The history of advertising and marketing is probably littered with scores of cases of companies and brands that began with a brilliant invention, but then petered out somewhere along the way. I have myself written about brands like Kodak, Nokia and Philips CDs in my older blog posts, and I am sure there are many… Continue reading Is Being a Pioneer Brand Good Enough?
In India, our festive season got off to a start last month with Ganesh Chaturthi and Onam, and there’s plenty more to follow. We always hear of companies talking about their plans for the festive season and how they intend to boost sales of their products through festive discounts. Even otherwise, we always hear businesses,… Continue reading The Festive Season Economy: Bargains, Bling and BOGOF
In my previous blog post, I had written about the consumer durables industry and how it is cluttered and commoditised with very little brand differentiation. Well, the consumer electronics industry is one part of the large consumer durables category, and it is usually known to feature the latest technology in audio and video equipment, mobile… Continue reading Where is Brand Differentiation in Consumer Electronics?
When you consider that the Indian advertising and marketing industry is exploring a new system of consumer classification based on ownership of consumer durables according to Rama Bijapurkar who has written about it in her new book, Lilliput Land, which I have reviewed on my blog, it makes sense to look at the state of… Continue reading How Consumer Durables Can Avoid Commoditisation
The idea for this article was triggered by posts I have been seeing on LinkedIn about creative strategy. In these posts, they invite “expert answers” from industry professionals on various aspects of creative strategy. It is amazing that many people in the advertising, brand communications and marketing industries seem to think that it is a… Continue reading What is Creative Strategy?
In a recent blog post of mine I had written about the US and its western allies’ allegations of China dumping its cheaper EVs, EV batteries, semiconductors, solar panels and the like on their markets. They have raised tariffs on Chinese EVs from 25% to 100% in the US and to 38% in the EU… Continue reading How China Can Overcome its Overcapacity Problems
It’s that time of the year again, when the world’s advertising industry flocks to Cannes to bask in the sunshine that the French Riviera offers as well as in the limelight of international awards for creativity. And as I had written last year, this year too Cannes seems to revolve around AI and more AI,… Continue reading Time for Advertising’s Seasoned Professionals to Save the Industry
Even in today’s fast-changing, tech driven world, we have several brands that are over a hundred years old in our midst. Often, we may not even realise they are that old. Brands age just like we do. Some manage to stay up-to-date and relevant to today’s consumers, while many others fade away or disappear from… Continue reading Reviving Hundred-Year-Old Brands and Making Them Relevant
Now that the first quarter of the calendar year 2024 has ended, it’s worthwhile trying to gauge the state of the global economic recovery from what the corporate earnings seem to be indicating so far. Of course, the March quarter happens to be the last quarter of our fiscal year in India, and we are… Continue reading What Global Inc Is Telling Us About the Economy
In recent years, social media has come under a lot of flak for being platforms to spread hate and discord, bigotry and indeed, even misinformation. From Russian meddling in US elections and in Brexit through Facebook, to our own elections reaching a feverish pitch on social media and allegations of a child-lifting racket spreading like… Continue reading What It Means to Be a Network of Professionals
Peripatetic Perch 