Ad(d) value

The little sweet doggy is back with a little girl this time. During the debut match of IPL, the thing I enjoyed the most after Mccullum's innings was the series of Vodafone ads.

The little dog wetting the tickets for envelopes by licking them was an awesome sight. The interesting part is that Vodafone doesn't come into the picture anywhere until you are completely held by the double innocence of the girl and the doggy.

And then, they simply write their message in big letters, such that it reaches every single heart.

I mean, when you watch it for the first time, it sure does.

Even before this, Vodafone has made beautiful ads for their alerts' services, the best one being for the art of living alerts.

Of course, nobody has forgot the 'Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai' ad where a guy sings one song through out his life and at the end you get an almost statutory warning telling you 'Zyada gaane sunen' (listen to more songs).

I just hope they keep on making such ads, which not only add to their customers, but also make the entire experience of watching TV great.

Just a Coincidence?

A few days ago I saw an article titled 'Identity Redefined' with a tagline going as 'Re-branding seems to be the new mantra for telcos to make their presence felt'. It was the latest, November 2007 issue of a magazine called 'Voice and Data' from the CIOL group. I was interested seeing an article on a subject I have also written on.

I had written my article 'Changing Colors of Mobile Telephony' on almost the same subject in September this year. So interested, I took up the magazine and started reading. But there was something more in store for me. As i saw the picture they had used, can't tell whether I was surprised or shocked. The picture they had used was exactly the same as the one I had used in my article, in which the Hutch dog asks, 'Will they paint me red?'.

Think it should be a coincidence, but no big deal if somebody is inspired by my blog to write the article. In that case I should be happy that people are reading, but I was simultaneously sad that there are people who are paying so much to read the same thing I have provided here. (The magazine costs Rs 50 per issue and you can't even read the article online until you're a registered member)

Anyways, all I can do for now is wonder if the similarity of article and picture are a result of some guy copying from the net or is just a coincidence?

Harshit.

Changing colors of mobile telephony

Indian mobile telephony, though it has been there for a longer time of course, came to a real existence with the advent of Reliance India Mobile, A dream of Mukesh Ambani, something that brought the very concept of cellphone for every person, a company that gave away cellphones for as low as 500 bucks, and is still providing people with cellphones at the lowest rates. Though, the name of the company is different now, the owner has changed, and so is the color.
if you remember, there used to be a number of small companies in the early 2000s most of which had started during '96 to '98. Namely, Escotel, BPL, Oasis, Spice, Orange, Essar, Aircel, Hutch, even Airtel. But then times changed and BSNL and then Reliance came up with services, threatening small companies to an extent and thus came the era of M&A, that is, Merger and Acquisitions in the mobile telephony, and the colors really started changing. With this new era, a race started off, prices fell, fundas like airtime came to an end forever, and the number of users grew exponentially. From thousands to lacs and finally, to crores. In this game of M&A, Airtel turned out as the largest company, crossing Reliance and BSNL both. In the race of getting the top position, Airtel bought Oasis (Rajasthan), Aircel bought RPG cellular (Tamilnadu), though it is itself a small entity, and Hutch made a pact with Essar. The light colored Escotel was bought by the relatively new Idea cellular and changed to a beautiful light blue. Whereas the orange Orange and orange Hutch changed into a green background pink when an egyptian partner came in. The Hexacom's Oasis, active in Rajasthan, turned from a light blue (as long as I remember), turned a Vibrant red when Airtel bought it. Last year, the blue circle BPL also changed into Hutch. But one of the major changes was brought by the split between Ambani brothers when the dull looking Blue-green RIM was converted to a Vibrant red-Sky blue logo of ADAG with two big A's in the centre.

And now, the Hutch puppy that followed us for so long, has been given a new shining bright red home by Arun Sarin's Vodafone, changing the ages old logo of India's big brother company, Hutch, to a new Red comma, seen majorly on the England Cricket team's t-shirts till date.
Anyways, happy new home, dear puppy!