Advertising has become more complex today then ever before, there was a time when all channels of communications were controlled by advertising agencies but today advertising has gone through a significant change today we have more then two dozen specialist agencies specialized from creative planning to digital executions. Apart from loads of channels to communicate to the consumers have changed, people themselves have changed.
A recent study published in Times of India points the average age of the consumer had dropped dramatically, for instance an average car buyers age had come down from 45 to below 30. This change not only affects the target for marketing but it also changes the media planning. Hence one needs to look at the content of communication in the context of message consumption therefore it is extremely important for the communication content creators to understand the contextual targeting. The moral of this story is if the creative and media planning or digital planning agencies do not collaborate then how the hell are they going to create a relevant campaign?
In this ever-evolving complex world everything is linked to everything and not everyone can be experts in everything. Super specializations are hear to stay and the intelligence lies in learning from each other and working as a team even if the team you are supposed to work with, belongs to a competing holding company. If a creative agency can collaborate with a film production company, which also works with competing agencies can happen with out any hesitation, then why not collaborate with another competing small agency on a project in the interest of a brand?
Bigger and traditional creative agencies can learn a thing or two from modern design companies which have learned to co-create and collaborate with technology companies for starters take a look at the design winners from Cannes this year. Small and nimble agencies have realized this early enough and are raking in now. Now it’s the turn of the biggies.
We all are witnessing the results of coalition government with out any collaboration. I urge all the communications channels to come together and get to learn from each other and march ahead into the new age communication era.
After all the solo sulking days have gone, as my friend Agnello puts it “jo tera hai wo mera hai”,
In hatred he saw love. In fear, courage. In weakness he saw strength. And in violence, truth. In cruelty he saw kindness. In anger he saw humanity. And in struggle, he saw peace. He saw things through his soul that are invisible to the eye. Yet through his eyes, we can still see the shining light of humanity. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. A different type.
Above are the words came out of Agnello Dias when I told him about my intention to create a font for Gandhi.
” There is no god higher than truth.” is what he said and is what got imprinted in my mind ever since I was a little boy, my grand parents always told me stories of Gandhi at bedtime, I am still a vegetarian thanks to the impression he made on me. I am just a spec in billions who follow him. Once he said “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”
When Indian Industrialist Vijay Mallya salvaged the pride of a nation by bringing back the priced possession of a man who owned nothing. The day New York auctioneer announced auctioning of Mahatma’s spectacles the nation put her head down in shame, as embarrassed Indian government’s desperate attempts to stall the action failed, Mallya’s $1.8 millon came to the rescue.
His glasses has a deep significance to all Indians, when he gave away the glasses in 1930′s to an army colonel he said ” these gave me vision to free India”. Today as we live in a free India we still are slaves to violence, terrorism, untouchability, communalism and many more evils. A young nation celebrates holiday on his birthday than his wisdom as Nitesh Tiwari one of our copywriters put it.
How do we make him and his vision relevant and how do we make people try to see the world through his eyes? Than the Idea of a typeface created out of his glasses came about.
Typographers from Leo Burnett went on to create this marvelous Gandhiji font in Devanagari and the team is working overtime to launch english and other Indian languages.( an up-date:English, Devnagari, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada are available ) The website went live last night http://www.gandhijifont.com
What’s the best way to keep Gandhi’s spectacles away from auctioneers than this?
Most of the enlightened brands today stopped doing “Ads” and started doing “Acts”, Ads usually chest thump about how good they are and propagate their superiority in all media channels. Acts on the other hand are the deeds brands do in public domains and are neutral to paid media channels or they put up their act in real life rather than communicate through paid mediums.
Brands today try to behave in a selfless manner and propagate certain values to emotionally connect with like-minded people, like Tata tea never asks you to buy its branded tea instead urges you to be awakened to the responsibilities of a citizen. This action or the behavior of a brand makes you want to connect and live alongside.
Human like behavior of a brand is what Leo Burnett terms as “HumanKind Brand”, brands are trying to find its purpose of existence in people’s lives so that they can play a meaningful role and become a part.
Thus to make this journey possible brands can’t fake things as fake friends are not difficult to spot, they need to be honest and earnest therefore they must “Act” the way they promise.
Now you know the power of ‘Acts” here are some powerful and earnest “Acts” put-up by Indian Brands in 2010:
Gillette “Shave India movement”- by women against lazy stubble.
Women prefer “clean-shaven men” is a universal truth. Men are dumb and they never get it, they all want to look macho by sporting a stubble. This insight had led to an inspired “Act” of “Shave India Movement”
Around November last year “Shave India movement”- by women against lazy stubble was announced and launched by sexy sirens of Bollywood: Neha Dhupia, Manisha Lamba and Mugdha Godse forcing men to get shaved, thousands of women joined soon in the protest against men with stubble. Television and social media transmitted the idea like wildfire, soon shaving camps were organized, media started ridiculing men with stubble forcing them to shave, in the midst of all this Gillette launched its cheaper Mach-3 razor for 125 rupees.
Bravo BBDO, Mediacom and Proctor & Gamble!
Hippo “Crowd Sourcing” on twitter.
Creativeland Asia and Parle Agro had an innovative solution for a complex distribution problem, they appealed to the tweeters to report to them if they have not found “Hippo” in the neighborhood shop and promised to make it available in an hour’s time. Curious tweeters reported and participated in the drill actively making the brand more fun and inclusive.
This cleaver “Act” not just saved the brand’s distribution or inventory problem but also created a bond with the consumers and made a statement to the young social media audience how innovative, young and agile they are!
“Aman ki Asha” an Initiative by Times of India & Jung Group Pakistan.
What can one say to an ‘Act” like this? Mahatma Gandhi would have been proud. Two nations have been fighting bitter wars since 1947 while the majority of the people in both the nations want to live in peace and harmony. Two huge newspapers take plunge of propagating peace in the midst of terror and distrust. Teachers, artist, businessmen, filmmakers, intellectuals, poets, actors, scientist and commoners all came together to exchange ideas and peace messages.
This “Act” I believe had re-kindled the love and affection this two nations once shared.
Virgin Mobile: “Indian Panga League”
When you want to be young and happening what do you do? Simple. You behave like one. Virgin had a choice of hiring a lesser cricketing star and do a conventional 30 seconds spot or think little different. They chose to do the later and took the trouble of going the extra mile by behaving little “hutke”.
Indian Panga League is launched for the IPL session-3 is a complete digital campaign with 100 viral films on YouTube and the website, allowing young fans to take friendly pangas with their buddies supporting rival teams, this generated huge participation on the micro site over 1 million visitors, 500,000 views on YouTube and 3000 fans on Facebook. Bates and Virgin’s choice proved to be the right one, young janta went berserk.
Gandhiji Font.
To commemorate Mahatma Gandhi’s 141 birthday, Leo Burnett had decided to create a special font designed from his iconic spectacles to enable a young nation to see Mahatma’s vision. This “Act” will take wings, once the ambitious project get into top gear by launching the font in all 16 Indian languages, currently Devnagari, English, Marathi and Telugu are available awaiting for a symbolic gesture of dedicating to the nation by The Government of India.
The ambition of this project is to make mahatma’s vision relevant to younger generation especially by using digital space to connect.
In the land of Mahatma Gandhi the “Act of Acts” is no new discovery, the symbolic “Salt Production” was an “Act” to bring behavioral change, so is non-co-operative movement. Imagine Bapu trying to explain the significance of freedom in a long copy ad than to a metaphoric act of salt making”
India might be the oldest and the most successful democracy in the world but it’s really the last decade, which empowered people. As the social media and Internet revolutionized the way people lived and behaved in this country. Its media which empowered the people from Tehelka to the resent CWG exposures to Mumbai blast coverage to ugly money display in parliament to cricket scandals to reality shows to pink chaddies to meter jams, by making public opinion count, aam admi is the king today decides who can do what and when and how.
This is the beginning of “Democracy 2.0”. Empowered by 650 million mobile phones loaded with FM radio’s and over 200 million traditional radio sets new revolution is about to begin in the real India from an unexpected medium called Radio.
What Facebook and Twitter are doing to urban India, radio can do to rural India, only if the government were to wake up and allow community radio to spread like wildfire.
Pandit Nehru put pressure on radio to help in “Social modernization” of independent India. How true? Social modernization can only be achieved by debate and exchange of ideas between people, every revolution in the modern world used radio to propagate and influence people to their ideologies including Netaji Bose.
Linguistic diversity is never been respected as mush as it should in India, we have always looked at India as three-language nation: Hindi, English and Tamil. What can we do to a country where a dialect changes every 24 kms? Radio might just be the answer.
In hatred he saw love. In fear, courage. In weakness he saw strength. And in violence, truth. In cruelty he saw kindness. In anger he saw humanity. And in struggle, he saw peace. He saw things through his soul that are invisible to the eye. Yet through his eyes, we can still see the shining light of humanity. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. A different type.
Above are the words came out of Agnello Dias when I told him about my intention to create a font for Gandhi.
” There is no god higher than truth.” is what he said and is what got imprinted in my mind ever since I was a little boy, my grand parents always told me stories of Gandhi at bedtime, I am still a vegetarian thanks to the impression he made on me. I am just a spec in billions who follow him. Once he said “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”
When Indian Industrialist Vijay Mallya salvaged the pride of a nation by bringing back the priced possession of a man who owned nothing. The day New York auctioneer announced auctioning of Mahatma’s spectacles the nation put her head down in shame, as embarrassed Indian government’s desperate attempts to stall the action failed, Mallya’s $1.8 millon came to the rescue.
His glasses has a deep significance to all Indians, when he gave away the glasses in 1930′s to an army colonel he said ” these gave me vision to free India”. Today as we live in a free India we still are slaves to violence, terrorism, untouchability, communalism and many more evils. A young nation celebrates holiday on his birthday than his wisdom as Nitesh Tiwari one of our copywriters put it.
How do we make him and his vision relevant and how do we make people try to see the world through his eyes? Than the Idea of a typeface created out of his glasses came about.
Typographers from Leo Burnett went on to create this marvelous Gandhiji font in Devanagari and the team is working overtime to launch english and other Indian languages. The website went live last night http://www.gandhijifont.com
What’s the best way to keep Gandhi’s spectacles away from auctioneers than this?
World is changing every nano second. Internet made it possible to live live. Every word you utter can spread like wildfire. Recently a tweet forced a minister resign, it takes few seconds to trend globally.
The original real-time communication was word of mouth. Religion used this form to perfection and then the kings; in the modern-day with Internet it became viral and buzz marketing. Now live is the name of the game live news in the aircrafts, live tweets from the space, live television on the mobile phones, live web cams stream videos from 2940 cities across the world from 4835 cams.
What can one possibly do with this live world today apart from tweeting and chatting? Leo Burnett Chicago came up with a creative idea: They created “David on Demand” . First ever Internet controlled human being. Take a look at the video:
We all have been talking about social media and how could one leverage this for building brands? There were theories about the possibilities but no cases to demonstrate until last year when Crispin Porter & Bogusky came up with this Cannes titanium winning idea, check the video:
Creativity has the power to change the way we consume the new technologies, above cases are shinning examples of how imaginatively one can use the Internet video streaming and twitter.
