Apparently you can purchase many goodies at a new portal called Yebhi.com. (I like the brand name, very imaginative.) And ‘great rates’ is their USP. To communicate this promise, they have come up with a completely hilarious ad.
There’s this lucky dude who’s hit a gold mine. Nearly electrocuted at an ATM machine, his daddykins goes through a magical transformation. The ol’ man now coughs out currency notes. In other words, he’s become an ATM machine himself. Naturally, his loser, good-for-nothing, wastrel son is elated. And the lad goes on a mad shopping binge, with his ATM daddy coughing away wads of rupees. Great idea. Every loser’s dream come true. To have a dad who’ll keep showering money, no questions asked.
Â
And the execution is wacko, it’s full-on entertainment. Full marks, I say. For a new online shopping portal, it’s critical to come up with a clutter-breaker, which Yebhi has done. Also, the message is single-minded: You don’t have to be a lucky son to get lucky at Yebhi. Should get the portal lots of hits.
Rating: (On a scale of 1 to 5): 4. I would have given it 5 if they had featured a mantri’s son. In which case the daddy works like an ATM just by winning an election. No need for electric shocks!Â
The prize for the day must go to the Indian Express and its expose of accounting fiddles by former IPS officer Kiran Bedi. This prominent member of Team Anna, according to the Express report, regularly overcharged NGOs and other organisations for her airfare by travelling cheap and submitting inflated bills.
TV channels soon picked up and the story and it must be remembered that they have been at the vanguard of the cheerleading squad for Anna Hazare and his movement. By mid-day, Bedi was on air offering a plaintively-voiced explanation and claiming she had done no wrong. Bedi’s answer to the Indian Express follows, without comment as it speaks for itself: “We follow transparent methods of functioning and volunteer to be questioned or audited. Every penny in our work is accounted for and is for the facilitation of causes we espouse… We have been very conscientious of trust and responsibility… And hence punctual and meticulous in our systems.â€
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The media, it has to be remembered, flatters to deceive. Too much expectation should not be placed on endless support for any person or movement, no matter how glamorous or well-meaning. The Anna Hazare movement thought it was good PR to go out of its way to thank the media for its “support†– mainly the non-stop TV coverage of Hazare’s fast at Ramlila Maidan in August.
Unfortunately for Hazare’s team – and unfortunately for the principles of journalism! – the positive one-sided coverage given to Team Anna could only last so long.
Cynicism and scepticism will usually triumph over adulation – one must remember that the so-called adulation of celebrities is usually PR and marketing driven and will also go the way of all things one day. One suspects that the internet will push that change faster than our little media darlings realise.
As for the rest of the world, some disgruntlement soon emerges. Poor Rahul Gandhi, who a few months ago was seen as a worthy heir apparent, is now pilloried all over the place and is often portrayed as the font of all problems. Extreme perhaps but inevitable.
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One which note, I was quite happy that the baby shower party for Aishwariya and Abhishek Bachchan completely passed me by. I only got to hear of it through Twitter and haven’t stopped congratulating myself on my escape!
Thursday started out with Kiran Bedi, allegations of accounting fiddling, Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalitha and a 15-year-old corruption case and the launch of a new train service in Bangalore (I refuse to call it a ‘metro’, because by my reckoning, metros run underground and this one looked like an elevated service). But by the evening, it was the death of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, dictator of Libya, which dominated everything.Â
For the first couple of hours, it was Al Jazeera which provided the most details, CNN and BBC catching up soon after. Indian channels got into it after that and images of people celebrating were soon replaced by pictures of what appeared to be – and was later confirmed as – the body of the dictator.Â
Gruesome as the images were, it was a poignant reminder of how death is the great equaliser and all your power and delusion cannot save you at the end. Please forgive that philosophical digression but sometimes TV will do that to you!Â
Of course, most channels tried to combine reporting with reportage and comment but experts were still grappling with what had happened to really provide any special perspective.
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The prime time news shows on Indian channels mainly remained with Gaddafi – the newspapers on Friday morning informed us of hundreds of ways to spell and pronounce the name – and many ran documentaries on the dictator, his rise and fall. News X did a discussion segment on the Kiran Bedi issue, with a very well put together panel of former Team Anna members — Swami Agnivesh and Rajinder Singh, current India Against Corruption member Abhinandan Sekhri, Tushar Gandhi and activist Shabnam Hashmi. Rahul Shivshankar had to work very hard to allow everyone to speak as Sekhri was in a very defensive mood and took exception to question Bedi as well as the exceptions raised by Singh and Agnivesh. These two were quite clear in their condemnation of Team Anna and the way it operated. The allegations against Bedi were also discussed. Gandhi pointed out what many had foreseen — that the movement was getting lost in personality disputes while Hashmi expressed the viewpoint of those not enamoured of Hazare and his supporters.
It was in fact an interesting, no-holds-barred discussion, if a little short, but then attention had to shift to the end of a 42 year dictatorship.
A stop at Times Now in the break showed an interview of minister Kamal Nath over the Bangalore trains by Arnab Goswami. No scope for fireworks there.
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Friday’s papers took the Gaddafi fall further but more or less reiterated what we already knew, so exhaustive had been the TV coverage.
There are two things I will do this Diwali for sure. One is to try my best to make my house soundproof in order to escape the deafening cracker explosions. And two, avoid the other mega explosion: Mr Shahrukh Khan. The man is leaping out at you from every single media vehicle, whether it’s old media or new media. I even fear going to the loo these days, the star may creep up on me there too.
On a serious note, I wonder if the carpet bombing of the media that SRK and some other producers do really makes a difference to a movie’s fortunes. Khan has, of course, gone ballistic in his marketing and has even done brand promo tie-ups, gaming, merchandise… the works. Not to speak of the PR machinery on overdrive. I am not sure how much the marketing budget for ‘Ra One’ is, but it would be safe to assume it’s at least 30% of the cost of the film, and that’s many serious crores of expenditure. When you consider ‘Rang De Basanti’ scored big with zero marketing and SRK’s own ‘Chak De, India’ made no noise and still went on to be a big hit, you wonder if movie makers are wasting their money. It’s Diwali, a long holiday weekend, and there’s no reason why the janta won’t fill up the multiplexes anyway, especially with Shah Rukh in the house.
There’s another thing: This level of marketing raises expectations to dizzying heights. And if the movie doesn’t live up to those, it comes crashing down even harder. Recall some of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s more recent films. As it’s often said, nothing kills a bad product faster than brilliant marketing. So perhaps it makes sense to cut out the marketing expenditure, and invest it into the film’s production. Keep the expectations low, and then surprise and delight the audiences with great cinema. Guess SRK is destined to learn this lesson at a huge price.
As for me, this 360 degree blast for ‘Ra One’ ensures I keep 180 degrees away from the multiplexes. I can only handle that much noise. Good luck to SRK!
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PS: One media ‘innovation’ I totally detest is the half-page cutout ads in the newspapers. Where the front page of the newspaper arrives half. This makes it very unwieldy and painful to hold the newspaper. Perhaps the new press council head, Mr Katju, should clamp down on this malpractice. Paid news I can live with (it’s easy to smell it out). But not deformed newspapers that are a struggle to deal with.
Not much Diwali themed ad action this season. Guess because the sentiment is a bit dull in the market place, thanks to the heavy inflation. How do I gift stuff to anyone if all my savings have been burnt on getting KLPD? *(For the one-track mind wallahs, that’s Kerosene, LPG, Petrol, Diesel.)
Still, three ads caught my attention. The Cadbury’s ad I have already dealt with earlier. The other two are from Coke and Big Bazaar.
Rating: (On a scale of 1 to 5): 2. Only for the jingle. Watch this commercial with your eyes shut, and it works rather nicely!
Coke: Great audio, poor video
To begin with, there’s no direct connect between a soft drink and Diwali. No one gifts a cola on D-day. Unless, of course, very subtly the Coca Cola guys are asking us to do just that, since we are all so bloody broke! Coke’s ad wants us to light ‘two extra diyas’ this Diwali. I suppose this is an extension of their ‘open happiness’ idea. And the execution involves kids lighting diyas at their regular haunts. College canteen, girls’ hostel, on the wall that serves as ‘stumps’ for their cricket matches, etc.
I think it’s a nice idea wasted on juvenile imagery. Coke should have taken the ‘share happiness’ route and come up with situations that are touching and emotional without being heavy. ‘Khushiyaan baanto’ as a concept lends itself to emotion very well. Even the jingle is warm and tugs at the heart. But the silly visuals leave you cold and detached. I suspect this is what happens in the desperation to feature kids at all costs. Even accepting that, surely there’s more to youngsters than canteen and cricket.
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Rating: (On a scale of 1 to 5): 3.5. For the advertiser’s deep empathy with the target consumers.Â
Big Bazaar: Relevant and thoughtful
It’s a simple, no-frills Diwali commercial. And you know what? It works perfectly well for me. Because the idea and the execution reflect a clear and sharp understanding of Big Bazaar’s core target market.
The TVC features a teenage girl inside her home. She looks fed up of her regular salwar kameez, and yearns for a stylish one she spots in a magazine. The setting and the casting clearly tell you this is a lower middle class household. However, her dad, who’s decorating the house, smiles and tells her: ‘Diwali aa rahi hai’. And yes, it’s time to hit Big Bazaar and get hold of that salwar kameez, and more!
Good one. I like the fact that Big Bazaar is totally clued in on their key customers, which is the middle and the lower middle class segment. And this results in an engaging, warm, and very relevant communication. Big Bazaar and the ad agency will definitely not win any awards for this effort, but the store will surely get many footfalls this festive season. And in the end, that’s what really matters.
My life has changed totally after I moved from advertising to journalism. For the better, of course. Here’s how:
I earn a lot less. This means no boozing, no smoking and no partying. In fact, I have had to give up on all good things in life. No problem, this keeps me fit. I am 10 kgs lighter now.
I seldom get invited to parties. And Page 3 parties, in particular, are totally out of the question. This has to do with the ‘unhip’ journalism I do. No one wants to risk pissing their VIP guests off with me in the house. But this also means I have started doing yoga in the nights. Healthier than partying, no?
Folks in Mumbai go to jail if they are caught driving drunk. But I get into serious strife for parking in a no-parking area. And that’s because I once did a sting operation on corrupt traffic havaldars. And these guys have a wonderful memory, aside from deep pockets. But that’s cool. Anyway I hardly drive because of the killing petrol prices.
I have spent many hours in the company of beautiful movie stars. Kareena Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra, to name a few. Asking them about their intimate secrets and desires. What fun! But I have also discovered how vulnerable, ambitious and insecure they are, just like the rest of us. I emerged from these meetings totally disillusioned. But that’s okay. I can boast to my mama who lives in Alwar that I have Priyanka’s cell number.
I have discovered that all the cricketing gods I idolized since childhood are actually quite petty, opportunistic and materialistic people. That they give a rat’s arse for their fans, and have interest only in making money. This has left me depressed for sure, but there’s an upside: I watch very little cricket now. Good. I have time to follow more productive passions.
My not-very-sweet views on netas and underworld dons over the years have worried my family members a lot. They fear I may not return home one day. But that’s fine. At least I feel wanted by someone.
And of course, people now look at me with a little more respect, which was not the case in advertising. When I last went for a snack to a very packed Kailash Parbat at Lokhandwala, the manager told me I’ll have to wait one hour forty minutes for a table. When I proudly told him I am a happening journo, he very graciously reduced the waiting time. To one hour thirty five minutes.
Whenever I get invited to participate in an event, my first reaction is to hesitate. And this is because, of the many I have visited in my life, most have turned out to be shoddily organized. Mismanagement of crowds, late start, poor banquet service, clueless hosts/hostesses… it’s a long list of gripes. And this turns out to be the case even when professional event managers have been hired. I must also add here, the few events I have visited in London, Cannes and New York, were a pleasure. Which is why I have always wondered why we screw things up in India.
Since most events are usually private/low-scale functions, no one discusses the bloopers, and life simply goes on. But we get caught with our pants down when they are held on a mega scale, when the world is watching. Our pathetic show at the Commonwealth Games, and now with the mess on Metallica’s performance in Gurgaon, has made us look like bloody jokers.
I really don’t understand why we Indians make for such poor planners and executors. Maybe it’s in our DNA. Or, we can blame it on bad karma, as we usually do for everything! However, here’s a hunch: I suspect our event management companies are not being run professionally. And they aren’t being held accountable for flop shows. Perhaps a hefty fine for botched events may make them pull up their socks. I wonder if these people train their staffers on the skills required to run an event. If there’s any quality control in place. I would stick my neck out and say that most staffers are hired based on their general enthusiasm and little else. When the ground reality is that running a huge event takes a lot more than enthusiasm. It needs astute planning skills, a resourceful temperament and a jihadic passion to execute a successful event.
Our event management companies need to clean up their houses. Or be ready to get penalized for bringing embarrassment to the host. Or to the whole country on occasion.
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PS: Haha. Came across this funny ad on the need to wear proper lenses. Must say the dude reminds me of a bumbling Indian event manager. Just kidding!
Although Mumbai is my normal hunting ground, I have spent this Diwali in Hyderabad. And it is wonderful how easily you can get into another news cycle, no matter how unfamiliar at first. There are no large well-packaged newspaper campaigns about roads or health or public transport. The outraged citizen is also more subdued than in Mumbai – Dear sir, I have not yet received my aadhaar card after so many reminders, gentle stuff like that.
Politics is far more in evidence and clearly Tellywood has not overtaken every page of every newspaper the way Bollywood has done to our Mumbai papers. No one can suggest that the Telugu film industry is not huge and does not command a massive fan following or commercial presence. Yet, no film star has jumped out of the pages wishing us Happy Diwali, Halloween or anything else. Happy Days!
Telengana is a big issue obviously, but everything has been a bit quieter over the holidays. Diwali-related allergies, pollution and injuries also got their fair share of attention, proving that social consciousness is a seller.
Between the Times of India and Deccan Chronicle, the former is more national in its outlook and the latter more local. The day after the Metallica concert was cancelled in Gurgaon, TOI led with the story while DC was happy with a single column.
The colour pages however are as full of the vacuous page 3 stuff and the scale varies, presumably depending on celebrity activity, which appears to have been quite slow. Or it could be that local celebs are not yet professional party goers who make deals with photographers to ensure themselves so many pics a week and all from the most flattering angle!
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Not surprisingly, the Formula 1 race and the continuing travails and protestations of Team Anna hogged TV and newspaper headlines. The Big Fight on NDTV had a discussion on the corruption charges against Team Anna and its anti-Congress stand at Hisar, featuring former Delhi police commissioner Maxwell Pereira, actor Kabir Bedi, politician Renuka Chowdhury, former TOI editor Dileep Padgaonkar and a young girl from Team Anna. Anchor Vikram Chandra tried to ensure that Team Anna got fair treatment but even he was a bit stunned when Kabir Bedi said that he was not bothered by Kiran Bedi’s creative accounting. Audience members were far more critical.
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The fiasco over the Metallica concert in Gurgaon demonstrated how TV needs to up its reporting skills. Anchors and reporters clearly did not have the wherewithal to probe what had gone wrong and relied on unsubstantiated claims made by fans. Oddly, TV channel websites appeared to have more clarity. It took the newspapers the next day to answer most questions. Yet, even now, the facts seem a little hazy, that is, juicy details of why the concert was not held are missing.
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Most intriguing of all is the fate of some 130 tourists who have apparently been kidnapped in Lakshadweep. TV ran the story late one night and forgot about it the next morning. Newspapers have been silent and the web, normally a fount of information and misinformation both, has provided only sketchy details. So what’s happened to them?
Here’s the Micromax ad that did not leave actor Shiney Ahuja very amused. And he’s taken legal action against the advertiser.
Now, Micromax is notorious for over-the-top and often offensive advertising, so this commercial came as no surprise to me. It sits in well with their brand personality. A young lady excitedly tells her female friend that her hubby, whose name is Shiney, has bought her a new Micromax Bling handset. And she’s surprised to find that the naughty Shiney has bought the same instrument for her pal too. But she gets the shock of her life when the housemaid declares Mr Shiney has bought one for her too!
Hahaha. I think the ad is very funny and very Micromax. I like advertising that cleverly ties in the brand’s message with current affairs. It just makes the communication that much more engaging. It’s a pity that Shiney Ahuja lacks a sense of humour. Also, if he had kept quiet, some people would have noticed the ad. Now that he’s protested, many more will. Enjoy!
Make no mistake about this: Niira Radia did no wrong. At least, technically she did no wrong. The seductress has announced her retirement from corporate PR, citing health and family reasons, but we all know better. No corporate suit would want to continue to use her organisation’s services post Radiagate.
But truth be told, Radia only did her job. She may have been involved in murky negotiations, but all she did was ride an already corrupt and rotting political system. Exactly the way many of us bribe our way out of red-taped procedures, not because we are dishonest, but because the straight route is much too painful and time-consuming. So what exactly did Radia do? She aggressively lobbied for her clients, was proactive, cut deals, influenced ministerial berth allotments, won the goodwill of powerful journalists… pretty much all that a solid PR person ought to be doing. Her only guilt was that her methods were hard-edged and her objectives cut-throat, but that’s about it. She was handling mighty corporate accounts, and the demands must have been heavy.
In short, Radia only pressed those buttons which work in this nation. In that context, terming the scandal ‘Radiagate’ is unfair in itself. Give me a Radia any day over those nice but ineffective PR people who sit back and issue press releases for a fat fee.
The hard reality is that the actual culprits were the netas, the babus and the journalists who fell for her charms, compromised their positions, and were caught with their hands in the cookie jar. She tempted, they fell like nine pins. It is they who ought to have paid for their follies. And while some politicians are in jail, nothing happened to the journalists. For them, life goes on as if it was a minor career hiccup. The ‘gate’ ought to have been named after one of these worthies.
Anyway… goodbye, Niira. You spend quality time with your family as the corporate world gets busy hiring expert press-release-issuing chicks.
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PS: So, Shakti Kapoor got kicked out of the Bigg Boss mad house. What a moron he is! The channel expected him to molest a few ladies (there are 13 in the house) and he ended up behaving like Mahatma Gandhi! Now I can believe the show isn’t scripted.
McDonald’s has launched an icy new dessert called McFlurry. I did try it out the other day and was left quite unimpressed. Would like to discuss that in detail, but since I don’t get paid to do food reviews, let’s cut to the chase.
The idea is ‘Slow down in life with McFlurry’. The commercial features very busy people taking a leisurely break over a McFlurry. Essentially corporate execs and other rushed souls. I like the idea of taking a quiet break from life, of taking some time off on a hurried day. And a nice, delightful dessert goes well in that situation. The execution is cool, too. A laidback jingle, assorted people cooling off… the commercial does catch the spirit of slowing down. The situations could have been more interesting, but that’s fine. That can be corrected as the idea evolves. So, all in all, a good one.
However, here’s a request for McDonald’s: They must make it clear that the McFlurry is a ‘take-away’ dessert that people must purchase and scoot. And that’s because youngsters and families often spend hours doing time-pass at McDonald’s over a single Fanta, happily ignoring the long queues outside. And forgetting that McDonald’s is a ‘fast food’ joint. With ‘slow down’ as the message, I fear these guys will hang out over a McFlurry for hours together!
It’s not something that’s not happened before. I recall Time magazine doing it in the late 1970s when it reported that an Indian politician had visited China when in fact he had called off the trip last-minute.
I was alerted on this thanks to a Facebook post by a former colleague, Narendra Kusnur. The city supplements of both the Hindustan Times and Times of India in Delhi reported that the Metallica concert had happened on
Friday. While the front page of the main paper did make a mention of the chaos at the venue, that of their supplements – which Kusnur believes happened because of an early deadline – was incorrect.
I am sure this is more than just a severe embarrassment for the editor and management of both publications. It’s not the case of an error in reportage or a typo or even a wrong picture that was printed. And mind you it doesn’t appear to be an inadvertent error.
Here was a case where the paper’s editors cheated their readers by deliberately printing incorrect information. We got to know about it thanks to a vigilant reader and also because it was a much-hyped event.
But my worry is what if the editors do such acts habitually, with other events too. Also a cause of concern is that the city supplements of the two leading newspapers in the capital carried a similar error. The Times of India blanked out the news item on the epaper, while HT didn’t do that. So obviously the decay exists not just in one publication.
I went through the front page of HT City and Delhi Times on Sunday to see if there’s any apology. I didn’t see any in the epaper edition. Times magazine, btw, had apologised for the error.
This only further accentuates my distress that the reader is being taken for a ride and no one really appears to care.
The Niira Radia exit. Good riddance or sad to see her go?
I still remember the days when Vaishnavi was setting up. The Tata group accounts were consolidating under an agency with a name unlike the other PR agencies. In the early days, the folks were working out of makeshift office at the Taj Mahal hotel and the Army and Navy Building in Mumbai.
But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I found it very pleasant interacting with Vaishnavi staffers. For a period when I was with the Dainik Bhaskar group, we had recruited Vaishnavi with an assignment which again was executed very well.
The PR industry grapevine always had assorted stories about how the Vaishnavi bosswoman Niira Radia had managed to net the entire Tata group account. Needless to say most of it was out of jealousy. Guess they found some merit in getting the entire business group to go to just one agency for PR just as you tend to do for, say, media buying.
My sense is that this policy doesn’t work. It’s always good to get a few different players, given their strengths in various business areas and have experience professionals available in the locations you want them.
Two questions: now that she’s gone (well, as of close of business today), what’s the view. How would the world remember Niira Radia? High profile lobbyist or a quality communications professional? Lobbyist yes, but perhaps incorrect to stretch it to her being a wheeler dealer.
There’s a lot that exists as part of the deliverables under public affairs, and there’s nothing wrong if the influencing has to happen beyond media folk. For instance, if a senior politician from Kerala thinks he or she is not being recognised by the powers that be in Delhi, then there’s nothing wrong in pushing your way around in Delhi.
And if there’s a journo or bureaucrat who is amenable and can get influenced, it’s surely not the crime of the practitioner.
That both the Tatas and Reliance groups entrusted their responsibility to Radia speaks volumes for her skills.
There is a lot on Radia that the various enforcement agencies are busy with. I don’t see anything happening to her. She has enough contacts to get her out of any mess and has enough dirty stuff on people to pull the trigger if anyone gets naughty.
Question 2: were the Tatas wise by going in for Rediffusion? I would be interested to know what swung it for Arun Nanda. After all, he doesn’t have the best PR brains with him any longer.  Perhaps that’s why tied up with Edelman.
But then 10 years back when the group went in for Vaishnavi, similar questions were being asked. Radia’s team put up a decent show. The Tatas can obviously spot talent where not many of us can.
PostScript: Are news media professionals worried about the mutterings of Press Council chief retired Justice Markandey Katju. Read this hilarious account on Legally India. Must-read. More on Katju’s comments on the media next time (which I promise you won’t happen after three weeks!)
Apparently you can purchase many goodies at a new portal called Yebhi.com. (I like the brand name, very imaginative.) And ‘great rates’ is their USP. To communicate this promise, they have come up with a completely hilarious ad.
By Ranjona Banerji
By Ranjona Banerji
