Absolut Fun!

What does a marketer do if it wants to sell a product that:
1) has no odour, taste or colour by itself
2) is just another product in an already crowded market
3) whose country of origin has no credibility in the making of this product, and
4) has to build the entire business from scratch

Would you believe if I told you,
that this brand is the largest selling imported brand in the US in its category?
Or that it sells at a premium much higher than other brands in the market?
Or that its bottles have become collectibles over the years?
Or that it still runs that same advertisements that marked its launch almost 3 decades ago?

That is the fascinating story of Absolut Vodka, a name that was invented just 3 decades ago, but claims to continue a tradition that's centuries old.

The book 'Absolut, Biography of a Bottle' written by Carl Hamilton presents a wonderful account of how the business and advertising of Absolut started.

The writing style too is commendable - one that makes the reader think he is tracing a scandal of sorts right from its origin to its launch and success in the United States. Throughout Carl demonstrates the power of advertising in building a brand, and the apparent disrespect the advertising world has to ethics. Overall a fun read, though.

The essence of the advertising campaign behind Absolut Vodka can be summed up in this paragraph taken from the book.

In Germany, several brands had been beaten into extinction when Allied bombers blew the factories to rubble in World War II, halting production for several years. After the war, they rose like a flock of Phoenixes from the ashes, and qucikly regained their previous market shares. Brand names had an iron grip on the people. This was a problem for new products, like instant coffee and frozen food. Simply put, they had no history. Such products were as scary as a person with no past. The only solution, Dichter said, was to invent a past.

Twenty-20 Foresight

As every other inactive Indian blogger, this moment would serve as an opportunity to get over the blogger's block, and I too, am making the best of this opportunity.

However, this post would be different (I hope) from the countless other posts that might get into the nitty-gritties of the Twenty20 tournament, the Final match tonight or Indian team's performance, or probably even how each team performed throughout the series.

This post is rather about my thoughts as a bystander to this exciting event.

Similar to what happened when the One Day International format was introduced, this format too faced the initial criticism from the purists. But at the end, as many articles and blogs have said, everybody is happy with this format. And almost everybody's sure that this would add to, and not replace, the other formats.

In hindsight, the reasons for these seem quite obvious. We were trying to measure the advantages and disadvantages of the Twenty20 format with our understanding and experience of the ODI and Test Match formats. The reactions, hence, were:
- It would be crunching it too much for it to remain interesting
- It would simply become a slog-fest, and the resultant runs would be so much, it would be very frustrating for the bowlers.

Overall, while some of the disadvantages are true, the format has its advantages too:
- It is long enough to keep things exciting, but short enough to hold everyone interested throughout the match.
- While compared to the other formats, the batsmen's strike rates would be higher and bowlers economy rates would be lower, the T20 records would simply get their own life, just the way ODI scores are no more compared to Test scores.
- As more of this format is played, the strategising would evolve and we would have similar analyses and planning in the matches and series, the way we currently have going in the Test and ODI.

But my gut feel is that the game would still be plagued by the current vices. There is enough money and not enough emotions riding International cricket (when compared to Football) to boot out the bookies.

I can only hope that the game comes out clean soon.

Mobile Manners

I haven't travelled outside India, or even to a lot of places outside Mumbai. So I can't really give a perspective on this opinion. But being within a small place in this big world, I have come to realise that the human race has got a lot of things it doesn't really deserve.

One of them is the mobile phone.

Imagine this. You are going in a local train trying to reach your office on time. The train is packed like crazy and the air is hot and humid. You have probably been through two quarrels already from your way to this place in the train. You are trying to relax a bit.

And then rings loudly the phone of the person standing next to you. He answers it and then for some reason, starts talking as if he is living in the distant past when trunk calls were hard to hear. A minute into the talk, everyone in the coach knows what the conversation is about.

Now imagine this happening almost every alternate day in your real life.


Life does not stop there. If you are thinking it is only the people travelling in local trains who do this, galat jawaab! These incidents happen at all levels across social gatherings, be it office meetings, or people sitting on the dias, or people in the cinema hall. And I am sure I am not the minority when it comes to being on the receiving side of such incidences. Mobiles have become one of the biggest sources of rude behaviour in public.

Some time back, Hutch had started an ad campaign on mobile manners.
My opinion - PLEASE RESTART!!! We desparately need some teaching!!!