Archive for October, 2003

As creative as it gets

charukesi October 16th, 2003

I came across some terms supposedly coined by advertisers to describe consumers :

Transumer : consumers in transit. Apparently advertisers are increasingly targeting transumers… Ever seen all those boards in airports and so on ?

Snobmoddities : commodities with snob value. Ah, good old Dalhi !

After spoiling date : age after which kids don’t fall for ads. The young adults.

As I was saying, our generation is of no interest to advertisers / researchers. Which is why I wanted to understand our age cohorts. But no response to it….. anyways….

Sympvertising : advertising with a pinch of sympathy. Didn’t quite understand this. Sympathy for whom ? The end - consumer ?

Oh, ok… infusing consumer advertising with a pinch of sympathy that acknowledges the tough times that most consumers are experiencing – LA-based ad professional James McLahan.

The best example I can think of is the Beetle ad created by Bill Bernbach just after the Great Depression in the US. Showing a man at a petrol pump (or fuel station, as they say!!) holding the petrol pipe (representing a gun) to his forehead….

Just imagine what is going on in the US market today….. Advertisers addressing son-of-the-soil type Americans….. We-know-How-It-Feels….. America and Apple Pie and so on….

Massclusivity : a product based on exclusivity from the masses. I am different….. which is why I shop at Shopper’s Stop and Lifestyle but take pride in being a First Citizen….. or gold member… or whatever it takes to be “exclusive”….

Any idiot can come up with a great ad. But it takes a truly creative mind to come up with such terms. After all, getting the terminology right is the most important and difficult step in the marketing process……
understanding your consumer? nah!

There’s always something happening with Reliance

charukesi October 15th, 2003

There is always something happening with Reliance mobiles. On the same day, in the ET, I saw two news items about Reliance Infocomm.

Reliance emerges No.1 cell co in the country, says one item. Taking only mobile services into account, Reliance (Infocomm and Telecom together) is the biggest operator with 47.96 lakh subscribers.

And why not ? Reliance has taken market blitzkrieg to new heights. The company has pulled all stops to ensure that one can hardly avoid having a Reliance mobile.

I shopped at Fabmall in Bangalore and found myself with a new Reliance connection, with a Nokia handset, all FREE….. I went to the Bangalore book fair, where it took all my wits to avoid finding myself with another Reliance connection….

You get the picture…… sell the phone, service issues can be sorted out later, feels Reliance. Good for them.

For most of us, a mobile phone is an investment to the extent that, having given my number to everyone I know, I would wish to retain that number at all costs. Which means that I am tied to the service, once I get into it. And RIM know this….

Now, they are the number one cell company, surprise, surprise…..

News item two says : WLL (Wireless in Local Loop) to be confined to local call area. Yet another Ambani manipulation. I came to Madras from Bangalore. And found myself with a new Reliance number. And my Reliance mobile is strictly ‘no roaming’ by law.

Where there is a law, there is also a loophole. And if anybody can find it, it is Reliance Industries…..

Apart from this, Reliance Infocomm is also being slapped by The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) for their misleading ads.

Will be good fun to wait and watch how Reliance gets out of this one. And the WLL codes of conduct.

And where they go from here…….

Bharateeya Blog Mela

charukesi October 13th, 2003

There are books and there are books, and then there is The God of Small Things. More discussed than read.

There are blog melas and there are blog melas….. and most of them remind me of Roy’s magnum opus.

This is with reference to Patrix’s post on the BBM. Over 60 comments and close to no nominations a day before zero-hour… Patrix, this post is in no way any reference to your effort. After all, I imagine saw you online at 1.30 a.m :)

Patrix says he did not hear from half the people he expected…. Before I start, I plead guilty of not taking this seriously enough to browse thru many many blogs and nominate the best….. I join the list of the GUILTY….. Wanna read the mela but not contribute to it….. BAD !

But when has that ever stopped me from ranting :))

I am new to the Blogging scene and am fascinated by the concept of a Bharateeya Blog Mela. This is my understanding of the objectives of the BBM (if there were any serious objectives as such. Shanti ? )

1. To showcase the best of Indian blogging : I have come to suspect that there are the opinion leaders in Indian blogs, as in any other sphere and by default, these blogs and posts are considered ‘must feature’ in any blog mela.

Therefore the need to nominate one’s own post(s)? Read the comments following Patrix’s mela for more on this….

2. To introduce new bloggers from the Indian blogosphere. Personally, I consider this the more important objective…..

I see the same names in every blog mela. And these are names which I see on most people’s regular reads also. I am talking about both the nominees and the nominators…..

Are these the only Indian bloggers worth featuring in the mela? We know better than to even attempt answering that question.

I don’t know whether the BBM is turning elitist or not (I have not been following it for long enough)…. It certainly is the celebration of the best-known bloggers of the Indian blogosphere and not necessarilty the best.

Is ‘I met her last night’ any more interesting to the world at large than ‘I ate a Big Mac today’.

3. What is the role of the host ? Does he/she have a more active role, as a forager, as an editor, as the creator that week’s mela? Check this out for more…..

Having given vent to my thoughts on the BBM following Patrix’s mela, I end with a solemn promise to make this effort myself for the next mela…. Deepak, watch out…. (by the way, is there an announcement on his page…. can’t see any ?? here I am with hazaar posts to be nominated and no idea where to do it….. life is so unfair…..)

After fairness creams, now this

charukesi October 10th, 2003

After a couple of decades of fairness creams, containing everything from aloe vera to vitamin M to rabbit’s foot…. now this…. a cream for the elbows….. With Fair and Lovely ruling the roost, and many me-toos following….

As a person who has done a lot of distasteful research into the fairness creams category, I am tickled by this new product.

I’d be very interested in knowing how they position this brand. The fairness cream market is very large and the need for fairness spans across income groups and regions. What about elbow creams ?

1. Is the average fairness cream consumer (I refer to the typical Fair and Lovely consumer) ready for this ? Will she be willing to shell out big bucks for an elbow cream ? Money which can otherwise be spent on further bleacing of the face….

2. If a low income consumer will not buy elbow creams, then will NoMarks be targetted at the higher end ? Is Nomarks a brand that a say, Revlon consumer will buy into ?

3. According to all available data, fairness creams are family-usage products (and not used by the young unmarried female of the house alone, as many believe)….. this in a way, justifies the outlay on the product. What about elbow creams ? I somehow cannot see Daddy’s elbows and big brothers elbows as being significant in the scheme of household purchase decisons….

4. The need for fairer elbows must be a niche need - a self-actualization need, as opposed to the purely physical and social need satisfied by fairness creams…..

I can almost picture the ads….

The city boy rejecting the fair-skinned girl…. the village astrologer mouthing inane words of wisdom….. and the harried dad worrying, will my daughter ever get married….

And the daughter herself saying, Oh God, why did you curse me with dark elbows ?

Will the marriage market survive this now ?

What about cricket commentary ?

Even worse, the pretty young wanna-be air-hostess being ignored during the interviews for her dream job…… guess what comes to her rescue ? Elbow Creams….. Have Smooth and Fair Elbows…. and Fly High ?

Exactly what insecurity will elbow creams play on ?

I wait for the ads with anticipation….

Coop Counsellor

charukesi October 10th, 2003

Did you read about Barbara Luetzeler, a psychologist for chicken ? No, I don’t mean the weak-hearted…. I mean the ones which go into Britain’s famous tikka masala…

The Week says, this Bonn based shrink deals with problems ranging from gender issues to neurosis in chicken….

Gender issues ? Do you think female chicken in Germany are under-privileged ? Or are they a traumatized lot because in popular lingo, they are called chicks ? or do the male chicken pinch their bottoms as they scurry along their cages ?

I could go on and on….. On the neurosis bit also….

Listen to this : she has treated about 2000 chickens with autobahn neurosis. All of them would move their heads from side to side for no apparent reason. She accurately diagnosed that they were disturbed by loud noises from the nearby motorway. The chickens overcame the stress and the problem disappeared when their owner moved their enclosure to a quieter spot.

I know what she means… I have seen similar behaviour with people I know in Bombay. Otherwise polite, mild-mannered people, at the stroke of 8.27 a.m. would suddenly start jumping around and shouting in hoarse Marathi and shoving and elbowing their spouses and children….. this strange behaviour would be repeated every 15 minutes or so… this remained a mystery to all concerned till the prominent psychologist in their area discovered what she called local neurosis. Local as in, not specific to an area, but local trains….

These docile creatures live next to Dadar station and this trauma has so deeply affected their psyche that they have started imagining themselves as commuters even within the safe confines of their own homes….

She is called a train therapist and I am told she has a roaring business in Bombay these days….

My Blog as a Research Tool ?

charukesi October 9th, 2003

I am sick of hearing about Today’s Youth (not me, but the generation after mine. I have a sneaky feeling I am no longer in the ‘youth’ definition of popular media).

There has been so much research on them already…. I have had it up to here with terms like gratification and consumerism. Anyways, ever since they voted Anil Ambani as their icon, I have lost all interest in them. Even worse, I lost my faith in them since they nominated Smriti Malhotra as a potential icon….. The Star-Plusisation of the younger generation ?!

I have been wading through many Indian blogs…. And came across quite a few Indian bloggers born in the mid-70’s..… What I see as the post-flower, pre-mouse generation…..

I was born in 1975…. And I am interested in understanding my age cohorts. The concept of age cohorts was highlighted by Rama Bijapurkar a few years ago in discussing cultural changes in India post liberalization. I’ve attempted to loosely explain the concept of age cohort : a group of people (who may be born around the same time frame) who grow up sharing the same social, cultural, political, educational experiences…

The concept of age cohorts is significant because this shared set of experiences determine the values and beliefs they will carry all their life.

For instance, the post-war baby boomers in the US.

Coming back to my age cohort, I am very curious about what experiences we grew up sharing…. That has shaped they way we are today… As my mind rambled along these lines, I’ve put down a few thoughts….

Internet ? Technology ? : No, I don’t think we grew up with technology. We approached it as grown ups. (I do not consider a job with an IT company and being able to send e-mail as being “tech”). I am talking about being born internet-savvy, the way kids are today……

Communication ? : We saw the STD booth boom in the country….. is that significant ?
Or is it mobile technology ? Are we the typical sms generation ?

Liberalization ?: Certainly, we witnessed the birth of McD and the re-birth of Coke in India…. Reebok and Ford….. Is this significant ?

The Y2K demand ?

Coalition Governments ? Our youth witnessed the end of single majority parties and the birth of coalition politics….. the shape of things to come and stay…..

Private TV channels ? MTV ? The Bold and the Beautiful ? Quick Gun Murugan ? Cyrus Broacha ? Or is it Giant Robot ?

The end of Angry Amitabh and the entry of Shah Rukh Khan ?

Or is it a combination of all these ?
I don’t know…..

My thoughts may be incoherent…. Since they are still raw thoughts….

I thought it might be fun to share ‘growing up’ with others who grew up elsewhere in the country at the same time……… I do not want to get into a stricter definition of age limits… is too traumatic for me :)

The idea being :

1. to understand the events, ideas, values that have shaped my generation (mid-70’s born, the over-20, under-30s)

2. to experiment with the possibility of blogs as a tool for primary research….. blogs as a tool for expression, blogs as a tool for lobbying….. and now this?

Personally, I would consider this data more credible because participation is voluntary and not coerced or coaxed as in case of conventional research

Something like Dina’s Youth Spotting ideas……

I want to keep this open for a couple of weeks….. Humour me….. Do take this seriously and write in with your ‘cohort’ experiences….. do pass it on to other bloggers / surfers you know of this ‘generation’……

I would love to see this research grow and see if something meaningful can be made out of it…..

Five More IITs

charukesi October 9th, 2003

Five more IITs in the offing, says Vajpayee.

Excellent. The more number of India (that should read Indian, but I worship Dilbert) Institutes of Technology that we open, the more number of civil engineers we can produce who will go into software. Who am I to argue with the concept of enrichment of human capital ?

I keep hearing about the digital divide- that deep chasm between those who can operate the mouse and those who cannot….

I am more concerned about the literacy divide….. that growing gap between those who can read and write their own names and those cannot…

If the Indian Government shares my dream of a progressive society, developed nation twenty years from now, then what is the way ahead?

The establishment of more and more IITs ?
Or setting up more and more primary schools ? And ensuring that children across the country get to go to those schools ? And stay there ?

My intention is not technology-bashing…. it is more a belief that universalisation of elementary education is what the country needs right now….

And not IITs alone…. (scroll to the bottom of this…. the man says, we need a hundred more IITs in order to eliminate illiteracy - what does this mean ? Is he confirming my suspicion that most kids going into IIT are illiterate anyway ?)

Functional literacy is the way to begin….. technical literacy without that is meaningless…. We need to set up a level playing field before taking computers into the villages….. In the present scenario, the literate get more literate (I do not say educated, note). And the illiterate stay that way….. after all, it is not possible to get more illiterate….

No Shout Out !

charukesi October 8th, 2003

People, my Shout Out Option is not working….. due to whatever labour pains BlogOut is going through, I imagine….

I like to believe people are reading my blog… now, I no longer know….

Any sooth-sayer out there : does this happen regularly with BlogOut ? Any experience ? Should I hang on ? Or try some other Comments option ?

As Ankh says, everything exists, we just need to find it….

Bangalore Bloggers Meet ?

charukesi October 8th, 2003

Is it happening or not ?

If yes, when ?

And where ? I know, in Bangalore, but where in ?

Life is so precious…..

charukesi October 7th, 2003

A rather solemn personal post…..

Triggered by all that talk about it cannot happen to me and my more recent spot on Nimesulide (this article realy really disturbed me)…. It’s a year now since my spine surgery… October 5th last year when Apollo Madras made a lot of money from me…..

And my surgeon said cheerfully when the hospital presented my bill I am sure your Mediclaim will cover most of this….

Huh ? Mediclaim ???

Accident ? Illness ? Surgery ? Give me a break….. I am only 27. It can’t happen to me…..

It did… and I paid for it (literally!!)

It was one of those jolts life sends your way to make you see how precious life really is…. That make you realize that you have only one life….. so you need to : think less, fight less, love more, smile more, give more and….. live it to the fullest….

Read this somewhere and loved it :

Most of us miss out on life’s big prizes. The Pulitzer. The Nobel. Oscars. Tony. Emmys. But we are all eligible for life’s small pleasures. A pat on the back. A kiss behind the ear. A four-pound bass. A full moon. An empty parking space. A crackling fire. A great meal. A glorious sunset. Hot soup. Cold beer. Don’t fret about copping life’s grand awards. Enjoy its tiny delights. There are plenty for all of us…..

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