OOH campaign for Sprite Xpress

Coca-Cola is using eye catching outdoor creatives for the product communication. This includes innovative 3D graphics on various outdoor structures.

• A sticker on a glass door looks like a Sprite Xpress bottle is breaking through the door
• Another like the bottle is breaking through the building
• Stickers on escalators look like people coming down the escalator are holding bottles of Sprite Xpress
• On truck backs, the 3D graphics make it seem like Sprite bottles are falling off the back of the truck
• On conveyor belts, a 3D sticker seems like a crate of Sprite Xpress is moving on the belt.
• Sprite Xpress Crate handbags make it look like a person is carrying a crate of Sprite Xpress when they hold the handbag.

The tagline for the campaign is: ‘Sprite Xpress Ghumo Ghumao?!’




“The mobility factor of the product is the big idea behind Sprite Xpress. It’s more of a ‘package’ communication, focusing on the new packaging. In the tagline, ‘Ghumo Ghumao’, the word ‘Ghumo’ represents the take it anywhere quality of the product, and ‘Ghumao’ is an attribute of today’s go-getter youth, which symbolises clarity of thought and smartness.”

The Sprite Xpress 350 ml pack will also be made available in Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Thums Up, Maaza and Kinley Club Soda in the first phase. In the second phase, Fanta, Limca and Minute Maid Pulpy Orange will also be available in this packaging.

Agency : O& M

ASIA BRAND CONGRESS 2008 - SNIPPETS

Earlier, brands followed this relationship pattern: You→Your Brand→Consumer. But ideally, they should follow this: You→Consumer→Their Brand. “Lovemarks are not purchased, they are owned. If you take a brand away from a consumer, he will replace it. If you take a Lovemark away, he will protest.”

Brands that command high respect (performance, trust and reputation) and great love (mystery, sensuality, intimacy) achieve Lovemark status. Even some people such as Mother Teresa or Sachin Tendulkar are Lovemarks. In the brands context, some Indian Lovemarks include Amul, Britannia, Cadbury, Horlicks and Vicks.

“Brooke Bond Red Label tea is a Lovemark that faded away, It is relatively easy to get people to fall in love with you… it’s tougher to get them to stay in love.”

A brand such as Starbucks is an international Lovemark, all because of its approach. Starbucks believes it is in the people business, serving coffee, and not in the coffee business, serving people.

This is a complete antonym to the 360 degree communication jargon. “That is all bullshit,”. “360 is all about surrounding people and attacking them from all sides… let’s not forget that we are in the attraction economy and not just the attention economy any more.”

Further, things are moving away from return on investment to return on involvement, from product performance to total experience. Marketers are to generate emotion, rather than get people to listen to reason because “emotions lead to actions, while reasoning only leads to a conclusion”.

“If your spouse tells you that he loves you a million times in a day, chances are that at some point, you will get irritated. Advertising is becoming like that. Let’s not forget, love is about doing, not saying.”

“In order to connect with the mindsets of people around the world, you must learn what their aspirations are, what their psyche is, what their outlook is. You must know about their lifestyle so that you can connect with them on the same wavelength,”

India post and the new logo

Creative agency: O & M
Management consultant McKinsey is behind the restructuring of the Department of Posts.

The new logo is designed in red and yellow. At first glance, it appears to be an envelope. A closer look reveals the bold strokes which give the impression of a flying bird. Though there has been a departure from the straight lines in the earlier logo, a certain element of continuity can be seen. The wings, which act as the anchoring element, have been retained, but the treatment is different.

Red has been chosen for its traditional association with the postal service. The colour also embodies passion, power and commitment. Yellow communicates hope, joy and happiness. India Post embraces a change to present itself as a vibrant and dynamic organisation with a modern approach.
“Hopes, dreams and aspirations are the basis of this logo. When they soar, anything can be achieved. That’s why the wings have been added to the new logo of India Post.

The line, ‘Giving Wings to Your Dreams’, summarises the philosophy of India Post.
The modernisation of post offices is a part of Project Arrow.

Bindass hangs a cab in the sky

Bindass, the youth entertainment channel from UTV, has launched a game show on wheels, Airtel Bindass Cash Cab, which went on air on September 15 at 7.30 pm. To promote the show, the channel actually put up a cab on a hoarding in Mumbai's prime advertising location, Mahim Causeway.

To win the money, the passenger must give the right answers to the questions asked by the ‘Cash Cab Haryanvi Jat driver-cum-anchor’, Munish 'Munna' Makhija.

The questions get progressively challenging and the cash increases apace. Incorrect answers get a strike and three such strikes get the passenger out of the cab, irrespective of the distance remaining to his destination.The passenger also gets two lifelines to help him when he doesn’t know the answer to a particular question. He can either call a friend or stop the cab and pose the question to someone on the road. Currently, the cab is running in Mumbai and Delhi, but will be taken to Kolkata and Bengaluru soon. The international format of the show has won an Emmy award.

OOH Media offers Flexicast to advertisers

What - Flexicasting as “the ability or flexibility to telecast brand communication on Out Of Home Media’s LCD and plasma screens as per the advertisers’ choice of city, location, target audience, frequency of exposures, creative and language”.

Why - “The need for a tool like Flexicast was felt due to heavy media fragmentation, less time spent on traditional media, and more opportunities and time spent out of home,”

Advantages - Flexicast are that it maximises exposure and media value to the advertiser’s target group, minimises media spillage, adds frequency to a TV campaign, adds audiovisual to a print campaign and the visual element to a radio campaign, and adds dynamism to an outdoor campaign.

“In a nutshell, Flexicast will make OOH TV media planning simple and maximise advertisers’ returns on investment.”

How does Flexicasting work?

OOH Media has a huge network from which the advertiser can slice and dice his communication according to his choice.

With Flexicast, advertisers can also practise proximity or vicinity marketing, where a client can advertise his brand or service in the area of his location for a multiplier effect.

Web 2 and why?

Tim O'Reilly, who is credited with coining the term way back in 2004 says: "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform".

Examples. Sites like eBay, Wikipedia and Google Adsense derive their effectiveness from the inter-human connections.

Bart Decrem, founder of Flock, calls Web 2.0 the "participatory Web".

The technologies encompassed by Web 2.0 include blogs, tags, RSS, social bookmarking and wikis. With Web 2.0 type-sites, it is possible to combine data from various sources, even sources that you don't own control or even exist, and turn that into data that people can use.

Web 2.0 is not just about technology. It's really about the users, the people.

Corporate Benefits:

Web 2.0 lets you share and incorporate multiple voices— your customers, your service reps, your employees—who quickly take the product, service, or idea in a direction that you could not alone.

Web 2.0 can help build your brands, reach out to the users, engage them with your brand, and help establish loyalty.

EXAMPLE - Infogain, says: "We expect to leverage the power of collaboration by getting innovative ideas from individuals, who are free to send theirtechnology/business ideas to the our CTO office directly."

Risks - Data privacy, application security, information integrity and information silos. There is a chance that inaccurate, or occasionally even offensive, information may get out.

How viable would it be to make the newspaper free in India?

Hormusji N Cama, director, Bombay Samachar,

In that scenario, the costs of a newspaper would have to be covered by the advertiser. He said that newspapers will have to ask themselves what they are selling – an advertorial or news. “A free newspaper is nothing more than an advertorial,” he said.

Sunil Mutreja, president, Amar Ujala,

For any business house to come up with a free newspaper, it had to start with free newsprint. “Will anybody give me that?” However, he added that free newspapers could work if they were also niche targeted. For example, there could be a paper catering to the youth and backed by advertisers from youth brands, which could be distributed free at places such as McDonald's, Barista and Cafe Coffee Day.

Mutreja raised the issue of advertisers’ perceptions of a free newspaper. “Advertisers felt that a Re 1 daily would be read only by rickshawalas. Just imagine what the perception of a free newspaper would be!”

Rajiv Jaitley, president, marketing and ad sales, Dainik Bhaskar -

Stressed that there are no free lunches. The real question, he said, was whether the free newspaper would be going to the right segment and whether the advertiser would be getting the right value. “If you are going mass, it will be just wasted.”

Paulomi Dhawan, vice-president, media and corporate communication, Raymonds - dispelled the myth that a free newspaper is funded by the advertiser and said, “The advertiser is not paying for the editorial. The advertiser is paying for the value he gets. He is paying for segmentation and the response he gets.”

HOW WAS IT DONE IN SINGAPORE?

PN Balji, editorial director of MediaCorp, which runs the free daily, Today, in Singapore, disagreed with Dhawan. The eight year old Today, which has a print run of 300,000 copies, has been making a profit for the last four years.

Balji gave five reasons for the success of Today’s business model.

The first, was that it was competing with The Straits Times, which had been in existence for more than 160 years and which controlled the entire vendor market.

The second reason, he said, was to provide quality content that “had the look and feel of paid content”.

The third reason, he said, was to put up a double agent model at the top level. “A person who is the editor should be the publisher/chief executive officer as well, so that one knows where to draw the line in the marketing and editorial pull.”

The fourth reason, he said, was “while other newspapers gave the ‘what’ of news, Today decided to give the ‘why’ of news”.

The fifth reason, he said, was the distribution, which went beyond the underground train system. “We decided to go to universities, offices and homes.” Today created its own distribution network.

Asked how they prevented people from taking copies in bulk -

They had their own men giving away copies at strategic points. These men worked on a salary basis, rather than on a commission basis.

Summary : “paid model going free would not work. Business houses would have to find niches.”