Yesterday, 21st September 2010, India’s leading daily Times of India launched a first of it’s kind advertisement in its print edition. This ad for Volkswagen was far more than just a full page creative. It had sound built into it. Yes, let’s have a look at the ad first before noting the interesting points about it.

1. Even though some may feel so but actually the ad is Non Intrusive. Why I say Non Intrusive is because only when that particular page is open, then the sound starts playing. When you read any other page, the sounds halts automatically. Read point 4 to understand how they did that.

2. Attention Grabber: This is primarily because of being the first time that such an ad has been carried by any newspaper in the country or maybe even in the world. It got different responses from people around. Some of the responses I heard was scary, amusing, innovative, intrusive, amazing…. Though the reasons vary, one thing everyone agrees is that it definitely grabbed their attention.

3. Technology: We all talk about technology being an integral part of our lifestyles today but how many of us do actually use it innovatively? Dissecting the device, one of my friends informed me that they have used an LDR (Light Dependent Resistor) device. A simple technology but what a great implementation I would say. It works only when it has enough light intensity over it. So when the page is turned back, as the light intensity is cut off, the ad stops.

4. Reach: The innovative ad was carried in 6 major cities across the country. Obviously Volkswagen knows where their TG(Target Group) is and there is no better medium than TOI to reach their prospective buyers. So carrying it in 6 metros solved their purpose.

5. Supplementing with Relevant Placing (the same page had a full page commercial of their new model Vento) along with appropriate messaging, as another friend said, “portraying bonding between a Car and an Engineer” was commendable.

Small things in life serve long goals, probably displayed to perfection by this campaign.
Just in case you are wondering about the ROI (Return on Investement) on the campaign, both TOI and Volkswagen got enough visibility, Volkswagen confirming by the number of enquiries they got and TOI writing about the reponse to their innovative ad.

Das Advertising!

Technorati Tags: advertising, audio-ad, Branding, times-of-india, toi, volkswagen, volkswagen-vento

Last week Teach for India celebrated the Joy of Giving week. There were free hugs campaigns in Pune and problem solving free marches around the city (2nd october- TFI fellows along with volunteers went around the city talking to people asking what problems they see in the country and what are the steps they have taken or plan to take in order to eradicate them). Being in Bangalore I could not be a part of the campaign but does that mean I should stop giving? Of course the answer is NO.

Joy of giving week reminds me the thought of giving. We often give gifts to our loved ones, we give money/food/clothes to beggars/needy ones, we give …. probably lots of things to people but what is that that cannot be measured in terms of money? I thought for some time that what is that I have given to the society that doesn’t involve monetary transactions? What is that which I gave or wish to give in future for nothing in reward? What is that which I gave and made me happy, just that feeling of happiness? Yes, I came up with an answer, it was ‘Knowledge’.

As a student and even now as a professional, there is one thing which I don’t stop giving or sharing and that is knowledge. Educate somebody about something, spread what you know and preach what you practice. There are some things which we can learn only from our peers, and education is one of them. Everybody reads the same text books but still someone knows more, someone less. Why not share our knowledge and make the world a better place by giving everybody the power of information. I have often seen people hiding their knowledge or not sharing what they know, reason being they fear their friend might overtake in the particular field/subject. How can someone overtake you if you told him/her how to take the first steps? And even if he does, you should feel happy about it, and that too for two reasons. First is, someone listened to what you had to say and has actually implemented what you were trying to convey, how many of us do that? And secondly because if he knows more than you some days later, you can learn all those new things from him and that too in a much lesser time than you would have originally spent. So its always good to ‘give’ and the joy of giving can never supercede any other joy.

Now let me know (in the comments section) what is that you’ve given or plan to give in future which would give you ‘Joy of Giving’.

Technorati Tags: education, information, joy-of-giving, knowledge, Learnings, lifehappiness, sharing, teach-for-india

I was shell shocked to see this email I received a few days back.

HI

We are providing Experience certificate for IT professionals (like Dot net,Java,DBA,Networking,Webdesigning,PHP,Mainframe,RUBY on Rails, etc) with life time verfication.

Details are as follows:
1) Offer letter/Appointment Letter
2) Experience CUM Releving Letter
3) Salary Slip
4) Corporate ID
5) Corporate Email ID

Charges : 10,000/- Rs

Do Call us for more details – 011-4164****
Regards

Raj

What ! I couldn’t believe my eyes on the first instant. Okay, I know it happens at quite a few places but I never thought that people would straightaway send mails along with their contact numbers ! Unless and until it’s legal how come can someone do that ? Are they not afraid of anyone ? The law, justice department, police ???
Well, I didn’t want to know much, after all I am not a journalist or in police that I get to the roots of the case, but I want to inform my readers that all such practices are fake and will only land you in trouble sooner or later in your life/career. Please avoid getting those fake experience letters as in the end a lie remains a lie. All private companies now get the background check through outsourced people and that too without the knowledge of the employees. What’s more is that now even the Public-Sector companies have followed the same route and are firing people who have some discrepancy in their CV’s.
Best is do some hard work and get some job through a truthful way rather than going for all those ways, even if you are jobless. It may do you some good in the short term but you will definitely be a loser in the long run. My genuine advice is “Please avoid these“.

Technorati Tags: career, ethics, experience-letter, fake-certificates, fake-experience, job, Life

I recently came across an advertisement in The Economic Times, a national daily newspaper arguably read by each and every businessman across the country. The ad started with the words :

Kind Attention CMD’s, CEO’s, COO’s and top management

Following the address, it had information regarding the program which was succeeded with a 2 line statement about advertiser’s background. Now I guess we can imagine how much information can be dispensed in a 3″x4″ ad. And hence as a result of which the ads are always suffixed with a website link, an email id and a contact no, assuming the advertiser and the addressed people have enough technology exposure. You must be thinking so what’s wrong in this ? Nothing ! Absolutely correct.
The website has a single page and that page contains nothing more than a 1 paragraph information of the company. There are 4 other links on the website, one of which links to a related external site, good enough. But out of the other 3 links, 2 do not work. The last one says “News”. Hoping that this will have information at least about the ad, I clicked that link. And guess did I see.

This post has been deleted.

I assume that, okay, the website might be having some problems so I pick up my phone to call on the given number. You can’t believe what reply I got,

Please check the number you have dialed !!!

What my first reaction was, I probably cannot write here.  Still assuming that IT’S OKAY,  there might be a printing mistake, I gathered  some courage and clicked on the only link that was working (the linking to an external site). That website, though functional,  also did not have any info about the advertisement. Somhow I found a landline contact no and I had full confidence that atleast this should be working. Alas! it was not to be. No, the numbers were correct, but none of them was recieved. I dialled both the numbers but to no avail.

Harms caused by bad timing

Can you imagine what sort of impression would this sort of campaign do. It’s done more damage than you can imagine. The website’s not ready, has no information, the news section says post deleted, the mobile numbers don’t exist and nobody is bothered or responsible enough to recieve the landline calls. Waaaoow ! I am impressed. And in case you forgot, then I may remind you that the post was addressed to CEO’S, COO’S and CMD’S. No, I am not anyone of those, but yes I do own an organization or rather a startup I should say and the advertiser is connected to me due to previous background.

Things they lost from all this :

Trust :   Confidence :   Loyalty :   Growth/Business (for a short term and with some concerned people at least) : and the most important BRAND VALUE, if they had any.

Lesson to be learnt : If your soldiers aren’t ready, don’t FIRE !

This is a perfect example why you should synchronize your advertising and marketing/branding campaigns. Probably they should have waited at least till the date the website is ready. Since a bad impression lasts longer in the human brain, I guess next time such or may be any ad from the same organization, wouldn’t be treated trustworthy or would get the response it expects.

By the way, after all this, I didn’t bother to try the email id.

Technorati Tags: advertising, Branding, Learnings, lessons, mistakes, timing

Update : I have intentionally put this update at the top. I have got a lot of people who have made comments on this article, no don’t look at the comments section, but to me personally on mail and calls, that they were not happy with this article. Let me be clear; I thoughtfully chose a topic which had a clear sarcasm in it. Rakhi Sawant is a gossip material and that’s what this article is meant to. In NO WAY do I promote the methodologies adopted by her to promote herself . The reading should be treated as things NOT TO BE DONE if you are a marketing or a branding person. For others the post is a pure fun to read.

I know I may be hated by the readers by writing about it, but believe it or not we can learn a lot of things from the Drama Queen.

All, ohk probably most, of us want to be a brand and become famous but are not able to do so. We have the skills but seeing this recent talk of the town I guess we have a point or two to learn.

First and the foremost thing is that talent alone is not the sole criteria, its publicity that plays a major role that will make you famous. Skill is a necessary condition but it is definitely not the sufficient condition. In my previous post I wrote about marketing your talent. Yes, that’s a very important point but I want to take your eyes to the tactic that Rakhi has used and used it better than enyone else. Get media publicity the WRONG way. Hardly people knew that the girl who did a couple of music videos and few movie item songs was Rakhi Sawant. But now, she’s a household name. Sometimes we have enough talent but don’t get the right/enough opportunities to show it. She made use of every opportunity. If I am not wrong, she shot into fame with the Mika Kiss Scandal. Got publicity on all those news channels who have more masala than news and eventually got more dance offers from movies and got a few TV reality show appearances as well.  Mission Accomplished I would say.

Result : Gets famous in a day all of a sudden, rules news channels for a week or so and in some cases gains public sympathy as well as anyone who cries on screen can easily get some emotional Indians sympathise her.

Second, if you can’t win, cry Cheating ! Everyone admitted that she was a good dancer, but when she was ousted on public voting in a reality show, she cried foul over the organizers claiming that the “votes were tampered”.

Result: Even though people like me who didn’t watch the show came to know about her and her dancing skills as it was again on all the masala-cum-news channels. Dancing skills proven, she starts getting more dancing offers in films, shows and no wonder her bank balance skyrocketed. Ofcourse she was famous by now !

Then comes third step and rather a mindblowing one. As people have a short memory and tend to forget things quickly, she comes with an ulmitate move, setting up a Swayamvar for herself. Marrying a person on a reality show! Who would think of that ? Are you Nuts , was my first reaction when I first heard of the show. Man, can you believe it ?  I don’t know whether it was all framed or real but bottomline is that the show managed to even get NRI’s to fight the others to marry her.  And guess what, the NRI wins ! Not sure whether the marriage will actually take place or not and the fact is who cares.

Result : Purpose of the show is solved. The show gets high TRP’s, especially because there were no cricket matches around the time of show being aired. Initially I also refrained from the show, but once when I saw it, I just couldn’t stop laughing. It was meant to be serious and emotional but it turned out to be absolutely foolish and idiotically funny and which was why even I watched it. But what surprised me more was that when I got back to work, logged into twitter, there were people who were updating about the show. News results all over the place. Ofcourse the masala-news channels had BREAKING NEWS. HAHA, I guess these news channels would run outta money if they don’t show this stuff. Everyone watched the show for various reasons and talking about her as well. Positive or negative but the point is SHE GOT PUBLICITY. I wonder what will up in those newspapers, but I guess being in Bangalore I can assume they won’t give her more than a small 5th or 6th page column.

Whatever ways she adopts, bottomline is she gets famous each time and does not let people forget her. Quoting a friend who just updated his facebook status which reads :

Rakhi sawant is a real celebrity , Hilton beware rakhi is coming, A real drama queen at it’s best on NDTV imagine ! don’t miss it

Update 1 : Latest news is that she even made it to the twitter trending topics.  http://bit.ly/12VWH1

Update 2 : Over 15 million watched ‘faisle ki raat’  http://bit.ly/1YfZ31

Technorati Tags: india, personal branding, rakhi sawant, reality shows, tips