SRK (Shah Rukh Khan) has been the brand ambassador for pepsi since eternity, right? and he hates coke as well, going by brand endorsement rules? well well…i was extremely surprised to see him endorse Sprite! As logic would go, it’s all in the name of getting some much needed moolah for kolkata knight riders…the korbo lodbo jeetbo re tribe…but is he going overboard with brand endorsements for KKR, when they just don’t have a team good enough to win more than a couple of matches in IPL? was the simple idea behind buying a team was to add a separate revenue stream through endorsements which otherwise would’nt have come to him? will we next see KKR folks, ganguly included, applying some Axe talcum powder on their bodies and going out to defeat delhi daredevils? (SRK sells us duniya ka sabse chota AC, right?). I think SRK is killing his brand appeal by trying to be everywhere. Getting desperate to make money, while the good times last. One of his mandates is to get red chillies as the producer in case he wants to be featured in any endorsement…whatever happened to the creative liberties of the marketing folks in the brand teams? sample the sprite ad here…

without fail, all ads of the orange soft-drink, Fanta, leave me perplexed. they managed to create some horrible ones with rani mukherji, and now with genelia as their brand icon, the execution and the ideation have only got worse. fanta ka signal loud, bunking is allowed?? what kind of ideation and copyrighting is this? who on earth is the marketing head who gives an approval for such bizarre ideas? if you haven’t seen the commercial yet, here it goes. watch it at your own risk…

have you had the misfortune of sampling the actve services on tatasky? especially the actve stories or wizkids..extremely primitive and lame animation, which are, in most cases, nothing more than static jpegs with some music and voiceover thrown in for measure. given the advancements in animation globally, and the rising appetite of indians for better quality products, how can tatasky continue to dish out such a pathetic product? sample these 4 images, which were telling a story to us about three blind mice…extremely poorly executed. i could have browsed through a PPT rather than getting my kid and myself listening to it!

mayawati is now on the newsweek cover story, being compared to barrack obama..however, with a twist. though the rise and the early rise may have been similar, but her reliance on the caste politics is in sharp contrast to how obama has been playing all along…obama’s promise was more about development of those who have traditionally lagged behind, while maya memsaab is about personal development, even while the caste she promotes continues to drag along. her rule is more about creating her statues wherever and whenever possible, in the hope that she will become immortal in the eyes of her followers, much much after she’s gone….and she loves to see the glitter in the eyes of the poor when they admire her wealth and jewellery…but is that what ministers are supposed to do? incite casteism and rely on a stupid divide and rule policy to promote their personal wealth? what choices do the indian electorate are left with? the abject backwardness of SP manifesto? the casteism of mayawati? the goondaraj of bihar politics? the getting together of like minded people to form a third front, which can be used to haggle during horse trading to amass more personal wealth and ministries/portfolios to ensure a steady stream of income for 5 years?
what are we left with? congress and bjp? and then we have lead india and every single media unit doing their bit to promote the cause of voting in these elections? whom do we choose? why cant we have a double party regime in place? i dont want the likes of bsp and sp and rjd and so on to have any influence in the scheme of things. i just want our electorate to have 2 clear options to choose from, so they know what to expect, without leaving development to chance. will that ever happen? can that ever happen?

when it comes to innovation in advertising, absolutely no one in india comes remotely close to the hutch/vodafone franchise. absolutely magical how they keep churning out blockbusters one after another. each series of their ads is a lesson for advertisers and marketeers, on how to stay on top of the game..how to keep innovating. sample these ones from the latest “white alien” series….absolutely brilliant.

just to update: changed the theme from simplex to clean home. and experimented with some interesting plugins. let me see how the new plugins work, will update with a new post on my experience with them!

i’ll start by referring to some text found on hiraj.com:
“At Hiraj.com you don’t have to wait longer to receives messages/responses from other kids because you will be automatically updated and on the main account it will show the all kids updates, so you view them and get updated what the little ones are upto.
As you know sometime people fear, nervous and hesitate in sharing their kids information through opens blog, social networking, file sharing or broadcasting websites because they don’t want any and every body to see or know their kids information. But at Hiraj.com you can share the information only with people who you want to and like to, gives you full control.’