The Celebrity Brand
Last week, I happened to be at New Delhi for the Global Summit on Media and Entertainment. What was supposed to be a FICCI Part II - Atleast that’s what people expected of it ; Turned out pretty decent.
The key area of interest, was ….. what do you know - “Branding and New Media”. Everyone from the likes of Sudhir Mishra, Jag Mundra et al. thought that the Celebrity(In this case, the brand in focus), was still the major USP for most Bollywood films. I would sure think so too, the word Starstruck does ring a bell pretty hard. Of late, anything and everything that has done well in the international markets (read:Indian Diaspora), seem to push the Starlit Big ones (Read Om shanti Om, Sivaji - The Boss) into the UK Top 10!!
I’m not one to complain. We at Fourteen have been involved with our 2 cents of thought and advice with Southside - A Provocative South Indian Film Magazine. It is the first of its kind and to commemorate 9 months of existance, we gave it a brand build. The launch of the new image kicked off pretty well with all the Page 3 attention that it commanded. Newsmakers Prahlad Kakkar, Lata Menon, Shashi Kumar, Madhav Das brought a lot of interest and fun to the evening.
But guess it was more of a hidden message to the media today - “Advertising works with celebrities - exceedingly well”. The evening had all the glamor and star glitz that it promised. The evening also saw the launch of Southside.in.
All in all, looks like the new year will be one where there will be plenty of Celeb-ration.
P.S.: Punning is dead.
New Media - Or is it?
A while ago, actually quite a while ago, Mike Brown from Handvertising USA had emailed me. He had written about his company’s latest product - Handvertising.
In today’s world of New media, where the term ‘New media’ takes a plethora of avatars if I could say so, I thought Handvertising was definitely NEW media. Well, enough punning.
From the website, I assume that, it has made headlines in Cnet, Newsweek, Fox Business and the LA Times. New media - I sure think so.
Back to the Future
Well, it is in a way. The last few months have been HECTIC. So much for being caught in a Web 2.0 advertised non-Web 2.0 world.
Branding has taken off incredibly well in India, owing to market conditions, socio-economic factors and well, the dollar rate. People are going retail and guess we have been on the radar. Our sincere thanks to our clients, freelancers and vendors.
Well, the title says it all - atleast half of it - We are BACK.
Brand new day
No, we are not tapping our feet to Sting’s greatest hits.
Today, at Fourteen, we take a ‘brand’ new approach - pun intended - We enter the world of corporate blogging. The 2 cents 2 branding weblog will primarily reflect on
1. Transparent functionality of a Strategic Brand Consultancy
2. Participatory product updates
3. Brand news, view and reviews
4. Niche areas of creative production that ‘Fourteen’ specializes in.
We look forward to your involvement at every level possible. In today’s web 2.0 world, we look forward to a community-input driven alignment for our internal branding - after all, what you infer of us is our brand.