Docomo – Keeping it simple and smart

I have always adored Docomo’s communication, barring a few aberrations like its mobile portability ads. Their latest effort, starring Ranbir Kapoor, is commendable if not exactly brilliant.

I respect those ads that highlight the core product benefits, even if they do not come across as striking. Docomo’s ads fall in that category. They might not win awards, but they will result in sales, which goes one step ahead of creating a brand.

More importantly, they haven’t wasted a celebrity, neither have they put too much focus on him. At the end of the commercial, you remember the messages in the ad, not just Ranbir.

Quite frankly, some of the ads are pretty ordinary like ‘the family that eats together, stays together’. But some of the commercials are quite witty, ‘poora mat bolo, poora mat sunaao’, ‘why the frog in the well does not come outside? Because, it costs roaming’. Smart!

Like every time, Docomo has tried to do something different. And kept it simple, not necessarily stupid.

Cadbury ads – where has the sweetness gone?

The more I watch the new Cadbury Dairy Milk commercials, the more I lament about the deterioration in the communication. First there was the likeable, ‘Kuchch meetha ho jaaye’ campaign starring Amitabh Bachchan. Then came the parody, ‘Meetha hain khaana aaj pehli tareekh hain’, which was still palatable, I thought. Just when things were improving marginally with the ‘Shubh Aarambh’ campaign, you see their latest effort, ‘Meethe mein kuchch meetha ho jaaye’ (whatever it means!)

I see the point in Cadbury trying to do a Coca-Cola – ‘thanda matlab Coca-Cola’ and ‘meetha matlab Cadbury’, if that is the intention. Still appreciable! But the execution is puerile, to say the least. The interaction between the young husband and wife comes across as an ad for a contraceptive, what with both of them discussing the dinner menu as if they didn’t use protection last night. Also, the first ad where the grandmom apologises to her grand-daughter is a let-down.

The new Cadbury Silk campaign, too, is a big disappointment. The sight of grown-ups licking chocolate and sucking wrappers isn’t exactly amusing.

Was it a conscious effort to do away with the wit, humour or the vivacity of the erstwhile Cadbury campaigns?

Try recollecting the old ad where the hottie dodges the security and dances with gay abandon after her boyfriend hits a six. And you will probably understand why the new ads are so forgettable. The sheer innocence and the simple storyline worked wonders. There was no effort to hard-sell the chocolate unlike in their latest campaign as if, ‘Oh, you know what! The Indian family likes to eat desserts after dinner. So why not position the chocolate in that space?’ If that was what the brief to the agency was!

Like Ranbir Kapoor says in the latest Docomo ads, ‘Keep it simple, silly’!

Dubbed South Indian movies on TV? We mind it!

For the past few months, satellite channels are agog with these movies. Try switching channels, and you will be lucky to find a Hindi film running on a Hindi GEC. I wonder what the TRPs for such movies would be! Who would bother to watch these movies with hilarious titles; including the South Indian audiences settled elsewhere in India? Sample these names:

Indra – The Tiger, Mera Boss Bajrangbali, Meri Jung – One Man Army, Don No. 1, Loha – The Iron Man!

I have nothing against these movies. They may be really entertaining, in an intentional way. But what’s the point in telecasting them on prime time on a Hindi GEC? Die-hard South Indian movie fans will prefer watching the films in their original language any day.

At the end of a hard day at work, I will prefer watching Amol Palekar’s Golmaal for the nth time than a pudgy, pot-bellied hero mouthing dialogues in terrible lip sync.

Like the Oscar-wallahs don’t understand song and dance routines in Bollywood movies, we too don’t understand the sensibilities of a movie culture where the hero can create a cyclone by the sheer force of his fart. To each his own! All’s fine until it’s showed to the relevant target audience.

So, could the Star TVs and Sonys of the world please have mercy on us, and run some quality movies, at least on prime time? I don’t pay you for the content I can easily watch on Sun TV.

Ten lamest ads running on TV now

10. Docomo mobile portability and 3G ads – I am a fan of Docomo’s commercials, which is why I am disappointed with their latest effort.

9. Reliance 3G Mix Your Worlds – All the ads in this campaign: Eye-testing, Yoga and the guy who blurts idiotic thoughts in the middle of a meeting.

8. Nescafe Cold Coffee – The one where skin-and-bones, Deepika Padukone, shimmies and shakes to work up some froth. The ‘Know your neighbour’ ads were much better.

7. Hero Honda ‘Dhak-dhak-Go, India Go’ – The makers didn’t understand the difference between patriotism and jingoism. And for a brand which was inspired by ‘Hamara Bajaj’, I think they should tone it down a bit.

6. LG AC and Kenstar Cooler – Why would the whole family play football after installing an air-conditioner?

5. Maruti Suzuki SX4 Diesel – How many times have we seen this idea before: Men making women wait for the all-important occasion? The execution is so puerile that the message, ‘Men are back’ should be replaced with, ‘Grow up boys’.

4. Colgate Maxfresh starring Shahid Kapur, Sehwag, Gambhir, Zaheer – A classic case of the advertisers not knowing what to do with all these big names after signing them up. Didn’t the ad director and the creative director get a feeling that this is not going well while doing the shoot?

3. Coca Cola Brrrr – Humff! What was this all about?

2. Lava A10 Where the cashier doles out condoms instead of change by looking at the size of the phone – And we thought girls judged guys by the size of their palms, feet, nose and what not! Thanks for this new tip.

1. All deo ads – Zatak, where the girl falls for the loser-next-door on her wedding night, Neil Nitin Mukesh frolicking with two girls in a convertible, the story of an Axe can… basically all the deo commercials.

The Wego ad throws us off-balance

In today’s market place, where style often rules over substance, the new TVS Wego ad strikes a fine balance between both. More importantly, it manages to amuse.

When I first saw the beginning of the commercial, I wondered what this is all about. But aren’t all good ads supposed to intrigue you? For the next 20 seconds or so, the girls riding pillion continue to outdo each other as the amatory quotient grows more risqué. The gyration and contortion of their bodies keep pace with their facial expressions. And when you see the eventual winner suggestively moving her arms on her beau’s chest, and the third arm emerges, you think where this is going. Cocky, but smart! And all the while, the funny background score tempers the spicy proceedings.

The best thing about the Wego commercial ad is that it gets the message across riding piggyback on humour that is intentionally silly. One of the cleverer ads I have seen in recent times. And like a good movie or a book, it has repeat value. Good for the brand!

Has the Nano lost the key to happiness?

When it was announced in 2005, the Tata Nano was touted as the dream of millions of aspiring car owners and the nightmare of environmentalists and city planners. Instead, Nano’s dwindling sales are giving sleepless nights to Tata Motors executives. Why has the price-sensitive Indian stayed away from an automobile custom-made for him?

I got the answer from my wife. When I expressed my desire to buy the Nano, she cringed at the thought of being seen by her friends in a Nano. And this repartee from a middle class woman, who doesn’t mind being seen bargaining for apparel on the Linking Road.

The Nano seems to have lost the plot while positioning the car. Right from the word go, Tata Motors positioned it solely as an economical car. How else would you explain why the Nano sold only 509 units in November 2010 as against 32,377 Maruti Altos in the same period (The cheapest car in India after the Nano, around Rs 2.5 lakh). The consumer connect was missing. The consumer doesn’t mind buying an economical car, but he wouldn’t like to be branded as ‘cheap’.

The promotional strategy was also erroneous. The Nano was promoted through a social media campaign! Would the family delicately perched on a scooter be expected to open a Facebook account and get a Twitter handle? They would be happy to see the Nano being promoted in perhaps the only shopping mall in their small town. Or in the vicinity of the vegetable market, railway station, petrol pump, a tractor showroom. And the urbanites active on the social media wouldn’t want to be seen driving a Nano. So, it was clearly a case of looking East and heading West.

The missing connect also might explain why the Nano’s sales declined after the media flashed images of a Nano up-in-flames. Why didn’t people give up drinking cola even after they found pesticides, gutka packets and chaddi naadas in their bottles?

For a car meant for the masses, it was hardly a good idea to sell it through a lottery. Out of the 2,00,000 initial bookings, only 1,00,000 ‘lucky’ customers would get the Nano. Ultimately, only 77,000 of these drove home in the lakhtakiya car. This gave an impression that the waiting period for Nano is too long.

The overconfidence of Tata Motors executives is largely to blame. They thought that the Nano would sell only because it was ‘the Nano’. The company hardly took any efforts to market the product, until three weeks back when it came out with the television campaign. This should have been done at the cusp of the launch, and minus the ‘economical car’ badge.

Still, all is not lost yet. The Nano still has the potential to be a game-changer. Remember, it costs half its nearest competitor. With a little more marketing pizzazz, it can still find the key to happiness. And when it does that, I will be happy to buy it in a Rs 1.25 lakh straight down payment.

Did you say ‘coalition dharma’?

For many years now, the Indian media has been liberally using the words ‘coalition dharma’ to describe how political parties in an alliance of convenience should conduct themselves.

Most probably, it was a politico who coined this term since only a politician would believe that there is any dharma (righteousness) left in politics. Quite often we hear Ms Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh uttering these words in exasperation (Ms Gandhi) and desperation (Dr Singh).

Whatever the origins of the term, but a little more discretion, logic and a change in semantics is necessary since the term sounds as discordant as a trumpet blown in a funeral. Is there any dharma left in Indian politics? Not only is it erroneous, even phonetically it doesn’t sound right.

Play these names in your mind, and try convincing yourself if you can associate the word ‘dharma’ with these people – Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, A Raja, N Karunanidhi, Mayawati. Also recall the 2G-Raja-Radia-Tata nexus, the Adarsh Housing scam, Commonwealth sleaze, land usurping allegations by Yeddyurappa and Narayan Rane, and you will know why I brought up this issue.

How about substituting ‘dharma’ with ‘back-scratching/back-stabbing’?