The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Tense, Nervous Headache? You Must Be At Delhi Airport.

The above photos are the queue trying to get INTO the airport. And no, it is not because there’s been a bomb scare or that it’s a national holiday … it’s because over a billion people live in the place and this is a ‘normal airport’ scene.

However, what I particularly love is that India are doing an ad campaign called “INCREDIBLE INDIA” which tends to focus on the calm, spiritual elements of the country.

All well and good … however, when they place a billboard of this campaign inside the bloody airport, it’s message sort of loses it’s effectiveness!

When will media shops understand buying media in isolation of the consumer environment/brand idea is stupid? 

Yeah, so they all say they don’t do this sort of thing … and yeah, you can say it is a by-product of companies demanding numerical justification for every dollar spent on marketing [which ironically is probably leading to less effective media strategies than ever before] … however when a media buyer/planner purchases media without really understanding/appreciating/considering the consumers mindset interms of brand/environment/media channel, then I think that is bloody unprofessional and get really pissed off when clients go on about how more ‘business appreciative’ they are than creative agencies!

[I’m not saying creative agencies are necessarily business appreciative, it’s just that in the main they are about as good/bad as media shops!]

OK, so not ALL comms/media companies are like this [Naked for one are brilliant at understanding what’s going on in consumers lives/heads and using it to deliver interesting, relevant and effective communication] and I certainly don’t want to start a ‘Media vs Creative’ war [especially as I am a mentor at the Asian Media Conference next week] however I do wish more communication professionals appreciated [as well as practiced] the inclusion of consumer/human insights within their media thinking – because when they focus purely on the ‘potential audience figures’, they end up placing communication that’s about as effective as this sign in the garden of the Taj Mahal …

 

One of the 179 photos I took at the majestic place. Hmmmm, so that sign didn’t exactly work with me or the other 10,000 people there did it?

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