Split-screen advertising (Part 1)
Part 2 of this series: . A famous dialog in the film Contact (1997; based on the book by Carl Sagan) went, “First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?”. How does that…
Category: marketing & advertising
Coca-Cola India vs. coffee, glucose, and Snickers!
A recent Pepsi 7UP ad (by DDB Mudra) showed a man seated in the ladies’ seat on a public bus. A young woman wanted that seat, and just as she arrived near that seat, the man feigned to be asleep (even as…
Anthropomorphism as a creative device in advertising
Related reading: Personification as a creative device in advertising Anthropomorphism, or making inanimate/nonhuman objects talk, emote, or behave like humans is a fairly popular creative device in advertising. There are various degrees of this trope… like giving human features to inanimate objects,…
Builder’s unsolicited love affair with Air India
Related read: Builder says (in an interview with Moneycontrol) it reached out to Air India after the first unsolicited ad that mentioned their name, and Air India, according to Builder, did not insist on canceling the campaign’s next stage (app reveal). This…
Ghee Me Red!
There’s a famous Halwa shop in Tirunelveli, called Iruttu Kadai Halwa. ‘Iruttu Kadai’ literally means ‘dark shop’, and refers to the shop owner’s chosen tradition of selling the halwa in an outlet (the only outlet) with minimal light! Similarly, there’s a famous…
Brand hara-kiri
In the recent (December 2021) Winter Cup, the All-Japan High School Basketball Tournament, conducted by the Japan Basketball Association (JBA), a peculiar item made its debut. Given the speed of the game, including rapid movements and tactical maneuvers, cleanliness of the court…
The imprecise framing of Cadbury Silk’s secret messages
When I first saw this new AR (Augmented Reality) activation by Cadbury Silk for Valentine’s Day 2022, I did not get it. The idea is by Cadbury’s agency in India, Ogilvy. Teen romances are frowned upon in India? Yes, of course. This,…