9 HOURS OF CHARGE

In the Argentina market, Beats Electronics wanted to highlight the special feature of 9 hours of charge that their headphones deliver. 

They launched a set of print ads which talk about different genres of music, but if you look closely, each word is split into smaller words of three letters. The three letters represent an airport in one country which are then connected to next three letters which is the symbol of a different airport in another country. The flight distance between the two destinations is 9 hours, signifying how you can enjoy your music continuously during the entire flight duration if you wear your #Beats headphones. This is brilliant creativity and fantastic execution. The colours of the layout have also been matched with the different colours of the headphones. 

However, as a marketer I miss the brand name in the entire ad unless it was mentioned somewhere else. I strongly believe that the best creativity is of no use if it doesn't connect people to the brand behind it. 

What are your views on this? Let me know in the comments. 

NON-STOP MUSIC FOR NON-STOP AIRLINE

Singapore Airlines has just launched a non-stop flight from Singapore to Seattle. To celebrate this milestone and build on the idea of 'Non-Stop', the airline asked Seattle DJ and musician Chong the Nomad to build a special track for them.

What is special? The entire track is made from various sounds from inside and outside of one of its Airbus A350 planes! The entire track captures 45 different sounds to create one 'Non-stop' piece!

Check out the video of how the sounds were collected. 

Very unique and creative. Lot of fun!

LET THE SONG PLAY!

Have you ever been in a situation where your favourite song starts playing on the car stereo just when you have reached your destination?

I am sure many people have experienced that moment. 

#Spotify USA took this consumer insight and came up with a nice and sweet ad film that shows people from different walks of life, who decide to spend a few minutes longer in their car to enjoy the complete song.

The acting is authentic, the song chosen is apt and the message is perfect! 

Enjoy this film this weekend.hashtag

Who is a RJ these days?

During my college days, one of the professions/hobbies that I wanted to pursue was that of becoming a RJ – Radio Jockey. There were a number of fantastic RJs in the country who were inspiring me to follow their path and I thought that I had the voice and the knack for something like this and hence I even went to a couple of studios. One of them asked me to come back after finishing my graduation as they did not hire undergraduates as a RJ (never understood how is a degree going to impact the delivery on radio), whereas the other studio told me that they do not have openings at the moment but they would be doing a RJ hunt which I could participate in.

By the time I was nearing the final year of my graduation, there were larger dreams and the goal of doing a MBA had taken over, pushing this desire to the back burner. Of course, over the years, since it was still an idea that had not left the head, I have always been a fan of the radio and I spend more time listening to the RJs talk rather than listening to the music being played. In fact, it would be no surprise to know that while others change channels to listen to their favourite tracks as soon as a RJ comes on air, I stick around and listen to their talk. 

But I am seeing a pattern emerge in the last few years that has left me feeling dismayed and is pushing me to change channels more frequently as soon as the RJ comes on air. So what has changed in the last few years?

To begin with, RJs now do not seem like Radio Jockeys but rather seem like ‘Rude Jockeys’. I know it is a bit unfair on my part to paint all of them under this title, but the truth is that most of the RJs these days across channels are obnoxious, loud, and disrespectful. The kind of language and words used are very casual and filled with slang. Most channels have certain prank calls lined up that are done by the RJs and these calls are filled with abusive language where neither there is humour and nor there is class and yet channel after channel is going after this kind of a format. 

What’s worse is the fact that these RJs seem to have become judges in their own right and they have started giving verdicts on matters and cases that are sub judice and where conclusions haven’t come, decisions haven’t been made and people haven’t been proven innocent or guilty. Most of these RJs do not even seem to have done their research before giving their opinion openly on air, forgetting the fact that as a voice on air, they have tremendous influence on their listeners and so they have a moral responsibility to not pass judgements till the case is complete. 

I think they need to remember that they are working at a radio station, where their job is to delight and entertain and not become the ‘Voice of God’ who seems to know all and who can get away by saying anything.

I am still a strong believer of the platform of Radio and there are still a few good men and women out there who are trying to withhold the respect and integrity of this profession. I hope to see many more like that coming back into the fold. 

Last but not the least, as far as my dream of being a RJ is concerned, I am extremely glad to let you all know, that despite what is happening on Radio all around, in 2015, I was able to carve out an opportunity of being a RJ for an afternoon show for an hour and that ensured that one of the items on my bucket list did get tick off!

Party Hard! No One is Listening.

Imagine being invited to a party, where you’re told:

“Come and enjoy the party, where the music will be loud, the party will go on till the wee hours of 

morning, and no neighbors will complain about the noise.”

It is very unlikely to expect someone to say something like this. In fact, you would give a doubting look to the person who says something like this. But I got to witness all of this in Cully.

Cully is a small town in Switzerland, situated on Lake Geneva. Despite a very low population of just 1,750 people, Cully is known for the Cully Jazz Festival, where people from across Switzerland come to enjoy the festival. 

I was visiting Switzerland for a workshop, and all the participants decided to visit the Cully Jazz Festival, which had thousands of people. It seemed as if the entire population of Cully had come to this festival. 

Obviously, that wasn’t true and the festival had people from many other places. 

After checking out a few jazz performances ourselves, we headed to the lake. Right by the lake, there 

was a huge, transparent canopy with hundreds of people dancing inside. Surprisingly, we couldn’t hear any music. That’s when; a member of our group noticed the board on top of the canopy that read ‘Silent Party’. 

What’s a party without music? Even the religious ceremonies in India have loudspeakers blaring the 

latest Hindi blockbuster and here was a board that said Silent Party. It seemed difficult to imagine a concept like that. Curious, we decided to check it out. Before entering, all of us were handed head phones. We put on our head phones and joined the revellers inside. What we saw inside was very exciting! There were hundreds of people dancing, with their heads bobbing with the head phones and yet there was not a single beat of music. To amuse myself, I took off my head phones for some time and tried to soak in the atmosphere. It seemed as if people were in a trance or a telepathic session and they were not realizing what they were doing, while I was watching them move. 

A few minutes later, I noticed that I was dancing in a different manner to a beat, whereas a few others from the group were dancing differently. I pointed this out to one of my friends who was not following the beat, but that’s when I was told that he was dancing to a different DJ and I was dancing to another one!

I turned around and looked at the stage and there were three DJs, playing their music live with a different number mentioned on the board behind each DJ: 1, 2 and 3.

That’s when I realized that our head phones had the option of changing from one DJ to other by changing the number that represented a particular DJ. Within the same premises, people could listen and dance to different music and everyone could enjoy their own genre. This made the party even cooler than I had thought.

After that, our entire group would signal a particular number and all of us would switch our head phones to that DJ, so that all of us would be dancing to a similar beat and enjoying each other’s steps.

What was beautiful was that we were all dancing near the lake, under the stars and yet Cully was as 

silent as any other night. 

I just wished that night that it would be so great to have Silent Parties in India. A country like ours, 

where noise pollution is always at its peak, a Silent Party is the need of the hour. Maybe Goa can take the lead and come up with something like this and I would book my tickets for such an event right away!

Readers, if you get an invitation to a Silent Party, then please go for it and enjoy a unique experience.

India – A Musically Talented Country

There is one common talent that every Indian possesses. That common talent is a musical talent that everyone has, irrespective of age, gender or geography. What is amazing is that people do not even take any training for this musical talent but it seems ingrained in them right from birth, which gets to be seen only after a certain stage in each individual’s life.

Do not scratch your heads in wonderment. All of you have witnessed this talent in others – your near and dear ones as well as complete strangers. The only problem is that no one wants to admit about this talent openly or acknowledge its existence within people they know. 

This musical talent that every Indian possesses is the talent of ‘Honking’. Honking comes as naturally to an Indian as crying comes to a baby. No one teaches you, you do not practice for hours, there is no school to teach this to you, but yet you know it. You just know it. 

In fact, a horn in an automobile could easily be one of the most important components for an Indian, who would get far more upset on the horn getting spoilt rather than the engine! 

In fact, a sizeable number of people do not like the sound of the original horn that comes with their car and they like to get it customized which goes with their style and personality! As a result of this, customized horns are a big business across the country. 

The reason I say that honking is a musical talent is because of the number of notes and the various scales that different Indians can churn out from this small device. The notes and scales differ from situation to situation, even if the person playing those notes at different scales may be the same individual. 

These notes and scales can be used to convey every possible emotion that exists in a human being. One does not need any psychological tests to understand a person and his mood swings as a person’s honking style is a good indication of how he/she feels on that particular day:

•  Someone overtakes you…you honk and show your anger. 
• The music in your car is quite peppy, you express your enjoyment by blowing the horn exactly like the beats and as many number of times.
• You woke up late and are now rushing to your office for a very important meeting, blow the trumpet (in this case the horn) all the way through.

Happiness, sadness, anger, rage, frustration, triumph, hurry, sleep deprivation and many more such emotions can be expressed through honking in India. 

This talent is so wide spread that the popular rhyme and jingle ‘If you are happy and you know it, clap your hands’ can easily be changed in India to the lines of ‘If you are happy and you know it, honk and honk’!

If petrol was not found, this blog would not have existed!

Zapped by the title of my blog? Don’t be as it will get clear to you at the end of the blog. While the title of the blog is quite long, it is pertinent to what this blog wants to talk about. 

Discoveries and inventions are an on-going process, which started since the time mankind evolved and will continue till the time mankind stays, as finding something new to improve and make peoples’ lives better is the wont of human beings. 

There have been a number of discoveries and inventions that are counted amongst the most relevant ones to change the lifestyle of human beings. But if one takes a step back, lot of these would be of no relevance if another invention or discovery had not taken place to complement or support these. 

Let me explain this further with a few of these examples: 

1. The invention of automobiles would have no utility had petrol not been found. 

2. If electricity was not developed, we would not be enjoying the confines of an air conditioned rooms in our homes and offices. 

3. We would not have been enjoying the gramophone, tape recorders, Walkman or iPods over the years if there would have been no invention of musical instruments to create music. 

4. A thermometer would not show any temperature had mercury not been found. 

5. Pens and pencils would just have been show pieces had ink and graphite not been available to make them. 

6. There was no question of the existence of something called the Internet if someone did not invent the computer first. 

I could go on and on as this list can have numerous such examples of discoveries or inventions that don’t enjoy the same status as the discoveries and inventions they complement. 

So coming back to the title of the blog and what is the connect? 

Well, if petrol was not there, there would have been no automobiles. Because there were automobiles, people decided to spread out across the world. To survive anywhere in the world, they had to work hard day and night. To be able to see in the night, they needed light, leading to the invention of electricity and the light bulb. Now that people were staying far away from each other, they wanted to communicate which led to Alexandar Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone. As people started working more and more, they wanted to make life easier for themselves, which led to the invention of the computer. With computers being present, Internet came into existence for communication to take place. Once the Internet was there, this blog came into existence. 

So it is fair to conclude that discovery of petrol led to the existence of this blog!