Volkswagen Vento – From “WHAT!” to “WOW!” to “WTH!”

So, my morning started today by updating my Facebook & Twitter pages about the new Volkswagen Vento audio ad and my day is actually ending up by writing a post on the same. The first experience was shocker or eerie enough as a consumer for me, resulting in immediate reaction on social media and the whole day analysis of the buzz on the ad is reflective enough to do a complete post

Needless to say the ad has managed to create enough hum-drum all across. Undoubtedly it was a media innovation and disruptive advertising at least for the Indian market. I don’t think I had ever come across anything like this earlier. In fact my reaction was exactly from a “WHAT” to “WOW” to “WTH”. When I suddenly heard my newspaper talking, for a second I was totally confused, rather shocked. I had to rummage through newspapers to realize what actually it was. And when I realized that it’s actually an ad presented in the form of an audio chip attached with TOI today, I was totally awed. Wow, what an idea! But then after some point when the voice went on repeating the same content in loop it became irritating. To add to that there was no option to switch it off; the only option left was to either fold the newspaper back or just throw that damn thing out. For those who missed (wait, did anyone actually miss to notice it) to see this ad, can check the video (by TejasNair) embedded at the bottom of the post.

Well, no doubt the ad was damn interesting and managed to grab the attention of almost everybody. Twenty two lakh chips were specially sourced for the one time exercise and the ad was targeted at the readers in 5 cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai & Pune. Total media spend estimated towards this 5 city campaign is close to INR 5 crores! Definitely a daring stand to spend this kind of money in just one day and that too only in 5 cities. But so what if it was only 5 cities, after all the consumers in these 5 cities have ensured to share their reaction with other consumers not only nationally but also globally.
Idea was great, so was the operational implementation but when it comes to execution of the idea, I do think that it was not properly thought through. Here is my feedback as far as the execution is concerned:

• The content was really boring considering it was an audio ad. Come on, you can’t just have the written content run word by word in the form of an audio clipping. There was definitely scope for a better tone, better sound quality & better content.

• Why O why there was no switch off button in that box? The loop presentation with repetitive content was the biggest reason for putting people off.

• Don’t you think there was an opportunity to brand that box with Volkswagen Vento? When you have spent so much, maybe a little bit extra could have added more zing.

• But this branding would have made sense if the device came with a switch on & off button and people would have liked to keep it. In its current state, many people decided to throw it off to shut it down! Bad call for action, no?
  

BTW was there any call for action in that clipping? Or Volkswagen Vento just wanted to create the stir amongst consumers by spending this amount of money? Whether this kind of spend is justified for such buzz is debatable. The ad definitely managed to be the talk of town everywhere, though it could have been executed better to serve other purposes of any campaign too. Overall good to observe this innovation coming from Indian market.

Aside: Wondering if this ad will give ideas to other money spenders to do something similar? OMG what will happen if say our politicians get inspired by all this and decide to take similar route? Will we have to hear their election speeches every morning along with our newspapers during political campaigns? Anyways they love to talk, don’t they???  Or say some Mr. Mahajan & Ms. Sawant decide to furthermore promote their swayamvars in their most happening voices through these talking newspapers? Eeeekkks!

Bollywood Online Anti Piracy Partners: Marketing Initiatives to Reality

When I watched Dabangg last weekend, the first thing which caught my attention was a new category of opening credit – “Online Anti Piracy Partner”. Oh yes I do notice the opening credits and brand mentions , blame it on my previous job which was actually into entertainment industry and as a part of my role I also used to look after brand alliances there. So coming down to this online anti piracy partner, I’ve been observing the increased usage of this term with every movie now and so when I saw a brand mentioned in the opening credit for this, it looked like a positive change. Indeed great to realize that Bollywood is now taking smarter technological routes to deal with piracy and there are branding efforts to give due credits to the partners who are supporting the industry in this cause.

But then I read this article today about Dabangg’s piracy, so Dabangg not only broke records in terms of BO collection in its opening two days, it also broke records of pirated distribution in the first two days. Within 15 hours of its release in India, over 50 websites were showing the entire movie of Dabangg. In 24 hours the numbers were over 200. Within 72 hours of the movie release, over 150,000 downloads were done in high-conservative assessment. In terms of dollar value at a 10 dollars ticket price, it is 1.5 million dollars (US) in the first 72 hours that has been lost. In Indian Rupees it comes to approximately – 6.8 Crores, an amount that could easily finance a couple of movies. With figures like this, it actually becomes the largest value of piracy in the first three days of a Hindi movie’s release. Those were the details of just online downloads, how about pirated DVDs? Even DNA reported availability of pirated DVDs of this movie within first two days at all prominent markets in just Rs. 50. In Bangalore, in fact the pirated copies are available for as low as Rs. 30.

Well, seems like regardless of all the marketing initiatives and consumer awareness programs to educate people about piracy, the problem remains as grave as earlier. In fact with digital distribution and increased internet usage by consumers in India, the access to online pirated content is getting easier by the day. At one hand internet is a boon to this industry when it comes to movie marketing or celebrity PR but on the other it’s a bane as well when it comes to illegitimate distribution of the content. Despite embracing technology and adopting software solutions to combat the piracy, till now nothing seems to be working for Bollywood to deal with this issue. Wondering what could be the bigger reason for this – lack of strong legal policies against piracy of content in India, strict bodies to enforce the existing laws, no strict action against the caught cyber criminals or the general attitude of ‘why pay when it’s available for free‘ of Indian consumers who are ok to compromise with quality if something is available for free?