Dense commentary on social media, PR, marketing, advertising and branding.
There are enough jokes online about unreturned, overdue library books. In our present times, though, ‘library’, ‘unreturned’ and ‘overdue’, all sound like vestiges of a different era. With physical goods like home, car/bike, furniture etc. we started by buying them outright. We…
Here’s an ad film from March 2019, scripted by Chennai-based Chirpy Elephant and made by Lemurian Productions. I quite like the narrative angle here – to connect a blood donor as a ‘blood relative’, and use the obviously disparate (using broad-stroked stereotypes,…
When you watch this ad for Lifebuoy soaps, where the “doctor” replies to an exclamation by the boy’s mother, “Lifebuoy?”, “Naya Lifebuoy!”, what do you think? Do you believe that he is a real doctor and that his word carries weight… enough…
When Rediff launched online shopping (as e-commerce was called then) in the late 90s, they did not promote the category. Till Flipkart, in the early 2010s started promoting the entire e-commerce category using the kids-as-adults theme, everyone in the sector presumed ‘What…
Back in the late 1990s when I had just started working in Delhi, as a Tamilian in love with paneer and all-things-Punjabi-food, I used to thoroughly relish eating out. Delhi was foodie heaven for me and the prospect of cheap/affordable Punjabi food…
If you are a restaurant with branches in 2 cities in Kerala (and one in the Gulf, obviously), and are opening a new branch in one of the cities that you are already present in, how would you publicize the inauguration? You…
Pouring ketchup out of a glass bottle has always been a painful task. Back in the late 1970s, Heinz, a market leader of ketchup in the US tried to tackle this consumer problem using marketing creativity. They framed the slowly moving ketchup…