Zero to one-eighty in nine seconds (& stitches)

CHETAN KRISHNASWAMY forwards an example of fine public service advertising, against overspeeding.

Also read: If public service is God’s service…

#4: Insert a pair of scissors into foetus’s skull

Contract Advertising’s newspaper advertisement against female foeticide which won the gold at the Cannes Lions 2008 in the public awareness category. The ad was created for the NGO, Aadhar.

Executive Creative Director: Ravi Deshpande
Creative Director: Raghu Bhat/Manish Bhatt
Copywriter: Anshumani Khanna
Art Director: Manan Mistry/Vimal Singh
Typographer: Manan Mistry

Link courtesy Anamika

Crossposted on churumuri

All the news fit to print, all the booze fit to air?

“NDTV Good Times” is a lifestyle television channel that is the result of a collaboration between India’s leading English language television network NDTV, and India’s leading liquor manufacturer, United Breweries (UB).

On the face of it, “NDTV Good Times” may seem like a good idea for M/s Mallya & Roy.

For UB, the channel’s name gives the “King of Good Times” punchline of its Kingfisher beer constant, not-so-subtle on-air play given the ban on surrogate advertising. And, for another, UB gets the kind of content which it can then slap on the screens of the planes of its Kingfisher Airlines.

For NDTV, too, it is a win-win. It has another channel to offer viewers in its bouquet; it gets a stock-market listed media company some extra dough, an extra revenue stream; and it gives NDTV’s image of a media outsourcing company that it has craved and cultivated vide a deal with GenPact.

But can the relationship work the other way round, too?

Obviously, a liquor company can use the packaging of its products to advertise its own channel. But does it work on tipplers? Does it create greater awareness of the channel or the partnership? Do Kingfisher-drinkers remember to switch on the channel after the hypnogogic haze has vanished? Do the TRPs suggest that?

More importantly, can a serious media house like NDTV allow its brand image to be exploited on liquor boxes? Does it need to? Admittedly, the beer boxes are only pushing “NDTV Good Times” but can such a symbiotic relationship work without affecting the credibility of the main news and business channels?

Maybe, there is nothing puritanical about the Mammon-worshipping modern market place. Signage is important and getting the message any which way is all that counts to put some black ink on the bottomline. That may be OK for a liquor house, but for a media house in the news business?

Put another way, would New York Times allow its logo on Budweiser boxes even if Bud paid billions?

Cross-posted on churumuri

Does smrtr and smplr add up to tts and ss?

RAMYA KRISHNAMURTHY writes from Bangalore: Deccan Chronicle, the Hyderabad-based group that is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, has just launched its Bangalore edition. Hoardings like these that greeted Bangaloreans on the first day of publication, 26 May 2008, raise fundamental questions about how a bottomline-driven media (pun unintended) views its role in society and the kind of equations it seeks to build with readers it intends to serve.

Like, are well-sculpted “bare bodies” the only way of getting “young minds” interested in reading newspapers? Like, are male “young minds” so devoid of imagination as our media heads seem to think? Like, is there any proof that “young minds” have a problem with serious, meaningful content? Like, is this just a Bangalore/IT/BPO phenomenon? Like, are “middle-aged minds” and “old minds”—not to speak of “female minds”—totally out of the pale of our newspaper proprietors and managers?

Since the paper is landing at our doorsteps free of cost, maybe we shouldn’t look a gift-ass in the mouth. But, pray, what is this gorgeous young lady doing sitting like that?

ps: “young minds” might like to note, as my husband did, that the bird at the top left-hand corner of the hoarding is a crow.

Photograph: Prashant Krishnamurthy

Also read: The ads say it’s going to be smrtr and smplr. Bttr?

Neena Gopal to edit Deccan Chronicle, Bangalore

Forget invitation price, try a new paper for free!

Cross-posted on churumuri

Obscenity ain’t in the eyes of the publisher

This promotional advertisement—showing the top half of a woman with a ten-pence coin covering each of her breasts—released by Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper has been ruled as not offensive or pornographic by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in Britain.

Objections related to women being portrayed as sexual objects, the ads appearing on buses where children could view them, and also that the image was pornographic.

But the ASA ruled that the Ten Pence Bikinis ad, “whilst distasteful to some, was not overtly sexual in nature and the amount of flesh revealed was no different to that in a bikini ad and could not reasonably be argued to be pornographic or likely to cause serious or widespread offence.”

Photograph: courtesy The Independent, London

Also view: The most offensive ads of 2007

The ads say it’s going to be smrtr and smplr. Bttr?

Like the proverbial wolf, “Deccan Chronicle is coming”, “Deccan Chronicle is coming” has been the cry in media circles in Bangalore for at least three years now. Well, this time it is coming for sure, and hoardings have sprung up across town promising a smarter, simpler paper aimed at the SMS generation.

Less Words? Shouldn’t that be Fewer Words?

Photograph: Karnataka Photo News

Also read: Neena Gopal to edit Deccan Chronicle in Bangalore

“Balls to boredom? Balls to gasbags?”

The New Indian Express, the southern wing of the once-mighty, united Indian Express family of Ramnath Goenka, is being revamped and relaunched from Friday, 11 April 2008, with a set of spunky graffiti.

# Balls to boredom, balls to gasbags

# Don’t give me bullshit, I get enough on TV

# Dear Mr Editor, stop ur preaching

# Dear newspaper, grow up. I have

# I hate left-ism, right-ism, extreme-ism and especially brain-deadism

But can attitude alone carry the day in a market teeming with old ladies, middle-aged aunties, and new kids all built on the same premise, same promise?

Reading a paper without getting your feet wet

The 15th international yoga festival was held in Pondicherry last month, and blogger Ursi showcases one of the many brilliant posters on view.

Link via Boing Boing

The launch that showcased a thousand slips

PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: The unveiling of the Nano has fetched the kind of publicity Osama bin Laden would kill for.

Purple prose hailing the new peoples car, breathless editorials brazenly brushing aside environment and traffic concerns, mushy interviews with the man himself, over-the-top opinion polls have all greeted the “world’s cheapest car”.

But, has anybody driven the bloody car?

Welcome to the age of hype as journalism. Welcome to the age of who cares as long as we can get into their media plan journalism. Welcome to the age of the details don’t matter, the spectacle is the story journalism.

Like the iPhone in the United States last year, the Nano has been decreed a success even before the assembly line can be readied for manufacture. And like a Harry Potter book, half of whose hold depends on the secrecy its author and publishers can double from the previous instalment, we have had TV channels describing the route the car took from Poona to Delhi, and schoolboy newspapers cackling about the Z-category security that accompanied it.

But at least, thousands of buyers could touch and feel Steve Jobs‘ claims the day it was launched; thousands more could sample J.K. Rowling’s concoction.

The Nano?

We just have to swallow and spout the manufacturer’s line hook, line and sinker. Or else, we could be out of their media plan. So we have to take Ratan Tata’s word that it lets out less fumes than a two-wheeler (oh, yes, tell me another) and that it won’t clog up our roads (oh, really?).

Sure, the Nano it looks cute, the colours are snazzy, and yes, it’s a proud moment for a desi company that has put out some of the most dangerous vehicles on our roads, like the Sumo and their godawful mini-trucks, to have stuck to a “promise” and delivered a car with a sticker price of Rs 100,000.

But, brother, how does it move? Isn’t that what a car is all about?

You scribble a line to see if a pencil (cost Rs 2) writes well. You check out a couple of vegetable wallahs before you buy kotambir (Rs 5). You try a pair of hawaii chappalls (cost Rs 200) to see if it is comfortable or not. Why, we sample sweets and savouries before declaring them tasty or not.

But you see a one lakh rupee from a safe distance and pronounce it a hit?

Hit it may well be and, for the sake of the Tata Motors stock of which I have a few, I hope it is. But where is the balance, the line between paid advertising and, well, unpaid advertising?

OK, it could accommodate Ratan dikra as he swung in for the launch. But can it carry papa, mama, chunnu and Bunty comfortably? Will its adhesive stuck parts withstand not-so-ideal conditions as the ramp at a five-star hotel? Do those very basic shock absorbers have it in them to haul you out of potholes for years on end?

And, since we are talking of a car, lest we forget, does its motor run well?

I guess we will never know till some auto magazine gets another sneak peak, and we all know what that means. But couldn’t we have been spared the instant verdict?

If an inexpensive price tag is all that matters, we’ve got it—even Tata’s PR people wouldn’t have done better.

Also read: 11 similarities between iPhone and Rajnikant

Photograph: courtesy tatapeoplescar.com

The greatest advertising guru of all time?

Lawyer to some; leader to others. Beacon to some; bugbear to others. He was many things to many people. Apostle of peace and non-violence, and father of the nation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was also a triumph of branding. As Sarojini Naidu famously said, it took a lot of money to keep Gandhi poor.

On media circus, Tom Tom writes:

“The truth is he wasn’t just some sappy dude who sat around all day smiling. He was a sharp lawyer who had a mind for smart communication. He was non-violent, but not passive. He devastated an empire by taking residence in people’s minds.

“He knew how the media worked and how to get attention. He spread his message by causing peaceful civil disobedience that got talked about in international press and word of mouth. That’s the power of a story worth discussing.

“His famous salt march was done explicitly to get noticed. He made a small batch of salt, which was illegal for him to do under British rule. The salt he made wasn’t worth much, but the press couldn’t help but write about his defiance.”

Was he, all things considered, also the greatest advertising guru of his time, and ours? A man who preceded image consultants, brand managers, public relations?

Read the full article: What Gandhi can teach us about advertising

Photo illustration: courtesy Media Circus