India's top 5 Marketing Campaigns

Disclaimer 1: If you want to get into an intellectual debate, please go elsewhere. I have too low an IQ to get into one.
Disclaimer 2: If you are a marketing major looking for some GAS, Dude get a life. Or like my boss says, Get a GF – you will learn everything there is to know about marketing.
Disclaimer 3: Like all posts on this blog, take this post seriously at your own peril.

Reading my blog, I am embarrassed at the lack of content. So this time I decided to come up with a post that is perfectly aligned to my career mission and vision (GAS lol, rofl). Now whenever I have read or heard some corporate honcho talking about marketing they always start with the cliché – “We proved all management theories wrong and created our own story”. I wonder if all successful products and companies proved the theories wrong, why are we forced to study these theories in the first place. Chuck it, it’s a different debate all together.

I pondered hard on few of the most successful Indian campaigns I have seen in recent history and tried to come up with a list of the best. So here is the list of my top 5 (in reverse chronological order)-

5. JK Super Cement – “Vishwaas hai isme kuch khaas hai” – I am sure all you perverts remember this ad. Just in case you don’t, here is it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCczkV972eo
I am sure Sigmund Freud had an Indian lineage. Otherwise we wouldn’t have produced such revolutionary ads. This threw all marketing concepts of using emotional connect (sexual appeal) for only low involvement products out of the window. This campaign simplified interpretation of all marketing concepts and summed up into one single simple solution – Get a struggling super hot model in bikini, buy cricketing ad slots and your campaign is a hit.

4. Zandu Balm – Has there ever been a better example of subliminal advertising in history than this?? Even though they deny it, I am sure Zandu sponsored it. “Munni Badnaam hui” has ensured that whenever a guy is in some distress, he will remember Zandu Balm. Sales figures revealed that Zandu Balm sales rose immediately after the release of the song. As soon as the song started to fizzle out, Zandu in a token gesture sued the movie makers to keep the song in news for a month longer than it should have. I seriously hope that Kotler recognizes this campaign and “Munni” gets its place in all future Kotler editions, a place it richly deserves.

3. Hakim Usmani – This is easily the best example of Out of Home mass advertising. While most OOH campaigns are never noticed, you would have seen or read this campaign even as a 10 year old. Using dilapidated houses besides railway tracks meant that they have one of the world’s highest No of views to investment ratios. (Unfortunately, my friends are not as sporting as me and would have some real mean comments about this one. Therefore, I would not comment any further. Use your own jurisdiction)

2. IIPM – Love him or hate him, you have to concede that IIPM is brilliant at one thing – marketing. It has achieved any marketing god’s dream – Selling an inferior product at a huge premium. It has transformed the “My dad is an ATM, I am cool (read as loser)” generation into “My dad is an ATM, I am an MBA (now an educated loser)” Few things I really like about IIPM are –
• It has decreased the gap between the haves and have-nots. Now UP’s desi lala can tell his munim (CA) – “Arre kaha aapne apne bête ko MBA karne Kozhikode bhej dia, Mera beta to Delhi mai MBA kar raha hai. Use free laptop bhi mila. Uske college ka bhi naam kuch II karke hi hai”
• Being a sort of wannabe quizzer myself, I am delighted that IIPM has brought fun back to Business Quizzing. Have you seen how gay the quizmasters of other institutes are??? They will show you someone’s underwear, two random logos, a male model and ask you to connect the pics. The worst part is that you will find people answering such questions.
So what if Sharukh cannot answer the question, Connect – KKR, Red Chillies, Circus and Baazigar. Atleast he brings the oomph factor to quizzing. There were more girls at IIPM quiz “show” than the number of girls combined in all other quizzes(atleast 1000) I have been to.
Obviously there are questions about ethics, authenticity etc but I am not going to question it. Being masters of marketing, I am sure IIPM ads would be appearing next to my blog which will help me earn 1 or 2 dollars. And I will (just like TOI, NDTV and all other media channels) never say anything against somebody who is bringing me revenue.

1. India TV – Great Management thinkers always talk about “Identifying your TG and positioning your product to suit their whims.” Obviously, they have not seen India TV. India TV has managed to do what no other product has achieved in history. It has managed to be present in more than two categories at once. For a large portion of the country it is a news channel, for others it is the televised version of fakingnews.com, for few other publicity hungry youngsters it is a sure shot way of coming on television. Imagine a youngster who is not good looking has no singing or acting talent but wants to star on a reality show. He can simply call India TV and they will help him create some news. I am sure Pagal Patrakar (from the fakingnews fame) gets 90% of his ideas from India TV. Arindam Chaudhari “fans” will argue that IIPM should have been at number 1 position but I would like to end with the India TV headline that sealed the top spot for India TV.
On the day of the royal wedding when all channels were busy showing the mundane wedding India TV ran a special 30 min show with the title - “Kya Kate Prince William ke liye dhood ka glass layengi??”

I guess that rests my case.

PS 1: The only reason i wrote this was to change my resume point to "Marketing Blogger" from just "blogger" Might help in getting more shortlist :D