It’s not creative unless it gels – sorry Mr. Ogilvy!

David Ogilvy had quoted the advertising mantra of Benton & Bowles ‘it’s not creative unless it sells’ in his iconic book on advertising, and it became inseparably associated with him. One of the most ubiquitous advertising quotes, it has valiantly stood the test of time. However, the Internet and Social Media have changed the dynamics that made the world tick in the Mad Men days, when giants like Bill Bernbach and David Ogilvy ruled.

‘Unless it gels’

‘It’s not creative unless it gels’, is just a two letters variation of the original but reflects a deep shift in the way the world communicates today. Gone are the days when an advertising campaign with adequate media budgets was certain to deliver results.

Enter 'unless it gels'. Read more...

How not to judge creative OR death by committee-titis

When you start something new, you learn a great deal by trial and error. You make mistakes and then you figure out the right way or someone teaches you. Sometimes, certain mistakes take longer to spot and correct. One such mistake is the tendency of new marketing executives to judge a creative piece, in pieces.

The tendency is to make sure that everything in the list has been done correctly. They start ticking off the different requirements and parts of the creative and when all ticks are there, they feel that the objective has been met.

What they do not realize is that the whole is much greater than the parts. If you breakdown a creative piece into several parts, you may get all of them right separately, but together everything may not work out very well.

Let’s have a look at what the requirements and parts are that a beginner marketing executive will look out for and tick off.

Well everything is ticked, so let’s have a look at the final creative. Read more...

Anyone notice the father headbutting the child in the SBI home loan for women ad?

The film is perfectly medicore except for a lively bit of headbutting that the father does with the child right at the end. A shot that should have been a natural scene of a mother and father hugging their child, is more like a race to place your head at the exact right position for the camera, disregarding the fact that you are headbutting your little son in the process.

Also the one tear streaking down the mother's face reminds me of clearly fake tears of masala Bollywood films of the eighties.

Considering the production values are decent, this looks like an oversight that should have been caught at the video editing stage.

Here's the TVC:

Other tea brands help you to fall ill a lot, but this tea helps you to fall ill less!

This ad is well meaning, and in all probability you will understand that it is selling a tea that stops you from falling ill, but it could very well sound like an ad for a tea that helps you fall ill less, compared to other tea brands that make you fall ill a lot more.

The reason may be that the client wanted the word ‘proven’ in the headline, and also 'India's only' and wanted to say it in a roundabout way.

However their attempt looks clumsy, people might start associating it with falling ill – India’s only tea proven to help you fall ill less often!

As always these are only my views and I may be totally wrong J

Is Supertech looking London talking Tokyo?

Saw the Supertech logo on a huge hoarding near Pragati Maidan in New Delhi, and felt that something wasn’t right.

A little later I figured it out. It was because the logo of Supertech was directly inspired by the Superman logo. However the baseline was talking about something that has no association with the qualities that Superman or any superhero stands for.

The line with the logo says ‘Yours for life’.

How does Superman or a superhero connect with ‘Yours for life’?

It doesn't and that’s why I was feeling a disconnect. What do you think the baseline should say?

Is Big Data going to affect creativity in advertising – looks like it!

We creative people already have to contend with Research and now here comes Big Data. Being a creative person, I won’t be able to demystify Big Data for you, but I can give you a rough and ready idea. Big Data is the massive amounts of information gathered from a variety of electronic sources (even video and audio recordings come under the purview of Bid data).

However, it broadly be divided into two chunks - internal information of large organizations consisting of intranets, emails, documents, chat messages, logged data and others, and the other chunk is made up of any kind of chatter about a brand in all social media and sharing websites.

The first chunk from within organizations doesn’t really affect creativity though it might have a big impact on the marketing strategy. The second chunk, however, could.

If you have a campaign running on TV or in newspapers or on the Internet, and there is some bad chatter about it, through Big Data decoding you might get to hear about it very quickly. And you know how easy it is for someone somewhere to get offended by something they have seen somewhere and write about it.

After a short period of time, when you redo the campaign and make it safer, and it still generates negative chatter, then you might hear about it very very quickly.

You can go on fixing it and making it safer etc. etc. but this is just me imagining about a possible scenario. There are already people out there who are doing this all the time, analyzing Big Data and altering the communication according to it.

It can bring out brilliant opportunities, and result in a first mover killer communication, and it can also kill off good creative ideas.

I guess only when the Cloud over Big Data clears will we really know ;)

Marketing is changing drastically, the olde marketing ways are dead, traditional advertising is dead and buried, mass media is going to fade away... WTF?

Let's get one thing clear right away, I am not a marketing expert. I am a person who is keenly interested in advertising and therefore also in marketing.

That said, I can fearlessly begin with this potentially completely flawed post on what is happening with marketing these days.

Let me begin with why I am writing this post. It’s because I have come across way too many pieces of online and offline communication about what this post's headline talks about - Marketing is changing drastically, the olde marketing ways are dead, traditional advertising is dead and buried, mass media is going to fade away.... These messages, posts, articles, videos, comments, tweets… have been crowding my mind without quite forming any kind of tangible picture.

So I thought I should try and get a clear picture in my head (to the extent that is possible) by writing about it.

The basic discussions seems to be about the fact that it is no longer relevant to broadcast your message, now your message has to be discovered and shared.

The reason being that now nearly the entire planet is on the Internet, and nearly everyone is searching the Internet for information, reviews, tweets, posts, Facebook comments and such, to gather information before choosing a particular product or service.

That is absolutely correct. However, back when the Internet wasn’t there, whenever possible we used to ask friends and if we knew one, even experts, before choosing a product or a service. Now, this is happening on a much wider scale and everyone is doing it. Therefore it is a very very important factor to consider when marketing your brand. OK, got it loud and clear!

Now, social media is enabling groups of people to broadcast their message far and wide without spending any money on media - Twitter, Facebook, Google+ et al. 

And it has brought down Governments. 

Wow that’s amazing. However, can a brand do something like that, very doubtful. No brand can have a

The great divide, or the shape of things to come in advertising!

I usually don't post graphics or pictures created by others, but I felt that this infographic created by http://www.voltierdigital.com/ is a really useful one for everyone who wishes to remain relevant as a brand in the foreseeable future.

Have a look... and in case you are not able to see the infographic properly go to this mashable post where it is very clearly visible - http://mashable.com/2011/10/30/inbound-outbound-marketing/