Read Between the Ps

An interesting way to keep your price-conscious consumers stuck to you - Employing a pricing tactic like this one, which creates a unique sense of urgency, may encourage wary consumers to buy more immediately. The concept, called " steadily decreasing discounting" or SDD , by researchaers, entails discounting in a manner to keep the consumers attracted to the offerings. Either keep on reducing prices, adding promotions to your offerings, to keep the consumers engaged (leveraging the transactional utility) or once reduced significantly, raise prices with one/two intermittent break - to create a sense of urgency that prices are going to be raised shortly. Net net, Higher future price expectations and greater anticipation of inaction-regret appear to be the underlying mechanisms that lead to the effectiveness of the SDD tactic. Read the article and the research to get more details. Photo Ref: Tollipop

This Christmas, St Mattews Church ( Auckland, New Zealand ) decided to celebrate in a different way – it put up a controversial billboard on Joseph and Mary, challenging Christians the very foundation of their religion! Result – Thousands of criticisms, hundreds of praises, and tones of vague logic. But most importantly, global publicity of the campaign, engaging half of the “ clicker universe ”! The advert was designed by M&C Saatchi, Auckland , with the brief that it had to be sufficiently provocative to keep most other churches from allowing it. It was designed to challenge stereotypes about the way that Jesus was conceived, and get people talking about the Christmas story. The initial intent behind the campaign was to invite people to think about the virgin birth and the nature of God, be open to more than one Christian way to think about God, to promote the Progressive view of Jesus having 2 human parents and God being the power of love in his life and to invite people out...

While I spend my time in getting something interesting on Christ, I found this interesting ambient from Coca-Cola’s Shelf. Had earlier talked about Coke’s “ Happiness Factory ” campaign almost 3 years back – the best part is it is still one of most talked about global campaigns in the advertising world! The new ambient “ Happiness Machine ” clearly calls out Coca-Cola as a source of happiness – its just that is the vending machine now which vends out happiness, in the form of foodie (mostly) surprises! Put together by Definition 6 , an interactive marketing agency based out of Atlanta, this one is about putting a vending machine in a college canteen, that gives out surprises – much more than what you order for. So, students inserting a coin for a coke, not only get that coke, but also more cokes or flowers or even burgers/pizzas along with it. In fact, some of them are ‘vended’ out by hand as well! An interesting campaign. It doesn’t matter if it is staged or actual or if the " v...

One has to muster a lot of courage to write about pain. It is easy to express pain through your senses, but not through your hands. Changing the font, expressing it from your heart and then articulating it, does not seem to be an easy task. But I think I need to do it, for this is the thing I want to – as I was told it helps to let out. You never know, it just might reduce the pain. Time and effort, as they say, kept me away for a long time. 2 years away from myself, this reflection that I call my own, did not have me around. My effort to be ahead in the ‘rat race’ and struggle to be ‘out of it’ kept me confused. The fear of losing my most precious valuable kept me lost and ignorant. The end was perilous, Darkness was imminent, but the little shades of gray is what you bank upon – and you rest your shoulders on the fragile layer of hope, ironically putting more and more weight on it, as it trembles. Does that happen every time just before a person gets completely shattered? I always ha...