Between the Briefs

The more I think about it, the more I realise I use words like “great” and “bleh” too easily to describe things I love and hate. But then when I think about it some more, I also realise that I wouldn’t have it any other way to describe what I’m about to describe.

What I’m talking about are two recent attempts (successful attempts) at viral marketing. Few “new media” campaigns have been able to create a stir the way the Whopper Sacrifice campaign did, until now.

The first one was for Ikea, created by Forsman & Bodenfors. I’ve somehow always liked the advertising for Ikea and now with their latest venture into social media, I think I like it still more. And here are my reasons for it. For starters, it makes me happy to think furniture can have life. Which is what Ikea’s advertising somehow always manages to do… like with the “Decorate for the Holidays” campaign. And with the new Facebook campaign, they’ve managed to get people to engage, without trying too hard. That’s the second reason to like it. With the no-reins feel that social media tends to bring along with it, it’s easy to get swept away. But Ikea’s attempt was simply… simple. Not too gimmicky, not overly “Ah, look… we’ve changed the world!” types. And most importantly, it had Ikea involved via their store manger. Which means this wasn’t just something left to the agency to take care of by themselves, but also had the brand’s presence created through their person. And I’ll admit that I am partial to this set of social media advertising only because it makes a lot more sense, even if it isn’t all glitzy and glamorous. So here goes:

The second one I’m talking is for Skype. This isn’t the first time Skype’s gone viral; its earlier “Laughter Chain” was also quite successful. But not Skype launched its first-ever, live streaming campaign where they put a guy in the middle of nowhere, next to a phone booth, gave out the number of the booth to people and got them to get in touch with him… via Skype of course. I can’t think of a better way to get people to try out a service and a better way to get the word going. And it’s exactly this that I love about advertising today… the way you can do absolutely anything and do it all the better than ever before.

For quite sometime now, everyone’s been talking about reality television and how it’s taken over our lives. But the new set of campaigns for Dove got me thinking about reality advertising and how it’s so much more effective at getting people to listen and, well, be a part of it.

I suppose if we are speaking of Dove, the whole aspect of “reality advertising” is not exactly new. Dove has, for almost always now, harped on its “real beauty, real women” aspect in all of its communication. Its “Campaign for Beauty” has known its share of success by just making women feel good about themselves.

So sometime early in 2009, Dove in India brought in its classic “Half Face” challenge, asking women to share their experience in switching from soap to “one-quarter cleansing cream”.

A billboard asking women for half their face

Of course “real” women participated and got to feature on the TVCs, with a few teasers prior to the actual revelation showing the women fumbling as they delivered their shots. I don’t have the set of these commercials, so you’ll just have to make do with these:

Then there’s the Damage Care Expert set of commercials, also adapted from the US. Although the TVCs don’t offer much to write home about, I did like the copy on the print and outdoor advertising. Here’s one of them:

A Dove print ad

Following suit in the same category, Pears is asking for mom’s to send in photos of themselves with their kids to indicate the innocence & purity of the soap is like the mother-child relationship. Not half as effective in my opinion, at least from where I’m standing.

A Pears print ad

And I just haven’t been able to make any sense of the TVC that talks about Humayan and Babar and whatnot. Please let me know if you can:

At the other end of the spectrum is reality advertising that has tried to become a movement of sorts, while pushing the actual product somewhere in the background. After the whole noise Jaago Re raked up around the elections, it’s now back with the”Khilana bandh, pilana shuru” campaign. Even thought I really like the commercial, I don’t see it creating as much of a stir. Perhaps it’s because there’s only so much of it that people can take, these causes, or perhaps it hasn’t gone as all out as the previous campaign. Whatever the reason, I do hope it evolves further. ‘Cause I just don’t think taking a pledge online is going to be enough to do this.

But I suppose looking at the certain campaigns that have done well while adopting this “real” approach, you can only wait for more advertising that will do the same. Because it’s really just a win-win situation for everyone. The people forget that advertising is advertising as they finally want to believe what they hear, and for the advertiser, it quells the existential brouhaha that arises ever so often about why we do what we do and what good will come off of it.

A quick skimming through activity of advertising and branding stories I thought you might like to read. Yes, I’m very considerate.

Retailer Knockoffs Abound in India

Cocoberry in India - Click image to read full story

An NYT story that makes you question the similarity between “Timberland” and “Woodland”, “Pinkberry” and “Cocoberry” and the like.

Marketing a Drink, but Never by Name

Open Hapiness Video Still - Click image to read full story

Another NYT story that talks about another advertising attempt centered on music. And here’s the related MySpace page.

When a Brand Name Becomes Generic – And How You Can Prevent It

Ivan (of Ads of the World fame) writes about the dangers of your barnd name becoming a household name. And I thought people saying “Google It” was a good thing for Google. Silly me. Here’s his take on the branding paradox.

To Shave or Not to Shave

Across countries, hairy men become the subjet of marketing initiatives. While the “To Shave or Not to Shave” campaign for Gillette in India got Mediacom a couple Lions at the Cannes this year, Nivea in parts of America is getting men to shave more than just their face. Read it if you have the stomach and really believe “A sweater should be bought. Not grown.”

A HubSpot webinar on using social media. Mother Hen sent it at work one day. If you don’t have the patience for the video, you can view the slideshow here.

A few ads and campaigns in the past few weeks have been at the back of mind for different reasons. Some made me happy and some left me confused. See -

The Dairy Milk “Pehli Tareek” campaign, for instance, took the pay day celebration all out, asking people to make Dairy Milk a part of this celebration. Very retro-Bollywoodsy, very quirky, very singable, very fun. Intermixed with 5 second spots on TV and radio that were quick reminders of the fact that it was the first of the month, and other radio quizzes et al., the campaign pretty much drove home really well. I even swore to buy a bar of Dairy Milk when I recevied my pay, so I guess that makes this efective advertising. Incidentally, the song is from a Kishore Kumar movie by the same name. Try and watch the entire campaign if you can.

And then Idea came up with a new “What an idea, Sir ji” ad with the “Walk When You Talk” approach. Not particularly ingenious, but sure to have struck a cord with the people.

Buuuuuuut, you’ve got to have some bad advertising, and so we did. Tata unveiled its new offering Tata Docomo after a fair amount of work spent on teasers. The teasers weren’t what you would call “teasing” enough. Just some random geometric shapes with some random questions. Very not-interesting. Like this:

One of the Tata Docomo teasers

So after all the teasing, on Friday – July 10, 2009 it finally happened. While we waited with bated breath, the brand was finally revealed. This only after some more teasing. Like, first the first page of your newspaper had some more arbit shapes and questions interrupting your reading and then on the last page, you had a full page ad going “Ta da!”. Like this:

The first page of the ToI on 10-07-2009

The Tata Docomo revelation

Now although I must admit I sort of liked how the shapes now made some sense and looked nice as “Docomo”, there was nothing else about it that I liked or made sense to me. For instance, the whole campaign is harping on some one second pulse USP.  Which is fine. But the whole “1 second can change your life” approach is so predictable and so out there. So if you are going to tell me something so preposterous, say it well. The copy elevated telecommunications to a lesson in how to make life-altering decisions, while the text is super big font is somehow reminiscent of “Do the Dew” (hmmm… I wonder why).

And it didn’t stop there. Radio One has this annoying (like, I started hating advertising kind of annoying) ad. I can’t find the ad anywhere but this is kind of what it was. First, for three minutes or more this played.

Click image to play

Now anything over 60 seconds is too much for a radio ad, so when it went on and on and on (and that was it… just that weird tooting sound), I initially thought there was some glitch with the radio station. But then, the tooting was replaced with a quick ad about how one second can change your life and so you should switch to Tata Docomo. At this point, I must mention that one of the examples of how one second can change your life was the background sound of a baby crying and some man becoming a dad. Seriously? One second? Try telling that to the woman who carried that thing around for nine months in a perpetual state of bloatedness and spent who knows how many hours in labor.

So anyway, after a few more ridiculous examples about 1 second instances, the tooting started again. Three minutes and then regular RJ comes on to speak. Bliss. Then RJ decides she’ll call some birthday fellow. So when she calls him, the tooting starts again – as the ringtone. I swear… if there ever were a moment when I agreed with people who said advertising sucks ass, it was now. (By the way, the ringtone was composed by Ram Sampath)

And what hurts more is that is a reasonably decent client, Docomo is a telecom giant in Japan, from the looks of it the budgets were good, telecommunications can be a fun account and what they’ve got to offer is not so bad. And I have a feeling the “Don’t pay for what you don’t use” proposition could’ve been used much better! Check this tool they’ve got on their site for starters. While I think it could have been more interactive (by actually letting people key in their conversation), what Tata Docomo is offering makes a lot of sense.

Now we move to their Twitter page. See, now this would be a good time to use the freakin’ shapes on the background and personalise it! But do they do it? No! Now it’s a blank orange. While it’s not such a bad attempt at keeping the conversation going, a few desperate tweets about “Spread the word” are a little tasteless.

I suppose the saving grace is the site itself, which is young, easy to get through and has some engaging pieces (but not much). But it’s still way off from actually saving the whole campaign.

I just hope Draft FCB + Ulka does something better for this client in the days to come. I really do.