Advertising Opinions

From the time Pepsi was introduced in India, as far as I can remember, their TV commercials have always featured celebrities. The very first TVC had singer Remo Fernandes and the ads which were released in the later years featured film and sports personalities. After seeing Pepsi advertising dominated by celebrities for years this new ad campaign comes as a refreshing change – there are no celebrities here but what we see are ordinary people; the ad features young men and women who happen to be Pepsi’s core target audience. The ad shows college students protesting and threatening to go on an indefinite hunger strike until their demands are met; one of the agitating students notices a bottle of Pepsi which he finds irresistible, he grabs the Pepsi bottle and drinks, thus causing great disappointment to his fellow agitating students, the Pepsi drinker reacts by coolly saying ‘Pepsi thi yaar, pi gaya’ and looks around with ‘I-drank-Pepsi-so-what-is-the-fuss-all-about?’ expression. View t...

Every year during the festival time in India, we are bombarded with special ad campaigns mainly in newspapers, TV and the internet. Most of these ads announce discounts and special offers for various products. These campaigns reach a peak during Diwali. Currently Pepperfry.com, a leading online furniture marketer, is running a pre-Diwali (2015) ad campaign – Why wait for Diwali sale? For high value products such as furniture most customers prefer postponing purchases till the time festival discounts are announced, the purpose of this campaign is to persuade customers to buy furniture, offered by Pepperfry at a discount, before stiff competition sets in during or just before Diwali. This clearly is a clever marketing move but what interested me were the scripts and the execution of the four interesting TV commercials(TVC) which comprise this campaign. You can watch the commercials at the end of this article below. All the four ads are based on true life situations which we all experien...

Greenply has recently launched a new advertising campaign – Ask Greenply. The campaign comprises three ads – 'Nayi Maa', 'Dhongi Baba' and 'The Couple' . In each of the ads an awkward situation is shown and when a character is asked a question he gets dumbfounded. The ads are humorous and the primary objective of this campaign is to urge consumers to ask questions on plywood, in order to enable this a website (www.askgreenply.com) and helpline number appear at the end of each ad. There is no need for me to describe these ads in detail since I have embedded them below at the end of this article. Over the decades plywood manufacturers have promised strength and durability as product benefits for their brands of plywood. Regardless who the manufacturer is or what brand it is advertising the message has always been about strength and durability; this has been happening for decades even till today. In this product category there is hardly any product differentiatio...

Faasos (earlier Faaso's) has been in the market for four or five years and has been expanding despite growing competition. The competition is just not from food brands in this category but also from other fast food or convenience food brands, both Indian and foreign, which are present in the market today; those being, various brands of pizzas, kabaab rolls, savouries, biriyanis and other such food items. Convenience food items of various kinds sold by local players, who do not have a presence in cities and towns other than where they are situated, also pose competition to Faasos; the convenience food market in India is becoming more and more competitive; the consumer today enjoys a lot of choice. Earlier Faaso’s was present only in Pune and Mumbai (Bombay) but today it has spread its wings to various other Indian cities such as, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Chennai, Indore and Gurgaon. Recently Faasos launched a mobile app to further grow its business, as is the...