well! Visible, a…

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Shifting the perception of ‘personal branding’ away from vanity

September 26, 2019 by Karthik S

The phrase ‘personal branding’ still makes a lot of people queasy. I had a conversation with a tech. industry veteran yesterday and he said the first thing that comes to his mind when he hears ‘personal branding’ is ‘vanity’! He’s not alone,…

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What a wonderful vertical world!

September 25, 2019 by Karthik S

We probably didn’t consciously think about horizontal vs. vertical till desktop printing and Microsoft Word happened. But, after smartphones came into our lives, we’re starting to see a lot more things in ‘vertical’ orientation! There are vertical currencies now. Here are those,…

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Sequential storytelling in marketing communication

September 24, 2019 by Karthik S

I wrote about Twitter threads and one writer’s use of threads to tell a highly engaging story entirely on Twitter, . The crux is that a thread offers sequence and continuity to communication. It makes the audience want to know if there’s…

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