Kapil’s Korner

Times OOH is organising the Outdoor Advertising Awards 2008 and sent out mailers to agencies calling for entries.

 
(yes, that’s a sexy piece there so go see the full size image)

It’s common knowledge that most of the award entries are scams and made at the last minute with very little actual consumer exposure.  I think they take a good dig at all those souls wanting to give even the last minute entries that genuine look!

I look forward to seeing the Winner List - How many would I have seen in the “Outdoors”? 

Life is fun if you can plug in “creative solutions” rather than just solutions. Here are 100 simple ways to be creative shared at The Heart of Innovation. I am going to start practicing a few so that I can put in more interesting stuff in my “idea piggy bank”.

11. Turn on a radio at random times and listen for a “message.”

13. Think of five other ways to define your challenge.

30. Read odd books — having nothing to do with your work.

45. Ask yourself what the market wants or needs.

99. Divide your idea into component parts. Then rethink each part.

What’s helping you get creative? Give me a shout in the comments area.

For some strange reason I have been thinking “radio” all of last week. That’s maybe because I spent three sick days last week listening to a lot of music.

— from inframan - (?)

Idea #1: You’ve got TV channels dedicated to religious talks - Aastha, Sanskar and a few more. How about having Radio channels dedicated to bhajans, spiritual talks and good sayings … something which can give people more than just bollywood masala. Ad revenues should not be difficult, after all religion is a big money subject in this country.

Idea #2: I don’t know if this has been attempted before. Radio channel branded public transport buses. Radio channel pays the bus operator a fee and gets to have the channel playing in the bus all the time. Bus can be branded too - “Is bus mein sab kush hain, kyonki sab Radio Mirchi sunte hain”.

Would love to know what do you think of the ideas, share your thoughts in the comment area.

“Habit is man’s enemy.”

Nitika shared this with a rather smirky smile on her face. Yes, I do have a few habits which irritate her.

I can make all the reasons in the book to avoid a late night on weekdays. I hate having lunch out of home on Sundays.

But then I’ll admit it, whenever I do manage to break out and do something different - it’s always been fun.

And just before you think I was a “time-table” boy, I do have some habits which I am proud of.

I make notes of every little todo/thought in my head quickly before it evaporates. Every few weeks I reuse paper from home and work to make scribble pads.

Is your habit an enemy or your best friend? Share your thoughts in the comments area.

Indian Premier League - the new cricket format to hit India has been the talk of the town lately. SET MAX, the official broadcaster for the matches released a nice tvc earlier last month. After a little chat with the creative lot in office, they all seem to appreciate the piece of work and think it was very well done.

Sadly, last night somebody from office sent us a youtube link which claims how shamefully the idea has been ripped from a 5 year old TV spot for Fox Baseball. Coincidence, inspiration or just pure copy? you decide.

Click here to see the video on youtube | this link for Fox Baseball on agency website.

After a lot of hard selling, pushing and shoving I managed to reach Goa’s Cavelossim Beach to attend the (third) Goafest 2008. This time it was special because two major groups of the industry - Ad Club and Advertising Association of India (AAAI) had teamed up to celebrate the festival and also share the stage for the annual Abby Awards.

To be honest, Goafest is all about a lot of networking, booze, eye-candy and good music adding up to a long fun weekend for the us ad guys. For some serious learning we attended talks by well known international speakers like Craig Davis of JWT,  Scott Goodson of Strawberry Frog, Stephen Gatfield of Lowe, Donald Gunn of The Gunn Report. The common message across all talks was that advertising was changing (yes, the very exploited word 360 degree solutions) and press is no longer going to be the lead discipline for communication. In my forthcoming posts I shall share some more learnings from the sessions.

The set-up was rather impressive and AAAI should be commended for all the effort put in to make such a successful event.

• Goafest was on twitter too but no updates after the first day’s breakfast session.
• Food was very nice with elaborate set and was nice to see some local cuisine too.
• Wi-Fi service was provided by Microsoft but I would have been happier if they had a bigger cyber cafe.
• There was a Bluetooth information set-up however it didn’t seem to send out the necessary hourly updates.
• The sessions were primarily based on strategy and planning. I believe the creative guys would have loved to see some talks on design too.
• Client participation was limited and I think it would be interesting to see more of them to come, see the award winning work and get a feel of some international learning at the sessions.
• It was impressive to see the media teams of campaign India and exchange4media churn out overnight newsletters updating the delegates of the previous day’s happenings, soundbites from the who’s who of advertising and snapshots of the various activities.

The event was organised on a lovely beach and the location provided an excellent opportunity for photography. I am quite happy with the results. See the entire photo set on flickr.

Just confirmed my presence for the Indiblogger organised Mumbai blogger meet. Please sign-up to confirm your presence and also spread the word through your blog.

Update: The new date for the blogger meet is Sunday, 27th of April.
Venue yet remains undecided.

Mumbai blogger meet

20/04/2008 at 16:00

This week’s Monday Mumble has been kind of stuck due to a technical problem.

The Idea: I have set up a MumbaiTraffic twitter channel to which people send in updates based on their traffic experiences. For example, if you are driving to town and notice a large procession at Mahim Junction - you could leave a message saying "Avoid Mahim Junction, take back road to Bandra". To start with you will have to send in all messages to the channel by putting a "@mumbaitraffic" in your messages.

The Problem: Currently, I haven’t figured out on how all messages which are going to be "@replies" for MumbaiTraffic can be displayed to all other users and get re-tweeted to followers.

My Attempt: I tried taking the RSS feed of the Replies and passing it through the Yahoo! pipes - Twitter Reply sniffer but the date/time format don’t seem to match and the process fails when I pass the RSS from the Yahoo! pipes through twitterfeed.com

Other Suggestions: Another recommendation was to set-up a bot and run it from a server, but I can’t do that currently due to limited bandwidth. So if you have a server where this can be set-up would be happy to get some help.

If you have any other ideas, please do let me have your thoughts in the comments and I’ll be sure to give you a credit when this gets active.

A quick round-up of what’s happening at KhanaPeena - my foodie blog. Don’t miss the updates there. Subscribe to the email updates or RSS in your blog reader.

(Click on image to read about the dish)

Restaurant Review of Falafel’s Veg. Humus House - the new Lebanese joint at Colaba, Mumbai.

Nitika takes advantage of the lovely strawberries in the market and bakes some delicious Egg-less Strawberry Muffins.

If you are a chocolate freak, go try the Choco Fudge Fantasy at New Zealand Natural in Atria Mall.

Did you watch the movie Ratatouille? Now go taste it at Mangi Ferra in Juhu. Read the restaurant review.

If memory serves me right it was Priya who started the whole idea of doing a photo drive of the Worli-Bandra sealink. Of course the long weekend was held responsible for her absence and ultimately the 6 twitter buddies (Aalaap, Anupam (bombayaddict), Preshit, Asfaq, Brajeshwar and me) braved the Sunday morning sun to accomplish the task on hand: Shoot the sealink.

I was rather impressed by the detailing which the company was putting into the project. This man was actually busy painting the equipment a bright yellow while the project remains delayed for more than a few years now.

Anupam was there so that he could update his blog (or blogs) with the latest development on what could be Mumbai’s ambitious infrastructure projects. A link which could ease the traffic and create space on water for the ever growing number of cars on the roads of Mumbai. If you want to know the sheer magnitude of the project take a look at these 4 photos which are put up at Worli side of the link.

Preshit made sure the event was truly web 2.0 with not only constant updates on twitter but also LIVE uploading of photos from his iPhone to flickr. Aalaap and Anupam were the official guide who made sure we made stops at the more appropriate “photo op” locations. Asfaq was my trusted rider who made sure I got shots even while seated behind on his motorbike.

Started from Worli Seaface to Prabhadevi then Chaitanya Bhoomi and Bandra Reclamation being our last stop over we ended the afternoon over some refreshing “limbu paani” and chicken nuggets at Candies in Bandra.

Meanwhile Brajeshwar even had some plans charted out for the next photodrive - should it be Sanjay Gandhi National Park? Or some botanical garden in Mahim. Whatever it be I think we all agree with bombayaddict that no more till the summer is over.

More photos from the PhotoDrive: My flickr set, Brajeshwar’s set and Preshit’s set.