Indian Advertising Ki AC Ki Taise!

Does a mere depiction of a rural setting in a TVC equip brands to reach out to the rural markets? Well, for a Coke an Amir Khan from the Hills as a Kancha to the Jat in the Punjab fields, it perhaps does. It also works brilliantly with a Hutch talking about everybody in the family tree and saying ‘Ab Rishton Ko Milon Mein Mat Naapo!’ Perhaps not, if you one’s selling an AC. With a setting and storyline that is nothing short of mocking the plight of the poor. Indeed a very juvenile act in Indian Advertising. From the brilliant positioning of Acs with IQ to the current India Ka AC, things have gone a little awry for the brand. A simmering debate on agencyFAQS would has just three odd who think it’s really an ill fit with TG while the rest purport that this is the beat thing to happen to reaching out to the Rural India. A few quick facts on the purchasing power of the Small town and Rural India and the general awakening to this goldmine of market must have made the brand guys agree to be bottled by this TVC. But hey, remember, power-cuts and increase in power tariffs still remains a major barrier in the first time purchase. So perhaps, the AC with IQ idea where the brand explained how it consumed, less electricity was a better positioning to explore even while going rural. The ad might work on the swadeshi plank but let’s not forget, BJP is out of power right now and anyways, buying an AC is not a matter of national pride in any case. There’s a lot that is at work when you expect someone to buy it in this newfound target market. The purchase is a matter of pride before anything else. Thus, primarily driven by aspiration. Having an AC in the house makes a housewife scale up the ladder in peer perception. Gifting one to the daughter does the same. So, while an Onida says, ‘at 48 Degrees if your AC doesn’t cool, its just a cooler’, and other claim other things, Voltas is happy with Indai Ka AC. India ka Dil. Don’t forget India is also concerned about its bill. So pricing would be crucial.

Being Cyrus

Hail Homi! For it was fun 'Being Cyrus'! On the murkier side of humour. For, "once the game is over the king and the pawn, both go in the same box". Brilliance is this!

An awesome tale, well told indeed. Nothing like the stuff we've seen out of Bollywood in a long while now!

Wonder what makes the general junta resent reality though? Saw the film last night with fairly young seatmates, who took three oevrlaps on dialogue to realise the lines, to a shell shocked audience walking down the stairs as the credit roll climbed the cieling. May be because they seek relief (a rather comic one) from the rigmarole of life as it is. A dark comedey of errors that doth not have their solutions, but an uncanny way of finding answers to rhetorics.

Kudos!

BPCL Energisies Auto Expo - Mobylog Makes it Possible!

One of the leading energy major's in India, rated by Fortune and a pioneer in redifining the fuel retailing scenario in India with Branded Fuels, Bharat petrolium Corporation Limited (BPCl) makes its presence felt through a highly innovative comunication design at the 2006 Auto Expo (Asia's biggest auto show). Here's how. An exposition stall that devives it's theme from the most commonly associated icon with the comapny - the all new Blue & Yellow canopied Fuel Stations that don't just offer the most advanced branded fuels, but also a host of innovative value adds like a mechanised car wash, vehicl care cetres and even In&Out convenience shopping marts. So the Stall looks like a fuel station replica with the trappings of corp com and exposition excitement and glamour. Add to that, the first ever use of a photo blogging resource for an event of this kind powered by India's first real-time multimedia blogging solution - Mobylog. Brand communications and community building has finally found the meeting ground.

Citizen Journalism CNN-IBN has finally done it!

Umesh Gupta sent a Video from a Mobile Phone and CNN-IBN used it as a lead in to expose the crumbling AAAI Infrastructure at Indian Airports. Sahara Airlines felt the Impact of this Citizen's report. Kudos IBN! What's been talked for long is finally here. Citizen journalism dawns finally. Here's how! CNN-IBN's Citizen Journalists Initiative invites you to be a part of their news gathering exercise by asking you to send original pictures, videos or news articles, to them: to citizen@ibnlive.com. So is that it? Well, yes! What's more, IBN is also the first channel to have Blogs. Rajdeep Sardeshai's blog has the max comments so far (164 at last count). And why not! This is the way people can connect with their fav jurno folks! And feel one with the Indian Cricket Team and Raghavendra Rathore in dishing out best wishes to Rajdeep & IBN. Some find the blogs inconvenient and some welcome the very beginning. All said and done, it's yet another first by a Brand News channel. NDTV 24X7 has an unofficial watch though it carries Rajdeep’s Picture on the template. Headline Today has no such sharp ideas to sharpen their news. Internationally BBC has been toying with Blogs on and off with Six apart. CNN has long been finding a lot of weight in Blogs and their power from US Elections to the War reportage. But hang on bloggers, you can only post comments on IBN Blogs and there would be no links allowed. 'Comments with links in them won't be published other than in cases of rare exceptions', reads the fine print. Wow! How very interesting, it just makes it a glorified forum or better still, a feedback form. Here’s hoping the Citizen journalist does wield more power in the times to come. So get up, speak out!.

Aspire MGurukool an all new WPP Initiatve

Yet another corporate refresher programme? No, not this one. It's a whole new way of looking at work; a new perspective on learning and training. For learning is a continuous process. With this novel approach towards corporate training, WPP, one of the biggest media conglomerate in the world, has just launched - Apire MGurukool, a programme that would focus on learning and not just traditional training. What it aims is to knock down the boredom out of training processes within the corporate environment. It draws its inspiration from the traditional Indian 'gurukul' system of education and mentoring and puts it to a corporate context. The launch saw a series of multicity Programme/ Initiatve launch events where the entire Mindshare (WPPs Indian division) teams attended school once again as the event was thematised as 'going back to school'. Innovative HR community building and learning initiative, Aspire MGurukool also entails innovative use of new community media like Blogs to help build stronger bonds between HR and make corporate learning - child's play!

Chaat Street Blog Rocks!

The first ever successful Blog integration for brand promotions! Here

kitty the cat...

The most amazing welcome!

Diwali @ Jaipur

On Duty!

The piece of paper in the pic is written by one the many security guards that guard the mushrooming ATMs across Delhi. This is a very dedicated to duty dude. Everytime is goes away anywhere (Lunch, or even answering nature's calls), he leaves a note (like the one here) behind. Now this works like a Movement Register of sorts. We all know how so many people are never on their seat; though claiming to be 'IN' at that moment. Inquire about their whereabouts, and you'd be lucky if you get the right answer. This Man deserves praise for his dutifulness. Here's an instance: knowledge is power.

Come to the Monopoly Country - Marlboro

A brilliant piece in a leading business magazine that declares the Brand as ‘Leader of the Packs’ (credibility matters), comments on the article from content stakeholders – Welcome to the Monopoly Country! Effective use of Buzz marketing and wholehearted support to anti-ATL media alliance with the authorities to keep competition at bay – Smoking Marlboro is good for Phillip Morris’ Financial Heath. Its still the same for yours as the pack says!

Read a blog!

‘It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations’- Sir Winston Churchill Pretty much the same can be applied in the context of blogging. And here's why. Foremost, for the uneducated/ uninitiated, reading would sure be a good thing. So begin by reading Dina Mehta, or better still, try some of the blogs she likes to read (the list has some awesome referrals in her links). It'd be somewhere here that you'd bump into Robin Good one of the members on theweblogproject - an experimental film on Blogging! Now that's a lot of good news for the novice bloggers. On serious thoughts, the above film and the progress that Jazz (or Conversations as Dina likes to call them) has made is truly worth a blind following. The fact that incredible amount of 'good work' is being done through Blogs is sure inspiration unmatched. I am glad I read my quota of quotations. Education continues.

India's Journey Against AIDS

A unique HIV-AIDS awareness caravan covered about 242 towns and villages and touched 263,297 lives through 807 live demonstrations in twenty districts of Andhra Pradesh. Well ahead of the Red Ribbon Express initiative. Interesting finds. From a person reporting being positive on stage, to one fellow even pledging to quit drinking (fearing the callous trap of vulnerability). The virus has spread enough. Now it's time for the word to follow suit. The world's second most affected country, with an estimated 4.58 million HIV positive cases, India accounts for 11.4 per cent of global HIV infections. The world's largest advocacy initiative, the Red Ribbon Express would do just that. While covering India, spreading a word about AIDS; the special locomotive's motive would be to bridge the distances between:

• Positives and Peers
• Information and Audiences
• Knowledge and Practice

Much like the introduction of the Railways was the first frontier in the Indian Identity formation and freedom movement, the Red Ribbon Express would certainly be a big frontier in the India's journey against AIDS.

Technology. How much is enough?

'Technology is a drug. You can never get enough of it.' Nitin Sawhney made a lot of sense when he penned those lines on the cover of his album Prophesy. It indeed is thoughtworthy. Just how much of technology is enough?

Photography: The digital analog divide.

With the advent of photography capturing time was made possible. Are you wondering 'is it not light that the camera captures?' Sure. It is light that a camera captures, but the bigger catch is that moment in time. Thanks to the digital revolution, the tools to capture time have proliferated. The mobilephone has one now. Cameraphones have outnumbered the traditional cameras. The cameraphone reigns supreme when it comes to capturing those moments - wherever, whenever. The maximum number of pictures clicked across the world today are clicked from cameraphones. But for my friend Ritam Banerjee , a Pro Photographer and may others like him, the real thing is still 'turning negatives to positives'. While the great debate goes on, here's to the efforts towards bridging the divide - mobylog!

Sammy - a good prayaas!

Aaah! Sammy missed Gandhi Jayanti in Delhi, just by 5 days! Screened at the Kamani Auditorium recently, it's a play about the Mahatma who led India to its tryst with freedom. Written by Partap Sharma and Directed by Lillete Dubey, the play attempts to cronicles Gandhi from South Africa to the last breath. Albiet, in a contemporary fashion - the language chosen was therefore english. Sammy was the slang used by the Whites in South Africa for the quinessential Indian name 'Swamy'. The Whites used the term to tease the Mahatma once in South Africa. Little did they know, this was the word that would break their empire! The play suffered from 'pop' theatrical values. Attempting to bring out the indomitable wit of the Mahatma, Joy Sengupta (playing Sammy/Bapu) almost bordered being a stand-up act at times. Neha Dubey did try and liven up the Kasturba role, but the mannerism and gait couldn't help but remind one of the current breed of soap opera performers. The show was held in Aid of an NGO working with Children in Delhi called Prayaas. Interesting sets and a powerful cast did all it can to bring the times of the Mahatma alive. Was really heartening to see the sponsors - a whole lot of them. This was a philanthropic act for Prayaas. During the interval, a bunch of Children (special invitees) from Prayaas were merrily seen having a snack break perched on the stairs at the refreshments lobby. Looking at the show, and the kids having a special out - Sammy was a good Prayaas by Prayaas.

Profile

Rishabh Ratnu l Communication Resource

Born in India's Pink City -Jaipur, Rishabh is currently located at New Delhi and is associated with Xpanse Asia, the small town and rural marketing division of Starcom as business manager North India and has been handling business with brands like Western Union Money Transfer, Aviva Life Insurance, Reckitt Benckiser India, Nestle among others. Prior to joining the team at Xpanse Asia, Rishabh has had an enriching stint at Midas Events India Limited, an Experience Management Solutions provider where he was part of the Core Communications Team working on communication solutions (thought to finish) for clients like Frito Lay's, HLL, ITC and the UB Group amongst others. Rishabh was also a part of the team leading Project Mobylog - India's first real-time Moblogging platform. Rishabh was instrumental in integrating Mobylog for brand Activation Audits in real time. Some of his work there includes ground activations for brands like MTV, Frito Lay's Chaat Street, Mountain Dew and a HR initiatve for WPP group's Mindshare.

Prior to which, Rishabh had a successful stint in Ad film production at The Culture Company, Mumbai - a leading production house which boasts of feature films like Fiza, Tehzeeb. Rishabh worked on Ad films for brands like Skoda (IB& W), Deccan Chronicle (Everest), IL&FS Investsmart (Grey Worldwide) during his stint here.

Rishabh began his career as a rookie copywriter at Mudra Advertising, Delhi before moving on to Everest Advertising as a Junior Copwriter working on brands like Honda City, National Panasonic, Red & White, Cavenders, Yamaha, Crowne Plaza Surya, Eenadu (The daily), Modern Silk House. He then went on to join Mateus Oxygen - a creative hot shop as Associate-Copy working on brands like Bacardi, Hyatt Regency Delhi and People.Com among others.

Following this, Rishabh enjoyed a successful long association with Crayons where he churned out communication Ideas across media on a host of brands - Hunter Douglas, Alliance Air, Kerala Tourism and Kohinoor Basmati Rice among others.

Rishabh is a Masters in History from St Stephen’s College, Delhi University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Advertising & Public Relations from IIMC, New Delhi.

Rishabh has a cumulative ten progressive years of communications experience.