On the 20th November the Times Of India masthead came with a typo! Most of the TOI readers didn't even realise it. Not to cast a doubt on their understanding of spelling and grammer, but what can you expect of the poor souls? They have been subjected to unwieldy half front pages and empty front pages containing empty advertising thoughts for so long! They have grown so used to it, that nowadays they start reading from the 3rd page!
The rest, who noticed it, sighed and pondered for a whole second upon where the world was headed. But those in the Advertising industry itself merely said, ah, another innovation, let’s find out what did it cost Airtel to pull it off.
The sad part here is that we call this Innovation. In real life, innovating means something quite different. In advertising, it means you acquired the rights to shout from the rooftops before anyone else could. Sigh!
And I am sure this will feature in the award entries this year under the category of media innovation and will walk away with a trophy as hollow as the idea itself.
Now I don't wish to be unkind to those who did it. (Who knows, I might need a job in JWT someday!) But I cannot, for the love of Noah Webster, understand why the agency or the client didn’t replace an 'a' with an 'a'??? Now you can't blame TOI for not having an A in the dead centre of the name, can you?
Now I don't discount the possibility that I am off my rocker and what I foolishly thought to be an 'a' for Airtel, is something quite different, like the manifestation of a bridge between telecommunication and human life, or two entities that cannot escape each other thanks to the 3G-strong bond of communication, or some such PPT nonsense... If that's so, I apologise.
In a day and age where advertising is fast losing the respect it once had, such overzealous adventures need a bit of taming down. Where were the creative directors? Oh, I forget. We are in the month of November...
The rest, who noticed it, sighed and pondered for a whole second upon where the world was headed. But those in the Advertising industry itself merely said, ah, another innovation, let’s find out what did it cost Airtel to pull it off.
The sad part here is that we call this Innovation. In real life, innovating means something quite different. In advertising, it means you acquired the rights to shout from the rooftops before anyone else could. Sigh!
And I am sure this will feature in the award entries this year under the category of media innovation and will walk away with a trophy as hollow as the idea itself.
Now I don't wish to be unkind to those who did it. (Who knows, I might need a job in JWT someday!) But I cannot, for the love of Noah Webster, understand why the agency or the client didn’t replace an 'a' with an 'a'??? Now you can't blame TOI for not having an A in the dead centre of the name, can you?
Now I don't discount the possibility that I am off my rocker and what I foolishly thought to be an 'a' for Airtel, is something quite different, like the manifestation of a bridge between telecommunication and human life, or two entities that cannot escape each other thanks to the 3G-strong bond of communication, or some such PPT nonsense... If that's so, I apologise.
In a day and age where advertising is fast losing the respect it once had, such overzealous adventures need a bit of taming down. Where were the creative directors? Oh, I forget. We are in the month of November...
mmm... good point
ReplyDeleteAs i began to investigate i thought of a possibility
i realised there must be 2 entities
1. 'The design company' actually designing a symbol for Airtel as a brush stroke in lower case = 'a'
2. 'The advertising agency' with perhaps the absence of any communication with 'the design company' must have assumed SOMEHOW that the designed symbol represents 'O' in capital letter :-(
and used that way in their communication.
Isn't it strange that Airtel never questioned it and missed it all through
(As Airtel is the only link hiring the services of both companies).
Also strange is the fact that the lower portion of the ad looks like a Vodafone ad !!