Marketing by the ordinary folk

Some person thought of it fun to break the windshield of my parked car so i had to come by public transport to the office today. Setting aside the suffocation and constant smell of sweat a Pakistani bus ride can be really a good experience. From marketing point of view I simply love it.. There are people who climb on a moving bus carrying a bag full of goods (I bet a Hollywood stuntman could not perform this feat), selling their goods at a relatively cheaper price from the market.. There was this one person who tried to sell a liquid which was the cure of all diseases.. Move aside cancer and HIV.. we have a magic medicine available on our buses.. no need to spend millions of dollars in research.. The way he tried to sell it, it would put a educated salesman to shame.. It was personal selling at its best.. I wondered if they had quality education just what they might have achieved.. Then there is a cheap source of text marketing.. Behind every bus seats are loads of numbers written.. "Call 0300112233 and all your problems are gone".. "call akmal the great magician and your life will change".. Buses bring out the best of marketing abilities in people it seems.. On my way back I think I should write a small detail of all the the business softwares my company makes.. Maybe i just might make a sale..

The power of jingles

It once occurred to me that what makes a cheap marketing ad click is a jingle. If you don't have super special effects or a celebrity in your ad the chances are the viewers will forget the ad no sooner they see it. So how do you make an ad that would stick in ones mind like glue. What is the secret formula that some people remember some ads till they are lying down on their death beds while some ads are forgotten no sooner they are viewed.. The answer are jingles.. I might have seen a thousand ads with special effects and celebrities but the ones that stick to my mind are the ones that have jingles.. I recall one very lame ad of a telephone dancing.. very poor graphics I might add.. but what made the ad make a permanent residence in my mind like a unwanted mother in law who just wouldn't go away is the jingle it had.. It had such a catchy tune of a certain numbers that I, like many people just tried it out to see what it actually was.. Then there was the milk wars in Pakistani ad community.. Not as epic as the Cola wars but cut throat none the less.. One ad had basically all the current crop of models drinking their brand of milk.. While the other ad was good but not so special.. What made it special was the jingle it had.. The jingle became so popular that every kid had remembered that tune.. Even when I go to buy milk I some how start humming that tune.. Anyways along with the jingle the ad has to make sense.. A few months back I saw an ad on cartoon network.. It was of a very famous chocolate in which every body was made up of chocolates.. It ended up with people eating every thing.. their gear knobs, taking a bite out of each other, in short cannibalism.. Horrifying ad.. The jingle gives me nightmares of man eating chocolates..

In my next blog i will discuss how we can exploit this jingle phenomenon in the internet.. Good bye