Finance Guru in making ?

Economic Times’s supplement, Brand Equity used to carry a critique section on Ads - Ads which didn’t create the buzz or could not achieve the stated objective or simply were waste of resources and generated confusion among consumers. This Ad of Aegon Religare Star Child Plan appeared last week in ET, and I believe this Ad deserves a critique.


Firstly, when you start reading the Ad, you don’t have any clue of why we are finding out whether your child is Finance guru in making or why those 7 symptoms are being written?


Secondly, even if we assume that Ad tells you to find out financial genius of child, questions remain unanswered - how scientific are these 7 questions and whether these questions are true indicators of a potential to do good in Finance. If these 7 questions are not scientific, then should these questions be used in such an ad in which the advertiser is playing with emotions and setting wrong benchmarks in minds of consumers?

Isn’t it a cheap way of satisfying egos of parents and trapping them in an emotional trap. I am not saying that marketers and advertisers should not leverage on the emotional fear of consumers instead their promotions should make sense and not make fool of consumer’s intelligence.

Doesn’t this Ad show creative bankruptcy of advertiser because mere answers to so called symptoms are not good enough reason for parents to buy a Children education policy and lastly, Why Finance? Why not any other profession or fields of study? It is universally accepted that finance is no longer a coveted profession as it used to be before current slowdown. Then, Will target consumers really be fancied by such an Ad during current scenario?

Why don't you not spend when you can?

I have always been amazed with Brand Building exercises and Ad Spends of two companies HPCL (Hindustan Petroleum) and BPCL(Bharat Petroleum). Here are the reasons for my amazement:

1. Both are Government owned Indian Oil retailers. I have hardly seen any other PSU which spends the way these two companies spend on marketing. Perhaps, there are few government companies in B2C (Business to Consumer) market.

2. Both companies are in red as per ET(Economic Times) dated 30th Apr 2009. If you don't make profits, then you try to cut costs and reduce expenditure on things such as Ads. I have hardly seen any visible efforts in this direction as they continue to get their products endorsed by costly players such as Dhonis' of the world.

3. Both companies are in oil retailing where competition is crushed by Government’s populist policies (Read Closure of Reliance’s oil retailing business). Why the hell you need to spend on brand building (Endorsement Spend, customer loyalty programs etc) when you hardly have any competitor to deal with.