Dense commentary on social media, PR, marketing, advertising and branding.
I have always looked at ads from chappal brands with a lot of interest. I say ‘chappal’ because I don’t want to call it ‘footwear’ and include all kinds of footwear. Chappal is a category, based on pricing and socio-economic target audience…
Last month, an elephant that smashed through a kitchen wall at a home in Thailand made news globally. While it was funny to see countless memes around it (including one that made me laugh out loud; it had the elephant’s pic along…
Back in 2018, the Indian Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) released a new set of rules for automobile manufacturers in India. Apart from new rules regarding seat belt reminders and airbags, there was one more important rule: speed alert warning…
Back in 2015, Nestle’s Maggi faced online what we can, in hindsight, call the first big social media storm of India. Armed with the news that Maggi contained MSG, assorted people took to social media to question a brand that they all…
Sony co-founder Akio Morita, in his iconic book ‘Made in Japan’, adds a lot of background details on how and why the Walkman was invented. Besides the more obvious reasons that we can intuitively guess now—portability, personal content consumption (of music), and…
Budweiser India had a marketing misfire in April this year when they got Messi portraits painted over existing street art in Mumbai and Delhi. It was widely called out as a ‘hijack’ where commercial advertising hijacked over organic street art. However, the…
Open any print newspaper on the weekends—across India—and you may see tons of large ads by real estate brands. Week after week! The real estate category has a fairly long gestation period for sales closure – given the high cost involved, they…