IPL vs. IPL
March 20, 2023For the first time in the history of IPL (since 2008), we have two competing ad campaigns to entice us to consume the tournament in two different ways! This need did not arise till 2022 because the rights for both TV and…
Category: communication
Women’s Day 2023: Ford vs. Mercedes
March 16, 2023Two Women’s Day 2023 campaigns by automobile companies that stood out for me, for vastly different reasons: Ford and Mercedes. Ford’s campaign, by the agency VMLY&R, was something of a crowd favorite, given the number of people I noticed sharing it on…
Hakka noodles, shipping costs, and life insurance to the rescue
March 13, 2023In November 2022, Pirate Ship, the cloud-based shipping software provider for small and medium-sized businesses, launched its first brand campaign made by the agency Mother. The narrative device is hilarious and audacious: People are shown to be in life-threatening distress (being abducted…
Toothbrush, toothpaste… but rinse?
March 10, 2023In my 4 decades of existence on this planet, the very first time I came across the instruction that ‘one should never rinse the mouth with water immediately after brushing the teeth’ was 2 weeks ago! I stumbled on a tweet from…
Disclosing the use of ChatGPT in your writing – should you?
March 6, 2023The office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education last week issued a statement addressing the recent mass shooting at Michigan State University where a 43-year-old gunman shot students at random that killed three students and injured…
HDFC Life’s ‘The Missing Dulha’ ad campaign has an ingenious idea!
March 1, 2023Update: Tata Sky did the same back in 2015, in a series of 13 interconnected ad films based on the same story, plot, and protagonists. Agency: Ogilvy. Playlist at the end of this post. — HDFC Life’s new campaign titled ‘The Missing…
Mivi’s nationalistic marketing missives
February 23, 2023Mivi’s new campaign was long in the making and feels eventual. We have gone through ‘Made in Germany’ and ‘Made in Japan’ TVs. ‘Made in the USA’ has long been an aspirational idea in India. But with recent geopolitical changes and the…