Sunday, June 22, 2008

hutch and vodafone..

This is somethig thats really been troubling me. Having spent so many years in the advertising business this incident is really been a eye opener. Like a true blue adman, "brand" to me, is sacrosanct. But funny things happen! I've kind of thrown out all the manuals and flushed the brand gibberrish bouncing around in my head. Hutch and Vodafone! Hutch, as we all know, was one of the premier cell service brands in the country. The brand had carefully been nurtured over the years. Surprisingly, Hutch did not rely to much on any bollywood or a cricket personality. One of it smost endearing campaigns was a magnificent tune and an even more compelling ambassador - a pug! Beautifully done and exceedingly well executed the campaign was a classic and was the topic of conversation in most urban tete-a-tete's. Positioning, minds space ownership, brand retention and value had all been achieved - text book style! All this of course with the help of really fat cheques to the creative and the media buying agency.

Then look what happens! A much talked about take over, thousands of reams of paper and tons of pixels on TV later, and of course a few billion dollars exchanging hands, Hutch becomes Voddafone! Pug included!! And what happens to the Hutch brand... it makes one of the smoothest change overs to the Vodafone banner! So? What does that tell us about branding. If LG bought Onida, would they use the Devil? If Nirma and Surf got merged, would the new management revive Lataji? Is any space anywhere in branding sacrosant anymore? Dont look like it from where i am!

Saturday, June 7, 2008

the morphing of world sports...

The 2020 saga has been flogged to death by all and sundry. I say this with trepidation and my mates at work will know exactly what i am talking about!!! (wink, wink!)

Nevertheless, just another angle to the circus which i havent read about yet. Why havent other popular sports morphed? Why not a football match of 20 minutes? Or maybe baseball with only two bases? Hockey, rugby, basketball have all retained their original format. SOme may have experimented with formats but no other game has three world champions. Cricket qualifies and how! Australia for Test cricket and One dayers and of course India for the 2020 series.

Imagine playing tennis with smaller courts and having world championships in that too. Hell, why not a separate grand slam series. Who knows we might just get a winner from India there what with all the jostling for space that we do here all the time. Would Federer and Nadal be champions still? WHo knows. Maybe Leader Paes could find it to be his true calling and finally make his mark in singles tennis.

Imagine the Brazilians playing 20 minutes of football at the World Cup. Actually, there may be some merit in this as it might lead to more goals being scored. Something like the ever rising run rate in cricket attributed to the shorter version of the game. Surely, the Europeans and the Latin Americans would take to this format. In fact, it might just throw up some new stars as well. Dont forget Gony, Asnodkar and Yusuf Pathan!!

What about baseball? Why the agony of nine innings? For new generation purists like us, what with the exposure to 2020 cricket, nine innings are eight too many! Why not one innings! But what the hell, the US dont have a BCCI. And they dont have Pawar and Modi!

And i am sure that the shorter version of hockey will be just what the doctor ordered for the beleagured Indian Hockey Federation. 10 minutes a half. We can do away with all the stamina training and concentrate on what we are known for worldwide - skill! Then we can get back to our winning ways again. And to hell with Gill and gang.

Actually, we should scale this to the next level and ask SRK and Preity to buy some other sports team. Maybe they could work some magic with Mohan Bagan if the players have to play only 20 minutes. It might just be possible that we have a parallel league in India to rival the European one. Thats a challenge for the mighty Khan!

Hmmm... all this gives me more ideas. More next time.