Wanna Find out who’s Naughty & Nice…

To Whom It May Concern: There have to be more ways to fit Pepsi in the frame than fighting over a one Pepsi bottle.

It has been a happening week for marketing, so before I move on the Naughty & Nice List, I want to talk about the campaigns of the last few days.

My favourite marketing brands Coke and Pepsi went head on with two major campaigns. Pepsi signed up Ali Azmat along with the tried and tested Ali Zafar. Both the Alis look great and the overall impact was also great. The only flaw I found (and this comes from someone who has worked on the Pepsi account); one of the cardinal rules in developing a Pepsi story is that Pepsi has to come out as the hero with the brand ambassadors being the sidekicks. Pepsi here seems in a force ‘force fit’ situation and add to this the fact that the idea of fighting over one Pepsi bottle has been done to death. I still rate it high and give it three out of five stars.

The great thing about last week was to see two brands selling almost the same product taking routes that are poles apart. What a great lesson for marketing students. Coke with Chalo Saath Khayen uses the insight of families eating together and what a brilliant insight for our market. My favourite moment of the year was when Adnan Siddiqui got a hug from his wife, done so naturally that no one raised an eyebrow and I have yet to see any criticism of it. Any physical contact including a woman hugging a man in a Pakistani TVC has always been taboo. But it has been done so brilliantly that you cannot say a word against it. The only risk I see is that when I compare the two, Coke comes out as a brand for budhaas while Pepsi comes out as the choice of the new generation. Still I will give three out of five stars to Coke, especially for capitalising on a great insight.

Another marketing milestone that kept the industry buzzing was QMobile using Kareena Kapoor. It has yet to hit the audience but it has already generated enough vibes to justify the marketing spend. Seths who have doubts about investing in marketing should get an internship at QMobile. Brilliant brains have turned a Chinese commodity into a market leader with a whopping 58% market share. It has literally given a global brand like Nokia Pakistan a death blow and the brand is now fighting for its survival.

Coming to the Naughty & Nice List, my pick of the week is Mobilink’s rebranding campaign. From the Jazba logo to the new Mobilink logo, it is beyond my digestive system that an organisation as big as Mobilink tolerates plagiarism. There can be only two possibilities. One, they knew about it and let it happen; the other, they didn’t know about it and it keeps on happening. Both reasons are inexcusable and point to incompetency or a hidden agenda that the advertising agencies know about but never talk about it. As for the campaign itself, I hate this trend in Pakistan where you shoot a collage of various situations and add poetic copy to it. To whom it may concern: IT’S A TRAP. Every year we see at least 10 campaigns doing this and it is the easiest way out for any copywriter and the easiest sell. HeadLion, being a midsized agency, did at least five TVCs like that in 2006 and 2007 and even now when we get stuck we present an idea like that. It’s a trap and don’t fall into it. There is a reason why you don’t see this trend globally. Advertising is all about big ideas not big TVCs. Mobilink is the worst offender because with the kind of budgets it has, it can hire the best brains for big ideas, yet it consistently fails to do this. One out of five stars and I am being generous, because you never know, someday they might come to me.

In the nice category, I choose two campaigns – 7Up and Sprite – simply because they seemed like identical twins. The objective to own the moment of consumption was executed in a way that the audience loved. Sprite lost mainly because of the budgets, with 7Up spending more and gaining more top of mind. Both lacked a big or unique idea, but both did what marketing is supposed to do. For once the quality of the jingles was hummable.

The last on the list is the launch of Voice, which was a desperate attempt to jump on the QMobile bandwagon. Although a lot of bad campaigns have hit audiences in 2013, the ones I like to talk about are those which have the budgets and waste it like a kid at a funfair. I can understand Voice being excited to see Qmobile’s numbers, but if you want to compete with them with another low quality product, you need to raise your marketing quality. What a waste of money by the Voice marketing team. The only people I can imagine being happy are those in the film production department – possibly the only ones making profits.

That is it for the Naughty & Nice list part 2. Next week will be Christmas, and we don’t expect a silent night in the marketing world. Beware brand teams, last chance to raise your standards in 2013 because in the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger “I’ll be back”.