I Want!!

Christian Louboutin Anemone Pumps

I Like!!

Christian Louboutin, Paris

LEGO

Is there already a smile on your face or need I say more? J

Remember playing with LEGO when you were a kid? The bright red, yellow, green & blue building blocks that you used to construct towering buildings with? Remember fighting with your siblings for blocks?

I randomly thought of LEGO the other day when I was getting bored at work and logged on to their website. They now make a lot of other toys and even offer online games such as Batman & Star Wars. But the true fun of playing with LEGO was in making buildings with LEGO bricks….the taller the better!!

Amar Akbar Anthony Revisited

One of my favorite AB movies is ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’. It’s as masala as a Bollywood movie of the 70s could get!

It’s the story of an ex-convict who must flee his mob boss, leaving his family to fend for themselves. His wife goes blind and he abandons his three sons at a park. They are found and raised separately, the eldest by a Hindu policeman, the youngest by a Muslim tailor, and the middle son by a Catholic priest. The Hindu-raised son (Vinod Khanna) grows up to become a policeman; the Muslim-raised son (Rishi Kapoor) becomes a tailor-cum-singer; and the Catholic-raised son (AB) becomes a happy-go-lucky local goon. Years later, they meet again at a hospital where they are all donating blood to the same woman. Following this reunion, they find their respective lady loves and their lives become entangled in a series of hilarious coincidences & furious action sequences interspersed with songs. In the end, the blinded mother recovers her sight, the evil mob boss is punished, and the family is re-united.

Can you get more masala than this?

My favorite scene in the movie is the fight scene between AB & Vinod Khanna inside a hut. Everyone thinks AB, being the goon that he is, would be beating Vinod Khanna to a pulp, but the latter comes out with AB hung over his shoulder.

All the actors have done a marvelous job in the movie. I loved AB’s portrayal of a Catholic hooligan & Rishi Kapoor for his charm & affability.

I like all the songs in the movie but my favorites are ‘Humko Tumse Ho Gaya Hai Pyar Kya Karen’, which is a happy love song that puts a smile on my face every time I hear it, ‘My name is Anthony Gonsalves’, a peppy fun song, and the title song where the three brother are trying to rescue their lady loves from the clutches of the evil Robert.....Kickass!!

I have seen the movie countless times – the latest being this past weekend – and love it every time I watch it. Hats off to AB & Manmohan Desai, who is as instrumental in the making of Amitabh Bachchan as Yash Raj are to the making of Shahrukh Khan.

War of the Worlds

So which do you like more….Cricket or Football?

Ask any self-respecting lover of both games & they’ll look at you as if you’ve asked them the most forbidden question of all times.

Their quandary is understandable too….for a person who loves both the games, choosing one over the other would be as difficult as choosing between coke & heroine (not that I have done either but going by their popularity, I’m assuming they give comparable kicks).

I started watching cricket about 12-13 years ago. For the wrong reasons of course! The reason being Ajay Jadeja. Probably like every other teenaged girl at that time. I say wrong reason not because of the match-fixing controversy he got embroiled in (unfortunate as it was, it didn’t take away an iota from his talent)….but because when I look back on it now, I feel it’s always a shame to start watching a game for a particular player. After all, no player can be bigger than the game. But then again, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. That is why we have “stars”.

Gradually I got addicted to cricket, much to the chagrin of my mother who, like all mothers, was worried about her daughter failing the tenth boards. I started understanding the game, and today I can have a conversation over cricket with any guy.

My favorite team, apart from India of course, was South Africa. Unusual choice, I know. But then, they had Jonty Rhodes!! And Hansie Cronje. It was really disappointing when Cronje got implicated in the match fixing case too, and even more sad when he died in a plane crash. South Africans were the perfect “gentlemen” playing the “gentleman’s game”.

I didn’t like England because they have been thanda for as long as I can remember. They were responsible for the genesis of the game but they lost it somewhere along the way.

Didn’t…and to this day I don’t like the Australians because they are too aggressive & virulent, except for a few players like Steve Waugh, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Brett Lee - among the ones I have grown up watching.

Then I moved to the US for college and lost touch with cricket. When I returned, I realized I had very little left of my old love for the game.

UNTIL Twenty20 happened!

That got me right back where the action was. The world is full of doubters but I feel T20 is the best thing to have happened to cricket since one-day cricket was invented & it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Then came the IPL that put India right in the center of the cricketing map. These are glorious days for Indian cricket. The sun is shining on India and any player who is worth even a dollar is wallowing in it! Wonder what the English have to say about what the world has done to the game that was literally THEIR “baby”, and that they took with them wherever they went. They must have spent considerable time thinking up the game, and even more time & resources teaching people across their colonies how to play it! It’s like having a child that you have given birth to and raised as a conservative for 20-30-40 years, and one fine day some outsider comes along and changes her/him into a hippie overnight!!!!

I got initiated into football as a kid. I remember kicking the ball around with my dad in our huge green lawn when I was all of 2 feet tall. Then life took over….I got caught up with studies, we moved, we lost the football somewhere in the process & a new one never made it home. I have no subsequent football memories.

Years later I rediscovered my love for the game. And I loved it for the right reasons. For the sheer beauty of it. For the skills required to hold on to the ball & score a goal.

Football is pure skill and stamina, whereas cricket is more about precision. It’s like the tiff between the head & the heart. Cricket is played from one’s head….keep a cool head, keep your eyes on the ball, try to get inside the head of the bowler & guess what kind of ball he’s going to throw next etc.

Whereas football is ALL heart. Just go out there & play. Give it all you’ve got. Pass, dribble, block. Do whatever it takes to score!

Football requires skill which is mostly innate & not often acquired. What can be acquired is honing the skill. Take for example, the Brazilians & Argentines. Every child in these countries grows up playing football on the streets. That’s what they know and they are brilliant at it! If you look at the way Ronaldinho, Kaka, Ronaldo, Robinho, Messi, Riquelme etc. play….or the way Maradona & Pele played….you HAVE to agree that they were born with it. It can’t be purely acquired.

Cricket, on the other hand, is learnt. You can learn to put bat to ball, you can learn to think like the bowler who is bowling to you. I think one is born to be a footballer but I’m not sure if one can be born to be a cricketer.

So I like football for (not necessarily in this order) :

• The beauty of the game
• The moments when goals are scored
• The brilliant passes
• The tenacity and athleticism of the players
• The hysteria it generates
• Brazil
• Kaka
• Cristiano Ronaldo
• Fabio Cannavaro
• David Beckham’s free kick (and his drop-dead gorgeous looks, of course!)
• Manchester United
• And most importantly, the memories it brings back of my dad teaching me how to dribble in our lush green lawn, of picking me up every time I fell and scraped my knee, of asking me if I had ever seen a tiger cub cry when it got hurt….

Notice I haven’t mentioned Zinedine Zidane. But then, you can’t touch him. He’s right up there with the Gods, that’s how talented & blessed the man is. Is it possible not to love a game that has given the world a Zinedane Zidane?

This post is more a labor of love than a post on cricket or football. It has been as emotionally satisfying to write as it is to think back of the times my dad taught me to play ball.

Bang On!!

Al Ries, one of the most prominent marketing gurus, who along with Jack Trout coined the term ‘positioning’ as we use in marketing today wrote in one of his books on branding that a second brand can enter the market and gain share by staying far away from the leader in terms of mind space, or by taking an opposite positioning.

Perhaps ITC borrowed a leaf from his book when they were working out the positioning strategy for their packaged snack brand, Bingo!

While Lays was selling its American Sour Cream & Onion and Spanish Tomato flavors, Bingo! was positioned with its Indian flavors such as Tandoori Paneer, Tikka, Spice Paneer etc. We all know how the North Indian market (in fact, all of India except the South) loves all things Punjabi. And to appease the South Indian market, Bingo! had flavors such as Chatkila Nimbu Achaar, Achari Masti etc. In fact, Bingo! comes in 16 flavors to cater to the taste buds of different regions of India.

Bingo!’s advertising follows the AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). The clutter-breaking ads with their slapstick humor and irrelevant themes garnered enough eyeballs to create awareness of the product and generate an interest towards the product in the minds of consumers. The ads are simply insane & nonsensical to the point of being bizarre & utter crap. And that is why they are so funny!! This resulted in high product trials.

Take for instance the Glad Bangles ad with the Caucasian model complaining about her life being so pathetic that even her cat walked out on her!!

Or the one where the scientists at the Bingo Mad Labs issue a pregnancy certificate after feeding you Bingo! Mad Angles. The procedure, the ad claims, to test whether you are pregnant is fast, simple and painless. The scientists will offer you Bingo Achaari Masti, and if you are driven crazy by the tangy "achaari" taste of the snack & chase the scientists for more, then congratulations you have tested positive!!

Or the one where a guy says he has tried his hands at making a combination of his lazy brother Jignesh & a toaster!!! Posing for a family poster, Jignesh jumps up in the air even before the photographer could click. In another shot, his girlfriend gets the shock of her life as he springs up from his motorcycle leaving her alone on the running vehicle. These incidents lead the guy to conclude that unlike Bingo’s Mad Angles combination, his combination was a failure.

There are many other attention-grabbing Bingo! ads such as the Vango Pango ad etc. but what's interesting is the fact that Lays uses a brand ambassador approach with mass appeal celebrities such as Saif Ali Khan, Juhi Chawla & M S Dhoni whereas Bingo still doesn't have an ambassador. Finding one that can match its image would be quite a task!!

Branding in the shampoo segment

It has been seen in the fast moving consumer goods category that brands that focus on projecting one or two aspects of brand imagery have been more successful than those that try to stand for too many things. The latter end up with a diffused imagery, therefore losing out on brand registration & recall in the minds of consumers.

Take for example 3 of the leading brands of shampoos in India – all in the premium category.

Proctor & Gamble’s brand of shampoo, Pantene, has harped on ‘shine’ through its communication, most recently through its ‘Shine Pantene’ campaign. As a result, the moment someone says Pantene, one thinks of shiny hair.

At the same time, Garnier Fructis has adopted the extreme imagery route, the focus being on ‘strong hair’. In their ‘If you want it long, it’s got to be strong’ campaign, the models wear unrealistic hair & are shown breaking objects that their hair gets tied to, rather than the hair giving way. It’s far-fetched but it works with the audience as suggested by the sales of the brand.

On the other hand, ITC’s Fiama di Wills shampoo has a very diffused imagery in the market. Their proposition is ‘gentle yet effective…through a combination of nature & science…for a beautiful you…today, tomorrow’. There are too many things they try to say through their communication. As a result, the ads have failed to register with the audience & trigger brand recall.

*****

An interesting piece of trivia about shampoos…transparent shampoos are not accepted as much by Indian consumers as opaque (non-transparent) shampoos. This is the reason there are only two transparent shampoos available in the Indian market – Pantene Lively Clean & Garnier Fructis Oil Repair – while the rest are all opaque. The misconception among Indian consumers is that opaque shampoos produce a higher amount of lather as compared to transparent shampoos, and therefore clean better.

*****

An interesting insight into the marketing strategy of Proctor & Gamble (P&G)….P&G plays only in the premium segment of the market, at least in India. They have concentrated only on 7-8 brands in the Indian market - Pantene, Olay, Head & Shoulders, Ariel, Vicks, Pampers, Whisper to name a few - all of them in the premium segment. Rejoice is the only P&G brand that is present in the economy segment while Tide plays in the mid-value segment. HUL, on the other hand, operates across all price segments.

Given that India is such a price-sensitive market, P&G’s strategy has been to wait for HUL & other FMCG companies to develop the premium segment in India, before they launch their own brand in the segment, so that there is already a market for premium products & the chances of their brand facing rejection are low.

For instance, Head & Shoulders was introduced into the Indian market immediately after HUL came out with it’s Clinic All Clear range of shampoos (not to be confused with Clinic Plus that straddles the mid-value & economy segments). Pringles was introduced after Pepsico had already created a market for Lays range of potato wafers. Olay was introduced after L'Oreal & Garnier had introduced various enhanced face creams in India. Similarly, Ariel was introduced to compete with Surf Excel.