Month: October 2010

Categories
Branding & Advertising Business What works?

Mohabbat Kare Khush Rahe Muskuraye: How Anchor changed toothpaste advertising!

Quick question: When I say oral care products advertising what comes to your mind? Most common answers: doctors in white lab coats, cute children in dentists’ chambers, cute children talking to their parents in metaphors about tooth decay (daanto me saDan!), people holding their cheeks because their gums/teeth hurt, and lots of information about roots of the teeth, gums, salt content, fluoride content, whitening strips and what not.

Too much information, then some more information, then scaring the audience (especially children) about the scenario in absence of the product.

How about some positiveness people? How about some classic emotional advertising? Something smart? Something snappy in thought, not just execution?

Well, here you go:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw5arTc26-0&w=480&h=385]
Video shared on YouTube by richacsaxena

Anchor, a very new entrant in the already over-saturated, over-crowded toothpaste market, that bored us with their Kajol-asking-when-you-changing-your-toothpaste-huh-huh advertisements in the past, turns a new leaf and does the daring but smart job of breaking the clutter by going back to the basics.

Too much jargon eh? Not really.

The ad became an instant hit with many advertising professionals I know, and whenever I played it back to anyone I knew, the instant reaction when the ad ended was never short of “wow!”

So, what works here?

  1. Back to basics: advertising at the very basic is a sales pitch delivered emotionally. It has to be engaging & fun. Because if you bore your customer he will not listen to you. And it has to have a story. Because who doesn’t love a story? Apart from lukewarm “my dentist papa says XXX prevents tooth decay” ads, there have hardly been any stories in oral care ads. We have been bombarded with component messages (triclosan anyone?), fake (as in actors playing) doctors endorsing the products on TV, and lately a father talking to his kid about oral care (which is somewhat interesting, and can be a topic of another post), but none of them comes even close to what this is.
  • The story: it is a story. A complete story. A story in the truest sense. There’s a hot wife, obviously madly in love with her husband, baking something, obviously for her husband. We get to see the husband momentarily in the photo-frame which she kisses out of overflowing love. The context is set. The mood is set. And then as a consequence to an accident arising out of her happy & carefree moves, we see the disastrous obstacle she (and her husband) has to face now: the cake is hard as stone! It’s so bad that it creates a dent in the refrigerator’s door! It’s so bad that it causes the tiles on the floor to crack ! Then we see the husband, a clearly average looking guy (played by Sharib Hashmi) – a clear contrast from the hot model wife he has, and the way they hug and are happy together, you start wondering how is this even possible. He is happy to see that his darling wife has baked a cake for him, and he lunges at it. The wife, who by now is clearly aware of the obstacle, tries to stop her dear husband from trying to eat the cake and losing his teeth, but stops short when she sees the miracle! The husband effortlessly bites into the cake, and overcomes the obstacle like a true hero! “How is that even possible?”, you think, forgetting your original dilemma of the unmatched pair. It is at this moment that the product comes in, and you get to know that it is in fact a toothpaste commercial – Anchor is the ally which helps our hero defeat the evil “stone” cake.
  • Suspension of disbelief: suspension of disbelief is a potent tool to engage the audience – it keeps them thinking and wondering. Like the dinosaurs living alongside humans in The Flintstones. Like the ultra-modern weapons in medieval looking arenas in the Quake franchise. The first disbelief moment is the husband-wife pair – everyone wonders what has this guy done to get such a wife, and then everyone wonders how is she so in love with him. The audience is so engaged wondering and thinking that they are now not taking their eyes off the screen. The second disbelief moment is the obviously exaggerated strong teeth our hero has. However ludicrous it looks, it engages you, and gets the message across.
  • Story-like tension and relief: a happy scene becomes tense when you see that her ultimate symbol of love for her husband (with two sweet pink candy hearts on top!) is in reality a nemesis for human teeth, and then it’s released when you find that the hero of a husband brushes with Anchor daily in order to be able to take such minor obstacles in his stride effortlessly.
  • Benefit: Strong, healthy teeth – that also are shiny white (as seen in every frame that the man smiles in – his dark complexion helps here). What else do you need from a toothpaste? Very strongly communicated, with such a sweet emotional backdrop. You won’t forget this message for a long time!
  • Underlying message: you know what proposition Axe sells on, right (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)? Now here’s an average-looking guy, who has a hot model of a wife swooning over him, using her half-baked (forgive the pun) skills to make him a cake, and worrying over the fate of his teeth, and he turns into a hero – for her and everyone else – due to this product we have here – Anchor toothpaste. This guy is a winner, and he uses this product. Why wouldn’t you?
  • Life connect: a toothpaste is an integral part of one’s life, not just a product comprising of chemicals who is supposed to “stop tooth decay” because your dentists says so. The health of your teeth affects your life. But instead of going the “ouch my teeth hurt because I didn’t use XXX toothpaste”, we have a positive story that says “look how awesome my life is, and how I am nothing short of a hero, because I use XXX toothpaste”. And of course our hero & his wife are happy once again, thanks to our product!
  • The production values: excellent execution. But what did you expect from a certain god called Prasoon Pandey?
  • The soundtrack: I love this part. The old Noorjehan song works as the perfect backdrop for the dreamy-eyed love story we witness, and the phrase “mohabbat kare khush rahe muskuraye” works well for the category – love, be happy and smile.

While I was writing this, I was wondering who the agency was, and only one name was repeating in my mind: Ogilvy. I confirmed it, and it is Ogilvy India. Love them for bringing in a breath of fresh air in the (ironically) stale category of toothpaste advertising.

Categories
Photography

What's that round black thing on top of my camera?

(or Which mode, eh?)

It is a regular question that I keep coming across.

People buy cameras, and then ask me which mode to shoot on for getting beautiful pictures.

Generally you ask this when you buy a shiny new camera, and while playing with it, notice that there is a dial on top with some letters and fancy graphical icons, something like this.

Looks familiar? Read on.

So what do you do when you encounter this dial? Turn to the green icon called AUTO and start shooting.

But then you get a nagging feeling after a few days that there is more to the camera than the green icon called AUTO. And you wonder why all your pictures look as bright as each other, and how there are other people using same or similar cameras who sometimes take nice low-key drama-type pictures, and then with the same camera also click bright sunny candids of their kids & dogs. There must be something to the mysterious icons and the even more mysterious letters on that dial, right?

There is.

The Samurai Sword

That dial is your key to complete control over the machine you hold. Complete power. And this complete power is like the power a katana sword yields you, rather than what say Harry Potter’s magic wand will give you. Yes that’s right. It’s not supposed to (and it can’t) magically find the “correct settings” for “drama” when you are in a cave, and then set the camera back to “cheerful” when it sees a puppy running by. Even the so-called “creative modes” are nothing but ‘average seeking’ modes just like the AUTO mode but with a few minor tweaks here and there. How do you harness this complete power then? By understanding it fully. How? Read further.

There are around 10-11 settings on an average on any of these dials. The main ones (as you can see in the picture above: D90) are P, S, A, M, Auto, No flash, Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Sport and Night Portrait. Some cameras also have modes like playback and video record. In Canon cameras the S and A modes are labelled Tv and Av.

At the heart of it, there are only three input camera variables (and one output variable) that define the picture you see (apart from the ever-so-popular focal length, which is purely a function of the lens and sensor size). These are 1. aperture, 2. shutter speed and 3. ISO speed. These dial modes give you control over, or combination of these three to help you get the picture you want.

The Fancy Modes

Auto is pretty obvious, innit? Set to auto, and press the shutter. Your uber-expensive SLR or bridge camera functions just like the tiny pocket point & shoots – it decides for you what settings to use, depending upon what it sees, and every scene is cut down to or bumped up to the same brightness levels.

No Flash is nothing but Auto with a flash override. Which means that even if Mr. Camera thinks the scene ahead is too bleak for handheld photography, he would not pop up the annoying flash to fill it up.

Creative? Really?

hide & seekPortrait tries to keep the lens aperture as wide open as it can, so that you get nice shallow depth and blurred background, accentuating the subject.

Landscape does just the opposite so that more of the scene is in focus. In addition it might activate a nice 3×3 grid on the viewfinder/screen which lets you compose landscapes using the rule of thirds.

Macro is not really macro. It is a nice little fancy thing to give the impression of macro capability to those who do not know that macro capability is exclusively a function of the lens and its distance from the sensor.

Sport mode tries to keep the shutter speed fast so you can freeze motion.

Night Portrait pumps up ISO so that you can take decent pictures at night without aid of artificial light (read flash).

The Real Modes

Enough about the so called “creative modes”. On to the real modes.

P is for programme. The camera has 4-5 programmed settings of aperture-shutter speed pairs, which you can cycle through using the dial on your camera. the expresswaySupposedly helps you when you need to switch between different types of settings for different types of pictures. In my opinion, it is a glorified Auto mode, giving you the impression that selection is the same thing as control.

S (or Tv) is for shutter priority. It lets you select the shutter speed, while the camera adjusts the aperture so that the combination gives you the exposure value that you have selected. Useful when your first concern is how long your exposure should be, eg. while trying to click sports or raindrops (fast shutter), or while clicking star trails or blurred motion (slow shutter).

A (or Av) is aperture priority. It lets you control the aperture, or the amount of light reaching your sensor/film per second, and adjusts the shutter speed to get the desired amount of exposure. You would use it to control your depth of field and amount of blurriness or bokeh in the background (or sometimes in the foreground).

Dial M for Magnificent

Finally the holy grail of photography. The mode that purists and puritans swear by. The one & only M mode! The simplest way to show amateurs tomtomming their super-long lenses around you on a trip that you are a god is to keep your dial at M at all times. In photography one-up world, you dial M for Magnificent.

So what does it do? It doesn’t do so much as it lets you do. You have full control over the shutter speed and aperture both, so you can get a picture of your puppy with shallow depth of field and nice creamy background, and also a low-down picture of the road where almost everything is in focus but the mood is dark and gloomy. You just need to know what you are doing. Or click 5 shots per picture you want. Or look at the exposure meter before clicking.

But

Well, it’s not entirely correct that M is the mode that lets you control everything. The S and A modes also let you control it, albeit in a different way. Remember I was talking about a desired exposure value? It’s not something the camera imposes on you. You get to set it! So when you are in A mode, and you want a very bright overblown picture, you set the exposure value higher than 0, so that the camera does not increase the shutter speed too much when you open up the aperture. You just press the exposure compensation button, which carries this symbol([Exposure compensation button]), and turn the main dial on your camera to adjust how bright you want your frame to be. So by letting you control the desired output variable, the A and S modes let you be in control.

All that is fine, but which one do you use?

Mr. Cat AgainIt depends. Majorly on which lens I am using. If I am using my current favourite, the AI-S 105mm f2.5, or I have any of my lenses mounted on the extension tube, I am restricted to M. Which is not so bad after so much practice. But if I am using any of the other lenses, I switch to A and dial down the exposure compensation by one-third for daytime or by four-third for nighttime. Heck, even for specific long shutter applications like traffic trails, I just dial up the exposure compensation to around one-third above, make the aperture really small, like around f/9, and click with the help of a tripod.

Bottom line is, if you know what you want, you can do wonders with any of the three modes (M, A, S, maybe even P).

Next up: what the [bleep] is ISO?

Categories
Photography

Incredible !ndia

Dear Editor,
The sweat was dripping down my face and into my lap, making my clothes very wet and sticky. I sat there, walking, watching. I was trembling violently as I sat, looking at the small slot, waiting – ever waiting…

Thus begins Douglas Adams‘ first known published work.

Well, here’s my first published (with credits) work:

Incredible !ndia is a publication of The Ministry of Tourism, Government of India. Nice magazine with good articles and (ahemm) photographs :-), but it’s a pity it can’t be found on newsstands. If you still want to check out a copy you’ll have to go to a MOT office.

Here’s the original photograph on Flickr:
the ride

Categories
Pune Food

Doodh!!!

Know what this is?

a kadaahi full of milk

Yes sir, this is a hot steaming kadaahi full of milk. Sweet, thick and mixed with tasty nuts & saffron (kesar), it reminds me of the good ol’ days in Indore, when a glass full of such milk was a delicacy we used to enjoy in the neighbouring market after dinner.

Where do you get this? In the chaat/food court at the ground floor of the Ozone supermarket building (next to the Pizza Hut/Crossword building) in Aundh.

How much? A big paper cup for Rs. 15.