It has been a year since my favorite person left us
It has been a year since.....
This is one of the most well made car commercials I have seen in recent times. I love the way it is attacking all the marquee and established manufacturers at the same time. This ad is made for the US market where Audi appears to be the underdog; and everyone loves the underdog.
Audi is trying to position itself as the rebel which offers all the choices that their competitors are offering under one brand and without the stereotype. It basically is telling people that you are doing nothing but conforming to stereotypes if you drive the other cars; and this would reflect directly in the statement you are trying to make about yourself. As I said in my last post, it is all about making a statement.
This commercial is an excellent example of how one can throw an open challenge to the established players in a cluttered market and try to change the thinking of the consumers to force them to choose your brand.
Finally, I love the way the R8 pulls up in the street for the kid to drool at. I just wish it was not silver! ;)
Indians got the first taste of this experience in a big way in 1983 when the Maruti-800 was launched.
Series #1;Vol #1
Zuk and his pal Zak are sitting on a branch of a tree and chatting.
Zuk: “Once an egg.. always an egg... well not literally.. because an egg was once a zygote and, if lucky, would once be chicken, and if more lucky, would be egg-curry!!
My point is that people seldom change.. or atleast we tend to think so. I don’t remember the last time I changed my first impression about someone. The irony here is that there can only be one first impression while it is the most lasting one!!”
Zak: And there goes a flop one!! When would you learn to make funny jokes?
Zuk: I am trying to draw a hypothesis here…
Zak: Oh well.. I still remember your last one on boys and their temptation to all harmful things..
Zuk: Yeah mate.. I was damn sure right.. boys seem to get most tempted to things that harm them like smoke, alcohol, rash driving, physical fights, etc
Zak: Bang on man! That explains why they are most tempted to girls !! :P
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About the author: Sana Khan is an MBA (Finance) student at SIMSR and a dear friend. A thorough professional and intellectual person, her style of writing is absolutely entertaining. This post is a part of a series that she has planned for the character Zuk. You can read more about it here.
This is the Google ad which was screened during the 2010 Super Bowl. To the uninitiated, Super Bowl has long been the event that everyone looks forward to not only for the 'Football' but also for the awesome commercials showcased during the quarter breaks.
Some of the best and most extravagant commercials have been launched during the Super Bowl. I really like this one by Google.
What do you think? Do they need to spend so much (the most expensive ad slots in the world) to advertise their search engine?
A time comes in every man’s life when he is forced to do things that he would rather not do; he is pushed to foray into the territories where he would rather not go to. This force, as found out by a very popular survey conducted, 99% of the times happen to be a woman. Yes, the other kind, the type of human being with TWO X-chromosomes to be more precise.
Well to come back to the applicable topic, I was recently influenced by such force, to be more exact – my mom (love you mom), to get a…well…a facial done, the reason being a wedding in the family. Having agreed to her, I embarked upon this quest of getting my face cleaned up by someone else. Throughout my journey upto the saloon, which is a very long and exhausting 2 minutes, my mind was still contemplating this decision. When I finally reached there, I decided to get a haircut to start with, which would give me enough time to think it over. This as it turned out was not a very good idea. People generally talk about this little voice they have inside them, the voice that tells them what is right and what is wrong. Well, I did find that little voice, and millions of others that live with it. If I deduce, that one little voice belongs to a little person, then I am pretty sure that I have a whole country of these little people inside me. They also surely will give India a run for its money to become the largest democracy; and boy do they practice their democracy. They made sure that each and every one of them was heard and for the first time I didn’t hear the snip of the scissor going through my hair. They debated right from the facial being expensive to the risk of one of my friends walking in on me. But the majority thought that I should go through it, and hence by way of voting, I decided to do it.
Then it started, my man, the barber, started off by first applying something on my face and thoroughly rubbing it in, making sure that every inch of my skin was covered with it. For some reason, he had taken a liking to my nose and preferred giving it the maximum attention and rubbing it like it was no one’s business. He kept doing it as if he was extracting some heavenly pleasure out of it. He then left me for a few minutes and came back with something new and slapped it onto my face and the rubbing resumed, there goes my nose again. Though by this time I had got used to the cold in the air conditioned place, he kept applying things that were getting colder and more difficult to bear, sending my skin into shock every time.
Then I guess it was time to bring out the big guns, and out came some thing that actually looked like a gun. I for a second thought I had mistaken a dentist for a barber and was ready to bail out. He plugged it in and thrusted it onto my face. Again maximum attention was given to the nose, which was sure to be the shiniest part of my face at the end of this ordeal. After this gun got done with, out came a machine which was breathing out steam from it. And boy was it hot. Fifteen minutes of steaming later, I was wondering if I had been mislead by my country of little people, when suddenly on my face came a towel which was wet and so cold, it felt like it was on fire. One thing for sure, if my skin can withstand such drastic variations in temperature, it can go through anything. Off came the towel and a minute later, when I thought it was finally over, the man comes in with a brush and starts painting my face with something as I later found out is called a mask. After this I was left by myself to literally dry out and mull over life’s irony. How can we trust a stranger with our hair and our face….HOW? Talking of ironies, while I was left to dry, my man switched on the TV, and was watching a movie with our old friend Jackie Shroff in it. And the irony here, if you are wondering was, Mr. Shroff was trying to get a plastic surgery for himself in the movie. Though I certainly was not getting a surgery done, I surely was expecting a result which was comparable to the same. After drying me, and my skin feeling as if it was being pulled from different directions by the same little people, the man comes in and starts spraying water onto my face, which sent a sizeable amount of jolt through my skin. Then I suddenly heard the sound of ice being taken from an ice tray, and to my worst fears, the man comes in with an ice cube and rubs it onto my face. This sealed the argument, making me want to bomb the country of little people inside me.
Finally, to finish it off, as per trend, the man goes ahead and applies something that burns the tissue out of my skin, making sure that I am not doing this again and making me want to bomb the country again. The question that you would now be asking is, was all this punishment worth it. Am I more pleasing to the eyes of the onlooker? Well I guess the only way to find out is by risking using your own eyes. Till then CYA and take care.