Watch our new TV Commercial

Watch our new TV commercial made for Audi of Mississauga. Let us know what do you think by providing your comments here.

Enjoy!

 

http://http://vimeo.com/99617009

 

 

Creative Audi Ad

 

I found this ad highly creative and nicely-done in communicating the brand message for superior road grip and manoeuvrability. A great way to convey legendary quattro technology by drawing a parallel with firm grip.

 

What do you think.? Let us know by commenting here.

 

Samira of OPAL Marketing Group wins Lux Style Award 2012

Samira Fazal, Creative Director at OPAL Marketing Group, wins the Lux Style Award 2012 for best TV writer. Samira has written popular drama serials and shows for several TV channels in Pakistan. She also writes advertisement copy. Her work in two drama serials “Mera Naseeb” (My destiny), and “Mera Sain” (My Lord) was nominated for best TV writer this year. “Mera Naseeb” won her the prestigious award.

The Lux Style Awards is a premier award show event held annually in Pakistan since 2002. The awards celebrate “style” in the Pakistani entertainment industry and honour the best talents in film, television, music, and fashion. The Lux Style Awards have been dubbed “Pakistan’s Oscars”^.

Samira lives in Toronto and has worked on many successful ad campaigns for OPAL

“Share a Coke” campaign – a must-watch

An excellent interactive marketing campaign by non other than Coca Cola using cross-channel, experiential and social marketing to get up and close with customers. Check it out here.

Enjoy the campaign and let us know what do you think by commenting here.

P.S. Though I like the Coke marketing idea and its execution, I am not trying to promote drinking Coke or any carbonated drinks. 

Super Bowl 2012 Commercials

Many of us watch Super Bowl more for the commercials than the game per se, especially if the teams are not one of our favorites. If you missed out or want to watch the whole line up of Super Bowl 2012 commercials, click at the link below and enjoy.

SUPER BOWL 2012 COMMERCIALS

Which ones are your pick of the commercials?

My Popular Marketing & Business Articles

So far I have written more than 80 articles and posts on this and the CMA blog. A visitor to this blog asked which ones were the most visited / viewed. Following are the top five articles by number of visits. Click on the titles to read and do let me know what do you think about the ideas discussed in these articles by providing your comments here.

• Putting Multicultural Marketing On The Fast Track
• Highly Effective Communication Model
• SACHIN- A market to grow with
• Workplace Dynamics
• Designing Better Ads

Happy Reading and cheers,

Take a short survey – You may win a $100 Gift Card.

We are conducting an online survey on media preferences and usage by South Asian-Canadians. If you are a Canadian of South Asian origin, 18 years or older, living in the GTA or the GVA, please click at the link below to take part in the survey. Your opinion will help in bringing relevant product and service information to you.

http://opal.checkboxonline.com/SA%20media%20monitor.aspx

Enter code # 608.

All completed responses will be entered in a draw for $100 gift cards. Also, we would share top line findings with you, upon request.

This Survey has ended!

What we do for living?

You asked what we do for living?

We have a Brain Bazaar,  Simple.

We start our Brain Bazaar every morning at 8:30am and use brains, lots of it, to come up with ideas and implementation to help fly our clients’ products & services off the shelf and showrooms. Our ideas are marinated in cultural flavors. We close our Bazaar at 5 pm but our brains keep working long after…

In-language, we are a Sodaagar (So`daa’ gar, سوداگر).  Sodaagar of Ideas ||

We try to to be unique in marketplace. To us uniqueness is being Innovative, Nimble, Courageous & Happy 🙂

Is Call-to-Action Required?

Call-to-Action phrases like call today, visit us for discounts, or click to learn more are commonly used in advertising to encourage audience to act and buy products or services. How effective are these catchphrases? I haven’t seen a research that supports or discounts call to action verbs but I believe it has been overplayed.

Why would you tell customers to call, visit, click or do this or that? Nobody wants to be taught or spoken at. We live in knowledge economy. People realize their needs and wants and can look for it (thin market concept). Providing information through gentle and frequent reminders about benefits of your offer is more effective than hard sell. I think subtle messages that connect emotionally with the target market do a better job in increasing brand awareness and sales.

Do you think that Call-to-action has diminishing utility in knowledge economy? Please comment and let me know.

Creative Ad-VII

Another good  ad with all visual, color and minimal copy. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

It’s a simple creative with a touch of humor. The visual aptly conveys the message that you get immediate relief from pain with Bengay, like having a new leg! The tagline should have been bigger to be legible in smaller versions / reprinting of this ad.

Overall, kudos to Bengay and their ad agency, JWT, Shanghai.

Advertising Gone Wasted

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half – this is a 100 years old quote that stands true for many ad campaigns even today. I saw few ads where 100% money was wasted and I think the advertisers have no clue.

The following ad appeared in a Georgetown, Ontario newspaper trying to reach South Asians with a divine public service message. Besides the models standing on the wrong sides of the flags, the ad targeted a geographical area where hardly any South Asian live. Can you guess how many South Asian families live in Georgetown? According to my findings, THREE, yes THREE.
The above advertisement ran several times in a wrong medium spending $1,000+ per household, basically putting thousands of $$$ down the drain and it was public money intended for a good cause 😦

Grocery Stores Eye South Asian-Canadians

I have been telling my colleagues and clients that Grocery stores will be the next business sector that will target South Asian Canadians. And this was no rocket science. I saw following three signs for it.

1. Immigrants’ Life Cycle: Most South Asian (SA) are new immigrants. They look for products and taste from “back home” and also buy more groceries per visit because they have bigger families.
2. Developing of a critical mass: The SA- Canadians became the biggest visible minority group as per 2006 Census and have attained a critical mass with an estimated ~1.5 million people now.
3. Opening of neighborhood SA-grocery stores: More SA Grocery stores have sprung up in last few years with constant flow of customers providing an existing market to big box Grocery stores.

The above three factors collectively provide a ripe market for Grocery stores to cater, increase customer base and sales, and get loyal customers

Come 2010, we saw an attempt by big grocery stores to reach out to SA market segment, primarily with print ads and with some radio and TV advertising. I see these initial campaigns as more of a test or tactical implementation in nature rather than strategic. Only results, research and time will tell how effective these ad campaigns were in achieving the campaign objectives. Though I will provide my opinion on this soon. For now, see few of the print ads below. These ran during last few months.

7 Steps To A Highly Effective Cimmunication Model

I wrote this post for the last month under the heading, If you tell more, you sell more? The idea is to refine the advertising and communication model aligning it with new marketing. I am reproducing it below, in case you missed it earlier.

Many advertisers believe in the cliché, if you tell more, you sell more. It seems these advertisers think as they are paying for ads, they have a right to mention everything about their brand; its features, benefits, sales offer, slogan and their dog’s name. In doing so, advertisers forget the main purpose of the communication is to connect and convey the idea, not to overload the audience with information.

Gone are the days when you could sell more by telling more. Hard core push selling is being replaced with soft and pull-creating marketing and branding. We live in a cluttered world. You go to Chapters and will find hundreds of books on a topic. You Google a topic and get thousands of results. Though how many of these are relevant, is anybody’s guess. People are not hungry for information. They are satiated and have become selective information-seekers. It is critical to understand that less is new more.

Follow these seven proven steps for building an effective and successful communication model and you would be laughing all the way to the bank.

1. You are primarily selling solutions. Solution to the needs and pain points of your target market. So find out what are the needs of your customers, select one or two needs that you can serve best and provide them with better solutions for these needs. The emphasis is on providing solutions that are BETTER than your competition.

Creative Ad – VI

This is another nice ad I noticed lately and wanted to share with you here. It nicely uses vital creative elements to get a high ad recall value. The ad presents a fresh idea supported by a big bold visual, which increases ad’s notice-ability. It has no copy but still connects with the brand and conveys the basic idea with humor. Lastly, it leaves the reader / audience with a good taste and perhaps a smile. Bingo!

Do you know the name of the ad agency who made this ad?

Is Twitter a fad

Twitter is the buzz  word these days and possibly the fastest growing social platform. Results of a recent survey by Nielsen Online riased doubts on the long term potential of Twitter. I provided my two-cents worth on it few days ago. If you are interested in knowing more about Twitter’s status and future posibilities, click at the link below.

http://www.canadianmarketingblog.com/archives/2009/05/is_twitter_a_fad.html

 

Let us know what do you think by posting your comment on it.

Thank you,