Tattoo removal - easy come easy go...

It isn't often that i come across direct mailers that make me stop whatever i'm doing. This mailer from work-creative did exactly that. In the words of creator Chris: To promote sk:n’s world class tattoo removal treatments I devised a simple yet engaging direct mail piece. I utilised a scratch off mechanism (like you would find on a scratch card) to enable the recipient to literally remove the tattoo.

...they Believe in Halo 3!

I just read this in Impact mag yesterday. I wasn't even aware the One Shows were on, but the Halo 3 "Believe" campaign won a Best Of Show at this year's One Show.

“The ‘Believe’ campaign catapulted Halo 3 from an ordinary video game into a worldwide cultural phenomenon due to its ability to build an emotional rapport with the audience,” said Mary Warlick, CEO of The One Club. “The innovative stream of interactive TV, Web and cinema advertisements was an inspired approach that successfully attracted an audience beyond the typical gamer.”

View the "Believe" videos here - http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/h/halo3/believe/default.htm or do a YouTube search.

Working on my pitch.

It's almost 2 and I'm still at work. Well, still at office anyway, I finished my work sometime back. But we have a big pitch tomorrow. And we're waiting for all the prints and cuttings to be done. Can't leave till that happens.

This was a great pitch to work on. No ads required, only design work. A whole range of them. 7 of them infact, with me doing 2 of 'em. One of them's real neat, the other's good enough. I can see the prints being cut and shaped, from A4s to bookmarks. This feels good. If we get the account tomorrow, I'll feel a whole deal better.

Sochne ke liye Khaana Zaroori Hai

Last evening, our client called us over to his restaurant for a meal, followed by a movie at Fame, Inorbit Mall. No, it wasn't a random gesture of generosity. It was, shall we call it, a business lunch? Except it wasn't lunch time, closer to 7, but that's just fussing over minor points. I was sampling their food for the first time, and I must say, I liked it. It's quite tasty, and reasonably filling too.

As for the movie after that, we needed to devise a campaign targeting all the cinema folks, get them to visit the restaurant. Providing service inside the theatre would be the most obvious idea, but it's taken that Fame doesn't allow that. If they did, most of the restaurants in the food court would be hawking their wares inside.

Anyway, I'm not sure how useful the cinema experience actually was, but we've come up with some workable ideas. We just need to fine tune them a bit.

Re-phew!

Last monday was my review, and I was told to use fewer puns and reduce wordplay. Hmm, I'm gonna have to work on that.

I've also completed 4 weeks at Saatchi & Saatchi. Wow, that last week went by fast. It's been a good four weeks so far. Would have been better if I'd gone to Goa, for the AAAI awards, but that didn't happen. The rest of the team must be enjoying themselves there. *Sob*

I wouldn't pick any one particular moment as a high point, but Sachin Tendulkar visiting the office sometime back was definetely a hype point. Yeah, haha. Urm, that was another bad attempt at wordplay. Nevermind. Back then, I actually wish I had a camera, to capture everyone's reactions. People were going crazy. The powers-that-be were toying with the idea of giving us the day off, but unfortunately, uncommon sense prevailed, and everyone calmed down. Damn, a missed opportunity that shall remain.

As per SIMC rules, another 9 weeks of internship remain. I'm looking forward to it.

A day like yesterday..

Wow, that was a fun shoot! All morning and noon at Film City, and then evening at the Bandra-Kurla Complex.

I was there at the helipad at 8, and the sun was already out with a vengeance. Heh, it's ok, the stars were soon to come out. Bad pun, sorry, but that's what M. S. Dhoni and Narain Karthikeyan are.

We were there under the scorching sun till 2, i believe. But i'm not complaining. I got to observe a shoot up close, and i must say it looks quite chaotic, but most things go as planned. There was a fair bit of improvisation on the shoot, with my CD and the shoot director discussing stuff, and accordingly changing the camera angles, and getting the two sportsmen to act out their parts in as many variations as possible.

Oh, we also got breakfast in thh morning - bread and jam, chocos or cornflakes with hot milk, grapes, pav bhaji and mutton kheema, idli, medu wada, and some sliced cake, supposedly from monginis. Reason alone to keep going to these shoots.

Philips loves us Advertisers

Yes, they like us so much, they've decided that the back-breaking work we do to produce a television commercial should not be wasted. They've patented a television that will prevent viewers from changing the channel when an ad is playing. Wow. I can see hordes of people fighting over a chance to buy this. Fantastic.

They must have been inspired by former television executive Jamie Kellner, who once said that people who went to the bathroom during commercial breaks were "stealing" TV.

Philips has ofcourse mulled this over, and decided that if at all you want to fast forward through the ad, or switch the channel, a nominal payment will give you that option.

Yay, more money in their pockets!

VH1 Headbanger's Ball - False Advertising or Misrepresentation?

April 7th must have been marked on a lot many calenders here in Mumbai. Atleast among all the metalheads who watch VH1. They were premiering Headbanger's Ball at midnight. I'd been waiting for it over a week, and had to miss the last song (had to go to the airport) but for all practical purposes, i could have missed the entire show.

I counted only 3 songs, just 3, that were suited for a show like this. Every other song could have easily been played at primetime or any other time throughout the day.

They started off with a very cliched song for a premiere - Metallica's Enter Sandman. Ok, it's Metallica, but this song has been done to death. They follow this up with Linkin Park. Jeez, what were they thinking? GnR's Sweet Child Of Mine is a great song no doubt, but a headbanging song it aint. Neither is Creed's What If, which if you ask me, sucks anyway.

So the 3 songs - Slipknot's Wait and Bleed, Nine Inch Nails' Pig something, and a song by Death (which incidentally didn't get its song/band/album name displayed).

There was some real bad stuff too. A horrible live performance by Deep Purple, totally destroying Highway Star, and a slow, slow, slow, boring song that I first thought was by Sade, but turned out to be something by Drowning Pool.

So what is this, false advertising? I'd be tempted to call it so, but no, that's a bit too harsh. This seems to be more ofa case trying to please veryone, as wide a demographic as possible. Creed, Linkin Park, Death, and Nine Inch Nails on the same show? That's what they're missing. Focus.

Ok, I think i'm trying a bit too hard. Over-analysing. Lets just say, I'm hoping for a much heavier show next time round.

One Night @ Saatchi & Saatchi

I love work. It gives me purpose. And purpose is what defines us.

So anyway, I just spent 32 hours at work. Wicked, eh? From 9 in the morning yesterday, to 5 in the evening today. With about 2 hours of broken sleep. We wrapped up our session (notice i didn't use the word "work", because we weren't all done) at around 6:30 in the morning, the team left, and I couldn't stay awake for much longer. Ofcourse, the night watchman was winding up his shift, and insisted on sharing some office gossip with me. I would have retained some of it if I was even halfway awake, but I was pretty much lost to the world. Staring at him with blank eyes. He must have gotten the message, I don't know, he left. I slept.

Got back up at 9, even though the team came in only by 11. Finished up work, stumbled through the day, and when I couldn't take it anymore, I left. This was just before the client meeting, but I didn't want to fall asleep in the conference room. Anyway, I hope they like our work, wouldn't wanna redo it all over.

Anti-Maria ads = Anti-sales campaign?

My mom told me about an interesting incident that happened at work. Every evening, the workers are given Marie biscuits and tea. Some days back, they refused to have the biscuits, and were giving people a hard time.

When my mom went to ask them what the problem was, they said they're not going to eat Marie any more, since the people on tv keep telling them not to have it. My mom was taken back. She tried to explain how that is just an ad, and what Marie is trying to say is that there is now a new Marie, much better than the older one.

Uh-huh-huh, they simply refused to listen, and as a result, some other biscuit brand is used.

Sometimes, agencies try too hard. Ads do backfire.

I have no idea about the future...

...because the future isn't Orange, it's Hutch.

Yes, I can see the cute doggy staring at me from those billboards. "Hutch is here." Hutch is also pink now. According to Naveen Chopra, VP-group marketing, in today's DNA, "We went through the whole colour palette but there were colours associated with other companies, so those were rejected. Through elimination we came to pink." Oh wow, morsels to a starving man?

Here's an article from the Hindu Business Line on the launch.

3.5 crorse for this??

According to reports, Ford paid Abhishek Bachchan 3.5 crores to endorse the Ford Fiesta. That's a heckuva lot of money.

And for that amount, this is the best they could come up with??

Agency - JWT

The Economic Times campaign..

Here's a really well done campaign for the Economic Times. Great visuals and minimal yet effective usage of text.

Ps. these are newspaper scans, hence the low quality. And the last one was bigger than my scanner could handle, so the copy is missing. It's the same as the others.

Ads get creative...

Aluminium pegs and the sun create a cool ad!!

And this one for the Ford Mondeo.