Archive for October, 2007

Unwanted Advice: ICICI Bank — We Want You To Be Perpetually Indebted To Us

Last week, I went to ICICI Bank’s Commissariat Road branch in order to obtain a loan foreclosure statement. What I ran out with, along with the foreclosure statement, was a lot of unwanted [investment] advice.
Here’s a sample:

The interest rate on your loan is just 10 percent! Why do you want to foreclose such a cheap […]

Lame Advice: What’s The Worst Equity Investing Advice You Have Heard?

In a bull equity market, human beings conjure magical investment formulae. Here’s the worst equity investing advice I have heard:

Your exposure — in percentage terms — to equity investments should be 100 less your current age. So if you are a 27-year old, your exposure to equity instruments should be 100 - 27 = 73%, […]

Lame Advertising: Air Deccan — One Thing That Didn’t Go Right After The Purchase

A one rupee coin, flying chocolates, a flying watch, and a flying signpost — who would have guessed that this was an Air Deccan ad? Till the end, I actually thought this was a Vodafone ad and was wondering where did that mutt run away — for it’s own good. Randomly inserting a child, a […]

Lame Advertising: Bajaj Pulsar 200cc — Why Show Me Everything That I Can’t Do With This Bike?

At the end of this advertisement, I am thinking “Ummm…Can I actually ride this bike on the road?” And what’s the whole point in showing all kinds of stunts with an ever present “Performed by experts. Do not attempt these stunts” subtitle?

Great product. Lame advertising. Belongs to the “WTF mate?” category.

Help Required: Can You Recommend A Good Mobile Phone Shop Near The Forum Mall?

A visitor to this blog wants to AVOID purchasing a mobile phone from Sangeetha Electronics. Can you suggest or recommend an alternative mobile phone store in or around The Forum Mall, Koramangala?
Drop a comment if you know of such a store.

Tweets on 2007-10-22

© Vinaya HS; Shot with my PowerShot SD850 IS.

Tweets on 2007-10-21

© Vinaya HS; Shot with my Canon PowerShot SD850 IS.

Tweets on 2007-10-16

I haven’t been keeping well since the past week - there’s a viral warfare going on inside my body. In between the antibiotics, I’ve been entertaining myself with Season 1 of Desperate Housewives. I’ll be back on a blogging blitzkrieg once the virii decide to take a hike.

If You’ve Been Itching To Talk To Me, I’ve Just Made It Free For You

Select your country, enter your phone number (any), and hit the CALL button. That’s it and you’re connected to me! Once we’ve hung up, I’d really appreciate your gesture of leaving a comment about your experience.

What are you waiting for? Call me now.

Note: Unfortunately, the flash based calling widget doesn’t display on a few RSS […]

Tweets on 2007-10-09

Interesting Do Not Call Registry Statistics.

On October 06, 2007, 6,521,322 users had registered for the do not call service. Out of these, 3,097,974 or 47.50% were Airtel users.

So who’s been selling your number all this while?

Lame Service: ICICI Bank — If You Make The Customer Wait Long Enough They Will Leave; For Good

I walked into the Jayanagar branch of ICICI Bank and was greeted by a wall-mounted primitive-artificial-intelligence-capable monolith device. This device has 15 buttons in total; 6 rows with 2 buttons each and 1 row with 3 buttons, all with textual inscriptions in a tiny-sized font.

As a customer, you are required to press a sequence of […]

Bad Jargon: A Lesson On How To Evade Answering Simple And Direct Questions

In response to the simple question “What can we expect to see from Technorati in the next year with you at the helm?”, Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati said:

We’re really centered on trying to create a wholly unique media experience and improving our properties. Our big thing is going to be working on the advertising […]

Great Advertising: The Peugeot 206 — Do You Remember Seeing This Ad On TV?

I don’t recollect having seen this advertisement on television. Do you?

I had written about this particular advertisement way back in January, 2006. Here’s what I had said back then:

Here’s a true example of an advertisement that is captivating, fun to watch, and memorable. It’s an ad for the Peugeot 206.
The ad starts on a busy […]

Tweets On 2007-10-05

Said Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer:

I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people. There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That’s for sure.

I’ve […]

Surprisingly Sane Quotes In A Bull Market #1

Sane quotes — a welcome change!

Source: Markets could move in a higher P/E band: Religare Securities

The market is actually behaving as if there is no execution risk in anything at all, so the stock prices are reacting to a lot of news flows without projects actually getting commissioned or scheduled. This remains a risk, as […]

Lame Advertising: The Aditya Birla Group — When Animators Go Wild

It’s generally a bad sign when an advertisement production team is composed of only animators. Because, what you then produce will look something similar to this:

Taking India To The World - Part 1

Taking India To The World - Part 2

My only question to the Aditya Birla group: WTF mate? Did you even consider viewing this […]

And When We Do Create Great Advertisements, The Government Bans Them

This is an awesome ad, but the Information & Broadcasting ministry - in all its infinite wisdom - banned its broadcast under the pretext of vulgarity. The Lux International advertisement that we saw yesterday is more vulgar. But then again, who are we - the public - to decide what’s vulgar and what’s not?

On the […]

Lame Advertising: Lux International - When Personal Fantasies Come In The Way Of Advertising

A note of apology: This ad’s in Indonesian. I couldn’t find the English equivalent. Drop a comment if you know where I can find one.

The team that came up with the storyboard for this advertisement probably had quite a lot of naughty fantasies wreaking havoc on their minds. How else can you explain a bathtub […]


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