Advertising Opinions

Let me introduce Shilpi Bose my co-blogger. Shilpi had contributed to this blog earlier; in this post she shares her experiences, hence the title ‘Looking Back’. Aroop Bose ... Let The Magic Begin! Remo Fernandes & Penny Vaz When I started out as a journalist nearly two decades ago, the economy was just opening up and the advertising industry was growing. Simple advertising was giving way to big budget innovative advertising and for me it was interesting to be part of this significant period in Indian advertising. When I look back what immediately comes to my mind is the ‘dhamakedar’ launch of Pepsi in India. I have no choice but to use the Hindi word ‘dhamakedar’ to describe the launch for I cannot think of an equivalent word in English; there was lot of fanfare with a teaser commercial et al. Pepsi came to India when Thums Up was ruling the roost followed by Thril and Campa Cola. The Indian cola brands ca...

In a highly competitive market, where various brands are jostling for space, differences among brands begin to blur; it becomes difficult to offer the consumer/customer a differentiated product benefit. Advertising becomes the only differentiator in such cases. Sometimes advertising is used to highlight a certain product feature or benefit which competing brands have not thought of. I recall a brilliant advertising campaign for Godrej refrigerators which ran in the late 1980s or perhaps in the early 1990s, the focus of the campaign was that Godrej refrigerators used PUF (polyurethane foam) as insulation, sales of Godrej refrigerators zoomed as a result of this campaign; the fact was that PUF was used by Godrej’s competitors as well, but only Godrej was the one to talk about it and that made the difference. Yes, a brand has to be perceived as different by consumers/customers, but the brand cannot be different just for the sake of being different, there should be a strong consumer benef...