About matchboxes, copywriting and bromides…

Things change. It’s the law of nature.  These days Bromides and spray cans have no place in advertising agencies. Copywriting is impossible without computers and internet. Jpegs killed the Styrofoam presentation sheet “Hero”.

Not only at work. Everything has changed in life too.

My table salt is iodized now. Washing powder is granulated and tooth paste has Sinclova 5. FM radio has RDS, earphones are powered with cobalt coils and the hand sanitizer disinfects without drying my skin with its 70% ethyl alcohol and 30% moisturizer mixture.

But there is one exception…
Still my matchbox retains its pretty old self, a small stick with some ignitable powder on its side. Dependable and good to the last…well 🙂

School teachers just don’t grow old.

 

School teachers just don’t grow old!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

School teachers just don’t grow old. They are frozen in time with all their dignity. When you meet them accidentally after a long long time, you realize how old you’ve become but how young they remain. Once ferocious they seemed, now look so mellow and loving. When you part ways after a brief “hello sir,” a vestige of good times linger. Only teachers can claim this!

Goliath vs. David: what an advertising agency can learn from the story to survive recession.

Recession is an eye opener for many advertising agencies around the world in  numerous ways. The vanishing ad revenues from real estate giants itself can be very fatal to a large number of agencies. These realty bigwigs need their creatives to be “cooked” in  record time, so many agencies are compelled to have a large creative group supporting them 24×7. Often an entire team is dedicated to a particular client and it makes perfect financial sense as money is not a problem-you charge double of what you normally charge to non realty clients and still get paid effortlessly.

A normal day is like this:

11.29am: The client servicing guy gets a phone call from the property marketing/brand manager for an urgent brochure. His job brief will be so small and skimpy that it can be rightly called a job bikini.

2.45pm: The jpegs are emailed to the marketing manger

3.00pm: image corrections from client

3.11pm: more image corrections from client

3.14pm: Arabic copy corrections from client

3.16pm: revert back to the original Arabic copy

3.31pm: new logo by mail. But it is very small and is a jpeg file

3.45pm: corrections in employee pictures as some of them are not working in the company but for the competitors.

4.01pm: change the brochure size. Mr. Deep Pocket does not like the current size

4.11pm: make the logo very big. Minimum font size should be 16pts.

4.20pm: make the logo a bit MORE bigger

4.30pm: brochure is approved but interchange TYPICAL LAYOUT PLAN 6 with TYPICAL LAYOUT PLAN 17

4.45pm: agency driver takes the artwork CD to the press.

Now is the time to put pressure on the press to print it on the same day and deliver it by the next day.

That is the way the story goes. Until recently…

“Goliath” agencies have one obvious disadvantage-their super size. It is like a nation with a huge army-very good to attack large countries, but a burden to maintain when there are no wars to fight. As revenues come down exponentially, even the multinational agencies cannot find a way to sustain their people.

Small “David” agencies have less number of people and small overheads. Their creative people are paid less (many times very less- pun intended) and overheads are low. One good client is enough to make the agency survive and keep going.

Know that even a 25% drop in revenue is fatal to a company if situations don’t improve in 4 months. And if the “Cash Cow” realty sector takes 2-3 years to revive, imagine how  crucial it will  be for the advertising agencies.

Somewhere, somebody will be fired for sure.

Al Qasba Food festival: it’s time to visit Sharjah

When Al Qasba was known as Qanat Al Qasba, before its repositioning, it was a secluded place where not many families visited. Even its existence was not that much known. As they drove past that big giant wheel while going to Rolla, people often wondered what sort of a place that it is. Even on Fridays its restaurants were almost vacant. I always wondered how they manage to pay salaries to these smiling faces.

Now time has changed. The new advertising campaign promoting the place “Al Qasba” as a family get together destination is showing results. This shift in positioning, balancing heritage and modernity is bringing people to the place. Al Qasba is slowly becoming a place families look forward to visit on weekends, and food festival acts as an event helping it ascertain this position.

For those who came in late, this is the festival activity schedule:

From 19th March to 28th March

Operating Hours
Weekdays    5.00pm to 12 midnight
Weekends    5.00pm to 1.00am

Cooking demonstration
Daily from 8.30pm to 9.15pm

Cooking competition
Daily from 9.30pm to 10.00pm

Cooking secrets and tips
Daily from 10.30pm

Seminars on healthy eating
21st of March, 25th of March, 20mins to 40mins duration

Ronald McDonald Show
19th and 20th March 5.00pm to 6.00pm

See it all to feel it all

Visitors are entertained by dancers and drum parades. Children will find it very exciting!

Various food items, all kinds of restaurants: Japanese, Indian, Thai, Lebanese, Arabian…

Come on, I cannot forget to mention the dancing fountain and the famous giant wheel. It’s great to see children play in these fountains…

Flower and plant display area: amazing flowers and plants at very good price. If you have a home/terrace/balcony garden, don’t miss this place.

Children/teenage fun area; Just look at the pictures to have a feel…

One good thing is that Al Qasba is near Sharjah Aquarium. So if you plan well, you can visit both the places in a single trip.

Copywriter: hey, are you surviving?

Copywriter : are you surviving?

The world (1): Dear copywriter, are you ok? (Felt like a soft voice asking into my ears)
Copywriter (2): Yes. Yes; and what makes you think differently?

(1) Come on, don’t act-you stupid. You are not a country to deny the effects of recession. We all know that advertising is hit hard by the economic downturn. Just look at the newspapers, how lean they have become! No single real estate ad for the last one month and you act as if nothing has happened. Tell us, do you have food to eat at least once in a day?

(2) You paparazzi, why are you after me? You media people only spread negativism and pessimism. In fact today morning I had a profusion of pocari sweat mixed with 20% ginger ale and 30% Horlicks. I was enjoying my life all through the last month. My BP is 155/75, weight 78.987 kilograms and walk is brisk.  See…I am jittery as a June bug!

(1) But don’t tell us that the fall in advertisements have no effects on you….
(Don’t you see that newspapers fill the vacant spaces with their own or associate advertisements?)

(2) Yes they have effects. I can easily carry the newspaper around as it is not that heavy now. Imagine the number of trees that are saved because we are printing less number of pages these days. And you sensationalists should know that online advertising is now growing exponentially. Big agencies – advertising agencies are affected, that is indeed a truth, but we all are not made redundant.

(1) But we the poor people, people in the main street are happy that your greed days are over…

(2) No…you people cannot write us off yet. We will still speak gibberish and act snobbish. We guys will dress up in low waist denim jeans and appear in formal occasions inappropriately dressed, often wearing worn out canvas shoes. Even if we die like this, our graves will be deep and wide enough to accommodate all these electronic gadgets and style accessories. We won’t die lonely.

Recession is nothing.
Advertising rules
(These two sentences are with echo, like speaking loud inside a church-to fade out)

With this I woke up to the realities of the world and advertising. It is 7.33 am. Another day; who will bite the dust today?

Know it from a content writer: strategies and advertising agencies in the time of recession and financial crisis

Markets are not improving as we thought. So, we advertising guys (content writer and other unimportant creative guys) have gathered again to decide on output cuts once again as recession deepened. The prevailing pessimistic mood directly hit Dow Jones Industrial Average and Worldwide Index of Creativity & Effective Deception (WICKED in short) and both indices were pulled down by heavyweight advertising agencies dumping the market with stupid creatives.

We were all saddened by the international barrel rate for stupidity. The rate as of today is $ 34 per barrel. We, advertising agencies were enjoying a high price for our stupidity for the last 5 years as world was blind with real estate growth and was busy making money. (As ad guys, we know that money makes people blind, not love). Now as we have lost almost 75% of our 2008 (Q1) price, we, stupid gurus are all very much worried.

“We cannot sustain this low price for stupidity for a long time”, quotes a creative director as he jumped out of the window to escape the huge loan payments due on his recently bought Maserati Quattroporte. “We have to consistently invest on fake creativity, otherwise when the world is selfish again and comes back to make more money there will be a shortage of stupidity and all the real estate companies will suffer then”, people heard him holler as he went down 9.8 meters per second square.

“See, you don’t really get it. If real estate companies and financial institutions don’t exist, for whom will we say big fat lies?”, a copywriter who sat next to me whispered into my ears. “Which other industry will ask us to release full page color newspaper advertisements all through the months and yet is satisfied with our substandard work? When they became rich we became rich riding on their shoulders. We were dumping the markets with real estate related promotional paraphernalia then. Actually, we were reusing & recycling creatives and nobody knew.”

So what all we can do to keep WICKED and Donjons up?

We will cut our stupidity output to 23 MMbpd worldwide. This is almost 53% low compared to our last year stupidity output.

We will ask governments to bail out stupidity as it is the only characteristic that makes us human. (For this reason you can always find a stupid person but never a stupid animal)

We will introduce Creativity Default Swaps (CDS) and trade it against hedge funds.

We can overcome limited liquidity of stupidity by making more stupid creatives that will make more asses. As a choice, those who are already an ass can either be a jack ass or a dump ass.

Disc Jockeys and what an advertising agency guy or copywriter can learn from them

When I go to hotel parties  I love to watch their DJs. I have learnt much about advertising, particularly about brand positioning by observing them. Like doctors, lawyers and politicians, jockeys think of themselves as special people. They think they are so unique that even a guy flying stealth might be scorned by them. They have acquired mannerisms and styles to make them and others feel like they are DJs. Like a well positioned brand in advertising, they position themselves to fit our perception very well.

Let us study these guys from an advertising professional’s perspective. Let us see what makes them a Disc Jockey or a DJ anywhere else.

Name:

Your name should be something like DJ Nasha, DJ Sasha, DJ Doom, DJ Storm, DJ Ankit, DJ Acid, DJ Black Widow, DJ Orangutan etc. There will be no jockeys with names like DJ Mathew Kurian, DJ Subash S. Nair, DJ Thomas Joseph etc. If your parents have given you a normal name change that to something like I have mentioned above.

Hair Cut:

You can be bald, with sparse hair or very long hair. Bleached hair and hair locks are also largely accepted. Normal haircuts are big NO-NOs. The thumb rule is not to look like a guy whose mother has combed his hair.

Facial hair:

French beards, Goatees (like that of James Hetfield from the heavy metal band Metallica) are in.

Facial Expression:

Always look like a guy who hates humanity. Wear this expression even while you go for a pee. Never never smile at people and always be as unfriendly as possible. Remember that Un-cool is Cool.

Dressing:

You should be the missing link between a funky teenager and a 70yr old guy. They key is to shock people, either by simplicity or extravagance. Wear black. Wear chains around your neck. Have innumerable bracelets on both hands. Your fingers should adorn at least 20 junk metal rings.

Many people might say that I am stereotyping, indeed I am. As social beings we have a studied notion about what all things are or what all things should be. It has lot to do with our cultural background and exposure. In other words we cannot accept a DJ with a normal hair cut or a normal name. It is our perception about him that makes him a DJ. His success lies in tuning his position according to our perception.

Advertising agencies know these secrets. All they do is that they manipulate reality (not so that it becomes a lie) in such a way that people will perceive products as marketers want them to be perceived. But it can be said for sure that many successful brands became successful only because they found fresh positioning-that is not following a cliché route. Many times, this fresh route of differentiation consumes much resources and time. So a normal looking, 3 piece suit wearing DJ is possible, but it takes a while for people to accept the idea. But if it is well done, it’s worth all the effort.

So NORMALLY, as a rule,

Glue bottles will be blue,

Girls’ accessories will be in pink,

SLR cameras won’t be manufactured in white color, and

DJs will always look and act crazy.

Next time you see a DJ, know that it is not his fault that he acts strange. We people want him this way and he just acts and fits in for survival.

Financial crisis, advertising agencies and copywriters

Real estate crisis and copywriter

It’s good news at last for copywriters and creative people. We advertising guys  are going to inherit the world when sub-prime mortgage crisis, PUT-CALL future options, real estate bubbles and bank runs make the newspaper headlines. Copywriters, Graphic designers and art directors from advertising agencies in Moscow, Trinidad, Dubai, Sharjah, Lower Manhattan, Uzbekistan, Minnesota, Calcutta, Kerala and Algeria will benefit from this global financial real estate meltdown. This is how we are going to do it. This strategy has been discussed and finalized in a big 7 star hotel located at Eldorado by Copywriters & Ad Guys Inc. (registered in Cayman Island, Reg. No: 0909878976/NB/435/12). Creative guys  secretly discussed this with all their financial wisdom and IQs above 134.9 to decide on three strategies.

1.    We have decided to trade all our skills as real estate copywriters and brochure designers to raise 7689 credit default swaps (CDS). As a regulatory measure to guard against excessive risk-taking in the financial system we will thereby sub-prime all our assets in the main financial markets. This will indeed followed by three regulatory marathon races by amateur orangutans aged more than 53 yrs to have sufficient assets to meet our contractual obligations, through reserve requirements, capital requirements, and other limits on leverage. Possible Financial contagion effects will be nullified by introducing 29 new advertising agencies issuing IPOs throughout the coming year.

2.    As Bank Runs (BRs) can be avoided by cash injection, the possible cash crunch in the market is coordinated with excess liquidity. All copywriters registered with Copywriters & Ad Guys Inc. will persuade printing presses around the world to print Hedge-Bonds in 6 colors (Alizarin Crimson as the special color to induce liquidity leverage). This will reduce recession by quarter 3(Q3) and bring the asset-liability mismatch to alarming rates, enabling trans border wealth creation. All financial instruments will be proportionately linked with EXIM policies and directly pegged with dollar(USD).

3.    Stock Markets around the world will be induced into a PUSH strategy by PULL strategies. But if the market adopts PULL strategy first (due to Butterfly effect) they will be induced by PUSH strategies.

We creative guys are going to save the world. We are going to give back the real estate its lost glory. We copywriters and graphic designers are going to bring liquidity into the world. “Ha! you Mr. Liquidity, you can’t escape our clutches. We may not have the brain power of those Wall Street guys or the cunning nature of those four piece suit real estate guys. But here we come, BEWARE!”

Sharjah Aquarium, Sharjah, near Al Qasba, UAE

My friends in Dubai are asking me about this new aquarium in Sharjah. All of them want to know more about this place so that they can make a perfect Friday family outing. I was there last week and this is all I have to say about the aquarium…

How to get there:

From Dubai first come to Al Tauwn Mall roundabout. When you are in the roundabout just keep on driving towards Sharjah/Al Qasba and you will reach another roundabout-the Al Qasba roundabout. Take left and drive straight and jump two other roundabouts. From the last roundabout just drive straight and in seconds you can see Sharjah Aquarium.

Sharjah Aquarium

Sharjah Aquarium

 

Lot of parking space

Kids will love it

So far, the place is neat and fresh

A place to take photographs [they won’t allow you to use flash for obvious reasons]

Only 20Dhs per adult [Other family friendly ticket rates are available]

 

City, it’s you.

 

City, it is you!

Come on, tell me. Do you get enough time to spend with your wife/ husband? How early do you wake up to reach your office on time? And how rarely you reach back on time? How hard it is for you when radio jockeys eat your brains out on every single car journey you make? How much time you waste in traffic waiting to pick your children from babysitting? Can you afford to keep a house maid now? When you are frustrated waiting for a taxi, how do you cry out? Do you people still pray together?

Tell me. Is your child studying satisfactorily? Does he/she know something better than the names of cars and four wheel drives? Are you reading your toddler some stories or you just stuff him with fried chicken and sausage? Are you worried that your 5 year old talks like an adult rather than a child and your girl child is growing faster than she should ever be?

How deep is your credit card debt? When your car’s rear tyre needs to be replaced next month, will you have that extra 550 bucks to pay? Do you have any plans for surviving your next rent renewal?

Don’t feel shame, tell me. You really hope to save on your AC bills as the winter comes, right?

Be frank! Does your family back home know how hard it is for you to meet both ends? Are you sending something back home every month? Do you have anything saved up to make your trip back home on next vacation? Can you do anything about the rising living expenses? Are you calling home at least on Fridays? Can you be a help to your ageing parents when time is ripe? [Or will they die not seeing your face?].

When was the last time you smiled at your partner? And when was the last time he/she smiled at you? How bad you miss your friends? Do you envy your better off friends when you see their smiling pictures in face book, Hi5 or Orkut?

When was the last time, someone asked you, “Are you ok”?

Dear friend, tell me, are you ok?