Beast of Traal

You must have seen the new ad for a sugar-substitute starring Bipasha Basu. The south Indian version has actress Shreya Saran. I don’t care how they look or what they do, but a URL caught my attention in the end.

If you are in no mood to see the ad. or you are not a fan [...]

It possibly can!
Our resident, social media favorite, in India, ex-Minister Shashi Tharoor sent a strange tweet last night. It said,
“Hugely frustrated by Norton Security. Paid for &downloaded software, recd product key, but everytime I try to activate, am told key invalid”
Did he try calling customer support? May be. May be not.
Did he [...]

I came across this Ragan piece titled, ‘Big-name consulting companies fail Twitter test‘, by Wendy Marx.
There is already a discussion thread about how PR companies do not blog or tweet from their official IDs enough and hence are incapable or not appropriate for handling clients’ blogs or twitter profile.
I’d like to think aloud here – [...]

If you haven’t seen or heard what Old Spice is doing online…that must be one massive rock you are under. Get out it, will you, please?
Old Spice started it quite innocuously. There was an ad. It was blah, at least in my opinion. Last seen, Kareena Kapoor is doing something mildly similar for a Sony [...]

I hate writing blog posts that hide critical names/information, but in the interest of the concerned parties, I’m forced to do so, this time!
I’m part of myriad groups online and one such group is a city-based ‘blogging’ group. Do not ask me if all members in the group blog…blog regularly or even blog at all. [...]

Two Indian journalists were recently seen sharing some opinions about PR agencies.
The Economic Times’ Joji Philip, among other things, said,
“in general, i have nothing against PR pros, they are doing their job – but some methods are wrong”
In the same conversation, Kushan Mitra, from Business Today, said,
“it is the duplicity I can’t stand. And the [...]

Some time back, there were helpful blog posts and articles in media on how not to use social media. One of the caveats was about how we’re not supposed to share information that we will not share in real life – the joke was, ‘Never share anything that you’d not share with your mother, priest [...]

I have ranted about many brands in the past for poor customer service. But I also realized that I’ve only occasionally commended any brand for being good! So, here’s a small list.
Automobiles
I’ve owned 3 cars in Bangalore – my first car here was a Maruti Suzuki WagonR. My wife’s car now is a Hyundai Getz [...]

I came across this new campaign by Santoor soaps – the offer is simple; buy two packs of Santoor soap and get a free Reynolds pen.
And I seem to have a small problem with that.
I have seen brands adding low value freebies and advertising it, but there used to be some USP to it. For [...]

I came across this case study on Media.Asia today – about Parle’s Hippo using Twitter as a channel for retail inventory tracking. I have written about Hippo’s tweets earlier and I like the tone and outlook of this twitter feed.
But, at what point does an agency ‘go for a’ case study? The case study says,
Hippo [...]