A maiden journey to the advertising world

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Session by Mr. Mohan Menon, Former Executive Director, Ogilvy & Mather, Governing Council Member and Chairman – Marketing & Marketing Communications Varsity, Chennai Business School


I used to sit before the television for NDTV‘s nine ‘o’ clock news, as a religious routine, which perhaps gives me a deep sleep with the smug that I am conscious of the world around me (Some times the news stories give sleepless nights, which is another issue!!) !!!! Some months back, Just before the end of the 30-minute news, a simple news item grabbed my attention. A young school boy from Delhi mourning over his loss after his recent encounter with a thief. I was curious in knowing what could have annoyed this little kid; His pug was taken away by two unknown bikers when he was playing with the it outside his home!!!!! … I was amazed to know that lot of pug thefts has been registered since the previous month due to an increasingly huge demand for that dog!!!! …I was frozen for a moment with the fact that it’s because of the HUTCH commercial which is featuring pug!!!

“Wow!!!! How much powerful the ad must have been to create a tremendous awareness, not only for the brand being advertised, but also a craze for a not so beautiful breed of dogs!!! . How it’s been possible to hook the attention of the common man within 15 seconds and register the brand before 60 seconds … How it is possible for some one to bring the metaphor of a dog to a telecommunication network and clip that in the mind of a consumer successfully? ….

To get it from the horse’s mouth, I was waiting for our first session on Marcom, especially advertising, from one of the best creative minds of the Indian advertising industry, Mr. Mohan Menon, Former Executive Director, O&M, who is also the Chairman of Marketing & Marketing Communications Varsity at CBS

Straight away telling us that he is from a world of Out-of-the-Box thinking, he started the session with a question “What are the different teams of an ad agency that are involved in a Television commercial “, starting with our opinions and preliminary knowledge rather than a classic style ‘take-it-from-me” gyan. At once came a shouting reply “Creative team” from all the students in unison … he smiled and questioned us “Then what?..., “client servicing”, a voice from the back desk received the appreciation from him … Again one more smile from him followed by “what else?...”, there was a moment of silence, then we were introduced with Account planning and its significance in creating an ad with consummate knowledge of consumer behavior.

As the session was flowing with various aspects of advertising industry and its work, a question on “celebrity endorsement “ was raised by a student and the next immediate moment the class room become a battle ground and students got polarized into two heavy artillery units firing at each other regarding the pro’s & con’s of celebrity endorsement

Mr. Menon made himself as an unperturbed moderator during the tug of war between the students .After seeing the boundless enthusiasm from students, he intervened and explained the nuance of success and failure of celebrity endorsement, which paved us to understand, what are the phenomenal attributes that needs to be considered when choosing a brand ambassador for a product/service and what are all it’s after-effects on the brand in the market.

After his views on celebrity endorsement and just before his departure, he stunned us with a question “How many of you think you are a brand”… he continued, “We all are projecting ourselves as a brand in life many a times but unknowingly!!!! We brand ourselves with our earnest virtues like sincerity, honesty, diligence, intelligence, creativity etc ...” He left us with the message “we too are brands in this world” … yes, the onus is now on us to brand ourselves, build the positive attributes and manage it well to shine better in the business market ! The whole agency business and the concept of branding was astonishingly given to us in a capsule and that too in a matter of 3 hours… what an incredible afternoon it turned out to be. In the meanwhile, Hutch has become Vodafone and whatever happened to the brand, the pug still follows!!!! Power of creative advertising as they say ….we had a brilliant glimpse of it with the help of Mr. Menon.

Contributed by Arun Saravanakumar, Marcom Varsity
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Publicity VS Advertising !

Session by Mr.Nytik Joshi, Senior Manager- Marketing(TTHL), Hexaware Technologies

In this digital era of burgeoning media, clutter and noise, there are numerous vehicles through which one can take the product message to the customers. But, when there are serious limitations in such a scenario, Mr. Nytik particularly took up Al Ries’ law of publicity and the law of advertising during a typical Sunday marathon session at CBS.

The Law of Publicity
“Brands are born with publicity and not with advertisement”

The Law of Advertising
“Once born, a brand needs Advertising”

Advertising is something where you involve sizeable monetary investment in order to promote your product or message. Whereas, Publicity is a commercial exercise in which, strictly speaking, there is no money transaction made. Publicity is something free of cost to promote or take your product to the end users. Also, Publicity is an endorsement through a third party which is far more credible than an exercise that blows the own trumpet.

“Unlike advertising which you can decide when you want to put up an Ad
PR takes time to built up and gain momentum”

Not just one or two, we literally ran through the cases of a plethora of brands that include Botox, Volkswagen, Vespa, Red Bull, Harry Potter, Jet Blue, Linux, Starbucks, Google, Palm and The Body Shop

Mr.Joshi buttressed the point that PR is like an Aeroplane take-off, which involves comparatively low risk and high return, whereas, Advertising is like a rocket’s take-off, which involves high risk and high return. It is always better to use the combination of both PR and advertising. Brands should be given birth in the lap of PR and after a certain stage it should play through Ads. A remarkable case was that of Microsoft XBOX. Microsoft created a huge interest through their buzz even before the launch and they didn’t spend a single penny on advertising before the launch and the newspapers had an article on Nov 1, 2001, which was a part of the publicity exercise.

Few more recent brands which has immensely exploited the publicity route are Cisco, Dell, Oracle, Microsoft, Palm, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Ebay, Google andYahoo

He also took us through the reality about the two sides of a PR coin:
Positive power of the positive PR
Negative power of the negative PR

The important aspects discussed during the session were,

Advertising is self serving, what you say about you has little or no credibility. People trust media, the third party effect.

What makes news? Being 1st in a new category makes news. Not being better than your competitors.

Why PR is important? Being 1st in market is worth nothing. Being 1st in mind is worth everything.

Finally the session was wrapped up with some incredible ideas on new age marketing:

· PR is more powerful than Advertising
· Advertising dollars cannot compensate for the lack of favourable PR
· If you can’t be 1st in a category, create a new category for you
· Most Advertising agencies focus on the wrong concept
· If Advertisement is so powerful why don’t Ad agencies advertise?
· There is a consumer reaction against Ads
· PR should take a lead role in Brand Building
· Many established brands don’t spend more money on brand


PR should focus on the new and different, that’s how brands are built.
Advertisement should focus on the old and familiar, that’s how brands are maintained.

When Chennai was having its first ever marathon, we had this engaging marketing marathon at Chennai Business School. Quite an interesting and charming session for continuous 3 hours, full of interesting examples & cases, we even forgot to have a break in between. Thanks a lot Mr. Nytik.

Contributed by Uma Shankar Pandian, Marketing Varsity