First of all apologies for putting up this post so late. Though I had stopped the poll after almost a week only but some important projects at work and traveling on weekends just kept me away from my blog for long. But nevertheless I had put an update on the results of my poll in my previous post. And as committed in my earlier post, here I reproduce the results of the poll done in my previous post. I had tried to keep the voting count unique by blocking the votes from same cookie as well as IP address (that’s the maximum which was possible as per polldaddy’s settings).
Now based on my last posts experience (esp. the comment furor ), I would again like to repeat that the opinions expressed in my post about the ad are solely mine as a consumer, personally speaking I didn’t like those ads. As a marketer too, I would repeat that I didn’t find any connect between the messaging and the product, also the communication route somehow didn’t seem to be in sync with the targeted TG. Maybe I’m right or maybe I’m not but then to each its own and I stand by my opinions against this ad as a regular consumer. Thanks to all those who commented on my previous post.
The worst thing that can happen to a bad product is good marketing…but what about the case where the product is bad and the marketing is even worse? Hmmm…then I guess it becomes a case study on brands like IBIBO with title – “how not to market a product”. No, seriously wasn’t balti ad enough that IBIBO has come out with yet another innovative campaign “why play akele”? Not one, not two, rather they have a whole series of creatives for this campaign but what is interesting is to decide which one of these can be crowned as the worst of the lot? This or this or OMG this i.e., the aunty ad on radio, well my vote clearly goes to aunty ad on radio! Every time I listen to this one on 94.3, I can’t resist myself from changing the channel, even if it means listening to kannada songs for a while on mirchi. I detest this ad so very much!
On a serious note, I’m wondering what exactly could be the reason for IBIBO to go ahead with such a crappy campaign? Millions of money spent just like that, effort wasted without any thought on promoting a product which by nature should have been actually promoted through a viral route. A copied concept which due to lack of any innovativeness decided to take the paid marketing path only leading to further disasters enroute. Neither the messaging is right, nor is the execution. To add to that the overall tone of the creatives is so suggestive & absolutely repulsive for the relevant TG of the campaign. I’m wondering is it me or is it everyone who finds these creatives to be totally absurd and disgusting? I think it won’t be a bad idea to do a quick survey on general reaction towards this campaign & send the results to IBIBO marketing team…maybe it can save us from further tortures of “why play akele” kinda campaigns in future.
Public service initiative : May I please request all of you to take out few seconds and just give your opinion below? It would be interesting to observe the results, though I don’t have any doubts on the outcome.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in my post are personal & I request readers to express their own judgements & take their own call.
Update on 8th Mar’ 2010: This poll is closed now for voting as per the expiry timeline of the poll. I will be publishing the result of it in my next post, for now you can just see the % of results by clicking “view results”
Makemytrip does it again and this time I love it. In fact just saying “love it” once can’t justify my delighted reaction towards the campaign, I mean I seriously loved it esp. the official atyaachar anthem. It’s a riot and simply terrific! It’s one such viral campaign which you definitely feel like promoting on your own. I seriously went ROFL listening to the lyrics of the anthem and the tone in which it has been sung is brilliant.
Makemytrip has launched this online campaign www.offisialatyachaar.com to promote its weekend packages. It’s a movement against work stress, impossible deadlines and long work hours which Make My Trip has presented in a very interesting way. The home page reads: Impossible Deadlines? Graveyard shifts? An atyachaari Boss? Work has taken you for granted for way too long. It’s time to act. It’s time to break away! Join the protest. It has sections as – Offisial Atyachaari, Offisial Atyawear, Offisial Anthem, Offisial Downloads, Offisial Outburst and all of them are just fantastic. You need to navigate through the site on your own to experience the fun. The movement has already instituted its presence on Facebook, now I’m eagerly waiting for its appearance on twitter too. What I liked about this campaign:
It’s FUN and brings a big smile on your face.
It establishes an immediate connect with the TG.
It promotes the product in a very intelligent way; in fact there is very less of branding in this overall campaign but still it creates that impact both from brand as well sales perspective.
It’s interactive properties like atyachaari jokes, sicknames for bosses contest, ringtones, wallpapers and my personal favorite – smashing a real office as protest to atyachaar . I think these are really wild and innovative stuffs.
It’s a viral in true sense, you really feel like sending this link to your peers and colleagues.
From concept to execution, I think both EURO RSGC & digiVaasi have done a great job. I’m only wondering why haven’t they started promoting this campaign at least amongst its members? I don’t remember receiving any email or message unlike that Gajodhar campaign which frankly speaking I hadn’t liked much. By chance I went to Make My Trip website today to check some ticket price and glanced upon their banner ad. Hope they start promoting it soon to spread the buzz and till the time they are not, I think I as a fan of this campaign would like to do it through my blog & tweets , now that’s what I call a true viral, ain’t it?
Was surfing the website of Air-India today to book a ticket & suddenly I saw our very own Maharaja in different avtaars there, like Maharaja with a laptop on home page & Maharaja with Indian flag near log in box. Though the size of Maharaja was definitely reduced but nonetheless noticeable enough! In fact I think as a kid my understanding of the word “brand” or “mascot” was only limited to either AI’s Maharaja or AP’s Gattu and its that solid imprint on my childhood memory that even slightest trace of Maharaja ji or cute Gattu catches my attention till date.
Air India had adopted this Maharaja mascot in 1946 symbolizing an Indian Maharaja kind of person welcoming passengers from all across the world on board, if I’m not wrong this Maharaja is one of the longest lived & most recalled mascots till date. But then today this mascot made me really thinking esp. because of all the reasons for which Air India has been in news of late. Now with Rs. 5000 crore loss last fiscal year due to operating costs, day on day ongoing loss of approx Rs. 15 crore & plans to cut down on quite many travel sectors, does Air India stand anything to do with royalty in these days? Well, I know the mascot was not chosen for exact representation of royalty only but then to a common man the image as well as the word Maharaja has always meant to communicate the same. With Air India being in news for only huge losses and other sorry state of affairs I personally think this Maharaja is a mismatch with the overall perception of the company. A Bankrupt Maharaja instead of Maharaja is what it makes me feel about it now . Rationally speaking, I think it’s time for AI to re-look at its mascot, it has outgrown its own perception today and I can see some sort of disconnect here. Though I’m sure there must be nostalgic / emotional reasons for the company to still continue with the same.
Would like to know your views on this. Does this Maharaja suit AI’s current image? Do you think AI should bid farewell to this Maharaja now?
Saw an interesting cute green colored animation ad yesterday on one of the news channels, they were showing some birds & the reason for my increased curiosity along with resistance to switch channel during that break was the fact that those birds were somewhat resembling twitter bird . But that ad actually had nothing to do with twitter & to my surprise it ended to be of none other than the traditional consumer durable giant (or shall I say erstwhile giant) Videocon. The clipping ended with a message – change is happiness. Seeing such a major brand makeover from sturdy steel colored V to a fluid green colored V was indeed a happy change.
“The Videocon logo is the heart of the new brand identity. The Fluid lava reflects the brand idea, ‘Experience change’. The color palette has been chosen to reflect the philosophy of Videocon Group i.e. the color green is symbolic to the company’s ecology drive” says the official coverage of Videocon. You can read more about it here.
Some of the major changes which I’ve observed in their current campaign strategy – this time apart from conventional media, I can already see their presence on digital medium too; their website along with the re-launch in other medium has gone for a change as well and is completely in sync with their new brand positioning plus they are promoting e-selling through their web channel. Well, as per me I loved this change & I think just like Sony even Videocon was in much need of a facelift. Somehow Videocon has lost that connect with today’s consumers, not only in terms of messaging & communication rather in terms of their product deliverables too. It’s good to see news of launch like mobile services & DTH services from Videocon. They are also augmenting their current offerings to suit the taste of today’s Indian consumers. Considering the sea change in Indian market dynamics over the last decade I think it’s prudent of these established brands like Godrej or Videocon to change their pace as per current times.
I had personally joined twitter more than a year & half back but was not an active user of the account then. Initially, I just used to read updates from the people whom I was following & then slowly got into posting my updates too. In fact I became totally active (rather addictive ) almost after six months of opening my account & the more involved I got into this the more I realized the power of it. Very soon I opened an account on behalf of the company where I work & started tweeting about the updates of my company. Well, what started just as an update mechanics is now converted into a full-fledged customer interaction medium. I’m totally amazed at the viral effect & the potential of this medium from promotion & customer engagement point of view. I occasionally keep on reading about twitter & it’s phenomenal growth etc., but based on my personal experience with twitter I think I have come to a conclusion that this medium is definitely a must for every new age marketer who wants to be in touch with his net savvy (or shall I say tweet-savvy) customers. Here is why:
Creating & Tracking Brand Buzz: I have found twitter to be one of the best mediums for being updated with what people are writing about your brand. I’ve used other popular alert services including the ones for twitter too but I find the “search” option on twitter to be really a smart way of being updated about “at the moment” buzz of your brand. It surely gives a real time insight into your customer satisfaction, dissatisfaction, needs & gaps of your service.
Word Of Mouth (Or Tweet of mouth ) : While a negative tweet definitely harms your image but a positive tweet followed by different retweets surely leads to excellent word of mouth marketing. There is this one guy who was having problems with our service, I read his negative tweet which he had written just 2 minutes ago, I immediately escalated it to our internal service delivery head & in next 5 minutes the guy got a call from our service head. The guy got so impressed that he immediately tweeted about the power of twitter w.r.to. customer service. In next 15 minutes when his problem was solved he ensured to mention the prompt action taken by our company in so many tweets of his and was all gaga about the service attitude & brand promise of our company. Thanks to all his retweets which gave us a positive boost to our brand that day. After that my SD head ensures to search for keywords related to our service every 2 hours
Competition Tracking: If your competitor is also active on twitter, then toh wah bhai wah! Isko kehte hai chandi ho jana! Easiest & fastest way to be abreast with what competitors are doing as well as how many customers are dissatisfied by your competitors is to search your competitor related keyword in twitter. I’m telling you it’s a very effective medium for competitive taka-jhaki
Customer Feedback / Suggestions: It’s definitely a very quick medium to seek feedback before any new launch or for announcing any new update / feature / product etc. And thanx to tweet-savvy customers they give you some very genuine feedback immediately.
Potential Targetting: Highly effective medium to reach out to potential customers too, check out who is looking out for your kind of service & reach the potential TG in a smart way.
Serious word of caution: When I say it’s an effective medium for marketers to promote & engage, this does not mean it should be used as a free tool for SPAMMING. Beauty of twitter is that twitter users till date DETEST spamming a lot. So, don’t go ahead posting only URLs or your service related promotions. You’ll only lose the interest of your followers & it just takes a few micro seconds to “unfollow” your brand. If it is fast method to engage, it is equally fast to un-engage. So, think again before you start abusing this medium. Key is to interact, talk, engage personally & tweet something which your followers can look forward too . If you’ve captured the attention, you can definitely promote your brand in a more involved way.
It was the last commercial break during IPL last night & guess the 1st ad being aired in that break??? Well, it was for a holiday site asking to book tickets for South Africa to catch live IPL match! :O – yea that was my first reaction esp. because it was from brand none other than Kingfisher who was promoting kingfisherholidays.com with call for action to book tickets NOW to catch live IPL (don’t remember the exact text, else would have loved to post the same here J)!!! LOL, book tickets at the time when the finals of IPL was hardly 5 minutes away , wondering were they offering some “reach SA on a blink” kinda service or what! Curious enough I landed on their website today only to find their IPL banner running on the home page till now. Looks like the group is too busy grieving over the loss of RCB to change the communication till now. If it was at one place it could have been understood as mistake or oversight but if their home page is having the promo banner (scrn shot taken on 25th May’09 at 7:15 pm) saying this, they what can I say? Wake up guys, wake up!
Kingfisher Holidays had partnered with DLF IPL 2009 & were offering some exclusive tour packages for South Africa to all cricket fans. While the idea was good & I’m sure they would have gained good traction out of it but then while managing their communication I think they should have taken care of implementation bit more closely. If at all they wanted to utilize the last slot too to promote their holiday portal, maybe they could have done it in a better way like a general brand message thanking all who used the portal to travel to SA or a different call for action instead of this. Hmmm…execution guys, execution!
Well, it’s Zoozoos & only Zoozoos all over, be it any marketing meeting which I attend or a casual chat amongst group of friends, “zoozoos” is definitely one of the topics which has to crop up in any such marketing discussion these days. I don’t think I want to write any review on Zoozoos ads or my insight on these commercials, simply put this concept is outstanding & has become a phenomena in itself. If you want to read more about the birth of this idea you can read it here and success of this concept especially in digital media can be read here.
I think Zoozoos are the cutest characters ever created in the ad world and I have got so hooked on to this characters especially in online world that these days I log on to my facebook account to see updates from “Zoozoos”. Yeah that’s absolutely right; such is the impact of Zoozoos on consumers like me! As I am writing this post, official fan club of Zoozoo on facebook is having 143,777 fans. And this was 143,112 just when I started writing this post 3-4 mins back. I know of people who don’t miss commercial breaks between IPL matches to just catch up on Zoozoos & have joined twitter specifically to follow updates of Zoozoos. Their videos, ringtone, photos, quizzes, facebook app, sound bytes – everything is so cute but as per me cutest are their emoticons & wallpapers. My laptop currently is adorned with the following Zoozoo wallpaper .
Now, as I was thinking of winding up this post I refreshed the facebook page again & Zoozoo fan club has reached 143,642 members already. Well, 530 new fans in just 15 minutes…need I say anything more? Hats off to the brains behind this campaign, truly a marvelous work. Zoozoos are the latest stars & definitely more popular as endorser than many bollywood & sports celebrities.
Yes, I am liking this new media communication strategy of Indian Political parties this year esp. of BJP but think they are definitely going over-board now. Can somebody please tell BJP campaign management team that:
Over communication esp. through certain media can really KILL your campaign.
Bombarding consumers repeatedly with too many messages, promises & benefits of the same product can actually be treated as spamming and not marketing.
Here is what I mean by my above two statements. On a daily basis I am getting SMSes from “TA-BJP” on my both mobile phones. Some of those messages are:
BJP’s promise: Terror-free India, Hunger-free society, Debt-free kisan, Worry-free middle class. 3.5 crore families to benefit from income tax exemption for incomes up to Rs. 3 lakh p.a. Student loans at 4%. Advani for PM. www.lkadvani.in
Har school jaane wali balika ko lakhpati banane wali LADLI LAKSHMI YOJANA par karenge amal. Advaniji ki shapath. http://www.lkadvani.in
BJP’s JAI JAWAN JAI KISAN JAI VIGYAN promise. Longstanding demands of our brave Armed Forces to be met. Farm loans at 4%. Road and broadband connectivity to all villages. 1.2 crore IT-enabled jobs in rural areas. Advani for PM. www.lkadvani.in
Need I say more??? These are just few samples, I have definitely received a lot more messages to attain a reflex reaction of pressing the DELETE button as soon as I see the sender as “TA-BJP” now.
Suggestion: BJP campaign team, good to see your aggressive strategies but please introduce some section on your website for consumers to unsubscribe from receiving these messages. Permission is the KEY for certain medium! Also would be good if you can post some anecdotes on your website about execution of any of these promises. Will help in establishing some credibility towards your SMSes!
Whew! Indian Political parties are on twitter now… While I was already chating about change in campaign strategy of Indian politicians this time, here I observe some other interesting & noticeable updates:
BJP on Twitter: Yeah BJP has really gone ahead of Congress as far as online strategies are concerned, you go anywhere online & you just can’t ignore BJP’s ads or L.K.Advani messages. And now they are on the latest micro-blogging fad – Twitter too! Not only they are present but they are tweeting quite regularly both by posting their updates as well as interacting with followers. Have a look on some of their latest updates, updates do look promising enough.
Congress on Twitter: Till now I have not observed Indian Congress Party formally present on twitter, yes but SM Krishna (candidate from Bangalore) has definitely joined twitter now. He says he has done this to interact with net savvy Bangaloreans!
Well, all interactions & communications on internet with today’s generation are fine but I again wonder – do all these political parties really understand their image amongst Indian Youth? As mentioned in my previous post it’s a welcome change to see such aggressive new age political campaigning in India but don’t you think that these are simply marketing gimmicks? Will they really act on their promises or will these remain as just promises once the elections are over? How much can marketing help them when the core product itself is not good? Would be good to know it from the readers of this post – do you really believe in current communications sent out by any of these parties? Personally speaking as a marketer I like their campaign & appreciate their effort but as a consumer, these communications are not impacting me much as somehow don’t have that trust left on the product itself.
), I would again like to repeat that the opinions expressed in my post about the ad are solely mine as a consumer, personally speaking I didn’t like those ads. As a marketer too, I would repeat that I didn’t find any connect between the messaging and the product, also the communication route somehow didn’t seem to be in sync with the targeted TG. Maybe I’m right or maybe I’m not but then to each its own and I stand by my opinions against this ad as a regular consumer. Thanks to all those who commented on my previous post.
) almost after six months of opening my account & the more involved I got into this the more I realized the power of it. Very soon I opened an account on behalf of the company where I work & started tweeting about the updates of my company. Well, what started just as an update mechanics is now converted into a full-fledged customer interaction medium. I’m totally amazed at the viral effect & the potential of this medium from promotion & customer engagement point of view. I occasionally keep on reading about twitter & it’s phenomenal growth etc., but based on my personal experience with twitter I think I have come to a conclusion that this medium is definitely a must for every new age marketer who wants to be in touch with his net savvy (or shall I say tweet-savvy) customers. Here is why:
, wondering were they offering some “reach SA on a blink” kinda service or what! Curious enough I landed on their website today only to find their IPL banner running on the home page till now. Looks like the group is too busy grieving over the loss of RCB to change the communication till now. If it was at one place it could have been understood as mistake or oversight but if their home page is having the promo banner (scrn shot taken on 25th May’09 at 7:15 pm) saying this, they what can I say? Wake up guys, wake up!
