Good idea, great execution

This is one of my favourites. This won a Lion at Cannes a couple of years ago. Brilliant execution.

A grand opening and half a dozen goals

It is 4 - 2 for Germany. But for the Costa Rican goalkeeper's splendid efforts it could have been half a dozen for Germany. A good beginning to what promises to be a great world cup.

Guy Goma on a Friday night show

This is how famous one could get. This is a friday night show with Jonathan Ross.

God bless Congo.

Guy Goma interview on GMTV breakfast show

Second time lucky. But this time he is interviewed as Guy Goma in this GMTV breakfast show.

What a way to get famous!!

One more on Interviews

Meet Mr Guy Goma, he went to BBC for a job interview as a Data support cleanser. But was lucky ending up commenting on the Apple (Vs.) Apple case. It was a case of mistaken identity when this Guy was picked up for another guy, Guy Kewney, an IT expert.

While he wasn't too comfortable answering the questions asked, he managed. But this Guy managed really well to become an instant celebrity.

Check out... The BBC story

Anirudhha is getting photo savvy

My 8 month old son is getting savvy of facing the camera. While I am not a great fan of mobile phone cameras, I tried clicking a few pictures impromptu, yesterday night and this is how Mr Anirudhha had to react.

It is amazing seeing the kid grow. God bless.

How mobile savvy is the UAE?

Come 10th of this month I am completing an year in Dubai. I was chatting up with someone who has been here for the last 18 years. The discussion was about mobile telephony, this man was proud to say that UAE is one of the most evolved markets as far as mobile telephony goes. According to this friend, people here exploit the technology available to the fullest and they have a great deal of understanding about things.

Having had the opportunity to work with a couple of mobile telephony service provider brands back in India, I have my own opinion about this market. I thought it would be better if I had my opinion validated. So I started doing a dip-stick on this market, its expectations from the mobile service providers and more importantly the level of understanding the subscribers have about mobile telephony.

I have also tried checking some secondary data sources like a recent interview among people here about mobile phones (instruments) which appeared in a leading lifestyle magazine here and some reports I found on the net. I have also used some of my own understanding about this market.

Why this study / post now?

UAE is getting a second operator in the next couple of months. So I wanted to see how prepared this place is in welcoming a new operator, what do the people expect, what the operators have to offer now and what they must focus on for their better future.

All this said, there are still some people in the UAE who believe that we are moving from monopoly to Du-poly situation with the launch of the new operator Du. This is mainly due to the reason that Du also belongs to the government, Etisalat and Du have reached an agreement already – they wouldn’t compete on cost.

Do let me know your comments / feedbacks.

Special thanks due to Vinay M for helping me collate responses for the research.

The United Arab Emirates market

It is a monopoly as of now. Etisalat, the sole operator in town has been in business for 30 years now. It was established initially in 1976 (the Federal Act 1 of 1991 made this industry a monopoly). UAE is one of the first countries to introduce mobile telephony way back in 1982. Digital GSM service is operational since September 1994. People would be surprised to know that Etisalat is the second largest revenue generator for the government after the oil sector. Though Etisalat is a government owned company it is very active pitching for business in the neighboring countries including Saudi, Pakistan etc.

So here we are talking about a government controlled monolith, in monopoly.

Mobile penetration

The global standards say that the developed countries have about 34% mobile penetration and in the developing countries the penetration is about 5%.

In UAE the mobile penetration is at 79% compared to a 30% fixed line penetration. This figures would show us how dynamic the UAE market is and its wealth & its ever increasing expatriate population.

In Dubai the usage / penetration is at 90% and Abu Dhabi follows next with 62.5%. Both these centers combined contribute to 74% of the total penetration of the country.

Despite these very high penetration figures the market grows by a conservative 10% an year. This 10% could be mainly attributed to the SMS and MMS services. The market is also known for its frequency of changing handsets (that would be a good study by itself).

The offering

Etisalat offers both prepaid and postpaid services. With WASEL being its very popular prepaid offering. In my estimate (due to lack of support) the skew towards prepaid is about 8:2. This could be mainly attributed to the cost of the postpaid connection, you are supposed to pay a deposit of about $140.

By December 2003 there was a reduction is the cost of international calls, notably to India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan and Yemen. Reduced tariffs have increased revenue, rather than reduced it, since consumers make more and longer calls.

The target audience

Mainly the expatriate population and not to forget the local population. This ranges from a construction laborer to a CEO of a multinational company. It is a very disparate crowd and therefore their expectations differ as per their usage.

Awareness among the users

Recently, in one of the leading publications I saw an article. They had spoken to a few people. All these people looked educated, having a decent job. The question posed was simple “What do you use your mobile phone for?”

And you would see below the kind of response from the people (in the order of importance)

1. Receive / Make calls
2. Send SMS
3. Set Alarm (Check out the BBC report on a Nokia commissioned survey)
4. Take pictures
5. Check time (Check out the BBC report on a Nokia commissioned survey)
6. Listen to Radio / MP3 (Check out the BBC report on a Nokia commissioned survey)
7. Send MMS
8. Connect to the web

Looking at this survey I decided to do a dipstick survey. I decided my survey would be from a service provider’s perspective and ask people about the mobile service usage based questions.

I contacted 15 young men & women with a questionnaire. Here’s what they had to say.

1. All of them have a mobile connection
2. All of them have a postpaid connection.
a. 7 said they have a Wasel (that is the name for the prepaid subscription plan).
b. 8 said they have a Etisalat connection
3. Next question asked was “What is GSM?”
a. 3 of them had said it was “Global System for Mobile communication”.
b. The other 12 had an interesting answer, GSM according to them is a type of mobile phone connection where you get a monthly bill and you pay it month on month. You also get a international roaming with this connection. Interesting!!
4. Three functions you use your mobile phone for frequently. (Services provided by Etisalat, in the order of importance)
a. Incoming
b. SMS
c. Outgoing
5. Do you know about anyother service provider in Dubai? (the reason being an impending launch of another service provider Du)
a. 3 said they knows Du is getting launched shortly
b. The others had no idea
6. What would make you switch to another operator from Etisalat? (in the order of importance)
a. Reduced call charges – International & local
b. Low rentals (the annual subscription)
c. Free international roaming
d. Good network
e. Good customer care
7. Are you okay with switching operators at the risk of loosing your existing phone number?
a. All 15 said yes they will
8. Have you switched numbers at least once? (have you changed your mobile connection ever?)
a. 8 said they have
b. 7 have not changed their numbers

Making sense of the numbers shown above.

UAE has an extremely high mobile penetration level. Mobile phones are more or less commodities here. Some people also have the tendency of changing numbers, the reason being getting a fancy number, a shift in jobs or just for the fun of it. You have an amazing skew towards prepaid connections. This is because of the high deposit / rental factor required for the postpaid connections. Postpaid is seen as a rich man’s connection.

The most important thing is the ignorance of people about their connection. A majority of them don’t seem to know what the prepaid offering of Etisalat is called – Wasel. Even this awareness doesn’t hold Etisalat in good ground as we move on to GSM.

The majority here seem to confuse technology with the offering. For many GSM is the postpaid offering from Etisalat. Even educated, high ranking men and women don’t know what GSM is in reality. Not that they should know the expansion for this acronym, but they should at least know that this a technology that enables you to speak. At least people back in India know this. Another thing to add here is Etisalat’s recent decision to enable full international roaming for its prepaid customers. People don’t seem to know this, they are all under the impression that roaming is available only for the GSM customers (that is the postpaid according to them).

On the usage part, we could clearly see that incoming calls are most preferred. This could be attributed to the high call costs and the amount of expatriate population living here in the UAE. SMS seems to be the next preference, but how many of the expat population are SMS savvy? Outgoing is for emergency situations because it is presumed a costly proposition.

Nobody knows that another operator is coming to town, Du is being launched shortly. But when prompted about this, almost all of the people interviewed say they would want to shift. The reasons that would prompt this decision of theirs is call costs, annual rental and the network (Thursday’s and Friday’s are the most congested days when there is a mad rush of international outgoing calls)

Some learning for the mobile service providers in UAE

1. When your customers crib about costs, it is not necessary that you need to reduce costs. You can create a feeling of reduction by making them feel that you offer more value for their money. Services like Cricket Scores through SMS, Football WC results and score updates, Dial-a-cab, Dial-a-flower, Dial-your-water services make a huge difference. These are some services for which the operator ties up with someone, makes money from this person and offer the services free of charge to the customer

2. There is a reduction in call charges past 10p everyday and on Fridays, but how many people know this? Communicate, may be an SMS to the people on Fridays at least only to those who seem to cough-up monies on making expensive international calls would do wonders.

3. Educate people about your offering. Let people know what your prepaid and postpaid offerings are and what the difference is. Let people know that your company works on a GSM plank and everyone is a GSM user. This should do wonders in a market like this where everyone has a misconception that GSM is postpaid, it would make a definite difference and create a sense of belonging when these guys know they also have a GSM connection. At least for starters.

4. Create more of Emotional loyalty and not the Behavioral loyalty (that’s what you have now). This comes out clearly from our interviews, people are sticking with Etisalat because it is the only player in the market. They would move the moment they have another option. But this option can’t be yet another Etisalat with a different brand name and identity. It has to differentiate itself by the product they offer, the Value Added Services, the packaging and more importantly in pricing (at least visibly)

5. Use the wealth of data you have to increase usage. You know who makes long ISD calls and who is an SMS freak. Offer them some add-ons, make them feel important and this would increase usage.

6. Remember visibility shouldn’t be limited to eyes, you need to take that to heart.

7. This is a service industry, beef your customers service centers up. Get people who understand the problems of your subscribers (at least the common complaints). Make sure all the complaints are addressed promptly.

8. Communicate about your offering clearly. When a person buys a prepaid card or a postpaid connection give him a welcome pack. This should explain him whatever he wanted to know about the connection, facilities and tariff etc.

9. For heavens sake make them use their mobiles for more than setting alarms, checking time and receiving an odd incoming call and make a call or send an SMS once in a blue moon. For a mobile phone’s primary use is not setting alarms and checking time, these need to stop with being value added services from the equipment.

10. As we could see, today a mobile is not just a phone. It is a watch, alarm clock, music player, camera and many more dimensions. It would be adding value if we provide the customer with services that supplement this kind of usage like a music server (like an iTune or a mobile radio station), simple software like the ones used for managing daily expenses etc.

The existing operator here doesn’t seem to have time. They have to react fast, otherwise the watch, clock, MP3 manufacturers are going to suffer a lot. More than that, the existing operators ARPU is going to take a nosedive soon with lots of people leaving out of the network and low usage among those remaining.

Why don't they teach these people some basics before they start giving interviews?

I was checking one of my daily favorites, the agencyfaqs website (Indian advertsing, media & marketing). I found yet another SMART advertising professional. This person is reported to be moving from one BIG agency to another, from being an Account Director to becoming a Director – Client Services.

I was intrigued by the way this person has answered a simple question. The challenges and the headway this person made working on a particular account (a well known brand) in one of this person's previous assignments.

The answer was funny. This made me wonder about this person's wisdom, the abilities of this particular persons handling clients, problem solving capabilities and even this persons understanding of the basics of advertising and branding.

Now over to that intersting answer “Here the challenge was to up the image of “The client” in India and differentiate the brand from the other brands in the market. This was achieved by roping in “A big superstar actor” as the brand ambassador.”

Can somebody try explain me how a brand image is “upped” just by using a celebrity? While one can attempt to try and explain this with some difficulty, the differentiation bit baffles me. May be this person was referring to the exclusivity clause they had as part of the contract with this celebrity and that is the only BIG differentiation I could think of.

This person is badly in need of a good lecture / sermon / coaching on “Brand” first and then on “Brand Image”, “Positioning” and “Differentiation”. This would stand to save the agency this person has joined or is going to join and more than anything save a client and his/her brand(s).

Till then god save this agency and their clients…

Aspirations – How dreams take shape

I had the opportunity of reading Abraham Maslow’s theory of hierarchy (again after 8 years of college). It is very interesting, more interesting than it was during college. I tried applying the theory to my life till date, on my progression.

From the dreams of a little boy to the practical family man to the aged head of a family trying to shepherd things, it is one full circle.

I found 6 distinct sections in anyone’s life in a pyramid structure. When I tried placing myself in the pyramid, I find I am in the fifth step. Let us see what these 6 steps are.

Not that I have discovered something new, but it seems interesting and may be we could use it on brands we are working on. Try map out where where the brand is placed on the pyramid and tackle its needs and wants as the pyramid would dictate us.

This seems interesting, the only problem - this is a fairly long post. If you do manage to take some timeout and read this, let me know your feedback, it would be invaluable and I would be grateful.

1) The age of Innocence

This is the time in life when everything around you impresses you, from the street side bougainvillea tree to the wiper blade of your uncle's car . Often you feel like floating on air and you wouldn't be worried about anything in life.

There is absolutely nothing called a cause – effect theory now. You are happy enjoying the all little pleasures in life.

I want to become a train driver!

That was my first aspiration in life. I was all of 3 when I decided I would become one. I was fascinated by the way they stood in the first compartment of a train, the engine. Their blue color bandana and uniform. They operate the horn of the train, I had heard. I wanted to drive my train all around India, meet and carry different kinds of people in my train. And more than anything operate the whistle whenever I felt like.

I want to become a doctor!

When I was 5 I had my first memorable fall. I had to have 4 sutures near my left eye. It was awfully painful. It was a Monday afternoon, I had come home for lunch from my school and I had this fall. My mother couldn’t control her emotions, she was inconsolable, weeping. My father was away at work. So it was my grandfather who took me to the doctor. But I was a brave boy, I didn’t cry, I didn’t growl. But when the doctor was working on my injury I couldn’t tolerate the pain. The pain turned into anger. The person who bore my brunt was my grandfather. I swore I would become a doctor and prick my grandfather with an injection, like how the doctor was doing to me then.

My grandfather took that seriously and began motivating me to become a doctor. My father gifted me a doctors play set. My grandfather had a vision for me – serve the needy and poor. I felt like I had already become a doctor.

I want to be a policeman…

Two years of dreaming doctor came to an end when the people in my colony caught a thief. He was bound to an electric post and was given a severe dressing down by the locals before the police arrived. This policeman incidentally was my father’s student at college. I loved his khaki uniform, starched to perfection. The elegant whistle chord. The stars on his shoulders. The pistol that hung from his belt. And more than anything the bike he rode – A Royal Enfield Bullet, Standard 350. I tried walking like him. I had a haircut like him and I did everything to make sure I looked like him. I wanted to become a policeman.

2) The age of Ignorance

This is an age where your life is driven by what others do. Most of the time is spent being a copy cat. You want to be everything what the boy / girl next door wants to become and is doing. From wanting to join swimming classes to pestering your father to take you to the same restaurant where your classmate went last week.

Most of the time is spent taking all “Word of mouth” at face value.

The engineer in me

I was in my 10th class when I decided I would become an engineer. What engineer god knows, but I wanted to join an engineering college and become an engineer. This was mainly due to peer pressure. It was a custom those days when half the class said they want to become doctors and the other half engineers. I tried asking myself “why do I want to become an engineer?”. The answer was simple Rama wants to become a doctor, Abdul wants to become a doctor, Rajkumar wants to become an engineer and therefore I would want to become an engineer.

3) The age of Adventure

The physiological developments start to take shape. The first love, smoke, drink and all the other little vices get started now. One becomes more careless and even a little arrogant. The mind wavers around, you want to be a hero and you want to do every possible thing to be known a hero. Street fights, fling with many women (read classmates), trying to watch x rated movies when your parents are not at home are common symptoms.

The motto being “I am fearless, I can face anything”.

“The world at my foot” attitude is prevalent.

How about becoming a musician?

Within one year of my engineer dreams I was fed up or maybe I understood the world better. I had realized I wouldn’t become an engineer, given my low marks in my 10th class. And the pressure of the 12th class made me resolute that I wouldn’t become an engineer. I was learning music for the last 5-6 years. I was from a musical family – my mother being a good singer and a Veena player, my father was a music critic writing for major newspapers (that was his hobby) and my sister, also an accomplished singer and she could also play the Veena. I was a bits and pieces musician. I would suddenly be a regular to vocal music classes. The next month I would want to learn playing the violin and then the flute. I would also experiment with the Veena we had at home, when nobody was there.

But some respectable people in the music circles acknowledged my musical abilities. But they also thought I was a crank to learn Carnatic music and also be part of a pop band. It was sacrilege for the puritans. I wanted to be a professional musician. Earn through music. I was serious about this and even grew my hair to look like a modern day musician. Then, it took me exactly 365 days to know the value of money. I was about to finish my schooling. I had to go to college, finish it and start earning for myself and my family. I suddenly felt like a very responsible man, how long would my father feed me. I must feed him someday, he is getting old.

The charted accountant

I had already joined my Bsc in Physics, when this option came to my notice. Those days we had an entrance exam post 12th class. Clearing this exam one could directly take the CA – Inter. Peer pressure again, I decided to take this exam. I had seen a couple of my seniors fail this exam twice or more times. So I wanted to clear this in my first attempt. This was an ego issue for me. I eventually passed the entrance test in my first attempt. I was among the 5 or 10 people who did pass. While everyone decided to take things seriously and take the inter in the next term, I had other ideas. So my dream of becoming a CA came to an end.

I want to play for India!

I was a decent cricket player and still think am one. So during my first year college there came the question – cricket practice or CA classes. I decided on the former. I was serious in my resolve of making it big in cricket. I wanted to represent my university and then the state and eventually the country.

I wouldn’t even represent my college in the first year, same old politics. In the second year I did represent my college but missed out on the zonal squad. The third year, everyone said I would definitely get an university color, but unfortunately I was down with chicken pox. My dreams were shattered. I was already in my third year of college. So I decided I would forget serious cricket and look at my future. Now I wanted to become a software professional. That is where the money was and still is.

4) The age of Realization

One starts understanding life, trying to find his / her foot on something. Money and future become a matter of concern. You try imagining yourself in your seniors / elders shoes.

“My cousin joined Infosys and went to Boston and even I should”.

Will I? Or will I not? Becomes the buzzword.

A soft dream

My dreams of becoming a software professional were shattered within the first 8 months of joining my Msc. I felt like I had gone back to the kindergarten, I had a bunch of nerds around me. I couldn’t stand them and the Msc in computer science. But time rolled fast, I swore that I would definitely not take-up a software job come what may.

Advertsing, management, show business

I had a family friend who was working for a place called BBDO. He said it was an advertising agency. And he was in client servicing. He was a serious advertising guy and he told me about who an Account Executive is and what he does. I was impressed and I wanted to join advertising.

The qualification this guy suggested me was a management degree. So I joined my MBA. I also started reading about advertising – “Ogilvy on advertising” was one of the first books I tried. I finished my MBA training with BBDO and Y&R.

But unfortunately for me advertising in India was faced with an year of recession. I was offered a job with BBDO, but in media planning. I refused because I was resolute to join client servicing and no other department. I could only land a job with a small advertising agency. But I was fixated on advertising and that too client servicing.

Cinema production and direction

The small agency I joined also had strong connections with the film industry. They were also producing a serial for a regional television channel. I was put in charge of this division. My interest in films and television swelled as I started learning about this medium. I was doing well for myself. At one point, I was in two minds to make this my career. At the same time, I also had an offer from JWT, so I consulted a good friend of mine who happens to be one of the goliath's of the Tamil film industry.

But for this person’s advice I would have decided on cinema and television as my career. He took me through some examples in the industry and explained me how the industry functioned. He didn’t ask me to wipe my mind clear of this field but advised me to earn experience and money taking up what seemed my first love – advertising. Advertising according to him was no different from cinema and television. It was all another facet of showbiz. So he asked me to learn more about the business and then comeback to films sometime. I took his advice and joined JWT.

5) Age of Consolidation

Here you have gotten into something you always wanted to. You have found a foothold and now you try and spread your wings. You want to be recognized by the people around you. Everything you do is dictated by this one thought.

Profit and loss accounts on everything you do becomes the order of the day.

My journey in advertising

It was in JWT I realized the importance of visibility and proaction. I had to use these qualities all around – within the agency and with the client. An year and a half later was when Y&R called me for handling a big consumer durable account. I felt happy because it was one of the most happening verticals at that point in time in India and there were more monies for me.

Two years there and I got smitten by the direct marketing bug. So in came OgilvyOne. After two fantastic years in OgilvyOne & Ogilvy Activation and setting-up my family I needed to consolidate further, so I moved to Dubai.

And now I am looking to find my feet on to Account Planning.

Maybe this would be the final step of consolidation I am looking at before I move to the next level on the pyramid.

6) Age of Retrospection

This according to me would be the last journey for anyone. This is after one earns enough of monies and respect, after he is seen as a champion of sorts by the world (or whenever he realizes he is seen a champion). This would differ from person to person depending on what his needs and wants are and also based on his movement across the other segments of the pyramid.

The smart Chinese are everywhere.

It was a bit ironic when I found a carton of apples at a restaurant in Dubai. It was a packet of apples, Fuji apples to be precise. The irony was that it was Fuji apples grown in China. I was shocked and surfed the net to find more information, here’s what I got to know.

“Fuji apple is an apple cultivar developed by growers at the Tohoku Research Station in Morioka, Japan in the late 1930's and brought to market in 1962. It is a cross between the two American apple varieties, the Red Delicious and old Virginia Ralls Genet (sometimes cited as "Rawls Jennet") apples.

Outside of Japan, the popularity of Fuji apples continues to grow. Fuji apples account for 80% of China's 20 million tons grown annually.”

I am waiting to see Chicken Tikka made in China. I’m sure that would happen soon or it’s already happening somewhere.

God bless China!

What's in a name? - Part II

We saw some unusual and interesting names found in Dubai & Sharjah in my previous post. In this one lets see the most commonly used names or phrases or terminologies here in this part of the world.

These words go with the name of any company or business. From Stationery to ships or from Laundry to Couture brands. And from eateries to earth moving equipment or from beauty parlor to airlines.

1. Arabian

2. Emirates

3. Middle East, Middle Eastern

4. Gulf, Persian Gulf

5. Falcon (it’s the national bird here)

6. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Umm al-Qaiwain (or the smaller locales inside these Emirates)

7. Golden

8. Most of the bakers have “Lebanese” tucked on to their name. It is almost like “Bangalore Iyengar bakery” or those “Punjabi Dhaba” back in India.

So if you want to unleash the entrepreneurial virus in this part of the world make note of these little things. These would enable your company / enterprise acquire an authentic flavor.

What's in a name?

Brand names have always been a matter of fascination for me.

Why Levers? Why Procter & Gamble? Why Wal-Mart? Why McDonalds? Why JWT?

* Founded in 1885 by William Hesketh Lever
* William Procter, a candlemaker, and James Gamble, a soapmaker, formed the company known as Procter & Gamble in 1837 (they were brother-in-laws who came together at the insistance of their father-in-law)
* Founded by Sam Walton in 1962
* Began in 1940 with a restaurant opened by siblings Dick and Mac McDonald
* Originally founded by William James Carlton in 1864 and renamed by James Walter Thompson in 1877 to the J. Walter Thompson Company (not many would know about this WJ Carlton bit!!)

Like these every name of a brand / company or commercial establishment has a reason. It signifies something. Some of the names in Dubai & Sharjah found my fancy, particularly of restaurants, internet cafes and billiards parlors.

These are some of those interesting names in Dubai & Sharjah.

1. Traffic Jam restaurant – This place is next to an important junction. It is also a traffic bottleneck. And maybe therefore this name.

2. Decent restaurant – In one of the most congested localities of Sharjah. Next to a big dust bin. May be the owners wanted to stand out of this clutter and wanted some positive energies to flow.

3. Radio restaurant – Another significant name in Sharjah. I told myself maybe they must be only playing radio in the restaurant and hence the name.

4. Airport restaurant – This name is anybodies guess. Yes, you got it right. This is on one of the roads that lead to the Dubai airport.

5. Automatic restaurant & café – I wonder what is automatic here. The preparation? How they serve? The billing? The payment?. It’s an unique name but.

6. Public Cook – Must be this restaurants main business comes from bulk orders - marriages and other functions.

7. Daily restaurant – I am wondering why the restaurant is named so. May be they want their patrons to be back on a daily basis?! Let me know a reason if you could cook one.

8. Golden Finger internet parlor – May be the owner is a James Bond fan! He gave a twist to the old 007 classic and made his parlors name Golden finger instead of the original.

9. Blue Door Ladies Salon – This is situated in a building painted white. But I managed to see a blue door that leads to this salon. May be that is why they have named it so.

10. Eject rent-a-car – A tricky name to have for a rent-a-car business. What happens if the car I rented ejects me out in the middle of Sheikh Zayed Express way. When every one around is moving at 120kmph. Scary!

11. Automatic Technical Laundry – These people in Dubai are obsessed with the word “Automatic” & “Technical”. I leave deciphering this name to your imagination.

May be sometime these grow as mammoth as an Apple or Linux or a Virgin and then people who mocked at these names (including me) would run to do case studies on their success or for having them as one of their clients.

God Bless them!

Following up with Emotion – I'mowshun “Any strong feeling”

Sajan says that this commercial is being pulled off air. Hence I wrote a mail to Sajan trying to explain / reason why this is a good commercial and why it shouldn’t be pulled off air.

The reasons why this is being pulled off air (strictly my version)...

1) This not being a good creative (the clients perspective)
2) The product not being hot enough for people to buy (the agency and the Marcom managers perspective)
3) The Marcom manager never involved me in the making of this commercial (the product managers perspective)

On the product not being hot... The onus is finally on the marcom person to sit with his product guys and try and augment the benefits this product could bring forth...

To put it simply, everyone in Tamil Nadu knows that the penetration of TATA Indicom is negligibly small.

So, what they (the client and the account planners / managers) must have done is

1. Have this campaign as a long term recruitment plan (don't tear the duck off for 10,000 golden eggs overnight!! you would get none!!)
2. Supplement this campaign with grassroot level promotions aiming at new recruitments (possibly groups... aiming at corporates, colleges, self help groups, women’s clubs, clubs etc.)
3. Do a member get member aimed at the existing base with an extra incentive or two for the target audience. The returns – Imagine a 1% return on the existing base, you would clearly see how beneficial this promotion would have been.

While I stand firm on saying that this is a result of a good creative brief and a this is indeed a very good creative. I don't want to accept that it is a bad product.

To give you an example of a similair scenario in FMCG…

1) How many of us remember the Evita soap commercials of 1994-95?

2) And how many of us who remember those commercials know that the product was pulled of the market within 12 months of being launched?

3) And how many of those who knew about the product pull-off know that Godrej scrapped the product (to relaunch it recently, if I am not wrong)?

So was it a dull / dud inferior product? NO
Was the communication strategy wrong? I don't think so
Was the product pricing wrong? May be (it was at that point in time .50p more than the regular beauty soaps, the normal weight )

So what could have been wrong?

1. The timing (as the TATA Indicom case is – Low numbers in Tamil Nadu). This is simply because Evita spoke about Vitamin E and moisturizer's when Lux was talking about woman, pampering and aspirations (using film starlets) and Liril was talking about independence, breaking free and emotional benefits. There was no Dove in the market, the market wasn't educated enough.

2. The woman at that time or for that matter those men who used Lux and Liril to look good, were influenced purely by the celebrity who endorsed the product. He or She didn't mind what is good and what is bad for them. And therefore Evita's product promise of Vitamin E etc. was not accepted or rather not considered at all.

The result... The product wouldn't sell and they had to rollback. Had Evita been launched two years later (97 - 98) or had Godrej sustained to keep the product on shelves for those 2 years, this product would have been a viable Indian competition for Dove. Godrej has woken up now and relaunched this product in a cluttered market, only time would tell how this would fare now.

Taking some morals from this story...

Your product managers and Marcom execs should have balls enough to stand by their product and sustain it in the market for a couple of months before reaping its benefits. I must also say that the people in the agency are equally responsible for the growth or otherwise of the brands they handle. Specifically the planning and the account management team.

If the client didn't foresee these stuff when he briefed, the agency must have gone to him and told him about the advantages and disadvantages of the product and suggested a comprehensive 360 degree communication plan rather than a TVC and some press approach.

All these said I still maintain that this is a good product and a very good creative. Unfortunately we lacked a owner to get the product running and win the race

P.S: Thanx a ton Sajan for permitting me to post this online.

Test Of English As Mother Tongue (TOEAMT)

All those who claim English as their mother tongue need to take this exam (like our TOEFL, Test Of English as Foreign Language). Just to make sure they are not mocked at in public by those who have to take TOEFL.

Why?

I heard a Radio Jockey (RJ), a native Canadian who works for one of the respected FM radio stations here in Dubai saying something like this “Mr Geoffrey wants to say something to us on the air”

Well, I thought the correct usage is “Mr Geoffrey wants to say something to us on air”

The irony is that he doesn't seem an Indian migrant. He claims he is authentic Canadian.

Don't control your emotions

Emotion – I'mowshun “Any strong feeling”

When I get emotional, I laugh, cry, get angry, smile, curse, abuse. The list goes on…

Why does one get emotional?

Well, one gets emotional when a particular thing attracts or affects him positively or negatively (Well I don’t know if I have got the definition of why one get emotional but am sure I am kind of right saying this. Correct me otherwise)

So why should one get emotional speaking over a phone? There could be many reasons…

1) I got a 200% hike (what a thought?!!)
2) I spoke to my friend of 25 years after 24 years
3) I won a lottery of $ 10m

Or to simply put it. I got something I was always longing for, which I never expected to happen in the immediate future.

So what happens when my mobile service provider gives me incoming as well as outgoing calls free?

I would get happy, emotional, uncontrollably emotional even if this offer is only restricted to those outgoing calls where I call some one who is a subscriber of the network I patronize within a geographical boundary.

Why? Because I could laugh, cry, get angry, curse, abuse speaking to someone I know without having to spend a pie.

This is precisely the route the new TATA Indicom commercial has taken (Again, this one is also from the kitchen of Sajan. My friend, classmate)

DON’T CONTROL YOUR EMOTIONS

It follows a father who is away from his daughter. The first time the father tries calling her, the daughter speaks fast, asks her dad to control his emotion and keeps the phone down.

The reason. The daughter doesn’t want her father spend too much being a jabberwocky. Outgoing calls are expensive and that too when you are roaming out of your town / base.

This happens the second time too.

In India everyone is very concerned about their mobile bills. And that too if someone is a frequent traveler then he / she must definitely expect a fat bill courtesy the roaming charges.

The third time the father’s driver dials the daughter’s number for him. The driver tells the daughter about the new offer from TATA Indicom, free outgoing and incoming throughout Tamil Nadu between TATA Indicom phones.

This time the daughter asks her father not to control his emotions but keep talking till he could.

The reasons are obvious.

This is again a commercial using celebrities, not one but two this time. Luckily again both are established film stars. Here again the product isn’t hijacked by the celebrities but they play a part magnifying the product benefits.

So ask anyone who saw this commercial what he / she understood.

The answer would be simple “Don’t control your emotions”.

And the product benefit, even a kid would say “A TATA Indicom connection lets you communicate as long as you can***”

*** The voiceover clearly says that this offer is only when the caller and called are both inside Tamil Nadu.

How better and clearer would you want a communication to be?

Second one in a row by Sajan, keep it up buddy. I must also appreciate / congratulate the person who wrote the brief, this must be one of the best briefs that person has ever written.

A good brief for a not so good product – A battle won.

This happened when I was handling one of the big mobile telephony service providers operating in the state of Tamil Nadu in India.

Mobile telephony market was just maturing. The government had just brought about some changes in the regulations. This made the operators offer a more competitive price and an array of products and services. This made the market bleed. The operators saw huge churn of customers every month, growth wasn’t that obvious. The market was reaching its saturation levels. The result was low ARPU but increased usage of the basic service – making and receiving calls.

In order to increase the ARPU the SMS rates were lowered. The client started offering value adds through SMS like cricket scores, astrological predictions etc. But still people weren’t using SMS. We had a problem. I managed to convince the client on doing a small research to find out why the people wouldn’t use SMS services. The results we got from the research were baffling.

Tamil Nadu is the southern most state of India. The people speak Tamil. Most of the mobile users were traders and businessmen who couldn’t even properly read English, leave alone speaking. We found that they mocked at their friends who used SMS to communicate as “Englishkaran” (English man).

So language was a barrier for them not using SMS. I presented our findings to the client. After a couple of weeks the client called us over for a meeting. He said his product team had made the breakthrough. He thought he finally had a winner of a product which was SMS in Tamil.

I wondered how, he showed me how it worked. It was a little complicated. Those were the days when you didn’t have language keypads on mobile phones. So you had to type the transliteration (in English) of what you wanted to communicate in Tamil. When you send the message it would reach the operators server where this message would get converted as a image file and would reach its destination as a picture message.

I too believed that we had a great product that would do well in the market. We had a reasonable budget for this campaign, there was press and BTL. I was so happy when I cracked the brief, it touched the emotional chord of the audience. We had a series of three adverts, which we were sure would win some awards for us.

It was when we finished work and I was supposed to present it to the client when I had some doubts about this product. This doubt stemmed from the research we had done earlier. The research said people hated typing something in English because of two reasons

1) They were shy about their knowledge of the language
2) They didn’t know the language

So how on earth would you expect this guy to transliterate (in English) something he wanted to say in Tamil?

Had he had the knowledge to transliterate something, he could as well use this service in English.

So the product was flawed. It would be a huge failure if were launched. This time around I didn’t have a boss, the one I had quit a couple of weeks ago. So I marched straight to the client, presented the layouts we had for him and then told him why I wouldn’t want to launch this service in Tamil Nadu.

The client was impressed. He was happy that we presented the creative as promised but still told him about the flipside of launching the service. The result some revenues lost for the agency by suggesting that we not do this campaign. The client felt bad having to kill a campaign which could win some awards.

For me personally this was a battle won. I felt that some work I was doing for the brand would be an absolute waste of resources – money and energy. And therefore I wanted the client to scrap the project. The client agreed to what I had to say and appreciated my proposal.

This client still respects me, I have moved a couple of places since, but his respect for me is not gone.

The moral of this story – Respect thy clients business, and he would respect thee

PS: Incidentally some other executive from the north of India wrote a similar brief (after an year of us scrapping our campaign) and his creative team produced a very similar campaign for a vernacular newspaper. This campaign did win some awards nationally (and may be internationally too). But I should acknowledge that there was no way that they would have seen either our brief or our creative. It was pure coincidence.

A good brief for a not so good product – A battle lost

It happened about a couple of years ago when I was handling a consumer durable major back in India. They wanted to launch a new color television – 29”.

The unique selling proposition according to the client – “this is a picture-in-picture television”. Meaning, you could watch more than one channel at the same time.

And this product, was the only one of its kind in the market at that point in time that gave the opportunity to get the audio feed for 3 channels at the same time. One channels audio would be beamed through the televisions speakers, and the other two through two wireless headphone sets that were provided free with the television.

And you could actually see 6 different channels at the same time. So this was a 6PIP with 3 Audio channels.

The moment the client briefed us and demonstrated the product, I had a creative brief in mind. To add to my enthusiasm of having cracked the brief even when the client was briefing, it was a $250,000 campaign including media and production.

My boss was gleefully happy, he would comfortably cruise through his annual targets if this campaign would come through. My branch manager was jumping up and down a couch, like Tom Cruise. Professing his love for this client. I was also happy, dreaming about a fat increment and a reprint of my visiting card.

But before I wrote the brief I had in my mind and set the ball rolling, I wanted to be sure about the product. I wanted to test it out for a while and I also wanted to test the product on a couple of guys from my agency.

The findings weren’t quite encouraging. Being a visual medium, even on the 29” screen if you had 3 different pictures running, one couldn’t concentrate on his picture. So people either let their eyes wander (which happened most of the time) or miss some audio trying to catch-up with a visual in another screen.

The result, it wasn’t a pleasurable experience. It seemed a painful technological innovation to digest.

I went back to my bosses and told them my findings. I wanted to go to the client and say the product wouldn’t work for 2 reasons.

1) The viewer couldn’t simply concentrate on his visuals and sound
2) The cost of this product – I could buy three 25” (there used be a TV of this dimension those days), keep them in three different places and three people could peacefully watch without distractions.

The bosses wouldn’t agree, they were in fact quite pissed off with me. They wanted the money more than the client. I was reminded about the story of the “Goose that laid golden eggs” my father had told me when I was young.

I was too small a fry to be heard. The result, I went ahead to produce what I think one of my best briefs till date. That resulted in a television commercial (big budget, my CD flew places – as usual), a barrage of press adverts, some good number of POS material and all very good quality and very creative. This also resulted in our agency getting a couple of metals in the Abby awards (conducted by the Bombay Adclub) and some in Chennai.

The agency got the monies and awards, the branch head & the CD were there all over. It was a good PR exercise for the agency. But the television didn’t sell, the brand was not doing well. Eventually the account was lost.

We killed the goose with the greed of finding a huge haul of golden eggs, the result we killed the goose and from then we couldn’t even get the one golden egg she laid per day.

My experiments with a creative brief

In my last 7 years of advertising, direct marketing and out of home experimentation, I have written countless briefs for the brands I have handled.

But there are a few that I think are worthy. Out of these few worthy ones, some were really satisfying - Accepted by client, worked upon and have provided fruitful results for the brand. Many have gone to the bin.

And some are those I really didn't want to work on as I knew that they would be a waste of money for the client. This I thought is an interesting segment to look at.

I wanted to see in retrospect as to

1) Why I didn't like to do that work?

2) If I didn't like it, then what did I do?

3) If I did something to express my displeasure, then what happened? Did the campaign go on as expected or did the client and my folks in my agency agreed with my point of view and scrap the campaign.

So for the next two posts a postmortem of situations where I thought I had a good creative brief but the brand didn't fit or the product was not so good and threfore I wanted to scrap the campaign & dump my brief.

Did I manage to pull my briefs back or did I loose my battle & the campaign rolled on?

Let's see over the next two posts.

Using Celebrity... A recent example

A couple of weeks back I happened to see this TVC for TVS Star city a 100cc 4-stroke bike from TVS. At Rs. 29,990 and 109 kmpl of petrol it seemed like any other bike. My curiosity swelled further when I happened to see Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the latest poster boy of Indian cricket on one of the press ads. In Hindi the headline read “Jitna Dum, Utna Style” loosely translated “Like Power, Like Style”.

Frankly it disappointed me, here you are in the automobile 2-wheeler market. In a very cluttered 4-stroke, 100cc category after 12 years you still talk about power?

How powerful could a 100cc bike be? And that too a 4-stroke engine.

Dhoni cut a sorry figure in that press ad. in a boxing glove in the background. An image of the vehicle in the foreground. What is so special about this bike? Is it about power?
No it is not. Is it about style? May be yes and may be not.

In my opinion, having a stylishly shot Dhoni doesn’t bring the product benefit or differentiators out. For me it reminded me about “Burnout” the burning issue of Indian cricket for which Dhoni is one of the champions. If Dhoni continues doing silly ads like these, he would soon burn out like Saurav.

While I was thinking what the differentiator could be and how this celebrity could have been used better, I got a mail from one of my classmates. Sajan, now a copywriter with the same agency that handles TVS Star City. He told me about a TV commercial he had done for Star City using Surya, an actor in the Tamil film industry. I wasn’t too kicked about it. The reason being the Dhoni ad I had already seen. But I had hope on two things

1) Surya is an actor by profession, so he would do a good job.

2) Sajan is a very talented young man with lots of common sense, so he would definitely know how to handle a commercial with a celebrity. He had done many before.

Sajan didn’t spoil my hope. His is probably one of the powerful ads on TV I have seen in the recent past. Lots of commonsense.

1) Surya the actor had already endorsed TVS Star the elder brother of Star City

2) Surya is fresh after a hit movie where he plays a vengeful hero who has amnesia, he forgets every thing. So to remember things he clicks photographs of whatever he has or sees and has it with him. This film was a major hit and no Tamil would forget this film for another 6 months at least

3) The differentiating proposition of this vehicle is not power (poor 100cc), not price (all 100cc’s cost nearly the same) or the looks (the elder brother had a near similar styling) but it was the alloy wheels the vehicle has. No other 100cc 4-stroke has this feature as I know.

So the commercial goes like this…

A guy sitting on top of his TVS Star City, brimming with pride is ready to roar from a parking lot

Surya in his “vengeful amnesia character” get-up jumps from this guys back, threatens him saying it is his bike this guy is sitting on

The guy frightened argues saying it is his bike. Surya pulls out some photographs shows them one by one to this guy. The last photo is of the wheel. Alas the photo is of a conventional wheel and this bike has an alloy wheel (Establishment of the proposition).

The guy is jubilant, Surya disappointed goes back.

Cut to a TVS showroom where Surya is busy photographing a Star City’s wheels.

Next shot is the parking lot again and the drama where Surya threatens this guy again.

The guy laughs saying he has already once told Surya that this is his bike.

And now the differentiating proposition clearly comes out. Surya takes a picture of the alloy wheel he had taken from the showroom, shows it to the guy (reestablishment of the proposition).

Surya pushes the guy off the bike and gleefully rides it off the parking lot

Cut to super for all the other superfluous details.

Now summing up the positives of the commercial…

1) Unlike other commercials where a celebrity plays himself saying I use this product and so why don’t you, here Surya plays a character he had played in one of the greatest hits of 2006 in the Tamil movie industry. It is a very good usage of a character played by the celebrity which people for remember for long.

2) The celebrity plays a part in the commercial, but more than him it is the character he played dominates. So the product is not dwarfed in the middle, it is seen prominent

3) The proposition that differentiates this bike from others is the alloy wheels and that proposition comes out aplomb.

Good work mate. May you cook more like this in the years to come.

Player burnout – Why is it a farce?

These days cricketers around the world are debating about one thing – Burnout.
I searched the dictionary and found the meaning for burnout – Melt, break, or become otherwise unusable. As far as these cricketers are concerned they think that they might probably become unusable, in the sense that they would become physically weak to play.

The main reason why I think it is stupid and wasting primetime discussing about this is because they are supposed to be professionals. They earn their living playing cricket. So why did you embark on a difficult thing first place knowing that it might burn you off.

If I ever thought, being in the advertising industry would burn me off, I better quit and choose another industry that suits me. Why crib about the industry that feeds you? That feeds you with more than your entire dynasty could eat.

To understand more about why I say this talk about burnout is bull crap, lets see what they do round the year.

But looking at their playing calendar one would see that they play for not more than 130 days.

Assuming one playing day is 8 hrs

They play competitive cricket for 1040 hrs

There are three levels of contacts that are offered to the players based on their value and utility A (Rs. 50 Lakh retainer), B (Rs. 35 Lakh retainer), C (Rs. 20 Lakh retainer).
For ease of understanding lets take C grade.

The yearly retainer is Rs. 20,00,000

For each test they play they get Rs. 2,50,000

For each one day they play they get Rs. 1,60,000

Now, again for ease of understanding let us assume they get paid Rs. 50,000 for each playing day

So for 130 days of cricket they get Rs. 65,00,000 (this is in addition to their retainer fee)

So the total money they make in an year on an average is Rs. 85,00,000.

So their monthly salary for playing cricket is Rs. 7,00,000

Their average salary per hour of play is Rs. 8173 (this is for the 1040 hrs of cricket)

If this is the salary of a C grade player, imagine what a Sachin Tendulkar and a Rahul Dravid must be making for representing the country.

That is not all, they also earn in millions endorsing everything from a completely misfit sandalwood soap to a television channel. Every Brand / Marketing manager you find in India needs a cricketer to endorse his / her brand.

So the cricketers salary per year becomes unimaginably bloated. We must also not forget a few cricketers who run their own business apart from their other sources of income. We would also not forget those who became martyrs by gracefully accepting the Indian tax structure and agreeing to pay taxes for a Ferrari they got as a gift.

Shame on them for shouting that cricket causes burnout.

Let’s now see what an average Indian skilled worker earns.

Let us take the example of a construction worker, an expat Indian in Dubai.

I am taking this example because he earns more than his Indian counterpart, he lives away from home (that’s another farce articulated by the cricketers – living away from their family) and he works under testing conditions.

He works for 8 hrs in the hot 35 degree plus sun.

He works for 300 days under testing conditions (leaving alone those Fridays or holidays)

So he works 2,400 hrs an year

He doesn’t endorse any brand. He doesn’t have his own designer restaurant, gym or a cricket academy. He doesn’t also even dream about his own Ferrari, leave alone importing it free of cost.

But he is the first idiot who runs to buy his ticket for a cricket match in Abu Dhabi.

What does he earn?

A maximum of Rs. 12,500 per month (1,000 – 1,500 Dirhams)

Rs. 1,50,000 per year

Rs. 63 per hour (and that is the maximum mind you and may be I have inflated his salary a bit)

Does he complain about burnout? He is the one who is really susceptible to a burnout, but he doesn’t complain but for an occasional crib.

He lives away from his family for a period of more than 2 years. That is when he would get his free air ticket to visit his family back in India.

How many news channels have shown his face talking about burnout or exploitation?

How many news paper columns are used talking about this man’s plight?

Nobody even cares about this man.

These cricketers who make such a hue and cry over burnouts must learn a thing or two from these measly mortals. If they decide that they are going to burn themselves out by playing cricket, they shouldn’t. Let them tell the board to cancel their contracts, give them a match fee for every appearance. That would bring some sense on their arguments.

I am sure they wouldn’t do that because if they do it then their other businesses may suffer. The brand manager would call a cricketer if and only if he is popular. And to be popular he needs to fail in 10 matches and score in 1. For doing that he needs to play more than 100 days of cricket.

So to sum up there is nothing called burnout as far as professional cricket and cricketers are concerned. It is a farce. And they are doing this for another pay raise, to become richer than now and grab a few more seconds of TV time and a few more column centimeter of press space.