Stellar outing: The F1 event showcased India’s event handling capabilities much more favourably than the Commonwealth Games could. - Photo : Rajeev Bhatt
On October 31, I was at Lucknow to celebrate a landmark birthday of my classmate from IIM Bangalore. It was a unique experience to be in Mayawati's kingdom, but I shall resist the urge to talk about statues and parks with huge, forbidding walls and stay with the events that India and the world witnessed around that time.
The media in Lucknow was showering praise on Mayawati for helping organise the F1 event, taking place in Noida at that time. Although it was largely a private sector initiative, the papers, in Lucknow at least, spoke in glowing terms about the support that behenji had provided to make the event a great success.
"Bangalore as a Brand has registered its mark world wide as the Software hub, thanks to companies like Infosys and Wipro. However the image of Bangalore as a brand is getting tarnished because of poor Infrastructure and governance, the city is in need of a "Brand Champion".
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Brand positioning should be directed by strategy, and not left to a lucky streak of publicity.
I have been married for a small matter of 29 years and I guess one of the expressions that I have heard most often is “I told you so!” I know that some of you at least may share some similarity in experiences, right? But the purpose of this piece is not so much to compare the relative states of our marital bliss (?) but to take a look at brands with a similar lofty philosophy. Often I have felt that it is wonderful to be a critic, sitting on judgement on brands and their foibles, but here I am more interested in the learnings for other brands from some of these acts of omission or commission that brand owners and marketers have done at different points in time.
Mid-Day being so popular with the youth will help scale up this business in a space where there are very few organized players, a person with direct knowledge of the development said Jagran Prakashan Ltd (JPL), the publisher of Hindi daily Dainik Jagran and owner of the print business of Mid-Day Infomedia Ltd, is planning to open a chain of Mid-Day cafés, two people with direct knowledge of the development said.
“Mid-Day being so popular with the youth will help scale up this business in a space where there are very few organized players,” one of the persons said.
According to him, the group plans to launch cafés under the Mid-Day brand across India, starting with the metros. “Cities from where Mid-Day is published will be targeted first.”
Will Chetan Bhagat be a good brand ambassador?
Please see my comments on the above subject in article below (Appeared in today's Financial Times).
In a country where most adverts feature celebrities such as cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar or Bollywood stars, an overseas phonemaker and an author seem like an unlikely, if interesting, pairing.
India’s best-selling author, Chetan Bhagat (left), has been signed up by Chinese telecoms company Huawei to launch its latest tablets and smartphones on the subcontinent, the Economic Times reports.
India is Huawei’s second largest market after China, contributing between $840m and $1.4bn per year (3 to 5 per cent) – of overall revenues, which totaled $28bn last year. But the company isn’t widely recognised in the country, and also must combat prejudice against Chinese products.
How companies can create true customer delight and offer service that really counts.
As I sit in the Custommerce National Convention listening to exotic concepts such as customer-centricity, engagement, experience frameworks and multi-channel customer interactions, my mind started wandering. I can almost hear you saying “tell me another” but in my defence I must tell you that I was still staying in the customer experience realm but in my own selfish way, I was thinking about myself as a customer and my own experiences over the years. Was there anything truly outstanding that I have experienced as a customer that I could remember, relish and share with you?
It was meant to transport the brand into the consciousness of India's youth, but a new advertisement by Flying Machine has flown into a storm of controversy instead. A welcome controversy! One of India's early home-grown jeans brands, Flying Machine, over the weekend, released a print advertisement that shows the picture of a female model wearing tight fit jeans around her buttocks, with the catchline in big, bold font screaming: 'What an Ass!' It was probably meant to highlight the oomph and cool quotient in an old brand, perhaps even mimic the edginess of the 'All asses were not created equal' tagline in an advertisement last year by larger rival Levi Strauss & Co. While the jury is out on whether Flying Machine's latest campaign has found resonance with the cool set, the advertisement is generating heat in some quarters.
It has been 'keeping it simple' for so long, but now there is 'no getting away' for Tata DoCoMo. Or so it seems, going by the severe flak its latest television campaign has drawn from doctors, NGOs working with domestic servants, and even viewers.
The Advertising Standards Council of India has already received eight complaints against the mobile operator's cheeky commercials that portray doctors and domestic helps in a negative light. And a Delhi-based social organisation working for the rights of domestic workers threatens to take up the matter with the parliamentary standing committee on labour.
The new series of 13 television advertisements promoting Tata DoCoMo's network connectivity with a tagline 'no getting away'-released across national channels last week-is being criticised for "showing class bias", "cozying up to harmful social prejudices" and being indecent.
Gen Y no longer lives in an idyllic, insulated environment, chilled out and being itself. Hence, how marketers communicate to them is extremely important.
Ramanujam Sridhar CEO of brand-comm. and a Director of Custommerce.
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Stellar outing: The F1 event showcased India’s event handling capabilities much more favourably than the Commonwealth Games could. - Photo : Rajeev Bhatt
