Karthik S | beastoftraal.com

WhatsApp’s bigger PR crisis, from fake news to leaks

September 28, 2020October 2, 2020 by Karthik S

In the past 2 days, I got alerts about 5 of my phone contacts joining Telegram. That’s a very tiny anecdotal signal (pun unintended) that there is some interest in looking at alternatives to WhatsApp even in India, a WhatsApp-stronghold. A front-page…

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The new un-Apple iPhone ads

September 25, 2020September 25, 2020 by Karthik S

There was a time when we used to see a lot of TV ads for laptops and home computers. Those were the days! And almost all of them began with the now-famous ‘Ting… ting-ting-ting-ting’ with the Intel Inside logo. And then the…

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The Social Dilemma, the sealing clip, and a bookmark

September 24, 2020September 24, 2020 by Karthik S

Everyone and their relatives seem to have already watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix. That’s quite a feat for a documentary, much like Tiger King, earlier. The Social Dilemma’s one-line crux is very, very simple – social media is a massive time-suck…

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Old-normal advertising during the new-normal

September 23, 2020September 23, 2020 by Karthik S

I had recently shared an ad film made for Haldiram’s, by Lowe Lintas Bangalore. This one. And this is what I had written about it: I was very surprised by a few comments that pointed out the fact that the ad film…

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Baby, baby, baby

September 22, 2020September 22, 2020 by Karthik S

The advertising world has a history of using as a narrative device characters that cannot speak and are forced to talk like normal/adult humans. For instance, animals are given the power to communicate with humans in their own language (with subtitles in…

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An utterly befuddling design choice by Gmail

September 21, 2020September 21, 2020 by Karthik S

I usually use a Gmail draft email as a tool to add some important details. Membership numbers of some websites, the process of some tasks, some user IDs, random thoughts, and so on. This draft is fairly old – been using and…

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Sukanta stars in a TVC script turned into a print ad

September 18, 2020September 24, 2020 by Karthik S

UPDATE: September 24, 2020: Airtel has released another ad in this series, once again, in The Telegraph. Like the previous ad, the tone is interesting for the way the story accepts that Airtel’s network is poor inside the home (homes!), but that…

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