What if you can control emotions and actions of humans just like you control an electrical switch or a water faucet? This is the theme of latest set of Crabtree‘s TV promos and all these promos are very impressive.
Sanju featured in fashion article
09
Jan
Sanjana, daughter of Dr. Srinu and Lavanya, is featured in the Navya section of AndhraJyothy daily today. The pictures came up very well.
Bad Advertising Practice
28
Dec
Yesterday I looked at one of the local wine shops while riding my scooter and surprised to find the shop decorated with a string of pamphlets featuring Telugu movie hero Nagarjuna. A short pause and a closer look later, figured out that the material is based on promos of his latest Telugu movie Don. The movie is sponsored by a soda/water brand, which is incidentally a wine/beer brand too.
Now let us look at the repercussions of such advertising practices. This wine shop is in the midst of a busy street leading to a lot of educational institutions. Needless to say, Nagarjuna is a hero who has popularity and following amongst teenagers to old people alike. Featuring him predominantly on a wine shop for a much hyped movie of recent times, especially during the holiday season, is going to have a considerable impact on teenagers. I am sure the hero has no direct involvement in this (it is usually the producer of the movie who sells the sponsorship rights) and everything here is legally correct, people involved should think about ethical correctness. I am sure the hero has enough influence to ensure that these kind of things don’t happen for his future movies.
BTW, I am not quoting the water/soda/liquor brand here to avoid additional publicity for them.
Splendid Aparna
19
Dec
Splendid Aparna ran an advertisement section of two full pages for Palm Meadows in local newspapers yesterday and today. They took the front page and second page of these dailies. Thats a huge advertising investment. Got a few calls from friends and relatives asking if this is the same project in which I booked my Villa. Yes, it is.
Cool Hot Mail!
18
Oct
Ok. This is the case of a constant being a variable now :-). So far, most free email services offered an email id with a unique domain name (e.g. hotmail.com, yahoo.com, gmail.com or their country specific TLDs, but the same brand name). Now, for the last couple of weeks, I have been listening a lot about coolhotmail.com on radio, so took a look at it.
The coolhotmail.com service is offered as part of the live.com initiative from Microsoft and looks like it is primarily targeted for India netizens. There are a handful of domain names based on themes like the places, interests, sports, personality, etc. People can pick and choose an id they want. That way, people get relatively unique and simple usernames as their mail ids (because of a vast number of domain names to choose from) than words/names appended with long numbers. Good idea to start with.
This is an interesting paradigm shift. So far, the domain name for the email id also worked as a branding opportunity. Now, the mail id is no longer a part of the branding, but the mail content (or advertisements with in the email) may be the primary source of branding and advertising revenues. Or may be the web front end that is used to read the email. But not the domain name. So the constant (the domain name) is a variable now.
I just registered an id with one of the domains and logged in. Except for the domain name, the rest of the service is hotmail. The login also is from the hotmail/live.com page.
There is a specific disclaimer that got my attention. The live.com service provider, at least per that page, is different from service providers of individual domains and the service may be discontinued at any time. Now this gets interesting. May be this is a beta service targeting a particular geographic location and if it successful, it may be extended further. If there are not many takers, then these services may eventually go. I am just thinking loud here.
Interesting idea. Let us see if similar ideas will creep into the offerings by other free mail service providers.
Google search on AirTel
10
Oct
One advertisement that kept on impressing me for the last month or so is this Google search on AirTel ad. The ad starts with a spoof on the Indiana Jones theme and ends with a statement that Google search on AirTel makes it easier to find the Solmon’s lost book than the tougher route taken by Mr. Jones. Very impressive theme.
McDonalds an Adult Brand?
07
Oct
McDonalds may be seen as a children’s brand worldwide, but not so in India. I read some interesting statistics in a financial newspaper earlier this week. Only 18 percent of revenues for McDonalds in India are contributed to by kids. Rest of them come from other age groups, especially the teenagers and youth.
Our family went for a pre-movie dinner at McDonalds on Saturday. My kids still prefer to eat those Happy Meals and I try out anything from pizza puffs to grilled sandwiches. During our dinner, took a casual look at the rest of the patrons and their age groups. Especially at about 6.00pm or so, there are only 4 families in the restaurant with kids of age group about 12 or less. Most of the tables are taken by college kids and young professionals below 25 years of age. Noticed a couple of tables with only 50+ age group too.
No wonder McDonalds India rolls out more youth centric products than children centric ones. For example, there are only very few Happy Meals choices, but there are a good amount of choices that are in the Rs 20 price range and are of mixed variety: e.g. Vegetarian Pizza Puff.
Launching the new way of talking to investors
31
Jul
About a decade ago, getting the financial results of a company amounted to waking up the next morning and reading it in a newspaper. Or glue to the TV and listen to financial news. For the last decade, we watched the financial results from the PR news on the web and/or on financial websites like Yahoo! Finance or TheStreet.com. Yesterday, Sun has taken it to the next level. Deliver content to interested listeners through content syndication means. Its like you getting a phone call when someone releases their financial results, as opposed to you calling them (frequently 🙂 ) and figuring out the results. Actually, it is less annoying than getting a phone call in the middle of a meeting. It is more like getting a quiet text message (aka SMS) and you being able to read it at your convenience.
In India this morning, I visited my google reader, rather than visiting my usual financial site, to know more about my company’s results. And its all there, whatever I wanted to know, in a friendly content aggregation tool that supports vi style navigation: press j and k keys to go up and down :-). I haven’t (yet) subscribed to any newswires from financial sites, so I will read the opinion of the analysts at leisure. But I have the main content with me.
I love this incremental change in delivering news to investors. As Jonathan says here, this is a fairer way of sharing news. RSS feeds are delivered 10 minutes before the news is delivered in a traditional way to financial companies. So if you are in a hurry to know, YOU get it first!
Is it very innovative? IMO, it is just a better (fairer) way of sharing news. Just that. It is just a n-th generation evolution from stone tablets age (thanks again Jonathan for that wonderful post!).
So, here are Sun’s feeds, if you are interested!
Cola Sales Down?
07
Jun
Looks like cola sales in India are down by about 15% this April and May when compared to the same period last year. What could be the reason? Here are my thoughts:
- Prices have increased considerably: Entry level 200ml cola bottle costs 8 rupees now, as opposed to 5-6 rupees last year. Compared to that, fresh coconuts cost about 5-7 rupees a piece. Coconut water consumption increased in most parts of southern India I have seen.
- People preferring fruit juices: Fresh fruit juices are now as affordable as similar sized colas. That makes a dent.
- Stocks: In two instances during my last month’s travel, I was told that they don’t have stocks of a particular cola in these mid sized towns. So I had to go for carbonated drinking water (called “soda” in India)
It would be interesting to see how the next year’s market would be. Will the cola companies cut their profits by NOT signing big stars for advertisements, or would they stick with the prices and adopt some other technique to improve the sales.
India Newspaper Growth
06
Jun
Very interesting statistics from the this WAN-Press report earlier this week: India has one of the biggest growth rates in both newspaper sales and newspaper advertisement revenues increase.
- News paper sales in India: Increase of 12.93% over last year and 53.63% over last 5 years (worldwide: 2.3% last year and 9.48% over last 5 years)
- News paper advertising revenues in India: Increase of 23% over last year and 83% over last 5 years (worldwide: 3.77% increase last year)
So, India is going great with newspapers despite having considerable growth in other media like TV, Internet and FM Radio.
Makes me think about our family’s newspaper readership. We have two dailies (Usually Eenadu and Times of India or Deccan Chronicle) subscribed at home. I also buy an average of another daily newspaper (if I am home) based on the day of the week. Typical buys:
- Tuesday: Business Standard
- Wednesday: Economic Times
- Friday: Hindu
- Saturday: Deccan Chronicle
- Sunday: Andhra Jyothi
In addition, I buy Deccan Chronicle (or Times of India, depending on our subscribed one) on other days, if I am in a mood for reading an extra newspaper. During holidays, I read Andhra Jyothi.