The wonderful world of advertising..

The wonderful world of advertising...reaching into people's minds and hearts...do whatever it takes to not just establish a brand identity, but also to gain remembrance in peoples minds through notoriety or excellence. This brings us to the new series of advertisements by Haagen Dazs..the ice-cream maker.

It begins with the words.."there is a school of thought that says.....less is more...that elegance is simplicity...." I am not going to bother with rehashing the details of the ad because simply said, you HAVE to watch that advertisement. If there was a statement made in advertising, this was one. 60 seconds of pure and clear and simple message being delivered at its very best. Touch of class that unfortunately hasn't been the hallmark of advertising lately. You have an issue with this statement?

Ok...go take a look at the new McDonalds commercial for its chicken whatever food. Go defend your chicken? What the heck is that supposed to be? Who ever came up with that idea? But then hey...if its fastfood, anything goes right? Drop the chicken and step away from the deliciousness I say. what are you? some kind of nutbar?

Equally lame are the commercials on local television channels. I am being easy on them...lame is praise for the quality of those commercials.

Then there are these crass idiots who advertise their products not on the strength of their products, but by putting the competitors product down. Gripe, snipe, snip, cut, grumble, crib...do whatever it takes to compare their product with their competitor. Talk about them asses not trusting their own product. If you need proof, think back to all those lame Pepsi taste-test ads, those equally lame Pepsi ads showing some idiot music star who chose Pepsi over Coke and found fame (ha..if only life was so easy). Visa insists on taking the cake though with its advertising blitz where it has to always compare with American Express. I mean give me a frikkin' break..if you are so damned exclusive, go shove yourselves up the orifices of rich uppity Republicans and leave me alone.

This gripe brings me back to the first commercial that I really appreciated in my time here in the US..the MasterCard commercial that started airing during the 2001 baseball regular season in the form of two friends making a road-trip to pay homage to all 30 major-league ballparks.

60 seconds to watch one of the classiest commercials of all time....$ 0

6 hours arguing with friends over why baseball is still a better sport over football...$ 0

appreciating the game of baseball being played without the constraints of time and enjoying the excellent commercials and their related memories...priceless

of course, just like my friend pointed it out the other day, I am obviously biased toward the Mastercard commercial because some of my happiest sport memories are associated with the 2001 baseball season when my beloved Diamondbacks cut Mariano "Mr. Automatic" Rivera and them damned-Yanks to size with a sizzling bottom of the 9th inning rally. but say hay kid...what the heck...three years later the adapted version of the Mastercard commercial now featuring Homer Simpson is still adorable

Then there is that extreme of creativity Honda Accord ad featuring many parts of an Accord made to work on a work-shop floor in a domino-trigger effect. That 2-min long commercial...apparently was on the verge of being given up on when all the gazillion parts that were supposed to be part of the domino chain would screw up..sometimes with about 10 or 15 seconds remaining to complete. After 600-odd exhausting takes..it finally worked...and guess what the voice-over says at the end of the commercial? "Isn't it nice when something just works" :)

Without much ado..the following commercials that have left a mark in my memory...

1. MasterCard
2. Haagen Dazs
3. Coca-Cola (the Life taste's good commercials that often times featured Penelop Cruz in a bar just slugging down a Coke, or a little girl offering a bride-to-be a Coke, and the new ads featuring a woman happily singing and handing out Coke bottles to people on the street)
4. Budweiser Zebra commercials from Superbowl Sunday

May the creative juices of ad-execs flow at its convincing best so we can all appreciate excellent commercials for their excellence.

Good night America!

In celebration of being alive..

My friend showed me a book today "Don't sweat the small stuff at work"..a cute little book that essentially strives to point to people what they ought to know themselves...it just doesn't pay to be stressed out and in conflict all the time. The book implores us all to work together to bring out the best in us and others...

In short, what I call...celebrate us being alive.

Life is a sweet little thing..you can do fun little things and you can do fun big things...you can screw up a $2000 PC (aw shucks you say? well its still a device and can be repaired. so if you screwed it up, so what? just be careful the next time around) or you can repair a $20 roller-ball computer mouse. you can eyeball a supermodel or you can go and marry the homely girl-next door type..you can treat the entire apartment block to your best dessert...or you can make your friend treat you to the best Haagen Dazs icecream there is.

It is about appreciating the beauty in the dew drop on the leaf of a plant in your front yard. It is in taking a hike up that desert mountain trail to view the glorious sunset that graces the western skies. It is in staying up at midnight in a campsite to see hundreds of meteorites and cometoids zoom by in brilliant flashes of light.

Life comes at you with dazzling variety of things to do and see and appreciate and learn from. That usually does not include the theme parks or movie studios but it sure can include that visit to San Diego to see dolphins at their prankster best.

Life is for all of us to share and enjoy...it is in having a few friends over for a quiet spot of dinner and talk..it is in having the same group of friends go over to a restaurant and become the boisterous center of racket (and by extension center of attention as well :) )

There is more to life than carrying along petty differences and egos. It is not worth your while or my while for us to hold grudges against each other. More importantly it is always worth your while to smile and make someone's day.

Let us make this world an easier place to be in...one person at a time.

The buy-in..

So finally I decided...what the heck...and took the plunge...into the worm-hole that is blogging. Inspired by two rather politically-active friends of mine...

If you are on the right side of the political divide...I guess we will be arguing from here to eternity!

Have a wonderful day..