Virgin vs. Airtel

Have you guys seen some fight in the ad industry after Pepsi and coca cola ?? Hope everyone had seen the direct strike by Pepsi on coke by letting a 8 yr old boy stand on coke can to get Pepsi. Of-course those ads are banned in the industry but very well available on you tube :P Now here is another fight within the Indian telecom industry with their ads. These two ads were released long time back and still running even today. The conventional hair oil ad or detergent ad would target its competitor by showcasing the normal product with the competitors product color. But right now the ads of virgin and airtel has shaken the industry with a big surprise. Now lets watch both the ads and then we can discuss on it




So now that you have seen both the ads you could sense that Virgin completely opposed Short Messaging Service(sms) and next week this airtel ad came strongly insisting on sms. Virgin roped in Ranbir Kapoor and so does Airtel did with Sharman Joshi. So whats the fuss all about. Virgin a strongly believed youth brand should never have done that. That's a really big mistake on their part. They forgot the fact that more young Gens come every other day and most of them live on sms and IM's. So completely its affecting the brand of Virgin. And this shifting phase would really kill the brand. So now coming onto airtel. Airtel always perceived as peoples brand came immediately to the rescue of youngsters. This immediate reaction from airtel would have seriously made the virgin marketing team to sweat at-least for a moment. To add some more sugar they have also started a GPRS campaign which again convinces the youngsters perfectly well. Why now airtel taking away Youngies?? Well thats a big question :P Telling people to convey things by talking is a real feel good factor but now who tells it there lies the problem and whom you are telling to again that's a major criteria. Tik Tik bandh karo Talk Talk Shuru Karo may sound rhythmical. However Airtel's ad purposely carried a guy laughing at Sharman Joshi that sms wont work and asks him not to waste time and there Sharman gets a instant reply with lots of love :P. Sure to raise smiles when compared to the drowsy Ranbir ad. So this i wanted to bring to your notice such ads are really pathetic that could even drive away the brand as fast as possible. Soon iam planning to bring a new column for commentary on specific ads for which again i need all your support !!!!! Cheers !!!!!

chennadmania !!!!

So here it goes guys !!!! my long awaited post !!!! :P ... Chennai has a different architecture for its ads. A sense of style which i haven't seen anywhere else in our country. If you see my first post you could sense how corporates are exploiting the ad space over here. The city is largely held through hoardings wall paintings umbrella messages and at times even tea shop captivity. I will be posting few images over here and lets discuss on that.



This picture shows you the back side of a bus carrying UNI-NOR advertisement. Of course this is quite common in most of the cities but if you watch it closely you will surely come to know that the size is really huge and pretty fitting on a bus and unlike any other bus where they post on the side-top of the bus here its done on the backside. Most of the commuters look for the bus number and the respective route and just a glance is enough for them to carry the brand on their heads. Secondly vehicles following the bus its 'n' numbers. Obviously every one will get a glance of this ad and mostly there are varied ads displayed and it includes magic shows too :P . So tell me how they manage to do it, its because the ad rates as i heard is very cheap on a monthly basis. Very cheap then 1 lakh pamphlets :O Now that's surprising. So this has been a tradition here its because of the fact that it attract high rate of viewership.

So now let us dig deeper into Chennai





Now you see these pictures these are more common sights in Chennai. Mostly cement ads you can find and obviously its more popular in deep suburbs of chennai. Most large scale manufacturers tend to use these ads in chennai. Now docomo has even started using this :P (God knows who are the marketers:P). These ads tend to attract the sight of people in transit and one more information the last two wall ads photo was taken in front of local train station so you can imagine how much these ads are really worth. But actually an one time payment on 10000rs would do :D in the housing fraternity.



Now the previous video. Really a fantastic addition to experiential advertising. As you can see the ad is meant to be electrifying as how it is shown. This is a pepsi ad posted on a tea shop through its name board. Of course the tea shops name is less visible but the contentment of tea stall guy is priceless. He got a flashy board for free with his name imprinted just by allowing Pepsi to do it. Adding the brands name on to someones board has been a custom in Chennai but getting digital in this platform whole of the credit goes to Pepsi. The ad is flashy enough to attract all eyes passing by. Who else but Dhoni is sitting on it too so a very special ad for very special people must be the tag line. When i took the video i found it in just one shop near my home but almost all the shops now are proud owners. Pepsi you rock!!!

There are few other ads like Big umbrellas given to road side flower shop or pan wale which is enough to attract the pedestrians unfortunately i don't have those pictures. These umbrellas are engraved with brand name and logo. And few others like vodafone give home use umbrellas to the customer so just that any user steps out with it on a rainy or sunny day we can have at least one kid saying "papa see that". This attention grabbing exercise is done flamboyantly well in Chennai.

The ultimatum of the blog is to highlight where Chennai stands in ad world. Your comments and criticisms are highly motivating thanks for the feed back from off-liners. :) Next blog on ..... keep guessing !!! ;)