Karthik S | beastoftraal.com

Deep pockets

January 13, 2023 by Karthik S

Whenever I’m out and sit down somewhere, I consciously remove my wallet from the back pocket of my jeans (which is what I wear invariably, having completely given up wearing formal trousers since I quit full-time employment in 2018) and keep it…

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Subscription goes berserk

January 11, 2023 by Karthik S

Ryan Sullivan’s tweet, back in January 2020, when the world was a few months away from pandemic-infused chaos, has since been deleted. I had fish to it out using Internet Archive. Crux? Ryan had a printer he had paid for. The printer…

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Exploring the fundamentals of meme marketing

January 9, 2023 by Karthik S

Let me start by confessing that I did like CRED’s new ad campaign for Bidblast where they made use of The Times of India’s classified section. It’s not a new idea, and other brands like Zomato have used it before. But the…

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Competence is not a prerequisite for personal branding

January 6, 2023 by Karthik S

To be clear, competence is not THE only criterion for personal branding. To link competence as a prerequisite for personal branding is a failure of imagination. A recent article in the Financial Express, by ad industry veteran Ambi Parameswaran—also the author of…

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What next, after returns and refunds?

January 4, 2023 by Karthik S

We order fresh vegetables often via BigBasket’s BB Daily which allows us to place the order by night so that it can be delivered along with the milk in the morning. So, my wife and I decide on the food for the…

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The 10 best Indian ads of 2022

January 2, 2023 by Karthik S

Year 2 of making this list! Here’s the list from 2021, for context. Let me reiterate: this list is not based on ad effectiveness. Effectiveness metrics, in whatever way it is measured, would be available only with the people who made the…

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Vim throws the kitchen sink at men

December 12, 2022 by Karthik S

Hindustan Unilever recently stirred the kitchen sink with a dishwash product meant only for men (campaign by the agency MullenLowe Lintas). How do we know that the new Vim is only for men? Well, for starters, it says so, on the pack….

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