Do products/brands have personalities?

Apparently, yes! Some are inherent. Ponds Dreamflower Tacl for instance. Some are built that way. Royal Enfield Bullet for instance. The latter could have been a deadbeat player by now considering its vintage and marketed on the pedigree platform alone, but machismo was deliberately built into the communication right from the beginning and today it is a cult brand.

Few know that one of the most noted 'manufactured' personality is Marlborough.

Marlborough was a woman's cigarette, to begin with. A product registering sad sales volumes. The situation was turned around by a re-branding exercise that positioned a dainty, woman's indulgence as a macho man's signature.

Like brands, all products have personalities, mostly inherent and therefore not conducive to personality manipulation. A cola drink has a fun, bubbly personality. A coffee shop has a laid back, relaxed personality.

When such is the case, would you want to break away from the personality type and project the product otherwise? Would you project a cola drink as a medicinal drink or medicine per se? (Believe it or not, Coke was at first sold as medicine. A bad idea in hind sight). Would you portray a coffee shop as a pious place of serious contemplation where you must always come in your Sunday best?

Then why do we do so?

Looking up some good work

"This Friday, each of us will present EITHER the best press advertisement OR the best television commercial OR the best online banner OR the best poster we know of" went the mail that announced last weeks meeting agenda. "Any one of these only, remember" was the rejoinder.

- Ahila presented the Happydent TVC
- Lavanya presented the Arun Icecream commercial
- Sampath presented the Fevicol TVC
- Tanuja presented the Raymond's TVC
- Kavitha presented the Zurich Chamber Orchestra press campaign
- Suresh sent us all a mail of his choice of the Vodafone (pug) TVC
- So did Jaideep send mail of his choice of the Axion 'belt up' TVC
- Rajesh presented a poster for the movie Chicken Little

We've decided to do another round next week. We'll put in our combined learnings then.

Who's stopping you? Just do it!

Doing something like nobody else does or has ever done before, calls for:

- the willingness to make mistakes, first and foremost
- the enthusiasm to experiment- the prudence to allocate time for your experimentation and managing it efficiently
- the keeness to follow up new trends, techniques and technologies
- an undying curiosity to find, seek, break the mould...
- a nose for finding the connect between the seemingly incompatible
- and above all loving what you are doing

Which means that you need to attempt doing something that is close to your heart. Because there'll be times when you won't be firing on all cylinders, for whatever reason. If it's something you love, something close to your heart, you'll pick up to speed soon enough. And, remember, in all this you must never forget to "ask" when you "don't know" or when you are "stuck".

So now who's stopping you from doing what you want to do? Just get out there and do it!

We Have Enthusiasm - We Make Anything

Here's what a London agency did when one of their employees asked around in office if anyone wanted to make a music video for his mate's band - We Have Band.

The agency was thrilled to bits and they immediately decided to do a 3 minute stop-frame animation of face paint for the band's single 'You came out'. It took them two whole months and 4816 photo layouts. But in the end, look what a stunner! Their Flickr page has all 4816 photographs, if you're interested.

Have enthusiasm - make anything, what? Ok, it's not just that, but it's a start, right?

"Why am I here?"

That isn't a existential question, though it might appear so. Seth Godin has this wonderful post about meetings. Think you agree?

This is a simple mantra that is going to change the way you attend every meeting and every conference for the rest of your life.

You probably don't have to be there. No gun held to your head, after all. So, why are you spending the time?

Do you have an agenda? It might be to change the agenda, or meet someone who will become a client or to learn something that will help you at work tomorrow.

Well, if that's why you're here, tell me again why you're just sitting there? If the only reason you came was to avoid the office, you need a new office. Quick, before the boss decides that for you.

Surely you have a question you can ask the speaker. Surely you have something interesting to say to the person sitting next to you. Surely you can do more than just sheepishly hand someone a business card they have no reason to save or remember or use.

If there isn't a good reason, go home. If there is, then do something. Loud, now and memorable. Productive too, please.

Nowhere Complete

Those posters we talked about last week are nowhere near complete. Well, yes, we do have the beginings in place, but now we need to get serious about completing them, cleaning up design, crafting copy, trimming the flab. We do have our constraints, but hey, is it not possible to put in a couple of hours on weekends to complete them? We have a Saturday and Sunday to ourselves.

The meeting on 29th May was centered around these posters. Since this post is a wee bit late, we forget what really transpired at that meeting. (Or is it because nothing really transpired?)

We did learn one thing though: that at our Friday Morning Meetings, it's better to get everyone to disect or discuss a piece of work. We've done that successfully for the past few weeks and learned quite a bit from the exercises too. Guess we need to get back to that.