Winter

Like winter she waits,
Silent and cold,
The silent shroud;
It's winter but her eyes burn with the heart beat of spring
The seed of life lies in the cold bed;
A blade of grass is seen,
Sticking its head out
Does this mean that life has prevailed over timely Death?
Only time will tell...

This is India, and as Indian, we are very emotional. Whether be it the first car you brought, or you brought something for you with the first salary will remain with you for ages. In India it is definitely “Old is gold”. So, are we as loyal with brands as we are with thing that we buy? The answer is yes. Customers are loyal with brands that are in the market for a long period of time. They begin to identify themselves with that particular brand.
One such brand that has been in the market for decades is Britannia. I have a number of times over-heard people saying “Ek Britannia dena toh.” Just as when we want noodles we mean “Maggie”, when we want biscuits we mean Britannia. It may not be right in all cases but the brand recall had worked for both the cases. Right from casting Gabbar Singh as the brand ambassador for Glucose D to Good Day to the different variants of baked items of Britannia you see in the market are because of good recall value and great branding strategy.
Britannia has also stressed on the fact that it is healthy, nutritious and it can be used as a substitute for your evening snacks which maybe greasy and oily and not good for the body. As its tag line clearly states “Zindagi main life” it tries to communicate to the masses that everyone need to revive the “life” in ones life. Britannia claims to give consumers that moment, with their line of products.

Their advertisement use emotional content for better brand recall with great jingles and the also try to act as a communicator, educating the society.

These glimpses can be seen in the advertisements of the product Time-pass which catered to the youth in India. The communication was done brilliantly by showing the youth as lazy and boring. It was a huge hit as per the humor was concerned but, it mocked the youth for not being as responsible citizens of the country.
Britannia has not only been projecting itself as a household product but, also as a brand which is concerned about the citizens of the county and would go to great extents to better the standards of their products as well as their consumers. I must say the “Ting ting ta ring” has worked and will do so for time to come.

More than just Cokes and Khukhuris...

The thing that I don’t seem to understand is why do we generalize people? This is a thing that I have noticed over the years. For instance why does a person wearing a dhoti have to be a Madarasi or a Bihari? Just stop reading for a second and think about what comes to your head when I say the word security guard…ah ha…I knew it. It would have been a chinky with a uniform, with his Gurkha topi(Dhaka topi) and a baton. A person stereotyping a certain race is uncalled for and the thing that surprises me is that people from rural villages or setting are unaware of these things or are not exposed to it as people from the cities are and we call ourselves the “educated”. The media is also responsible for affecting the way we think, talk, judge, perceive. For example the media will never show you a normal Muslim person doing his daily chore like going to the office, spending time with his family; you know why because this person according to the media is boring. They will always show you the “crazies”.
I had seen this particular Coke ad where Aamir Khan is show as a Nepalese tour guide. Guess what, I felt good when I saw the ad. You know why? Because in this ad the “Gurkha” is show as a smart individual who fools the tourists. I felt good not because he fools the tourists but, because for a change Coke has shown the Gurkha not as a security guard but as an intelligent individual. The ad shows other aspects of a particular community. But, viewers thought this ad was racist not because they were told to but, were conditioned to. In India we are always sensitive about topics such as cast, colour and creed. It is not like we do not discuss about these matters and laugh about other communities and make joke about them the fact is when we become the joke we don’t like it. We as an audience do not analyze what is wrong and what is right we just go with the flow. For me this particular ad was good commutation but for the latter it was an insult.
We read the papers, listen to music, read books but don’t you think we are still illiterate. We say we that the mother earth is holy to us but we micturate the streets. We are agitated if our homes are dirty or the kid in the house spills milk on the furnished floor but our city streets lay uncared. We look up to great men in the county highly educated and like by people in his circle but, we find them doing the gravest of mistakes.
What is the use of education if one cannot seed good beliefs and traditions in the coming generation? When people from other regions of India start taking Kuppuswamy or Rakesh daruwalla as a name and not associating it with a man with a dhoti or a topi will we be educated.