Good news is no news

That’s all one can infer from two unrelated incidents of the past month.

Piyush Pandey completed 25 years at O&M. None of the MSM products saw fit to write about it.
Yashpal Khanna completed 15 years at STAR TV. None of the MSM products saw fit to write about it.

Let a mid level manager resign from O&M or STAR TV and it will be breaking news in the media focused dotcoms and will form part of a larger story in the advertising and media pages of newspapers.

Attrition is a story, retention or loyalty is not.

Piyush Pandey wins Silver

No, not at Cannes. Not at the Abby's. Not at any award ceremony.

He completed 25 years with O&M on the 31st of July. And, surpisingly, no one tom-tommed it.

What a story. In an industry which is going through an acute talent crisis, and attrition management is the foremost responsibility of CEOs, 25 years in one agency. And yet, it seems to merit no attention in the media.

Cool.

Bloomsbury WILL announce 8th Harry Potter or new series by Rowling

Because the franchise is too big, and makes far too much money for Bloomsbury and Rowling to walk away from.
It’s naïve to believe that they would throw away the considerable investments made in both Harry Potter and JK Rowling. The 8th Potter book, if ever written, will sell like hotcakes – as will the first book in a new series “by JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series”.
If I were Ladbrokes, I’d open books on both, the 8th Potter and the first non-Potter Rowling.
And I hope they would acknowledge the fact that they got the idea here.

Do we know it all? Of Fest-O-Comm and Santosh Desai

Last Sunday, I decided to forgo bridge and Bacchus and instead conduct a day-long session on event management at Pune’s Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communications (SIMC).
One thing led to another, and the students wanted to discuss their annual event, Fest-O-Comm – and the biggest problem confronting them.
The Symbiosis credibility and reputation ensures that the most successful professionals from the fields of media and communication are always willing – calendars permitting – to visit the campus to deliver lectures, be on panels, and so on.
The problem is, Symbiosis has an auditorium that seats 650, and SIMC has only 150 students (both seniors and juniors put together). How does one fill up the auditorium so that, say, a Piyush Pandey or a Rajdeep Sardesai is not offended by empty seats?
SIMC invites colleges from across the country to take part in the fest and, yet, it is an uphill task to get the audi filled to the brim.

And the students are a worried and despondent lot – and I hope I’m able to find a viable solution to what is surely a vexatious problem.

And I think about all the seminars and symposia and talks I’ve attended in the past few years. And I am reminded of the poor attendance at a Santosh Desai review of the year gone by when hardly anyone who was anyone was there; of seminar rooms at FICCI Frames attended by audiences in single digits; of a Subhas Ghosal Foundation lecture delivered by Javed Akhtar given a miss by industry stalwarts.

Does nobody want to learn anymore?

Wet-nesdays at Seijo and the Soul Dish

I wasn’t there for the first Advertising and Media night on Wednesday, but I know some who were. Everything on the house for the inaugural night, but from next week on you get zip, except the guarantee that the place will be teeming with People Like Us.
And that’s not a bad crowd, advertising and media types.
For those who don’t know where it is: Waterfield Road, Bandra. See you there one of these Wednesdays.

Indian ad agencies: fear of the web

We’ve given rise to the phrase “Bangalored”, thanks to the skills and abilities of India’s IT professionals. The IT sector probably does business with over 80% of the companies on the Fortune 500 list. A number of IT companies are listed on Nasdaq. Silicon Valley has any number of dollar millionaires with their roots (and parents and grandparents) in India.

And at Cannes, only one Indian entry makes it to the Cyber Lions shortlist.

With an explosion in the number of Internet users, why is it that Indian advertising agencies are so incredibly unenthusiastic when it comes to designing communication targeting the webizens?
Fear? Fear caused by the losses of those advertising agencies that dabbled in Web 1.0? If the fear is not overcome, India will continue to be a laggard when it comes to Cyber Lions.

And there’s a parallel somewhere in history. When every agency worth talking about launched an events division. And lost money. And the failure froze their brains. Instead of figuring out what went wrong and correcting mistakes, they threw the baby out with the bathwater – and got out of the events area. Today, Omnicom and WPP are talking to all major event management companies in attempts to buy them out – at valuations that will make many an event management entrepreneur take up golf.

Watch this space two years from now. When every small Internet design shop gets an offer from the biggest advertising agencies in the world. And many a web designer will consider golf, too.

Knowledge Management at Percept

Harindra Singh, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Percept Holdings, has been detained by the authorities in Dubai on charges of possession of Ecstasy. The following extract from a Gulf News report on developments:

There is however no confirmation of a drug or the amount found in the case of Singh by the police or a spokesperson from Percept.
In a statement issued to Gulf News by a Percept spokesperson in Dubai, no further details can be revealed on Singh's arrest as the matter is sub judice. The spokesperson however said a lawyer has been appointed to deal with the case.

He said: "It is an unfortunate incident, but we at Percept have full confidence in the investigations that are being carried out by the authorities in Dubai. We have known Singh for a long time both professionally as well as personally."

So the Percept spokesperson knows Singh for a long time both professionally and personally? So he (or she) should. Singh is his (or her) boss, isn’t he?

What's up at Haymarket?

This morning, I attempted to visit the web site for Haymarket Publishing -- and the site stubbornly refused to go beyond the frame that is reproduced above -- and the gif is called Haymarket_launch.

Intriguing headline. And, if you look at the copyright carefully, Haymarket is 50 years old this year. Or is it today?

A visit to the site, http://www.haymarketgroup.co.uk/, a little later in the day might be worth one's while.

Now, Rexona from Lever

What's common to new commercials of HLL's brands in India?

A one-second slate at the end displaying the HLL logo.

Commercials produced earlier continue to run without this slate, but one would presume that, over period of time, all commercials will follow suit.

Interesting, the highlighting of the mother brand in the TVCs. Will we see a larger logo presence in the packaging, and the leveraging of Lever?

OOH goes ouch in Mumbai

Here we go again. Mumbai’s corporators are proposing a censor board to ensure that “obscene” billboards are not put up in the city.
Also on the anvil is a ban on cigarette and tobacco brands using the medium.

The implications of the censor board concept? Every single creative will have to be cleared by the board before it makes its way to the hoarding sites. That will mean delays and/or corruption, and will prevent nimble tactical reactions like the one above.
There is no indication as to the composition of the proposed censor board – will it include professionals from the advertising and marketing fraternities?

STAR TV, Levers kiss and make up

Just yesterday I posted on the STAR-Levers impasse -- and a few hours later, I learnt that all pending issues have been resolved to the satisfaction of both protagonists. Levers spots will appear on channels on the STAR network as early as they can be scheduled by media planners and accomodated by the inventory position.

Good week for STAR. They get a COO, Uday Shankar, and they resolve what could have been a vexatious problem.

TATA brands back on BCCL

When I read The Economic Times this morning, I kept staring at the TCS full page ad, as if something was wrong with it. It’s an ad I’ve seen any number of times in the past few weeks, and, considering it’s a full page insertion, that’s no surprise.
I moved on.. and then, froze.

A TCS ad in a BCCL newspaper? A TATA ad in the ET?

The release signals an end to the stand-off between the TATAs and The Times of India group – a stand-off that’s a few years old, a period during which not a single TATA owned company advertised in any publication from the BCCL stable.

A stand-off that saw the Indigo launched without the Times of India, a stand-off that saw the Trent-owned Landmark bookstore launch in Mumbai and Pune without the Times of India. A stand-off that forced media planners working on TATA accounts to look at means to get to consumers in permutations and combinations without the Times of India.

And DNA and Hindustan Times were the biggest beneficiaries, the TATA “ban” on ToI proving to be manna from heaven when the newspapers launched in Mumbai.
Now that the ice seems to have melted, DNA and HT will also be the biggest losers, as one can now expect other TATA brands to use the Times again.

And on another medium, Levers and STAR TV face off, with no Levers product on air on the entire network. Let’s see how long this one plays out, and how much Zee and Sony gain from the negotiation impasse.

Brand Equity now Bekaar

This comment, calling the Nike commercial Bekaar in this morning's Brand Equity

"Brand: Nike

Maybe it’s the length of the commercial that got to our panel. Sitting through a two-minute gully cricket match to find out that it only sells a shoe is too much for them to bear."

Maybe it’s the quality of the comment that got to me. Sifting through a four page newspaper on advertising, marketing and media that so many of us respect calling the commercial a “two minute gully cricket match” and Nike “ a shoe” is too much for me to bear.

Perhaps Brand Equity has become only a supplement.

Santosh Desai brilliant, but who cares?

Last evening, Santosh Desai presented the Advertising Review for the year 2006 under the auspices of the Bombay Advertising Club.
When Desai accepts an invitation to speak, be on a panel, write or review, he does so with a commitment that is uncommon. He has viewed — literally — 1500 commercials that were aired in 2006, during the course of which he looked for trends that he thought noteworthy enough to share with the advertising community. I won’t “report” those brilliant, and sometimes provocative and debatable observations – I’m sure the media and advertising supplements, magazines and websites will, as will CNBC’s Storyboard.

What surprised me was the quality of the audience. No one from O&M, no one from JWT, no one from Grey, and so on. Hardly any clients. And hardly anyone from newspapers or television channels.
Have we become incapable of learning from a peer? Or was the event not glamorous enough?

To the Bombay Advertising Club, reeling as they are in the tug-of-war between them and the AAAI, there’s an opportunity staring them in the face. The review was brilliant, even if the attendance was not. The entire proceedings have been videotaped – digitize it and sell it. With brand building, not profit, as the objective.
An objective, as Desai pointed out, that seems to have been somewhat lost in last year’s advertising.

2007 cricket world cup Trivial Pursuit

While all the MSM will be full of all the predictable stats, I thought, since I’m a cricket freak anyway, I’d track records and landmarks which all of us in media and advertising could find more useful than the strike rate of Brian Lara.

Like, the first commercial AFTER the batsman entered the ground, but before the first ball was bowled, was that of Videocon.
The first commercial AFTER the first ball was bowled was Pepsi’s.
The first ground runner to be hit by a ball was a Hutch board.
The first tech goof was from the very first ball till the 13th ball (not counting extra deliveries), during which period commentary was completely absent.
The first inadvertent editing of content was in over 6.1, when a commercial ate into the delivery.
The first surrogate liquor ad was McDowell No 1. Soda, of course.
The first commercial to be truncated due to the editing was the TVS Apache commercial.
Six of the first eight bundaries hit Hutch signage, with Pepsi host to the other two.

Yeah, I like Trivial Pursuit

Have event, have editorial, have advertising

The past month – and the next – are easy times for editorial teams, considering the number of “calendered” events. Marketers, too, could benefit, if they anticipated the events. My take, as published in Hindustan Times, here.
And the visual, a brilliant April Fool’s Day release, which was destroyed in the layout in HT, reproduced here for relevance.

Clarity on Front Page Solus

This, so that everyone understands what Front Page Solus means.

If you can’t figure out why I’m taking the trouble to illustrate FPS, read this. Tried a wikipedia search – came up with zip on "Front Page Solus", or, indeed, on "solus". Dictionary.com, however, says it is “By oneself; alone.”

Times of India’s Front Page Dupleix

There’s new jargon that will creep into the media buyer’s handbook: the Front Page Dupleix.
I open the paper this morning, and the front page looks a little weird – almost like I’m looking at a person with a funny growth on his forehead.

I refocus and figure out why. There are TWO ads on the bottom half of the paper.
And I’d bet many a beer to say that the Canon ad has a release order that says Front Page Solus where the position is mentioned.


And I thought solus meant all alone, only one.

Gaping Void: a must visit

One of the blogs I visit regularly is http://www.confusedofcalcutta.com/, where the gapingvoid cartoons – drawn on the back of business cards – always catch the eye.
And today’s is a beaut, and I think of the many Rogers that one comes across in the many bars and nightclubs in Mumbai, and I think to myself, what a similar world.

Why politicians should not create advertising

This is the body copy from Raj Thackeray's election ad.

One day, before I die, I will understand what he is trying to say.