2010 World Cup - that Nike ad.. nice!

This was good to watch, several times. Do not miss Federer midway....=)



Go ahead and add to 13 mil views in 3 weeks.

Is this a Volkswagen ad? What were they thinking?

Chanced upon the VW ad campaign in India on TV. The ads (print included) are unusually poorly done - did Wolfsburg really approve this brand embarrassment?

In a long and amateurish sequence, here's how the TV spot goes:

1. Kid shows up in a showroom. Inquires about 'booking a car for his 18th birthday' in a horrendous vernacular accent (premium segment, anyone?). Hear that first line again. Who at DDB and VW thought the delivery sounded about right?
2. Ingratiating dealership salesman calls the kid 'sir', and proceeds to fawn over him.
3. Kid goes on to talk about VW models for when he's 24, a CEO... a longwinded sequence while the salesman agrees for each choice earnestly.
4. This goes on for about a minute, and feels much longer.

And this was the best way DDB and VW thought to present themselves to India: a brand known worldwide for creative, innovative, and most importantly - memorable advertising. Perhaps they wanted to oversimplify things for the Indian consumer, and came up with this.

As a former VW owner, and as a fan of their campaigns in the United States, I am appalled at such substandard communication from the brand.

To think VW India and the agency are actually pleased with their work. Since Porsche and VW are together now - did they copy an older Porsche ad and do this version for India?

What a waste of advertising. Recall anything?

Most advertising on television, if not all, is a waste. I don't recall the product nearly all the time. Recall the music, the visuals played ever so often. The product? What was it?

1-2 minute commercials lose the point in trying to be funny, tell a story, make a connection, be very clever - and lose whatever was being sold.

This is the same for print - who the heck recalls those watch ads for instance? Rolex, Omega, Cartier - they all look the same.

Back in the advertising program at the Newhouse school/SU, I recalled a discussion about clutter. God-awful clutter. We counted the number of ads we were exposed to from the time we woke up - FM radio alarm, breakfast tv, newspaper, drive-time radio, hoardings, in school placements - to when we got to class.

They numbered over 200 for me. Two hundred in 90 mins on a weekday morning.