Advertising Opinions

Ad History is a new feature I started in this blog last month and this is the second installment. I would like to share some old ads which I have been able to lay my hands on and as I mentioned in my earlier post ( Ad History -1 ) the ads featured here are not necessarily memorable but are pretty interesting. This Cinthol Soap ad was scanned from a magazine called Star and Style published by Indian Express, if I remember right; it appeared in many other publications in the 1970s. The above ad features young film director and actor Shakher Kapur, if you wish to know more about him please click here . Year:1963 Year: 1981 Television was introduced in Bombay on October 2, 1972; TV at that time was black & white. If I remember right Weston TV was launched sometime in the late 1970s. Television ads those days usually talked about the basic features like good sound and picture quality. None of the television brands of that time exist today. I do not recall the year of the above Wills pre...

I always believe that if you have something to sell you must be able to answer a simple question – Why should my target customer spend his hard earned money to buy my product? – The question appears simple but the answer may not always be so; the marketer must give the target customer a good reason to buy if his ad campaign has to work. In a highly competitive situation there are several players making similar claims and all or most competing brands are capable of satisfying the needs of the target consumer equally well because there might be no significant differences in the physical and functional attributes of products of competing brands. In such a situation marketers go beyond the physically characteristics or functional aspects of the product in question and position the brand/product on entirely different platforms – lifestyle, aspiration, pride, fear and many more or in other words take the emotional or psychological route. In this post I would like to discuss the advertising ...

I won't be reviewing any ads here but would like to share with my readers some of the old ads I dug up. I have randomly selected some ads, these are not necessarily memorable or path breaking ads but to me they definitely are part of Indian advertising history. Premium Soap: Perspectives 1993 Perspectives was a supplement of Metropolis on Saturday, Bombay edition - published by The Times of India, it does not exist now. Colgate Baby Powder: Filmfare June 14,1963 Half a century ago Colgate-Palmolive tried to get into the baby care business but was unsuccessful, perhaps Johnsons & Johnsons was too strong a competitor for them. Halo Shampoo: Filmfare June 14, 1963 Halo Shampoo was a product of Colgate-Palmolive and was among the top selling even in the 1980s, the sales declined when several new multi-national brands entered the Indian hair care market. I wonder if the company lost interest in the brand. Coca-Cola: The Bharat Jyoti, Sunday, March 25, 1973 The Bharat Jyoti used to b...

 Life insurance companies and banks face similar challenges when it comes to advertising; the plans or products offered by insurance companies or banks are usually very similar so making a distinction depends heavily on creativity in advertising. In this post I will discuss advertising in the Indian life insurance sector; I plan to discuss bank advertising some time later.  There are two dozen life insurance companies in India; possibly in future this number could increase. LIC is the market leader, this financial year it is aiming to retain 82% market share according to reports. That leaves only 18% to be shared by the rest, so the competition is pretty tough for them. Personal selling by company agents is very important in the life insurance business; advertising also plays an important role in informing and educating the prospective buyer about the various plans/products on one hand and on the other hand it creates a favourable image for the insurance company in the minds o...

This post is about two Bengali TV campaigns, both are mustard oil brands targeting the Bengali population; one is Emami Healthy and Tasty Mustard Oil and the other is Nutrela Kachhi Ghani Mustard Oil. The Emami campaign comprises four ads while Nutrela is a single ad campaign. In a product category such as cooking oils which is essentially a commodity, positioning brands is a challenge. One mustard oil is no different from the other so no differentiation can be shown in the advertising in terms of physical characteristics; differentiation is possible only in the label design and advertising. The target audience in both campaigns is exactly the same and the essential message is also the same, which is about enhancing the flavours of Bengali food. Despite the similarities both campaigns are based on different consumer insights, hence are significantly different for each other. So what is distinctive about of these two campaigns? Let me analyse both these campaigns. Mustard oil is essenti...

In November 2013 the Indian FMCG market saw a new entrant – SCA, one of the world's largest companies in personal care products. The company’s two brands – Libero and Tempo were unveiled. Libero is a range of baby care products; it comprises of baby diapers, baby wipes and baby toiletries. The second brand is Tempo – a range of hand and face hygiene products. In this post I would like to comment upon the advertising I have seen of these two brands. Libero The Libero launch ad campaign comprised TV commercial, press ads and outdoor (I remember seeing see bus shelters). Libero addresses the concerns of Indian mothers regarding safety for their babies; it claims that its products are made from skin-friendly natural ingredients which are good for baby’s skin and is a natural way to care for the baby. To my mind both the press ad and TV commercial do not communicate the proposition strongly, or let us say the proposition itself is not strong enough because the ‘natural’ claim has been o...

 The Snickers ad campaign was first launched in India sometime in the year 2008 and it was promoted as a snack to be eaten between meals, the first Indian TV commercial  for Snickers ‘Iske to char baj gaye!’ that was created had the tagline 'Hunger Baja Char Snickers Kholo Yaar' (When hunger strikes at four unwrap a Snickers). The ad showed a goal keeper who is not alert because he feeling hungry at 4.00 pm, but after he eats a bar of Snickers which is passed please see the ad on YouTube ). The brand was pretty low key when it was introduced in India in 2004, few shops stocked it and the advertising was not enough. The product itself was imported and not manufactured in to him by the spectators he begins to perform well and saves a goal ( India. Even to this day the product is imported; the pack of Snickers I bought yesterday was made in UAE. As per media reports Mars International, the owners of Snickers, Galaxy Chocolates, Mars Chocolates and few other brands, will commence...