As reported earlier, Miami Ad School conducted Portfolio Evening on August 30 Over 65 young creatives were shortlisted to meet the following senior creative leaders (in no specific order): Raj Nair, Garima Khandelwal, Kainaaz Karmakar, Ramanuj Shashtry, Viren Noronha, KV Sridhar, Kartik Smetacek, Hetal Ajmera, Naila Mateen and Sameer Sojwal, Tista Sen, Pallavi Chakravarti, Raj Kamble, Manish Bhatt, Agnello Dias, Bobby Pawar, Parixit Bhattacharya, Ashish Chakravarty, Amit Akali and Vikram Gaikwad
Said Raj Nair Chief Creative Officer Garage Worldwide: “Helping put Portfolio Evening together for Miami Ad School and Garage Worldwide has been one of the most fulfilling moments of my advertising life. Young, enthusiastic aspirants showcased their abilities to an amazing, inspiring bunch of creative leaders. A sincere thank you to all the legends who accepted my invitation to attend by contributing their time and feedback to the young ones who came seeking their inputs.”
Added Prabhakar Mundkur, Miami Ad School Advisory Director: “It was a fantastic evening. So many creative people on our campus. A fusion of young and experienced creative minds interacting with each other.”
The Ghatkopar billboard incident that killed many and injured many more has raised many ethical questions about the advertising and media business.
For many unknown reasons, the outdoor media business has always been known to be of a low moral standard and has once again brought up important questions of ethics in the advertising and media business.
It is well known that the outdoor business is often part of the intricate web of questionable transactions. Which means if you are an owner of a hoarding in Mumbai, by definition you need to be turn a blind eye to the law.
If one goes to the Ego Media website what is shocking is to see all the best brands in the country – from Godrej, Tata, Audi, Honda, Britannia, Big Bazaar, Titan and many more.
Are we saying that some of the best brand names in the country don’t care where their advertising goes and would like to in any way be associated with a company who has shown to have a complete lack of morals and ethics in the business? I know many advertisers and equally their advertising agencies think that a hoarding is something remote in their outdoor plan. Beside the top-ranking client wanting his favourite airport hoarding or a hoarding in the centre of the city because s/he lives there, not much importance is perhaps being given to where the advertising finally goes.
But shouldn’t advertisers care about where their advertising is being placed? Let me give you an example. If your cinema ad was to be tomorrow viewed in a theatre that screens porn films would you want your ad there? Or if your ad was screened in a theatre known to conduct other illegal activities, would you still want your ad placed in that theare? If yes, why don’t you care about where your outdoor creative is being placed?
If so far you have thought that “Oh that is the job of the outdoor owner” you better think again. You are not really distanced from the tragedy that has struck us on the Ghatkopar hoarding. Now that the real operation of Ego Media has been exposed in the media, I wonder how many advertisers have pulled out all their advertising from Ego Media.
Or are they waiting thinking that they are actually at arm’s length from the outdoor business?
There are many parties that are complicit in this act where many people lost their lives.
The owner of the property, which is the Government Railway Police, Ego Media who actually constructed the hoarding, the BMC for having allowed it (or for giving a stability certificate ) and, yes, the advertiser and his advertising agency are equally complicit. After all, lives have been lost.
It is time that the advertisers and their media and creative agencies feel equally guilty about the Ghatkopar billboard accident?
As a nation that is constantly boasting about now crossing Japan’s GDP, we better stop condoning our collective conscience that this is the India we know and nothing can be done about it. Make a trip to Japan to see how strict their laws on construction of any kind are in their cities.
We proudly say the medium is the message, but do we really care about what the medium is, and how the message is being placed on it.
I don’t think so!
Prabhakar Mundkur is a veteran advertising person having led advertising agencies in India and internationally. He is also a prolific writer and commentator. His views here are personal
With the recent apocalypse of well-known agency brands, JWT, Y & R, Wunderman, Grey and several others, it seems in comparison, that the only agency to escape the onslaught of mergers in the WPP group is Ogilvy.
There is a near mythical story about a conversation that was once overheard in one of New York’s many synagogues between two heads of the world’s top communication conglomerates. “You know JWT is past its prime. It is very good at handling old established brands like Kellogg’s and Unilever. The best ad agency in the group is Ogilvy. They handle modern brands like IBM and many others. They are ready for the future. The two men departed the synagogue after that propitious meeting. Almost 25 years later, the JWT brand was slain.
The dialogue in the synagogue seems to have come true in many ways. Ogilvy has withstood the test of time as one would call it. They have continued to be one of the most creative agencies in the world coupled with their knowledge of new media, customer experience and data-driven communication. It is no wonder then that it continues as Ogilvy and refuses to be overcome by mergers and acquisitions. The only acquisition ever was when Sir Martin Sorrell pitched for the agency from WPP in 1989 when he acquired Ogilvy in a hostile acquisition for $864 million. A move that irked David Ogilvy into calling Sorrell ‘an odious piece of shit’ publicly. A little later, David Ogilvy’s tirade against Sorrell changed from ‘shit’ to ‘jerk’.
But David Ogilvy quickly changed his earlier animosity against Sorrel. He was to write much later, “To my surprise, I liked you. . . I was flattered when you quoted my books, and even more so when you invited me to become Chairman of your company, which goes by the name WPP. I accepted your invitation.. . It remains for me to tell you that I am sorry I was so offensive to you-before we met.
When Ogilvy was dying of cancer, Sorrell visited him and promised to look after his wife and even paid for his nurses, according to Miles Young.
The magic of Ogilvy
For one, Ogilvy pursued excellence in creativity relentlessly unlike its contemporary brethren like JWT. Also, Ogilvy embraced direct marketing much earlier than some of the other agencies in the old days, quickly giving it skills beyond mass media. For many decades, JWT produced middle-of-the-road advertising for its largest client Ford which once accounted for 25% of the agency’s revenue making JWT Detroit its biggest office in the world. That coupled with its client portfolio of old world brands perhaps was it undoing. It failed to embrace the tilt to modern forms of communications as well as Ogilvy. Its slew of modern brands like IBM, Verizon, Ikea and others I believe helped Ogilvy to keep in touch with the future much better than other agency brands which have got acquired and withered away. It has been creating iconic, culture changing advertising ever since Ogilvy founded the agency in 1948.
So here is a lesson to the rest of the agency brands out there. Please look at what Ogilvy is doing. Because if you follow them, you will stay alive and hope to avert the death of advertising as predicted by many.
Let me end this piece with one of my favourite quotes from David Ogilvy.
“The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything”
Is this the final death of advertising as we know it? The last nail on the coffin? Or is it that the communications conglomerate that started it all has forgotten what is branding in their quest for “interconnectivity of brand experience, commerce and customer experiences” words that Jon Cook, Global CEO of VML used to the announce the death of Thomspon, previously J Walter Thompson and Y & R, previously Young & Rubicam.
Not to speak of Wunderman.
Although I don’t think Wunderman was nearly as great a brand as either J Walter Thompson or Y & R, it had certainly gained a reputation starting from its origins as a direct marketing agency.Somehow I am unable to shed tears for Wunderman but to think that both J Walter Thompson and Y & R do not exist even as the initials depresses me. To me, it is the death of creativity and strategy more than the death of advertising. The fact that they had been reduced to initials itself was depressing but I had just begun to accept it.
Strangely, the erstwhile JWT which was named after its founder J Walter Thompson had sold the business at the turn of the early twentieth century because he thought that advertising had no future.While it did well in the intervening 100 years or so it is strange that his spooky prediction about the future of JWT should finally turn out to be true.
So what is VML?
Do those 3 letters conjure up any images in my mind? I am afraid not. Who do those initials belong to and what do they mean to the rest of us? To me, I am sorry to say, it sounds like a company producing scooters at best. Maybe that classifies me as an advertising dinosaur. But even dinosaurs must have their say on history.
John Valentine, Scott McCormick and Craig Legible started VML in 1992 in Kansas City.I never thought that a great communications company would emerge out of Kansas City. Kansas city is known only for BBQ and a mighty good time!
The Challenge for WPP
The question really is how WPP is going to transfer the legacy of JWT and Y & R into a Johnny-come-lately company such as VML. What happens to 100 years of thinking about advertising and branding that made JWT famous?Thanks to stalwarts like Stephen King, Jeremy Bullmore and many others.People who laid down the foundation of the advertising business and built interesting theories about how communication worked. Or the creativity of Y & R who is known to have produced the first colour television commercial in advertising history? Or the theory of Archetypes and how that could be brought to hear on advertising which first emerged from writers that worked at Y & R?
What happens to the legacy of proprietary knowledge, analytical rigour and creative solutionsthese two great advertising agencies brought to bear on the rest of the communications industry?
Or are 100 years of history and knowledge going to dissolve in the vacuous nothingness of AI, technology, customer experience and commerce? That is a lot of words that somehowdon’t convey much to me but are found in the press releases of the new age communications companies.
In retrospect, Wunderman-Thompson was a good example of bad branding from the world’s largest communications conglomerate. Why would they havedelegated Thompson to second place in the first instance? More people surely knew Thompson rather than Wunderman. And in process kill an over 130 year old brand with much higher equity.
Wunderman was a small entity. Thompson was a big entity.Wunderman-Thompson was a non-entity. So I am not even sure I should be shedding any tears now that both of them are dead.
I am sure“Commodore”J Walter Thompson as he was lovingly called must have flipped a few times sadly in his grave last evening when he saw the VML press release.
Goodbye, J Walter Thompson, Young & Rubicam and Wunderman.
Hello, VML, whoever you are!
And Sir Martin what do you think of what your successor is doing?
PS: Meanwhile, Sir Martin’s successor has just got himself another five-year contract from the Board. Share price is trending at a third of its 2015 peak and lagging behind Publicis and Omnicom to No 3.
When I read the obituary of the Air-India Maharajah this morning, I couldn’t but shed a tear. After all, he was mortal like the rest of us. Ailing for the last 20 years, and in and out of hospital, many of his detractors were not able to overcome his strong will. And in spite of the many attempts on his life, he just kept coming back like the strong royal Maharajah he was. In fact he just laughed it off in his inimitable style.
While plenty has been written about him and his escapades through the decades through various lands, the end was solemn and brief. Just an unemotional announcement that his life had finally ended. There were no flowers. No prayers. No tears. No celebration of a life well-lived.
Which makes me wonder whether all mascots have a life of their own and like us mere mortals have to finally bid a goodbye.
Remember Gattu of Asian Paints? And the Murphy baby? Gattu, the mischievous Asian Paints mascot, was created by none other than the famous RK Laxman and enthralled us for a good 50 years. Murphy, another Indian favourite, was a brand born in Britain and founded in 1929 by Frank Murphy and EJ Power. The Murphy brand now belongs to the Shirodkar Group of companies but they don’t sell radios any more.
It is interesting to examine why the Maharajah was so successful. For one his commentary was on our day to day lives and the life of the nation. He became the social mirror of Indian society. He reflected our happy and unhappy moments with a touch of philosophy and wit.
Ivan Arthur, earlier National Creative Director of JWT, and now educator and author, when asked about the Air India advertising, said: “Conceived as a letterhead design, the Maharajah broke the fetters of the line drawing and became flesh with a personality and DNA of his own: the double helix of gracious exotica. That DNA did not permit him to stand in the street corners of conventional media and tout his destinations like a cheap ticket salesman. His famous romps on those hoardings were not advertising. They were non-advertising: parlour talk, one-liner points of view, camaraderie, provocation and good humour, all of which did not ask you to buy an Air India ticket. In fact, in many of the hoardings, he refused to have the Air India logo as sign-off. He was the sign-off. He was no commercial mascot. He became a national figure. Much loved and respected.
The Maharajah was always accompanied by another symbol that belonged to Air-India and that was the Centaur. Equally old, it has played an equally significant role in the branding of Air-India.
The Centaur had its own life as an alternative Air -India mascot. It flew around the world as the airline’s insignia, appeared on the inflight livery and even cutlery, was embroidered on some of its crew’s uniform, stood proudly on the top of the company’s impressive headquarters and became a brand name for its hospitality subsidiary!
Hopefully the Centaur carries on, unless the new adopted parents of Air-India have another strategy in mind.
In the meantime, let us mourn the loss of our favourite Maharajah once more. As the Byzantine Empress Theodora said “ For a King death is better than dethronement and exile”
As you all perhaps know Twitter’s official mascot until a day ago, was a bird and the bird’s name is Larry. According to a tweet by co-founder Biz Stone, it is called Larry the Bird as a tribute to Larry Bird who played for the Boston Celtics.
I was caught unawares when my friends on a WhatsApp group of intellectuals told me that the Twitter logo had changed into an X. What? Why?
I hastily opened my Twitter app only to see the familiar bird on a patch of blue as the opening screen.
Wait a minute. For some time, I couldn’t see the X. Then a friend said he had opened it on his computer. I quickly rushed to my laptop and open Twitter. It took me some time to see a weak little X tucked away in the corner of my screen. And the language was the same. It said tweet.
I then rushed to the App Store to check what the logo on the download would reveal. Once again, I was welcomed by Larry, and that told me that the new X branding was far from complete.
I had never thought about it before but the logic of the previous branding fell into place. Twitter because that is the short high-pitched sound that birds make. That is why you tweet. So what was the logic for renaming it X?
Elon Musk elaborated: “Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app. This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing.
The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140-character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video.
In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world. The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird.”
Yes, so I got it. You have long videos instead of 140 words. But you tweeted on Twitter. The logic was solid and unquestionable. My question to Elon is what do you do on X? You still tweet as indeed the image above seems to suggest. Something wrong here. Why am I still tweeting on X?
Now coming to the logo which was the weakest part of my computer screen when I opened Twitter. For a moment, I thought some highfalutin design company had probably charged Elon a few million dollars for a new logo and made a few quick bucks.
But here is the ultimate disappointment. It is simply the letter X from the Special Alphabets 4 font which you can buy on the internet for $29.99. Now that is cheapest logo I have ever come across for a major corporation.
Now I have no pretensions to being an expert typographer but after having spent more than 45 years in advertising I do think I can tell a bad logo from a good one.
But enough said. Farewell, Larry. Hello, X, whoever you are and whatever you want to be. Please introduce yourself!
daCunha Associates, Elysium Manson, Walton Road. The address said.
The year was 1977. I was desperate to get a job, having outlived the meagre pocket money of Rs 120 that my mother gave me. So desperate that I had applied to an ad in the Times of India for which I clearly didn’t qualify. Those days the recruitment ads in the Times could get creative. The ad said “Account Excecutive with 5 year’s experience needs daCunha’s”. Most of my friends in advertising had already discouraged me from joining the profession. When I asked them why, they had told me that I wasn’t a bastard, which you needed to be if you had to be successful in advertising. That intrigued me. I wanted to be in it nevertheless.
So, I wrote a smart letter to Sylvie that said we were looking for the same thing. He was looking for the five years experience backwards in time, and I was looking for the five years forward. For some strange reason that ploy worked. I got a call from Sylvie. And after a successful interview he hired me at the princely sum of Rs 1200 per month. My joy knew no bounds.
Sylvie was a hard taskmaster. I remember he once found a typo in an artwork (a colon instead of a semicolon) and in a rage he pierced his pencil through my artwork. These were the days of hot metal typesetting. Another day would be lost to make another artwork. But a lesson would be learned for life. Never ever let a typo go through. I was forced to learn the proof-readers marks and symbols right away. Something I am sure Account Executives who followed five years later wouldn’t know.
My media training happened in a car. One evening Sylvie asked me to learn the circulation and rates of all the major newspapers in the country. The next morning unfortunately my scooter broke down right in front of his house on Peddar Road. Sylvie kindly offered me a lift, which I accepted little knowing that my media test would start in the car. What is the circulation of Daily Thanthi, he asked. And what is its rate? I was a little shattered but passed the media test successfully. Basically, I had joined the Marines of advertising. I couldn’t have been trained any better.
Looking back, Sylvie was one of the original Mad Men in India. He grew up in an era when advertising people were copywriters, art directors, film-makers, media persons and strategy planners all rolled into one. He was a very talented writer and had made his reputation in an agency called ASP (short for Advertising and Sales Promotion Company). Those days it was one of the best agencies in town. Boasting of names like Usha Katrak, Shyam Benegal, Prahlad Kakkar and many others. Sylvie left to form his own agency daCunha Associate and took along some of ASP’s accounts including Amul Butter. We had a slew of blue chip accounts that included Lakme, Nutramul, Calcium Sandoz and Britannia Biscuits to name a few.
Sylvie was one of the last advertising men with courage (the others were my uncle Bal Mundkur and Mike Khanna of JWT). One day, I went to Britannia with some creative work, and the client was rude enough to get angry and he then threw the layouts on the floor of his office. I was shattered. I went back to the office to relate the story to Sylvie who was furious. He asked his secretary Patsy to get him Julian Scott, the Chairman of Britannia on the phone. As I was leaving Sylvie’s office, I overheard Sylvie tell Julian that he wanted to resign the account because his brand manager had insulted his account executive by throwing the layouts on the floor.
They don’t make men like him anymore. Theatre person, creative, writer, litterateur, he was an advertising man with a reputation. And he was respected by the best people in the business of those days be it Simone Tata, Dr Verghese Kurien, Julian Scott and many others.
I owe my gratitude to him. For getting me ready for the world of advertising. I was proud to have emerged from daCunha Associates, an agency that even had the great Mohammed Khan before me.
Go well, Sylvie. I love you. You will always have a special place in my heart!
Prabhakar Mundkur is a veteran advertising professional, a prolific musician and an even more prolific commentator who has worked across continents. He is currently holidaying in Canada, and wrote this tribute in the wee hours of the day to a man he loves much, and he owes so much to.
Hand drawn toothy tiger. Designed By 千图网 from https://pngtree.com
By Prabhakar Mundkur
For some time now, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has been the subject of criticism about its effectiveness. There is the annual rant in the media with various commentators taking potshots before or during an IPL which sees a major blip in advertising in India. ‘Watchdog’, which is often used to describe the ASCI, is perhaps not wholly descriptive of what it does. It can watch like a dog, but I am not sure it can bite. To bite you need legislation and now we have the Department of Consumer Affairs which has the teeth to bite. In the UK, for example, it is not the ASA that is considered the watchdog, but the Competition Markets Authority. The CMA has teeth. It is a non-ministerial government department to prevent anti-competitive activities. The Indian equivalent is the Competition Commission of India which was formed under the Competition Act 2002, which was formed when the erstwhile MRTP Act was repealed. But unlike the MRTP, which was very high profile, you don’t hear much about the CCI. That’s a pity!
Most critics of course miss the point that the ASCI is the advertising industry’s self- regulatory body. In many ways, it is the industry’s conscience that tells you what is misleading. And like we can always overcome our own conscience even when it is telling us not to do something, an advertiser can knowingly bend the rules. When you can overcome your conscience, you are being unscrupulous.
But coming back to the issue of misleading advertising, there are several bodies that are responsible for misleading advertising in the country. For example, the Cable Television Network Rules does not permit advertising for alcohol or tobacco products. Section 7 of the Rules on the Advertising Code has an exhaustive list of things that cannot be permitted.
(viii) promotes directly or indirectly production, sale or consumption of- (A) cigarettes, tobacco products, wine, alcohol, liquor or other intoxicants;
But rarely does anyone complain to the network channels that surrogate advertising for alcohol is being found objectionable by then. After all isn’t ASCI the favourite whipping boy for advertising that seems to cross the borders of acceptable advertising norms?
(1) The Central Authority may, after receiving any information or complaint or directions from the Central Government or of its own motion, conduct or cause to be conducted a preliminary inquiry as to whether there exists a prima facie case of violation of consumer rights or any unfair trade practice or any false or misleading advertisement, by any person, which is prejudicial to the public interest or to the interests of consumers
– The Consumer Protection Act, 2019
Equally, the Consumer Protection Act 2019 issued by the Ministry of Law and Justice protects the interests of consumers through legislation and it has a mechanism for accepting consumers complaints. It also has the authority to disburse fines for misleading products or advertising. Violation of their guidelines for endorsement can attract penalties from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 50 lakh.
So why is the ASCI the favourite pick of advertising-watchers when they find objectionable advertising in our media? If one actually looks at the number of regulatory bodies in the country there are quite a few.
1. Food Safety and Standards Authority (FSSAI)
2. Central Drugs Standard Central Organisation (CDSCO)
3. Insurance Regulatory Development Authority
4. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India
5. Securities and Exchange Board of India
6. Reserve Bank of India
7. Medical Council of India
8. Competition Council of India
9. Consumer Protection Act 2019
But perhaps what India lacks is an inter-disciplinary body or an inter-ministerial apex body that can look at the subject of misleading advertising.
For example, if we take the UK as a market, the Competition Markets Authority and the ASA form a powerful duo against misleading advertising. Also, misleading advertising can be controlled by the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008. The Office of Communications (Ofcom) is the ASA’s co-regulatory partner and legal backstop for regulating TV and radio advertisements. The Financial Conduct Authority for example in UK blocks several financial services ads. In 2022, it removed 8582 consumer promotions and published over 1800 alerts to prevent consumers from losing their money to financial scams.
The House of Commons briefing paper considers the ASA ( Advertising Standards Authority ) and the regulation of advertising in the UK and therefore has the indirect consent of the government unlike the ASCI.
The ASA working hand in hand with the Competition Markets Authority gives the ASA very large teeth indeed. And the CMA will get some very extra large teeth from the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill to be introduced shortly. Also, the several legislations provide a whole bag of weapons for the ASA to conduct their business of tracking misleading advertising.
In closing, I would like to point out that in markets like the UK it is possible for the self-regulatory body the ASA in the UK to have very large teeth that can bite those that stray away from the advertising standards code. India pales in comparison.
So I leave you to decide whether the ASCI is a toothless tiger or is just being made a scapegoat for the lapses in the fight against misleading advertising in India.
Prabhakar Mundkur is a veteran advertising professional and commentator. If it’s not his views on A&M, he’s very busy with his music, and in the lockdown produced several music videos (some 100-odd). His views here are personal.
It’s not only fashion that is about trends. Trends is an affliction that affects management thinking as well. And the latest trend is to talk about personal branding. The well-known management magazines are writing long articles about it. Other general gurus on branding are writing books on it. Why even the Harvard Business Review made it their cover story for the May-June issue of 2023. And here is the surprise. The article is written by a Jill Avery, a branding thought leader, and Racheal Greenwald a dating coach and a professional matchmaker author of the book ‘Find a husband after 35’. So if that doesn’t prove it is trending what does? After all, the HBR is considered the mother of all management journals. And their definition of purpose is what we were taught in the marketing kindergarten class for branding.
For a particular target person or group of people, I will make a difference by offering the unique, memorable, and meaningful value you want to provide…
• HBR May-June 2023 issue
But isn’t this just a another extension of the branding? Have the personal coaches and marketing gurus just discovered a new revenue stream? I certainly think so. After all it is quite easy to do. Transfer all you know about branding to people, especially people in positions of importance. And everyone is jumping into it, not just marketing gurus but personal coaches as well.
The question I would like to ask is whether great CEOs don’t become great brands automatically. After all I would hate to think that Steve Jobs was focussing his entire life on creating a personal brand. I think he was focussing on following his passion, making great products and leading Apple into becoming a great company.
The brand Steve Jobs just happened as a result of what he was doing.
Or take Jack Welch for example. Welch was Chair and CEO of General Motors from 1981 to 2001. He closed factories, laid off workers and pursued the vision of a fast growing company in a slow growth economy. Of course he wrote books and did a lot of public speaking. And became one of the greatest management thinkers and leaders of the last century. Jack Welch, the brand, became what it is because of what he did. Not because he was focussing on becoming a brand.
Jeff Bezos said: “Your brand is what people are saying when you are not in the room”. Well said. But I really wonder if Jeff Bezos was planning his entire personal branding strategy to achieve that. He was focussing on creating a great brand called Amazon that the world would acknowledge as a great brand. The rest just happened automatically.
In conclusion, I would like to submit that becoming a great leader and creating a great company or product will make you a great personal brand without much thinking or effort or trying to create your own personal brand proposition. It is hard to believe that the great leaders of our time were writing out by writing personal value propositions, auditing their personal brand equity or constructing their personal brand narrative.
If you are an artificial intelligence fan like me, you have no doubt watched all the seasons of Westworld. Or you might have been an avid watcher of Stanley Kubricks 2001 Space Odessey and HAL’s famous words from that movie when he says: ‘I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.’ That was as human as human can get.
When I first heard about ChatGPT, I was intrigued. I had played around with IBM Watson many years ago and even used it to make some revealing business analyses and business decisions. So what was ChatGPT going to be like? The humanness of artificial intelligence intrigues me and I for one have never been afraid of it.
Humanity’s biggest threat has always been itself. ~Engerraund Serac in Westworld
In fact ChatGPT interacts with you in a very human way. You could have a conversation or you could ask it questions. What I found was that the interactions are certainly very human, I wouldn’t know the difference.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an open chatbot system released just three months ago by OpenAI, a for-profit research lab. You can almost ask it any question. And it will go thru swaths of data from the internet to deliver a dialogue with you. ChatGPT, according to its inventors, is still not perfect and it is still ‘learning.’ The biggest challenge for AI researcher to tackle is the Turing Test. You would have heard of that in the movie ‘The Imitation Game’ that portrayed the life of English mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. Turing proposed the following test to gauge intelligence. Can a human conversing with a human and with a computer tell which is which?
UBS Analyst Lloyd Walmsley estimated that 100 million users had used ChatGPT in January 2023 in two months after launch what took Instagram two and half years.
What kind of questions can you ask ChatGPT? Mostly everything from asking it questions in quantum physics to asking it to write a poem. Here are some of the questions I asked.
PM: What is Schroedinger’s Cat?
Chat GPT: Schrödinger’s Cat is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics, proposed by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. The experiment describes a scenario in which a cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive substance and a poison, such that the radioactive decay of the substance has a 50-50 chance of killing the cat. The idea is to demonstrate the concept of superposition in quantum mechanics, where a particle can exist in multiple states at the same time, and the act of observation collapses the wave function and determines its state. In the case of Schrödinger’s cat, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time until the box is opened and the state is observed.
Or I asked it to write a love poem and this is what I got.
Love is a rose, with petals soft and bright,
A flame that dances, illuminating the night.
A treasure to hold, a gift to share,
A feeling that warms, a bond that’s rare.
It’s the twinkle in your eye, the skip of your heart,
The laughter that echoes, when we’re worlds apart.
It’s the comfort you bring, the peace you bring to my soul,
The place I call home, the place I call home.
With you, I am whole, I am free, I am me,
Together we soar, through the highs and the lows.
And though the winds may howl, and the skies may turn gray,
Our love will endure, with you, come what may.
So here’s to the laughter, the tears and the joy,
To a love that is true, a bond we’ll enjoy.
With you, my dear, my heart overflows,
With love and with life, with love that glows.
Interesting isn’t it? Chatbots are based on Natural Language Processing or NLP. Chatbots are being used for internal business communication, enhancing customer service and to boost online commerce.
What is the future of AI? I think so far all of what we thought was science fiction has pretty much turned out to be reality. I wouldn’t be surprised if our future world was a lot like Westworld.
Prabhakar Mundkur is a veteran adperson, a prolific writer and musician. He writes for MxMIndia on and off. His views are personal
Manyavar is clearly the darling of celebration wear. But when it featured Alia Bhat in an ad which was forward-looking by suggesting that giving away the girl in marriage or Kanyadaan is sexist and regressive, the ad angered the public. Further, Manywar suggested that the age-old practice must be named Kanyamaan adding fuel to the fire. But no right-thinking individual could deny the patriarchal nature of Indian society.
However, Manyavar has managed to come out of that temporary setback. What with the wedding season reaching its peak in the winter months, the brand could not afford to slow down. So, the new string of commercials features Ranveer Singh.
While the campaign features on the groom (Ranveer as dulha), it also showcases the baaratis who also have to be well-dressed. Manywar has a full range of celebration wear; from exquisite sherwani to Indo-westerns classic kurta jackets to matching accessories. Being a dulha of course means all eyes are on you.
Personally, I felt the commercials lacked a real idea. All it did was captured a realistic wedding situation with the focus on Ranveer. So if Kanyamaan had a strong idea about making a comment on society, these commercials are pure entertainment – music and dance. But they seem to have captured the imagination of the public all the same.
Also, their tag of #ManyvarAaGaya was carried out throughout social media. Influencers on Instagram prompted the dance moves to the same music as the commercials. The copy says
“ Hey grooms and baaratis,
When the beat drops, #DoTheManyavarMove
Show your moves and get ready to set the dance floor on fire, kyunki
@manyavar
#ManyavarAaGaya ”
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Saorabh Rajnish Choughule (@mesaorabh)
Another Instagram post said:
Listen up grooms and baaratis,
Let’s burn the dance floor and #DoTheManyavarMove
Aap bhi try karo aur dikhao apna swag, kyunki #ManyavarAaGaya
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Rohan Mehra (@rohanmehraa)
What it has certainly managed to do is create awareness of the approaching wedding season and prompting consumers to be ready for it with their attire.
And while the ads have no real idea, Manyavar has made people forget their angst against the Kanyamaan ad and the brand has moved ahead with their happy string of commercials announcing the wedding season.
Perhaps in any other country, Truecaller would not exist. Because other countries respect the privacy of their citizens. I recently spent a month in the UK and my family did not get even one unsolicited call.
Unfortunately, in our country, all our details are an open book. We all no doubt get at least a few scam calls a day. If they are not scam, they are at least greedy marketers who are aggressively calling you to sell their wares. I have noticed a new trend now. Some of calls are mechanised and as soon as I pick up the odd unknown caller, a pre-recorded voice is trying to sell me something. These recorded calls in many ways are the most irritating because you can’t be rude and insult the mechanical voice as you can do with a real person at the other end.
It is not only our phone numbers that are available freely. Our car registration numbers are available not only on the official Government app Parivahan but on a score of other private apps. At least the government app tries to hide the complete details of your name, but the private apps don’t even bother to do that.
If that were not enough, our car insurance details are also an open book. I get a score of emails from various insurance companies every time my car insurance is nearing its expiry date. Recently, I read about a well-known person who got scammed on life insurance. The victim had an insurance policy that had lapsed in 2014. The scam caller called the victim and offered to not only reinstate his policy but offered to redeem the policy, trapping the victim who could naturally do with a little more money. It is only when he reached the end of the call and the scammer started asking for his bank details and offered him an OTP did the victim realise that it was a scam call. These activities are being done openly in our country in spite of the fact that both telephone calls and insurance have government entities supervising the industry – IRDA for Insurance and the TRAI on telecom. It is strange that these government bodies are doing nothing to protect the privacy of the Indian citizen.
But coming back to Truecaller. I was in the UK and I must have received at least 30 scam calls. Thank you Truecaller because I would immediately get the notification that they were scam calls and I could safely leave them alone.
Though no one is writing much about it, I also like the Truecaller advertising. For one, it is entertaining. And they seem to have proved me wrong that Indian advertising has lost its humour. Truecaller uses humour to show how the app can frustrate the scammer. It also demonstrates the stages of the scam and makes fun of the account numbers and OTPs that scammers normally demand as the call progresses. Some of you may remember how Netflix exposed the entire process that scamsters employ in their movie on Jamtara – Sab Ka Number Ayega.
Truecaller has in some ways also exposed the process of the seamster but with a humorous twist. I particularly liked their Diwali ads. I believe scam calls are at their highest during the festival seasons because this is when most people are looking for deals and are therefore most vulnerable.
I also thought that their sign-off line is quite interesting Scam ka Jam is quite appropriate.
Well done, Truecaller. Here is wishing you the best in protecting Indian citizens from scams.
The Ghatkopar billboard incident that killed many and injured many more has raised many ethical questions about the advertising and media business.
By Prabhakar Mundkur
The question really is how WPP is going to transfer the legacy of JWT and Y & R into a Johnny-come-lately company such as VML. What happens to 100 years of thinking about advertising and branding that made JWT famous?
I was caught unawares when my friends on a WhatsApp group of intellectuals told me that the Twitter logo had changed into an X. What? Why?
I then rushed to the App Store to check what the logo on the download would reveal. Once again, I was welcomed by Larry, and that told me that the new X branding was far from complete.
