A Time To Reflect

charukesi January 7th, 2007

My parents in Chennai recently had their lives made jingalala by the two of us; we gifted them with a Tata Sky connection for the television at home which had for the last two years been showing them only remade Tamil versions of the Star soaps and Sahara TV for the sole “Yindi” programming. With CAS coming into effect early this month, the battle hots up. And that means, marketing slogans on over-drive. Thinktanks from rival companies stay up nights, puffing cigarette after cancerous cigarette, in order to develop that slogan that communicates the ultimate benefit to the consumer - this is why you should buy into our brand and not the other.

And Tata Sky has clearly cracked it - Tata Sky laga daala toh life jingalala.

I mean, how can any competitor hope to match that promise? The ultimate tv watchers’ need - to have his / her life made jingalala.

Top of the charts of what they don’t teach you at Business School- or is it what they do… Get your advertising slogan right and you are on your way to winning the marketing game. Er, what about product delivery please? Or a relevant product differentiation? Oh that - minor details. Get the slogan right first, won’t you. Does anyone even remember let there be light?

Take the FM radio war in Mumbai - there is a new FM station launched every day - ok, every month - and each of them plays the same mind-numbing hit pe hit pe hit song from the latest movies that rocked the box office in the last three years, and some which did not rock so much as disappeared without a trace. When I am driving to work, and I don’t get to listen to it’s the time to disco and where’s the party tonight through the entire stretch, I am a wreck by the time I reach - my hands are trembling and my eye has that terrible tic that sets colleagues scurrying out of my way. I find myself suddenly breaking into terrra suroooooorrr in the middle of client meetings and into giggles each time I am to say something to the client. (As an aside, why, oh why, do radio jockeys giggle so much? why do all FM stations seem to hire only the great gigglers?)

As I was saying, the same hit songs in channel after channel, as if there is an invisible hand passing around an MP3 disc with a collection of fifty bollywood hits (and misses) between them. What about programming? What about content? What about differentiation? The only channel that was truly different and interesting was Go 92.5 - that suddenly turned all Hindi one morning - Britney Spears went to sleep in a room full of saas-bahus and woke up as Ekta Kapoor - why?

Ah, there we come to the slogan again. The latest station to hit (eeps) the market, BIG FM has cracked it - their slogan goes - suno sunao life banao - listen and make others listen… and make your life. Truly an utterly unique positioning stance. Big FM - daer aaye par durust aaye.

Television went through this initially when the market which had only one DD (with its Metro and other numerous regional versions) found itself flooded with tens of channels - all with film based programming - five feature films a day, countdown shows of hit songs, trailers and the like. Of course, the scene is somewhat similar today with saas after shceming saas in all the channels, but atleast there is some programming in place. Viewers - those interested enough, that is - have the choice of tuning into a program ta a specific time on a specific channel.

Unlike FM where it really makes no difference where the dial is - unless, of course, like me, you have made a careful (albeit painful) analysis of the RJs across channels and have chosen to be loyal to the one with the lowest score on the gigglo-meter. Is anyone listening?

• Advertising , Media Matters
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charukesi October 19th, 2006

Speaking of ads that make you sick, if I did have the option of tagging outdoor ads with “this sucks”, I know where I would start… with that serial on Zee TV which ran those terrible teasers all across Mumbai and Delhi last month which said among many other appalling things - “Bete ek mannat, betiyan ek bojh” (boys are a blessing, girls a burden) and “Bete banaatey kanoon, betiyan khaana” (boys make the law, girls, food). Puke. “Bete chalaye vansh, betiyan silai machine“. Puke. [Boys carry on the generation, girls run sewing machines]

[pic courtesy : mid-day]

Various organizations in Delhi protested against this campaign and the Delhi Police ordered that these hoardings be removed. And, and, here is what Ashish Kaul, Senior Vice President at Zee Network has to say - I don’t have means to replace the hoardings overnight simply because of a protest. Yes, indeed, poor man.

But hang on, there is hope. For this is only the first part of the campaign, according to Kaul - the campaign has been conceived on what we have seen since childhood, and the second campaign brings to the fore the myth that the male child is superior than the female child. As it happens, I did see the hoardings for the second part of the campaign and they go on and on about how we were trying to say that girls are indeed superior to boys in the family and hey, the first campapign was just to get your attention so on and so forth…

And while I google furiously while writing this, I find that Star TV has a similar serial about to go on air called —- Paraaya Dhan! And that Zee and Star TV have been at loggerheads claiming to be the “originnal” beityaan people. The ad for the Star TV serial raises this socially aware, thought-provoking question - ” betiyaan apni ya paraya dhan?” (girls, our own or someone else’s wealth?) - not only are we calmly writing about women as “wealth” and property, wer are also raising a question about who this wealth belongs to?

• Advertising , - Television
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charukesi October 19th, 2006

Adverblog writes about this initiative in Berlin and Seoul where guerrilla “soldiers” have been tagging outdoor ads with personal evaluations delivering messages such as “this ad makes me sick”, “I like this ad”, “I find this campaign boring” etc…
. The idea, ostensibly, is to raise the level of consumer awareness about the quality of outdoor advertising in a city

So these little stickies go on those big bad hoardings across the city. And as adverblog says, tagging moves to the real world. Interesting… but where is this leading? Who is behind this, I wonder? And what impact will this have on advertisers anyway…? If negative feedback can kill an ad, most advertising we see on air and in print today would not have survivied the rigorous rounds of consumer research prior to launch! As one commentor has said there, “Most clients will just be deliriously happy and say “There’s no such thing as bad publicity - at least they think and talk about us!””

And what’s stopping competing agencies and marketing companies to get themselves a huge bunch of these stickies and get their own people to “tag” ads the way they want, depending on whether it is their own or a bitter rival’s! Or maybe someone should start doing just that - the consumer gets to have some fun atleast that way…

Which recent ads would you say “suck”?

• Advertising , Media Matters
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charukesi October 2nd, 2006

I came across some SuperModel something or the other on Zee Cafe the other night (alright, I don’t normally do this - I am just standing in for Uma till she gets her laptop and blog back in place) - and found various people gushing about Ujjwala Raut, “middle-class Maharashtrian home”, “the only Indian model… international modelling scene”, “she makes use of her length very well” etc etc - yes, really, length. And I found Ujjwala Raut gushing about Ujjwala Raut too. And her baby. Many pictures of ideal-mom-with-chubby-baby later, cut back to Ujjwala (oh, only first names please, as the gushers would say) - oh, she is such a cute baby. So far so good.

And then she says, my life has become busier since she came blah blah blah. But I like spending time with her blaah blah blah. She is really a low maintenance baby.

Gasp! Imagine that - a cute baby. And low maintenance at that.

I wonder how she went about ordering for one - oh, I’ll take that baby please - she is so cute. But what did you say - high maintenance? I don’t have the time. I’ll take the other one then - the low maintenance one… Just make the service contract…

And oh, she also did mention that she wanted to give something back to her country “which has done so much for me” - and that would be, I want to be a normal person in my country, not some kind of some diva that people look up to. Ok, whatever. One more normal person will not hurt the country, I guess….

• Pot-pourri , - Television
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charukesi August 14th, 2006

I was searching earlier on the net for something and came across a site called smartbahu and of course, I had to click on it. This is what the site says - Smartbahu.com - India’s 1st portal for the complete woman.

What was that again - complete women = smart bahu (or is it the other way round?)

The home page contains links to articles such as Injazat data systems to build the most advanced TierIV data centre in the region and GM utilizes internet to introduce new vehicles.

What am I missing here?

• - Gender issues , - New media
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charukesi June 24th, 2006

And then some more.

For instance, sun protection inside the ladies loo.

[another in the series of things a mobile phone camera is meant for - and I need a better one surely]

I don’t know how to break this to you gently, Hindustan Lever - or the whiz media planner who thought of yet another spot to find the “captive audience” - but I am not thinking about six signs of sun damage when I am inside the loo at the theatre (no, not even at home for that matter). [Dear media planner, here is a handy tip for you because someone seems to have misled you - Imax does not have an open air loo. Really, you must believe me when I say that there is just no exposure to the sun when I am inside]

Yes, I am sitting and staring at the door, purely for lack of anything else to stare at, at that particular moment, but not because I am thinking about what the harsh sun is doing to my skin. No, believe me.

[While on this, please do me a favour and don’t ever ask me what I was doing thinking of blogging about this then]

And perhaps, it irked all the more because I had just spent a good(?) one and half hours with Kkrish, watching him drink Bournvita, telling the little kid how Bournvita makes him strong, how his grandmother always washes the glasses with Tide before serving him with Bournvita, and how Lays chips are the ultimate word in Bournvita-time snack. And how after washing the said glasses, his grandmother places the packet of Tide on the kitchen shelf next to gleaming brass and copper tumblers just so it is always in front of her eyes. And so on.

The point is this - what is it with companies spending good monies on product placements. How does it work? If it does at all? Oh, I know you are going to tell me about about how see, I remember all the brand names. But you must remember also that I am a blogger. And a market researcher and avid advertising industry watcher to boot.

And there was not much more by way of entertainment in the movie otherwise.

And then the welcome interval. And then the fairness cream (with sun control mechanism) in the loo. Enough already.

Merchandising, sure. Free gifts and promotion, surer [I know this because I did a mini poll among friends sitting in the neighboring seats about how their kids would respond to such blatant - to me atleast - endorsement in movies and was told that kids respond better to free gifts. Smart of them and so on]. But what does product placement do for the viewer? And repeated ones at that…

[More on this coming up - wait with bated breath. And oh, go drink Bournvita while you wait]

• Advertising , Branding and Marketing , - Cinema
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charukesi June 11th, 2006

The Week writes about new-generation televisions shows. Targeted at segments which have been ignored so far and so on - men and children. Highy inscrutable article. See what sense you can make of it. And if you know, do let me know how such staggering statistical analysis and interpretation is possible - I may be able to use this with my clients too.

Reality TV, comedy and romance are the new prime-time favourites. This change of strategy stems from the twin needs of grabbing the attention of the largely ignored audience segment of men and youth, and countering the increasing popularity of children and regional channels. A still bigger threat comes from news channels which are “growing at an impressive rate,” according to rating agency TAM. [phrase in quotes original and not mine]

Now watch this closely for the “impressive growth rate”. [this quote mine]

While the viewership of Hindi mass channels has grown marginally from 24 per cent to 24.7 per cent over four years, Hindi news channels have seen a rise from 3.8 per cent to 4.5 per cent.

Indeed. While Hindi mass channels have grown marginally by 0.7% over four years, new channels have shown an astounding growth rate of 0.7% over the same period.

That is cause for concern.

And the article only gets better and better…

But, news officials think there is no reason to worry. “Yes, news is being redefined, but there is a core difference between us and mass channels. Their end aim is entertainment while ours is imparting information. So there is not much of overlapping,” says Raju Santanam, editor, Zee News.

No reason to worry about what? The impressive growth rate? Or the sudden uncomfortable realisation that the end aim of new channels is information and not entertainment?

Do read A telly tale fully and do telly me what you understand of it…

And someone please tell these producers about single tv households where the entire family sits around and watches the box - saas bahu, aunty-uncle, whatever saga is on. And whatever the woman of the household is watching. Study after research study has told us - and them - this…

I would tell them myself but I am writing this from a cyber cafe in Madras and need to run now…

• Media Matters , - Television
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charukesi February 1st, 2006

When was the last time news made your hands tremble?

Hmm, let me see now… Was it when I first heard about Raveena Tandon’s lost dog ?(on the front page of the Times of India) Or was it when I read that Indian couples are now quick to wed, quicker to split? (again on the front page of the ToI).

And if you have quite recovered from the trembly hands and mopped up the spilt coffee, get ready now to feel the news. Uh?

Times TV is now finally on air after a long spell of promotion and promise of news that is different and relevant. Yeah, right. As different as Emraan Hashmi’s next movie in which he claims to have a role that is challenging and different.

TIMES NOW will create the second generation of TV news in the broadcast space. ”Its vision is to expand the space by being relevant to the urbanite who is culturally aware, trend sensitive and brandcentric. With a focus on involving the consumer more closely in the news experience, the channel’s unique programming wheel blends the urgent news needs of the urbanite, says the impartial and totally-unconnected-to-the-Times-Group publication Economic Times.

I imagine this conversation on the morning local :

Commuter 1 : Hey, did you feel the news last night?

Commuter 2 : Oh yes, I did… wasn’t that something? My hands didn’t stop trembling…

Commuter 3 : *Spills coffee from styrofoam cup*

Commuter 4 : *Flashing understanding smile at Commuter 3*

I know how you are feeling… I tried so much to be the involved consumer in this second generation TV news wave. But I was so busy mopping up the coffee from the couch…

*Sighs and elbows her way out at Dadar station*

• Media Matters , - Television
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charukesi December 12th, 2005

Students fear AIDS could spreads through kissing, says report in todays’ ToI. While students were generally found to be knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS, the survey found they had misconceptions about transmission. A large number of believed that kissing (40%), hugging (29.7%) and sharing of clothes (25.4%) caused viral transmission. A shocking 45.1% thought that mosquito bites could cause transmission.

Here is more - Sharing of toilets and eating out with HIV-infected persons was an issue with the students with up to 25.4% saying that it could cause viral transmission.

This from a survey conducted by the Wockhardt-Harvard Medical International HIV/AIDS Education and Research Foundation (WHARF) based on interviews with 1,179 junior college boys and girls. If this is the knowledge level about transmission of AIDS among the young who are the main target group for this disease - global figures indicate that 50 percent of persons infected every year are below 25 years of age… Makes me wonder about the effectiveness of AIDS and HIV related communication campaigns that we see all the time.

Scary…

***
I tried looking for the link to this article on the ToI website but couldn’t find it - I have copied this from their epaper. However, I did find this on their home page - Urmila Matondkar at the Dubai International Film Festival. Oh, and this too - Big B watches Ek Ajnabee in hospital. Why am I not surprised? Surely, Urmila Matondkar makes for better copy than a bunch of ignorant students.

• Media Matters , - Public health
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charukesi August 9th, 2005

I first came across the term ‘culture jamming’ when blogger / flickr mate Akshay left this wiki reference as a comment on an earlier post on the Coke controversy

This is the simple wiki definition - Culture jamming is the act of using existing mass media to comment on those very media themselves, using the original medium’s communication method. One of the most significant culture jamming movements is adbusters a magazine, published out of Canada which runs ad spoofs.

I thought of the term again this morning when I read Reuben Abraham’s post on Scrutinizing the Times of India

This is Reuben’s idea - While we recognised the need for India to have a newspaper of record, we came to the conclusion that the time was right to start a blogger-driven Watching the TOI-type blog, simply to catalog the horror that the world’s largest selling English newspaper has become. If enough people contribute, bloggers may even prevail on the TOI to at least lower the amount of garbage they print every day. We could even paraphrase Newshounds’ memorable catchphrase to something like “We read the TOI so you don’t have to.”

Time to start culture jamming on a newspaper - in this case, using not existing ‘mass media’ but blogs as the watchdog medium…

However, the wiki critique of culture jamming also says this - Canadian authors Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter in 2004 released a book called The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can’t be Jammed, criticizing culture jamming as not only ineffective, but encouraging the very consumerism it seeks to quell. - In other words, free publicity for the Times of India. Let us beware of that…

Incidentally, there has been a long history of mediawatch on Indian blogs - one of the earlier popular movements was the Say No to Media Slaughter campaign on blogs like Mahesh Shantaram’s Filter Coffee. And now with more newspapers and therefore more “news” that we have to put up with every morning, I guess it is time to say no again. Maybe just a little louder?

• Media Matters
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