Dense commentary on social media, PR, marketing, advertising and branding.
I always thought Avis’s iconic 1962 “We’re No.2” (and “We Try Harder”) campaign (by the agency Doyle Dane Bernbach) was intended as a salvo against market leader Hertz! After all, when they say that they are No. 2, our attention automatically heads…
Ringa Ringa RosesPocket Full of PosesAsshhaa BusshhaaAll Fall Down. If you were able to relate to this nursery rhyme, at what point in your life did you find out that you may have been singing it completely wrong? Me? In my late…
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…
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…
On September 9th, I received an email from ICICI Bank. Now, ICICI sends me tons of promotional emails, across the bank and ICICI Prudential, and fearing that some important email might land in the spam box if I mark one as spam,…
The comic strip format has long been associated with fun and entertainment. If a serious topic is communicated via this format, the assumption generally is that it is meant for younger audiences, or it is toning down the seriousness of the content….
In communications, we could use ‘easter eggs’ as a way to convey a second, almost hidden-in-plain-sight level something else besides the crux. Puns are one example – the sentence could read in a normal way but the puns add a second context…