WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEPSI'S ADVERTISING

I love ads. Creative, well made ads are a treat and are very enjoyable. It is when the ads are stupid, and you are forced watch them in between every over, it makes you start hating the damn product/company.

Remember Pepsi's ads during the 1996 cricket world cup. The whole "nothing official about it" theme, the "More cricket, more Pepsi" theme in retaliation to Coke's "Eat cricket, sleep cricket, drink only Coco-Cola" ads. The rivalry between coke and Pepsi ads on the national and the global scene was legendary. Remember the kite flying between Sachin and Amitabh in the Pepsi ads.

Those ads very nice.

Pepsi always had a good campaign, unlike Hero Honda who I think has the worst ad campaign ever. I hate Hero Honda's ads so much that now I has even affected my liking for the company.

In justification to my hatred for Hero Honda, please please watch this ad.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpX7f-afqHw .....This one of the worst ads I have ever seen.

Back to Pepsi, Pepsi roped in Ranbhir, and coke roped in Imran. Both are young upcoming actors. Both the ads are wired during the IPL matches. I like the Imran ad where he is in a bus drinking coke from an invisible bottle. Not an awesome ad but I like it.

But the Pepsi ad, where some weird dude in a weirder voice says "Drink Pepsi now" and Ranbhir says yes and drinks it. Then there is some seriously irritating background music which goes like "Naa naa na na na Youngisthan ka Wow" with an even more irritating Ranbhir displaying a stupid toothy smile.

I used to like Ranbhir before the ad, now I find him irritating. And personally, the ad spoils my IPL.

This is my list of the most Pissing off ads during this IPL

• The Akshaye Kumar's stupid laughing Videocon mobile ad.
• The Havell's ad where people look up to pray and then there is a stupid fan which wont let you down.
• The Spice ad where the kids say in classroom talking about some bua in UK - How is it even related to Spice.
• The "Youngisthan ka Wow" Pepsi ad.
• The JK cement ad where a girl in a bikini walks out of the water and they say JK cement. (this ad is not aired much during IPL but it had to be on this list)
• All the Hero Honda ads......EVER.

The ads which I like are

• The coke ad with Imran.
• The Docomo ads are nice.
• The Airtel ads with Sharman Joshi.
• The Sprite ads...all of them.
• The Nokia-KKR become a coach ad
• And the best of them all- for the creativity,for how well it is made, and for creating that anticipation for the ads among the viewers- THE HUTCH ZOZO CAMPAIGN.

So Pepsi please change your ad, Hero Honda.. PLEASE STOP ADVERTISING

MAJGE.......priceless

I remember last year around feb, I was working at Rida, no job security, things were going baad, was financially in an unenviable situation. Things were not going good on several fronts, pressure from home about why TCS hadn't called yet. I used to go the Sri Vinayaka Bakery and drink majge - it used to cost rs 4 then. There were several occasions when I did not have cash to pay for my majge. I had an account there, so I used to tell aunty "Ivaga dudd illa..naale".

Things changed. I left Bangalore, went to Trivandrum, then Hyderabad. Whenever I came to Bangalore I made sure I visited that shop whenever I was passing that way. Aunty always remembered me and asked me how I was.

I got a transfer to Bangalore. My office is very close to Rida now. Today I was passing by that shop and I decided to stop for majge. From being totally broke, no security and depressed and low on confidence to being atleast a little financially stable, with job security, a happier and a more confident person....a lot has changed in one year. But sitting on the roadside and drinking the same magje was awesome..After drinking my majge I opened my wallet only to find a Rs500 note. So I had to tell aunty "Change illa aunty, next time".

It was like the master card add where everybody is fighting for the bill.

A majge at aunty's 5rs....saying "Ivagilla aunty naale kodthini"..PRICELES

my Resolutions for 2010

These are my resolutions for 2010. I am putting them up here and uploading the link on Facebook as I want to make it as public as possible. So if anybody sees me lax regarding these, you can point it out to me. If anybody catches me lax more than 3 times regarding any one of the resolutions below- a treat in corner house is awaiting.

So here goes

• I am going to exercise for an hour a minimum of 3 days a week.
• I am going to be more involved at home and spend more time wid my grandparents(this one is for you maa).
• I will get more organized and disciplined and keep up my time.( this is for you paa).
• I personally feel I can talk better, so I am going to work on that.
• I am going to read a minimum of 3 books a month.
• There will be a minimum of 2 posts per week on my blog.
• Improve mind control.
• Will work on being in a calmer state of mind.
• Take better care of my health, so no more chocolates at adda :(
• I will save up atleast 50% of my salary(again this one is for my dad).
• I WILL CONTINUE TO REMAIN AWESOME ;)

Constraint:Points can be added on to these but they cannot removed from these.

Additions: I vow to be positive, more efficient and think big in all my actions.

Pyaar Impossible

The fact that you try to mix up a romantic comedy with data theft and an irritating kid is not what f***s it up. What does is the fact that Uday Chopra has decided not only to act but also produce and write the story and asks his even bigger flop friend Jugal Hansraj to direct it.

Since the stupidity quotient in the movie is sooo huge I have decided to classify them into major and minor.

MINOR stuff

• Priyanka Chopra is the PR head and Marketing head of her company, and she plays a major role in all deals related to products struck by the company.
• She goes to these meetings dressed like she's on the beach in Hawaii.
• Though she studies in some shitty university, got pregnant at 18, been a single mom since then - she's managed to become the Marketing head of a company at the age of 25.
• Mr Dimwit Uday creates a brilliant operating system which is stolen by Dino Morea in 2mins by Copy-Paste method.
• The deal is struck by PR head Priyanka and the software is immediately deployed.
• Priyanka's daughter is 6, yet has more gyaan to give than a 40 yr old.
• Uday Chopra prevents Dino Morea from showing the software by putting a user account password.
• The only person stupider than Uday Chopra's character Abhay Sharma is Uday Chopra himself.

MAJOR stuff

• Uday Chopra took money from his dad to produce a movie.
• Uday Chopra took money from his dad to produce a movie with his own story.
• Uday Chopra took money from his dad to produce a movie with his own story and decided to act in it.
• Uday Chopra took money from his dad to produce a movie with his own story and decided to act in it and ask his even bigger flop friend Jugal to direct it.

VERDICT: Watching this movie even for sexy Priyanka is not worth it.

Twitter's Revenue Model

Few days back, the number tweets exceeded the world population.
Also Twitter got to know about a recent small earthquake faster than the local media could get to know about it.
They have 70million users and they’ve grown 1300 odd% in a year.
But yet they don’t have a revenue model and don’t make any money.
So here are a few things I think they can do to become profitable.

• Divide the screen space and display ads.
  This is a tough one as people like Twitter for its simplistic view. But still there is a lot of screen space they can utilize. They can probably divide the page and on one side are the ads related tweets. These tweets can have graphical content which will stand out in comparison to the text based tweets. To tweet here ( lets call it b-tweets) you need to pay something to Twitter. They could charge you per tweet or per month with a usage limit or for the data content. Put in a lot of options which will give a lot of choice for businesses.
  


• Customized feeds.
  Twitter should ask people if they would like to subscribe for customized feeds of they're interests. Something like Yahoo does when you sign up, they ask you to check your interests. There would some people who would check for something which would make a portion of the users not complain about ads since they asked for it. Of course others like us should have the option of not getting any ads on our personal area.
  


• Communities/ Fan clubs
  Twitter should also have this thing like fans/communities where people with similar interests could have conversations. I think since Twitter is so open, there is no directions to the tweets; which is nice in a way but people should be able to direct it if they want to. Twitter could charge businesses for starting these communities to give people info about their product/services.
  


• Strike a deal with GOOGLE
  Also Twitter can strike a deal with Google and allow Google to access their site for real-time searches. This works for Google as well as they need to combat Facebook on the real time search front.(btw It takes a Facebook with 360mil users and Microsoft to take on Google and Google still rocks!!!)

I still haven’t given this much thought; I need to come up with more points.

Paa

I watched Paa last night.
I loved the movie. Amitabh Bachchan has acted really really well and my respect for him as an actor went up a few notches yesterday.
They story revolves around Auro- a 13 year old kid suffering from Progeria, a condition of advanced aging. Auro is the illegimate child of Vidya(Vidya Balan) and Amol Arte(Abhishek Bachchan).

Amitabh's expressions and body language as a 13year old kid is simply amazing. Vidya Balan has acted really well too. Movies with a "different" story suit Vidya more than those which involve wearing skirts and dancing. She has this raw beauty about her and she'd still be as beautiful when she just wakes up as she is all decked up. Ofcourse, since I'm head over heals in love with her, I could be slightly biased.The movie was directed excellently, the songs by Illayaraja were superb- especially the 'gumm summ gumm' song which I am totally crazy about. There was this background score which sounded like a tape recorder barely able to play- yet playing all the time which added to the effect.
All in all a lovely touching movie and a must watch for all ages.

SWAMIYE SHARANAM AIYAPPA

Yesterday there was a pooja for Aiyappa swamy at my aunt's apartment complex. I wanted to go out of belief to Swami Aiyappa. It was a huge gathering of about 300 people. The arrangements were done nicely with huge mantaps for Ganesha, Subramanya, Venkateshwara and of course Aiyappa.
I went there thinking I would just have a darshan, mangalarthi, take my prasad and go. There was loud music playing due to which i was not able to hear anything on a call i received. Feeling a little irritated I thought to myself "what a waste-all the flowers and lighting. that money could have been used elsewhere to provide food for the homeless.etc".There was some sort of orchestra by devotees who were all going in a group to Sabarimale. I actually started enjoying the songs and watching people sing with devotion. It was very nice. Everything from the songs, the singer, the little metal plates banged to add to the music, the casio- I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Of late since about a year or so, my religious activity involved going to the temple or saying a few prayers here and there. I felt I had lost the connection I had spiritually and it had become more of a routine. Recently I had been having a lot of negative thoughts which led me to move into a negative spiral. Attending to pooja, listening to the songs sung there has some how helped me get out of that negative spiraland I am really thankful for that. And I am seeing some form of that spiritual connection resuming again.
When I'm back in Bangalore I want to attend some bhajans more frequently. There is this Hanuman temple near Sophia's where every saturday there are bhajans sung. Looking forward to going for that every saturday.