Article Titled "Pushpa the Power of good content" published in The Hans India today 30-01-2022

 

Pushpa the Power of good content

Lots of time most come to conclusions based on insufficient research or on assumptions that have no scientific evidence. One such assumption is "If the audience can watch a movie free on TV/OTT, they will not come to the theatre".

Totally wrong. If the content is good, the acting is sleek and the direction is tight, the audience will flock to the theatre irrespective of whether the movie is shown/released on the TV/OTT. The epitome of movie watching will always remain watching on a big screen with an audience. If the movie is good, it will whet the curiosity and audience would go to the theatre and watch it once again. That way tremendous word-of-mouth publicity gets generated.

This has been proved twice now. Attarintiki Daredi a Pavan Kalyan movie was freely available online and that too even before the release. But even though it was available free, fans of Pavan Kalyan and the other audience flocked to the theatres and made it one of the biggest blockbusters.

Pushpa again proves the same. It was released on Amazon Prime when it was still running in the theatres.  Proving all the Nay-Sayers wrong, Pushpa is doing well both in the theatres and on the Amazon Platform.  Maybe the Amazon release has increased its earning capacity. Pushpa has earned Rs 15 crores after its release on the OTT platform. Really commendable.

It is time, makers and directors get their act together. Make better movies and they will do well irrespective of the distribution platform. The colour rendering and re-release of Maya bazaar were warmly accepted and viewers flocked to watch their favourite movie on big screens despite the fact that they have seen it many times in theatres, TV, and on YouTube. Time to look at the OTT platform from a different lens and make it part of the marketing strategy to leverage the reach, popularity thus boosting the earning potential of movies.

Cadbury Maid ad - Too Clever to do any Good!

Over the years Cadbury has been known for its heart-touching advertisements! There was a time when we used to wait with bated breath for the new Cadbury advertisement! 

Recently Cadbury's creativity has taken a beating and some of the latest advertisements are leaving, much to be desired. The worst of them was the "Do nothing advertisement" where a guy refuses to help an old lady in distress and we are supposed to feel happy and consume a Cadbury after seeing it! 

Now here is a Cadbury Dairy Milk advertisement that provokes a similar thought process. 

A bai (a household help) who is about to put dirty clothes into the washing machine starts berating her owner.

She says "I keep finding things in your clothes.  License, headphones, and other miscellaneous articles. And now this" 

She holds up a Cadbury Dairy milk chocolate, "What would have happened if I had washed your clothes without checking". 

The smug youngster, says with a smile "but, I left it deliberately and it is for you". The advertisement ends with the bai looking at the young man with tear-filled eyes. 

I had almost sleepwalked through the advertisement but was stopped dead in my tracks by my wife's comment, "What nonsense, this is pure tripe. Why can't the guy simply give the CDM directly to the bai? Why this roundabout way of giving her. Why give her as if by accident and that too pretend as if he has forgotten about it". 

I totally agree, the advertisement is too clever for its own sake. Let us keep our advertisements simple and pure. Simplicity always works!

Innovative, Trend-Setting Media Promotions – 2021

"It is not news when a dog bites a man, IT IS NEWS WHEN A MAN BITES A DOG". Originally from the field of journalism, this term has found tremendous traction in the field of marketing, especially in Product Promotions. Promoting products and services has become a headache in the highly fragmented world. The surfeit of media options is leading to overexposure, overstimulation, media fatigue, and Déjà vu. Getting eyeballs is very important, come what may!

Getting customer eyeballs is becoming increasingly expensive with the fragmented media and falling customer attention spans. Attention spans are down to 8 seconds! It has become increasingly difficult to get into the customer's mind! Discussed here are four innovative methods used to get attention from customers in 2021.

1. "Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav" campaign by GOI: Usually, it is assumed that media innovations are the prerogative of the private sector. But in this case, the innovation came from the government of India. The campaign was, "Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav campaign".

As India celebrated its 74^th Independence Day, the Honourable Prime Minister of India and GOI came up with a campaign called "Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav". The theme was "Let us sing the national anthem together." At that time, COVID-19 was ravaging the country. The event had to have large participation, but at the same time, India could not afford large gatherings. We needed to respect the COVID norms of social distancing.

The solution was breathtakingly simple and absolutely breathtaking. An official website called Raastragaan.in was developed. Anyone interested in singing the Rastragaan (the national anthem) had to go to the website, get registered, sing the national anthem and record it with their mobile/laptop video.

To help them, the entire national anthem script was available in all the official Indian languages, and one simply had to sing the national anthem in the stipulated time. Once the recording was done, the national anthem had to be submitted.

The minute the song was submitted and accepted, a certificate of participation could be downloaded. All the submitted entries were played at the Red Fort on the 15^th of August 2021. The best 100 entries were put up on the official website, Raastragaan.in. (In reality, 262 were put up). The campaign was hugely successful and more than 1.5 crore Indians across the world participated.

2. Ola Scooters' "Friends, Indians, Countrymen, lend us your voice" campaign: After many years, a product category that has caught the imagination of the Indian public is the e-Scooters category, and the company that raked in attention on offer was Ola. 

Ola cashed in on the craze. In August, Ola sent e-mailers to all its customers (existing Ola users). The mail said, "Friends, Indians, Countrymen, lend us your voice".

Yes, the famous words from Mark Anthony’s speech! Written below was a pitch for Ola’s in-built AI-powered Voice Assistant. Ola requested voice samples from across age groups, genders, accents, and even pitches to be used for its Ola scooters.  A wonderful way to engage and keep connected with the present and prospective customers.

3. "Not just a Diwali Ad" Campaign by Cadbury: 2021 was no different from 2020. Covid-19 had the entire world, including India, in its vice-like grip. Everyone was suffering, and the worst hit were the informal sector workers, the small shop owners, and the petty dealers. Faced with little reserves and rapidly falling footfalls, their future looked bleak. The sales were down, and consequently, they had very little cash reserves to spend on advertising.

Cadbury stepped in with a brilliant campaign "Not just a Diwali ad’, which became one of the most talked-about campaigns during Diwali 2021.

Cadbury India gave an opportunity to small local businesses to "hire" one of India’s biggest brand ambassadors, Shahrukh Khan. In 2020, India had about 6.3 crore MSMEs and 12.8 million grocery retailers (source: IBEF.org). It is impossible to cover all these stores in a single campaign as multiple locations, languages, and businesses pose insurmountable challenges.

Cadbury used Artificial Intelligence from Rephrase's Tech and deployed Machine Learning to recreate Shahrukh Khan’s voice and face to take the local store’s names in the advertisement. The different versions of the same advertisement with local store names were targeted as per the pin code of the viewer, showing only the nearby stores.

Any small or medium-sized businessman could visit Cadbury India’s website and create their own version of the advertisement and share it on their social media platforms. The local store owners were thrilled to have Shah Rukh Khan endorsing their products, brands, and stores. What a brilliant marketing ploy! Cadbury turned small and medium businessmen into being brand loyalists or even becoming its brand evangelists.

4.  "Cadbury’s Iconic Cricket advertisement (new)" Campaign: If you ask any media/advertising buff to name his or her favourite Indian advertisements, Cadbury's iconic cricket advertisement will undoubtedly be among the top five remembered and loved. Made in 1993, it tells a lovable story of a player hitting the last ball of a match for a six, winning the match and the heart of his girlfriend. It is heartening to think that the advertisement told the story in 60 seconds and it took the makers of Laagan, 3 hours and 40 minutes to tell the same story! Talk about the skill of telling a story in a minute!

But this time, there was a twist in the tail (tale)! Instead of a young man hitting the six, it is a young woman who does the honours. And in a gender twist, it is her boyfriend who dodges the security guard, runs onto the field, and does a no-holds-barred jig (dance). The advertisement was topical and celebrates women achievers in sports and in life. Way to go, Cadbury, 2 out of 4 trending and innovative campaigns were executed by you.

 

 

 

Pandemic Celebrates its Second Birthday - Article Published in The Hans India today (02-01-2022)

 

1^st January 2020 was when WHO announced the arrival of the new Corona Virus popularly called Covid 19. Initially dismissed as a joke or simple flu, there were boasts that the hot Indian climate would sound the death knell for the perky virus. One of the chief ministers said (on record) that it was a simple flu and that paracetamol would take care of it.

But the death dance of the Covid pandemic goes on and on, unabated and the death toll keeps climbing. The numbers are staggering: nearly 29 crores have been infected and 54.5 lakhs have succumbed to the deadly disease.

USA leads the tally with 8.5 lakhs deaths, followed by Brazil 6.2 lakhs, India 4.8 lakhs and Russia 3.1 lakh, Mexico 3,0 lakhs and Peru with 2.0 lakh deaths are the other countries with more than 2,00,000 deaths.  Truly a pandemic that ravaged the world!

The lessons learned so far:

1)      Any technological advancement comes with a curse! The speed of travel that meant easy commute also meant that the virus had spread the world at a lightning spread. Any amount of restrictions or lockdowns have at best a limiting factor but could not really stop the virus from spreading.

2)      No country or region has been spared. Every country, poor or rich, irrespective of caste, creed, race, religion, or region, has reported the virus and is still fighting it.

3)   Initially thought of as a virus that will die a quick death, Coronavirus is mutating and thriving. Two years into the pandemic the end is still not in sight.

4)      Some sectors have been affected very badly especially travel, tourism, air travel, realty (real estate) and education have been dealt a severe blow.

5)   Film industry has been brought to its feet and with the theaters shut, ticket prices issue, and with 50% occupancy the film distribution is in utter chaos and if it was not for the OTT coming to the rescue the film industry would have been wiped out. Movie watching would be restricted and already OTT seems to be getting an upper hand as far as reaching the customers is concerned.

6)      The house rental sector is in the doldrums and there are scores of apartments, commercial areas, and houses vacant as the I.T companies have extended work from home facility. This has resulted in IT employees moving to their hometowns and operating from their residences.

7)      The plight of the IT workers who work from home is terrible. They put in long hours of work (in excess of 10 hours), can’t socialize, have huge health-related issues (like obesity and lack of exercise). Families are falling apart as both husband and wife operate in the same house along with their children and too much interaction is leading to friction.

8)      The worst affected are the children. They are forced to stay at home, attend lectures on mobile phones, can’t interact with their friends, and can’t play outside their homes. Houses are becoming prisons! This has resulted in violent behavior, mood swings, reduced attention spans, and consequently the children’s performance in the examination had plummeted down and the failure percentages are going up all the time.

All in all, the two years of the Covid pandemic have been a disaster, and let us hope that we don’t have to witness its 3rd Birthday on the 1^st of January 2023!