Utterly Butterly Advertising

For a very long time, my post on Amul: Longest running ad campaign in the world? is one of the most favorite search engine hits. I do not know why net searchers are fascinated with Amul’s ads rather than the usual utterly salacious searches with a dose of butterly. I do not know if it has anything to do with the Amul Star Voice of India reality show currently on Indian television.

Amul: India’s No. 1 Brand

Thanks to Trak.in, I was alerted to this interesting news: Amul is India’s No. 1 brand, followed by Life Corporation of India (LIC), and Nokia.

Leading media, advertising and marketing publication Media magazine, together with regional brand consultancy Asian Integrated Media Limited and global market research company Synovate, has released the 2007 results from the annual Asia’s Top 1000 Brands survey.

About the Survey: Nine markets were included in this fourth round of the survey – China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, India and Indonesia. Synovate interviewed people aged 15-64 years old, with sample sizes per market of 500, apart from China and India, where the sample was 750 across three and four top-tier cities respectively.

Asia’s Top 10 Brands for 2007

Rank	Brand
1	Nokia
2	Sony
3	Colgate
4	Coca Cola
5	Panasonic
6	Honda
7	7-Eleven
8	Samsung
9	Nestle
10	Adidas

You can see the Top 100 Asia brands and the top 3 in each market (country) here (PDF).

Word of Mouth Advertising

A Nielsen Global Survey shows that word-of-mouth advertising is still the most powerful in the world. Conducted twice-a-year among 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets from Europe, Asia Pacific, the Americas and the Middle East, Nielsen surveyed consumers on their attitudes toward thirteen types of advertising - from conventional newspaper and television ads to branded web sites and consumer-generated content.

87 percent of Internet accessing Indians still trust recommendations from others over any other kind of advertising, making word-of-mouth advertising the most powerful tool in the industry today. Let’s take a look at the interesting Indian results:

Form of Advertising Trusted	%
Recommendations from Consumers	87
Newspapers	77
Consumer opinions posted online	73
Brand Websites	72
Magazines	71
TV	65
Email I signed up for	58
Radio	55
Brand sponsorships	52
Search Engine Ads	41
Ads before movies	41
Online banner ads	38
Text ads on mobiles	24

This is amazing - online opinions (on blogs, social networking sites, etc.) are trusted higher than TV advertisements! And what about those ads before (and during) movies? Can this persuade the sponsors to reduce those TV ad break intervals down to zero?

Can an open GPhone kill the restrictive iPhone?

Imagine you buy a car that comes with a 2 year warranty on defective parts and 3 free servicing trips. But what if those were valid only if you filled fuel from a specified provider - say Indian Oil or Shell? Or you buy a DVD player or home theater that can only play movies produced by Universal? Sounds ridiculous, right?

I’ve always been surprised how Apple gets away with its restrictive policies while Microsoft gets dragged into court over anti-trust laws for anything and everything. Until recently, you couldn’t run Windows on a Mac, while you could always run even Linux on a PC. You could choose whether you wanted an Intel or AMD processor to power your PC, but no such choice with the Mac, until recently. iPod doesn’t work with anything except iTunes. And the iPhone doesn’t work with any cellular service provider except AT&T.

It was one thing with computers, but another with cell phones. The cell phone market is much, much bigger. How long will this restrictive practice of binding you to a specific service provider work? The reasons why Apple did it are clear. Apple gets a monthly revenue cut from AT&T for each iPhone user. Though some say that there are alleged benefits to this restrictive policy, it just doesn’t cut it for me. After all, these revenues are not comparable to what Apple gets from the actual sale of iPhones.

Well, the inevitable has already happened. The iPhone is now unlocked. What this means is that anyone anywhere in the world can buy an iPhone in the US (or get their friends to buy it for them) and use it in their country. Yes, so you can now use the iPhone in India. Read the original Engadget news here. The second image below shows the iPhone working with the T-Mobile service provider in the US.

Is it illegal in the US to unlock your iPhone? Engadget says no, as long as you’re doing it for your personal benefit, and and agree to forego your warranty and Apple support. Predictably, the second team developing such an unlocking software has already received threatening calls from AT&T’s legal team. Being one of the worst service providers in the US in terms of quality, they need to get their act together quickly!

How will the iPhone be marketed outside the US? How can Apple force consumers in Europe and fastest growing cellular phone markets like India to select Apple’s choice of service provider? I just don’t think it’s possible. And if that’s true, can Apple have different marketing strategies for the US and outside the US?Can the iPhone withstand competition if an equally sophisticated telephone were to offer users their choice of providers?

The Business Standard has just broken a story that has made headlines all over cyberspace. It says the Google Phone, or GPhone, is just two weeks away from an international launch:

Talks are believed to be taking place with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar, respectively India’s first and third largest mobile telephony operators, and state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam.
Sources close to the development said a simultaneous launch across the US and Europe is expected, and announcements would be sent to media firms in India and other parts of the world. US regulatory approval, which is expected soon, is the only hurdle that Google is waiting to cross, they added. Google plans to invest $7-8 billion for its global telephony foray.

TechCrunch gives a nice summary of the history of the GPhone rumors and says that a 3G GPhone worldwide release can be a strong competitor to the iPhone. Also see this ComputerWorld article that quotes the Wall Street Journal. If you’re skeptic about whether Google will indeed foray into consumer electronics, or simply want to know how studying a company’s job listings is being used for competitive analysis, I’d highly recommend this Forbes article.

So, will the GPhone kill the iPhone? I believe it can, provided Google comes up with something comparable to the iPhone. And just like Apple eased its restrictive policies with other products, I think it will soon have to warm up to the competition in this case.

Photo Credits: CNET, Engadget.

Technorati Tags: apple, microsoft, google, iPhone, Gphone, wireless, telecom

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Techno-Social News Tidbits

Here’s some interesting news stories from the past few days.

It’s not 42, like Douglas Adams thought it would be. It’s 26. BBC reports that research has proved that a Rubik’s cube can be returned to its original state in no more than 26 moves. A supercomputer took 63 hours to crank out the proof which goes one better than the previous best solution.

The study brings scientists one step closer to finding the so-called “God’s Number” which is the minimum number of moves needed to solve any disordered Rubik’s cube.

It is so named because God would only need the smallest number of moves to solve a cube. Theoretical work suggests that God’s Number is in the “low 20s”.

Did you know that the world record for solving the Rubik cube was 11.13 seconds? And if you’re interested in this kind of stuff, do you know that the game of checkers is solved? I mean really, solved?

An Ohio man charged with statutory rape says he thought a 13-year-old girl was actually 18. He tried to bring in evidence of her MySpace.com page, which falsely said she was. The appeals court rejected the evidence, and convicted him.

On a lighter note, there were many centuries during which mankind used to keep time using the Sun. Now, Sun was itself 5 days late.

Just like every major candidate for the White House has a health care plan, every major technology company has one, reports the New York Times:

The Google and Microsoft initiatives would give much more control to individuals, a trend many health experts see as inevitable. “Patients will ultimately be the stewards of their own information,” said John D. Halamka, a doctor and the chief information officer of the Harvard Medical School.

More importantly, every major Search Engine is capitulating on the healthcare scenario: Ask.com is offering ’smart answers’, Google is coming up with Google Health! For screen shots of Google Health, see First Google Health Screen Shots.

On another note, I just love Wikipedia, in the sense that it is so transparent! In this context, it is indeed interesting to observe how folks at Fox News and the New York Times have engaged in tweaking and manipulating the content on Wikipedia about themselves and their competitors. This is not just corporate espionage, this is corporate mudslinging!

This shows the empowerment of the public. These corporations or media houses cannot influence the content or description about them in, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica. But when they think they can manipulate Wikipedia, their antics are exposed! Three cheers to open source Wikipedia!

Technorati Tags: google, healthcare, rubik cube, wikipedia, news

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On The Origins of Homo Mathematician and Professor Calculus

On the occasion of India’s 60th Independence Day, the news world and blogosphere is abuzz with the news story that Calculus was created in India, 250 years before Newton.

The official news source says:

A little known school of scholars in southwest India discovered one of the founding principles of modern mathematics hundreds of years before Newton according to new research. Dr George Gheverghese Joseph from The University of Manchester says the ‘Kerala School’ identified the ‘infinite series’- one of the basic components of calculus - in about 1350.

And there is strong circumstantial evidence that the  Indians passed on their discoveries to mathematically knowledgeable Jesuit missionaries who visited India during the fifteenth century. That knowledge, they argue, may have eventually been passed on to Newton himself.

While admitting factors such as the obscure medieval Malayalam language of the source, Dr. Joseph further adds the European imperialist angle:

There were many reasons why the contribution of the Kerala school has not been acknowledged - a prime reason is neglect of scientific ideas  emanating from the Non-European world - a legacy of  European colonialism and beyond.

For some unfathomable reasons, the standard of evidence required to claim transmission of knowledge from East to West is greater than the standard of evidence required to knowledge from West to East.

There are several cynical responses to this current news item. From ‘What’s new? We knew this all along!’, to ’So what? Of what use was the Indian invention if it remained in obscurity in a remote Indian region?’.

To be fair, the press journalists obviously not trained in mathematics, did exaggerate. The Taylor Series of trigonometric functions and representation of Pi are building blocks of Calculus. They do not, in themselves, form the entire branch of mathematics that is Calculus. Not surprisingly, Dr. Joseph’s origins are from Kerala!

There is nothing new in this discovery as Wikipedia shows. But I’m inclined against dismissing and ignoring this news altogether, for three reasons:

1. Imperialism certainly plays a factor in how knowledge spreads. While these medieval Indians used mathematics to create almanacs and calendars, the Europeans used it for navigating to conquer other lands. It is because of imperialist adventurous travelers that knowledge spread during most of mankind’s history. Imperialism and its derivatives are still very much in action. For instance, check the history of Wikipedia’s article on the Kerala School, after this story broke out in major news circles.

2. The truth about this was known before, but it was known only to a select few. Forget calculus, how many knew the truth about Pi? Shashi Tharoor wrote about it, but we couldn’t make him the UN Secretary General. The excellent project and site, History of Indian Science and Technology provides fascinating insights into the scientific achievements of Indians in fields such as township planning, water management, healthcare, surgery, metallurgy, etc. It even has a paper on exactly how and why the Taylor series and building blocks of Calculus were imported to Europe from India (PDF).

But how many of us know all this? Indians need to learn the art of marketing from the Westerners. We excel in science and technology, arts and philosophy. But we cannot sell well. We cannot put the right ’spin’, such that the world takes notice. Once the exaggerated headlines hit the world press, the blogosphere pounces on them, tearing them to shreds in analysis and comments and trackbacks. That’s how information is disseminated. True, it’s not always correct. But at least more people will think of India the next time they encounter Calculus!

3. This story highlights how we must cherish and safeguard our knowledge assets. Most scientific texts of the ancient times are in a dilapidated condition, neglected in universities and shrines. There are projects by the Government and Google to digitize them, as I’d written earlier. Just like corporations prize knowledge management, countries should too!

Technorati Tags: calculus, newton, india, kerala school, manuscripts, mathematics

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India’s Ingenuous Condom Usage

While India plans a six-fold increase in spending to tackle AIDS, it is desperately searching for its own Mr. Condom:

Mechai Viravaidya, a former Cabinet minister in Thailand, emerged as an AIDS-fighting crusader in the ’90s with an aggressive campaign to distribute condoms and educate the Thai public about HIV, helping to significantly cut that country’s infection rate.

K. Sujatha Rao, the head of India’s National AIDS Control Program told The Times of India newspaper, that India needs a similar figure.

“We are very serious about finding India’s very own Mr. Condom. He has to have a dynamic personality to change both government policy and public perceptions about HIV, AIDS, sex and condoms,” Rao said.

In Thailand, Mechai’s award-winning campaigning included visiting notorious nightspots to hand out condoms and holding contests to see who could blow condom-shaped balloons the fastest.

However, such antics may not work in India, because people are not only using condoms for balloons, but also for various ingenuous purposes already:

Of the 891 million condoms meant to be handed out free, most were used by road contractors, who mixed them with concrete and tar to create a smooth surface.

Health activists said millions of condoms were melted down for their latex and made into toys. Others were dyed and sold as balloons.

In rural areas, villagers used them as water containers. India’s soldiers covered their gun barrels with condoms as protection against dust.

Only a quarter of about 1.5 billion condoms made each year were “properly utilised”.

If this continues, the six-fold increase in spending will just go up as hot air in a condom-balloon.

The buzzzz over Crezzzzendo

On the heels of my earlier post on condom advertising in India, comes this.

Protests in Madhya Pradesh over Crezendo, a vibration-enhanced condom, reached a crescendo in political circles. Kudos to the Union Health Minister, Ramadoss, for sticking to his guns!

TV Ad Break Intervals

When I watch a movie on TV, I’ve observed that the time interval between ad breaks is not uniform, rather it decreases as the movie progresses. Towards the end, it is almost like the Fibonacci in reverse.

What I mean is when the movie starts, there are no ads for, say, the first 30 minutes. After the 1st break, the next break will then be after 25 minutes. Next, 20. And so on. And finally, when the climax is just around the corner, and you’re at the edge of your seat, you’re bombarded with ads faster than Himesh can spring a new song/music-video on you. Well, you got my point.

What I’d like to know is, is this really true? Have you experienced this? I haven’t checked it out scientifically and Google didn’t help either. Is this:

- True, because advertisers know that the farther you’ve been watching the movie, the more likely you’re watching it with interest, the more likely you have some company also watching it (more eyeballs), the more likely you wouldn’t want to waste any single scene during the climax and thus stick to your seat!

OR

- False, because it is a Temporal Illusion, where the more engrossed we are in the movie, the faster time passes by. Hence, though the ad break intervals remain the same, the intervals appear shorter to us, because the time we watch the movie appears to pass by faster!

Dip, Dipper, Dipping…

Imagine being in charge of AIDS-prevention in India, where you’ve to market condoms to the masses, amidst this country’s socio-religious-conservatively charged atmosphere. Rather than cringing at the thought, some people actually rise up to it, and produce some great advertising campaigns.

Condoms for the India’s trucking community, are branded as “Dipper”. They are inspired by a request for dimmed headlights painted on the back of trucks in the country, “Use Dipper At Night,” which S.Y. Quraishi, head of the National AIDS Control Organization, hopes will provide plenty of free advertising.

Another one showed three cricket stumps, sheathed in condoms, beneath the slogan: “Save your wicket from the unwanted googlies of life!”

While on this topic, some heartening news came out this month. The estimated number of AIDS victims in India has, er, dipped. And what a dip it was - between 2-3 million, instead of almost 6.

Back to the ad, I actually haven’t seen this particular request to use the dipper at night. It’s all mostly “Horn OK Please” and other stuff that I never read. Well, I work during the day, and, um, have better things to do at night than read signs on the back of trucks right?

No, no, I meant, things like observing the visibility of Alcor, the tiny companion to Mizar in the Big Dipper, to assess the level of pollution! I like to watch the sky before dipping off to sleep, don’t you?

Amul: Longest running ad campaign in the world?

I’ve always enjoyed Amul Butter’s ads. Did you know you can view most of the Amul ads right from 1976 to the present on Amul’s site? (Disclaimer: this blog author will not be held responsible for the hours of time a reader may waste following this link).

“For 30 odd years the Utterly Butterly girl has managed to keep her fan following intact. So much so that the ads are now ready to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for being the longest running campaign ever.

India looked forward to Amul’s evocative humour. If there was an Indian Airlines strike Amul would be there again saying, Indian Airlines Won’t Fly Without Amul.

“We ran a couple of ads that created quite a furore,” says Sylvester daCunha. “The Indian Airlines one really angered the authorities. They said if they didn’t take down the ads they would stop supplying Amul butter on the plane. So ultimately we discontinued the ad,” he says laughing. Then there was the time when the Amul girl was shown wearing the Gandhi cap. The high command came down heavy on that one. The Gandhi cap was a symbol of independence, they couldn’t have anyone not taking that seriously. So despite their reluctance the hoardings were wiped clean.

“Then there was an ad during the Ganpati festival which said, Ganpati Bappa More Ghya (Ganpati Bappa take more). The Shiv Sena people said that if we didn’t do something about removing the ad they would come and destroy our office. It is surprising how vigilant the political forces are in this country.”

Heroine Addiction, Amul’s little joke on Hussain had the artist ringing the daCunhas up to request them for a blow up of the ad.

Er, um…wait. Didn’t Hussain take them to court for defamation and hurting his public image and sentiments? Folks like him have no self-respect or dignity - shouldn’t people like him be banned?

“He said that he had seen the hoarding while passing through a small district in UP. He said he had asked his assistant to take a photograph of himself with the ad because he had found it so funny,” says Rahul daCunha in amused tones. Indians do have a sense of humour, afterall.”

Read the full story behind Amul’s 39-year old ad campaign here.

When worms were found in Cadbury’s chocolates, Amul ran a campaign with a punchline that read “Cadbura” (implying Cadbury is bad).

For more on the ad agency and people involved in creating Amul’s ads over the decades, read this blog post.

This Hindu Business Line article is a good discussion about a brand’s staying power (discussing Amul, Onida, Liril, etc.). Among other things, it reveals “What’s more, Amul’s ad agency has carte blanche to say what it wants in its ads, a unique feature in client-ad agency relationships across the world”.

Lastly, coming back to the original topic of this post, did you know that Amul is the largest food brand in India with an annual turnover of US $868 million (2005-06)? Currently Amul has 2.41 million producer members with milk collection average of 5.08 million litres/day. Amazing feat, considering the history behind it. And yes, they’re really rooting for the Guiness Records!

(All images from Amul’s site)

Microsoft ties up with Mumbai’s Dabbawallas to promote Vista

Mumbai’s dabbawallas never cease to amaze me. They have received temendous publicity in the last few years, mostly because of the Six Sigma certification by Forbes, the Prince Charles visit and wedding invitation, and the support of Virgin’s Richard Bramson.

But this was news to me: “Microsoft has tied up with Dabbawallas to Offer ‘Asliwala PC Offer’. The main aim of this campaign is to spread the awareness about the benefits of genuine Windows software. Under this scheme the leaflets will be distributed to 2 lakh customers of Dabbawallas with the message about the benefits of genuine Windows software.

Against this leaflets customers may buy PC, Laptops, etc from Zenith computers at discounted prices. Dabbawallas will be wearing the T-Shirt and cap of Microsoft Vista - the new operating system recently launched by Microsoft. Your friendly Dabbawalla will be paid Rs. 100/- for every PC or Laptop sold through this scheme.”

Read the original “press release” straight from the Dabbawalas themselves!

I’m so happy to see this 120-year old institution growing more than ever.

In the News

“There is a service called FedEx that is similar to ours - but they don’t deliver lunch.”
Recent New York Times story.

“On a bicycle we are king of the road, We can go down no-entry roads, through red lights. You can’t do that in your car, can you?”
An account from The Independent

Unraveling the Color Coding (From Mumbai’s Amazing Dabbawalas)

Management Gyaan

(From What You Can Learn From A Dabbawala, and Mumbai’s Amazing Dabbawalas)

• “Error is horror!” In the event of a dabbawalla meeting with an accident en route, alternative arrangements are made to deliver the lunch boxes.
• The dabbawalas must be extremely disciplined. Consuming alcohol while on duty attracts a fine of Rs 1,000. Unwarranted absenteeism is not tolerated and is treated with a similar fine.
• Branding: The Gandhi cap serves as a potent symbol of identification in the crowded railway stations. Not wearing the cap attracts a fine of Rs 25.
• No retirement age, and any person can work till he is fit enough to carry on the tasks required of him.
• Put the customer ahead of everything else. It is said that when Prince Charles expressed a desire to meet them during his visit in 2003, the dabbawallas requested him to schedule the meeting such that it did not interfere with their mid-day delivery timings.

Quotable Quotes

(From Walk the Talk with Shekhar Gupta, The Indian Express)

• “Our computer is our head and our Gandhi Cap is the computer cover to protect it from the sun or rain.”
• “The uneducated have an ability to memorize and retain more as opposed to the educated who are used to writing down everything.”
• “Till one is 25-30 years old, you can eat anywhere, but after that home cooked food is what suits the the stomach and health.”
• “Even if someone in their family falls ill, they first deliver the food and then attend to them.”
• “Our ancestors fought in Shivaji’s army and just the way they had to climb mountains while fighting, we have to climb stairs to deliver the tiffins.”
• “I made every worker a shareholder. This way they would put in more effort and since everyone is a shareholder, there would be no question of a union or strike.”
• Q. “Have any of your disputes reached the police or the courts”
• A. “No, never.”
• Q. “How did the people in Italy react to you?”
• A. “They are amazed that uneducated people like us can carry out a business like ours so accurately. They rely on their call centres for every small problem whereas we have to be accurate with our delivery every single time.”

‘Nuff said!