Brand extentions

technology is changing the way marketing fraternity looks at brand extensions. conventional logic will tell you that you can extend a brand across a range of connected benefits. so Dove can become a range of skin care products that enhance beauty, and Clinique can become scientific skin care brabd that keeps skin youth ful and blah blah.
but technology is doing funny things and marketers are doing funnier things in this field. Apple has been doing some truely path breaking extensions. if itunes an online music store owned by apple what is it doing in a tie up with HP? and more interestingly with motorola on motorazr? and if ipod is mobile music nd video device why is it inside BMW and many more automobiles? these extentions are beyond conventional logic or thinking. It doesnt stop here. What is Walkman? a music player or Phone? What is Cybershot? a Camera albiet digital or a mobile phone? Is Nokia a mobile phone maker or an entertainment device maker? Brands are getting into teritories that they would have otherwise stayed far away from. But today technology and the chage it is bringing in forcing those dynamics to change. to survive the brands have to think about engaging their customes and not look at narrow categories. so cosmetics are becoming beauty salons, will toothpastes become dating services??

News Channels in India have become sensationalits

News Channels in India have completely lost the plot. There is no objectivity, no sense of news worthyness, no sense of an opinion. Wedding of Ash and Abhishekh occupies the lead headlines. channel after channel spend enormous time showing you some inanne footage and nonsensical comments! every day, every channel does a half an hour programme on cricket. Even the sports channels dont discuss the matches as much as the news channels do! All this to generate viewership? i guess they are losing more viewers than gaining. Newspapers have realized the folly and you can see that every day the newspaper stories are very different than tv stories. Channels need to wake up and smell the coffee

What ails advertising awards in India?

there is a lot that is not right with award and award judging process in India. Even for awards like EFFIEs which are franchised from EFFIEs based out of US, the process is neither transparent nor rogorous. The way the Euro Effies and the Global Effies are judged are far more rigourous than the way Indian EFFIES are judged. Imagine a campaign that won the Euro Effie, but failed to win an Effie in India? was it not effective? was it not dispalying exceptional business results? on what basis dies the india jury decide not to give the ward? it is all nebulous. just look at the winners: Lowe and O&M!! with one or two awards for other agencies. is all a matter of concidence that these two agencies are fighting a pitched battle to control the bombay ad club award functions? is it a coming togather of two agencies so that they can now bury the hatchet?
whatever it may be, but this will kill the fairness and objectivity that award functions must demonstrate. lets not reduce effies to presentation stunts and populist feelings...