The Y-AXIS LIVE!

I have been a great fan of Amul’s topical ads, which create a connect with an event that happened recently and Amul Butter. The brand has followed decade old practice of creatively staying contemporary connected to the common theme in India. Here are two of them that caught my attention.

(To those who do not follow cricket - Sourav Ganguly is a cricketer who retired recently, he was labelled the Prince of Kolkota by the media)

My another recent favourite is on, you guessed it.

More Amul topicals can be seen here. And of course, I remain a happy customer of Amul Butter and the topicals have played a key role in that .  The oldest topical I remember is on 1984 LA Olympics when PT Usha missed the Olympic bronze by whisker and the nation could not sleep for days.Wonder if anyone has a copy.

Meanwhile, keep going, Amul.

The newly launched Nokia 1202 does not have a music player, no camera, no radio, cannot connect to the internet by WiFi or GPRS. It does not have a slider, or touchpad and stylus. Chances are that it would not support your Bluetooth headphone either. Yet, this phone has the potential of being a winner, simply because it has beautifully identified the requirements of an ignored market segment, and translated them into a very promising product. Simply put, this phone is targetted to the demographically rural ( read poor) customer in markets such as India.

Instead of the high end and increasingly perceived must have features, this phone a flashlights- for anywhere applications in a village, the phone has five different phonebooks ( so that papa, mamma, Bunty, Gullu and Soni can all share the same phone).

The phone has been designed to work in dusty surroundings, and has an amazing standby stamina of 26 days so that even the most wretched  powercuts in the village do not debilitate the connection with the mandi (agri mart), or the son working in the nearby city or village. Smart. It will also capture the usage of individual users . What’s more, its price is a jaw dropping ~USD 32 (~ INR 1500) and it is targetted at Dr Prahalad’s BOP.

Incidentally, Nokia sold more than 200 million of a previous model of this series - the Nokia 1100. The ad below captures a typical environment in which the 1100 was targetted.

I happened to see Tata Tea’s Hindi commercial so rightfully taunting folks who use the election day for anything but voting. The ad’s simplicity and optimism impressed me very much. The ad closes by a tea vendor pointing out to a website run by Tata Tea for enabling voter registration. The name of the website is also quite thought out - Jaagore.com (Approximately translatable as ‘Hey, wake up!’). The use of social messaging to promote a brand evokes a subtle and positive sentiment. Very neat.

Today, I noticed a StarBucks ad offering free coffee for Americans who cast their vote in Nov 4 elections in US( “A tall cup of brewed coffee”). I loved this ad too.

Wonder why only beverage companies take this line of election themed social advertising. The biggest spenders on TV including the mobile companies, the soaps and cosmetics have completely stayed away. It sure takes lot of guts to stand apart and Tata Tea and Starbucks surely remain the very few of them. My vote goes to Tata Tea and Starbucks. Three Cheers to them!

I am not sure this happens anywhere else in the world this way. Every evening(or daytime), a TV channel poses a leading question in the name of opinion poll (I can almost think up this question for the opinion poll -Do you think terrorism should be countered with a heavy hand - Y/N) or asks its viewers to send in their congratulatory messages for popular cricket stars(“Wish Yuvi on his century by typing Yuvi follwed by your message and send to 5XXYY”) which the channel would display on a scrolling bar. Viewers are urged to participate in such opinion polls and those who want can participate only by sms, not by email, nor by submission on the channels website(”If you agree, type Y and send to 5XXYY, if you disagree, type N to 5XXYY”, or, “Type Dhoni followed by your message and send to 5XXYY”). Last evening, a Hindi channel kept running an hourly ‘ win a gold coin’ contest asking extremely silly questions- here’s a gem:

“Which festival is celebrated today - Diwali, Dhanteras or Bhai Duj”. Now, the entire country celebrated Diwali and Dhanteras few days back, so even if you have not heard of Bhai Duj in your region, you would still know the answer. How intelligent. Important to point out that this was a Hindi channel, and all the three festivals are fairly well known in the Hindi speaking areas of India. Love this.

Then there are reality shows where viewers vote for their favourite contestant, like Indian Idol and Big Boss.Votes sent by sms could turn out turn out to be in multiples of hundred thousands(lakh).

Why do Indian TV channels love sms so much? An argument could be that more people have phones than computers. But why only sms, why not email, webpoll as well as sms? The answer it would seem, lies in economics.

Everytime, we send an sms to a TV station, it costs upto 3-6 times more than a regular sms (Rs 3 in my case).My phone company gains, the TV channel’s phone company gains, and in turn, passes on a commission to the TV station. The more smses, the more money the TV channels make. What a cosy arrangement! On the other hand, a web poll, or a Happy Birthday Yuvi message receiving system on the website would not yield them anything other than server costs.

Look at last evening Win-a-Gold-coin contest.

One Gold Coin = INR 15000 ~ USD 300 - winner of the contest will get this.

Viewer spends INR 3 per sms. The lure of Gold in India is so strong that channel would get , say, a hundred thousand messages. Assuming they get a third of the sms cost as commission, the channel would get a hundred thousand rupees. That is the cost of about seven Gold coins. Not sure many other businesses have such a business model!