A round-up of my posts from last week:

1. An ad that made me cringe massively - not sharing the brand name/product because that would be a spoiler. Here's why I think this ad is deeply disingenuous and irresponsible: bit.ly/maskshaming 1/5
2. Part 1 of 2 posts on creativity in Public Relations. Highly creative methods of earning the media's attention, by Brand-Comm and Text 100 (now, Archetype), for Indian clients: bit.ly/pr-creative1 2/5
3. Part 2 of 2 posts on creativity in Public Relations. A creative method by a technology brand to get into media in sections they can never dream about - as a campaign, this idea is 13 years old and still going strong! bit.ly/pr-creative2 3/5
4. The target users of health drink brands (Bournvita, Boost, Himalaya Quista Kidz, Complan, Horlicks etc.) are struck with digital schools and are leading highly lethargic lives now! Shouldn't the brands do something about this? Here's an idea! bit.ly/kids-move 4/5
5. Amazon, the *most* customer-friendly company in the world has quietly changed the way they email you updates about your orders. What is it? And, why this change? Two theories are floating online: bit.ly/amazon-mystery 5/5

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More from @beastoftraal

9 Nov
When is BigBasket likely to inform users about the data breach, the extent of the breach and what we users are supposed to do as a result? ImageImage
2/5 While the company has issued a statement in response to the media reports, *to the media*, isn't it appropriate that they also inform users directly too? If we users read about the breach in the news and do not hear anything from the company directly, that looks terribly bad
3/5 from a corporate communications perspective. Companies gleefully go over the board with offers and new deals to email, sms us customers. But when it comes to bad news, why delay informing customers? If they knew the news is going to be out today in the papers (they have
Read 5 tweets
8 Nov
During the peak lockdown, I did anticipate advertising campaigns framing our shopping as 'helping businesses'. Understandably, many campaigns are launching now for the Deepavali festive season that frame the 'buy and help businesses' narrative. 1/4
2/4 The Birla White ad I shared last week had that theme.
3/4 Here's another beautifully strung together similar narrative from Philips, by Ogilvy. The film's narrative literally stitches various buyers of products and services as helping the sellers and each sale segues smoothly to how it would change their Deepavali. It is a bit too
Read 4 tweets
7 Nov
Why are the advertising air conditioners in November?
Advertisement for air conditioners by Haier, in November... generally winter, in India.
Some loud thinking:
1. Most white goods brands targeting summer were not able to advertise during 2020 summer given the peak of the fear of the pandemic and the ensuing stringent 2/6
3/6 lockdown. So, they may be making up for lost time.
2. This is in the Mumbai and Chennai editions, cities that generally do not have a proper winter (the seasons in Chennai is humorously referred to as, "Hot, hotter, hottest"). So they are targeting metros that are generally
Read 6 tweets
29 Oct
Was surprised to see a 'click to play' pop-up call-to-action on the Amazon festive sale front-page ad in The Times of India Mumbai edition's e-paper version! Did not find it in other editions of the newspaper today, though. It played the Amazon ad when clicked, though it 1/5
2/5 could have played the video in a slightly larger window.
The potential for this kind of interactivity in e-paper is immense - it could bring almost every element of the newspaper alive with multimedia experiences. The first page had an ad for
3/5 MX Player's (owned by Times Group) show's new season. They could have added a click-to-play option for the teaser, but they did not - it looks like this feature is a very small experiment for now.
Read 5 tweets
29 Oct
I always thought Avis's iconic 1962 "We're No.2" (and "We Try Harder") campaign (by the agency Doyle Dane Bernbach) was intended as a salvo against market leader Hertz! After all, when they say that they are No. 2, our attention automatically heads towards the No. 1, even 1/4
2/4 though they do not mention No. 1 or Hertz specifically at all. But, it was supposedly a salvo at the No. 3, 4, 5! Here's an excerpt from the book, "From those wonderful folks who gave you Pearl Harbour: Front-line dispatches from the advertising war", by
3/4 Jerry Della Femina (pages 39-40) that explains the context!

What fantastic insight!

But, unlike what Jerry says in the book, Avis did take away customers from both above and below (Hertz, and the ones below it, in market share) with the 'we try harder' campaign.
Read 4 tweets
28 Oct
A thread on 'Open Sesame':
How do you pronounce “Sesame”? Till my mid-20s, I have pronounced it as “See same”. Then I stumble upon the TV show ‘Sesame Street’ where I hear people uttering it as “Se sa mee Street” and my whole life felt like a lie. 1/21
2/21 And then I realized that at least in the case of Tamil Nadu, one of the reasons why many people pronounce it as See-same could be because of M.G.Ramachandran aka MGR!

Why?
3/21 Because, he starred in a 1956 Tamil version of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves (Alibabavum 40 Thirudargalum), which was massively successful, and he said, in that film, “Andaa Ka Kasam, Abu Ka Hukum, Thirandhidu See-same”!!
Read 21 tweets

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