Aditya’s Blog

Audi trying to 'Break the Spell'

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Run Mumbai Run!

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Most creative logos from 2009

We have learnt a lot in theory about what a logo is and how it is important. One can go into further detail of designing a logo and what aspects of a logo are important and vital to attract maximum attention. 

         

Click here to download:

Most_creative_logos_from_2009.zip (33 KB)

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Marketing the Porsche Panamera

So, what if you are one of the iconic brands of all time having produced products that have become objects of craving and all of a sudden you make something that seems quite hard to sell.

Now imagine this brand to be Porsche. Yup, even they can come out with a stinker of a car which is not exactly a dream to sell. The car I am talking about is the Porsche Panamera. It is by far the ugliest looking sports car I have ever seen! And it will take a considerable amount of booze for any designer to beat that in the ugly scale in the future.

So what does Porsche do? They turn to the marketing department and plead! The marketing department then try to figure out a way to make people feel that the Panamera IS actually a Porsche and it has been made the way it is, for a reason. So in comes its positioning as the first thoroughbred four-seater sports car.

The next step is to drill this positioning statement - Four, uncompromised - into the customer's head. And for this purpose, they have come out with an absolutely brilliant creative!

What do you have as your resource if you are Porsche? What will convince the customer about this being a Porsche? Maybe showing a FEW of the older path-breaking Porshces will do the trick? Just to be on the safer side, lets say, we show ALL of the 50 Porsche models ever made - together! Sounds great!

So off they went and gathered around every Porsche they could find and made something like a teaser first.

So it sounds and looks quite exciting, the prospect of seeing the finished product. Before you go ahead and see the finished ad below, I want you to think about the problem Porsche is facing marketing this ugly car again. You know they are serious when they are putting the weight and reputation of no less than 50 cars behind just one new car. They are pretty desperate!

The concept of the family tree is quite brilliant and so is the execution. However they could have done without the gimmicky CG animation. At times the ad looks like a computer game. But overall a good strategy to market what seems like an adopted child as one of their own.

Tell me what you think!

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Careers in Marketing

Following is a general and broad list of careers one can have in the field of Marketing. (Courtesy Prof. Ramki who is an MMS marketing faculty in SIMSR and BMS marketing faculty in colleges like Jai Hind, HR, etc.)

For obvious reasons, I would refrain from putting anything in detail and just put the list here. For more details, you can try and contact him as he provides guidance in this field.

So here goes:

1. Sales
2. Distribution
3. MR
4. Advertising
5. Brand Management
6. Retail
7. Logistics & Supply Chain
8. CRM
9. FMCG
10. Consumer Durables
11. B2B
12. Banking & Insurance
13. Airlines
14. Hotel
15. Travel & Tourism
16. Telecom
17. PR
18. Event Management
19. Media Management
20. Data Analytics
21. Marketing Consultancy
22. Entertainment
23. Marketing Finance

There is a lot more to it than this list of course. Details like the type of jobs and skills required.

So, hope this helps you in some way.

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More about ads

It has been quite a while since I updated this blog of mine. But I have been a little busy with college activities, especially involving placements.

Anyways, I had one more though regarding ads and I though it is good enough to put it up here.

I had posted once earlier, that advertisements should carry the logos of the brands they are trying to advertise through the length of their ads. I would now like to take it a step further.

David Ogilvy, in his book 'Ogilvy on Advertising', says that all print ads should be signed by the writer himself. This will mean that there is additional responsibilty on the writer and the agency to write better ads and make sure every ad counts. I was wondering why this cannot be done for print ads. Imagine ads having a 2 second intro or conclusion credit giving the name of the agency which produced it. This way, the better your ads, the more your agency is known. For the brands, they now can be assured that the agency will make sure they do not put their names on ads which are not upto the standards.

This will help the viewers too. Lesser irritating, stupid ads which make no sense. This will bring in a lot of accountability to advertising is what I think. I know this might not be feasible and all the agencies will surely lobby against it. And when it boils down to it, who would make sure this is done? What governing body?

Anyways, do you think this will work?

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Affiliate Marketing Vs Ambient Advertising

I am to write a 2500 words White Paper on Affiliate Marketing for a competition. I hope that with the little experience I have of working in the internet industry, it will give me some kind of advantage.

The other topic is Ambient Advertising and even though advertising does attract my attention, I think I can do more justice to Affiliate Marketing. However, if I do choose Ambient Advertising, I guess I will learn a lot more about something I don't really know a whole lot about. But I think it is not that broad a topic in the first place.

Help?

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Put the logo throughout the length of an ad!

What would any brand lose if they put the brand name or the logo throughout the length of the ad. I can understand that initially you want to keep a level of suspense and keep the viewer guessing about what brand the ad is all about, but it just defeats the purpose. Are not ads meant to create high recall and make people buy the stuff when you eventually go shopping? But if you want to make more impact by keeping the user guessing and in the bargain losing out on recall in the clutter, what use is it?

I really do believe that the creative people would rather not have the logo throughout the length of the ad as then the user would know what would happen by the end of the ad and thus downplay the creativity of the copywriter. But, ads are not meant to satisfy the copywriter, it is meant to increase the sales and achieve stiff targets!

I recently saw an ad by 'Roca', a bath fitting brand, which had its logo throughout the length of the ad at the bottom corner. I now remember the brand better!

Is there any reason why one would not put the logo right at the beginning of the ad?

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Airtel Vs Vodafone 2

I had posted earlier about the Airtel ads and how they are similar to the Vodafone ads.

I have seen a few more from the Airtel campaign, and I have to say, I don't get it! Why would Airtel risk doing something like this?

The ads look similar to Vodafone, they don't look anything like the other Airtel ads, and the most noticable thing in Airtel ads - the music - does not come in until the last 5 seconds! So, how is it helping the ads stay in the viewer's mind?

Usually, an ad can be associated with a particular brand, if there is the usual peculiarity. Like the music in case of the telecom ads. All of them a peculiar music of their own which have become popular in their own right. However, Airtel (which incidentally has the most popular of these, thanks to A R Rehman), is just ruining it. The least they could have done was flashed the Airtel logo at the beginning itself. Most brands like to keep the viewer guessing about the brand, but in most of these cases they get it wrong. They would be better off by showing the brand earlier on and showing it a couple of more times by the end. Especially in this case where people are confusing it to be a competitor's ad!

Come on Airtel! You can do better!

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Would you show a customer choosing another product in your ad?

I am sure about 90% of you would answer no to the above question. Even I would.

But the Bajaj XCD ad shown below, proves to be an exception to the rule and does it quite well. I like this extremely risky idea of showing a customer choosing a different product. The ad in point however, makes it a point to show that the customer who is choosing something else, does not deserve the Bajaj anyways. They show the person choosing an average home and an average woman, so it goes without saying that he deserves an average bike as well. However, the execution of this idea is brilliant. They show him recollecting the old XCD ad which is a glossy, slick, upmarket, young, pacy ad of a biker riding with a girl who just won a fight with her twin to sit on the bike (I do like the earlier ad also, but more on that later). He then goes for the cheaper bike, satisfied with his choice.

It is a brilliant idea to create a position in the mind of the customer and at the same time an extremely risky ploy at these times, especially from Bajaj, which is known to give cheaper and more value for money kind of bikes.

What say?

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