Monday, April 21, 2008

IPL - Fringe benefits...

No doubt it's an interesting game format. A la superbowl, or NBA, or other American and English forms of sports which rely as much on gameplay as on the hoopla surrounding the entire exercise, whether it's Katrina waving to the fans, or Mr. Mallya walking with his team in an exclusive RC ad, or ofcourse the interestingly-attired cheerleaders.

Talking of advertisements, there have been quite a few which appear to have been recently created perhaps just to catch the eye-balls during the matches (and there certainly are enough eye-balls, if the packed stadiums are anything to go by).

There's of course the new Vodafone "Happy to help" series, which seems to be an effort to ward off the evil aura surrounding customer care. Traditionally, customer care (of Vodafone, or any one else's) has been given the same treatment as people would give to an unhelping, old, cranky doctor at a lone hospital (the types who prescribe strange injections and then smiled fiendishly?). And it is this "visit-only-when-about-to-die" image that Vodafone is trying to wash away. Quite a cool ad...

The Max NY Life pension plans ad is another nice one which touches a cord somewhere, reminding one of decisions taken with everyone but yourself in mind. It is noticeable that the basic message is the same as SBI Pension fund, viz., live "your" life at some point...

There's the Samsung Freshtech thing, focussing on the freshness positioning (with a particularly creative act of the lady pushing in green plant leaves inside the refrigerator towards the end of the copy).

I suppose the advertisements have to necessarily follow the innovation and "newness" theme, given the creative, fresh (albeit copied from other worlds, but nevertheless very new from an Indian perspective) nature of the entire series itself...

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