Tagline : Butt of Jokes?

When people attack a company, the first one to get hit is the tagline.

In 1987, Scott Baker designed the current, so-called "Pac-Man Logo" for Microsoft. The new logo has a slash on the ‘O’ that made it look like Pac-Man, hence the name. In 1994 Microsoft introduced a new tagline Where do you want to go today?, as part of a $100 million advertising campaign. Needless to say, it was widely mocked.

In 1996, perhaps tired of being the butt of jokes like "what kind of error messages would you like today?", Microsoft dropped the slogan. Later, it tried on new taglines like "Making It Easier", "Start Something", "People Ready" and "Open Up Your Digital Life" before settling on the current "Your potential. Our passion."

~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

One-line Marketing Strategy

I had a chat with a start-up founder. He wanted me to act as a sounding board and as well give him a one-line marketing strategy.

"Serve a market that is an inch wide and a mile deep and not a mile wide and an inch deep."

How true!! Start-ups should follow this brick to brick or pixel to pixel!!

~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Losing Audience ?

There was an interesting question in LinkedIn about Presentations : 'When giving a presentation, what is the biggest obstacle to connecting with your audience?'

Read my response :

"Could be your presentation itself.

Especially if you have a powerpoint presentation. Unfortunately, majority of presentations are culttered with content. When you have loads of text up there, human psychology is to read it than listen to the presenter.

I think text should be a talking point triggers and allow visuals to explain the big picture. If this is done, in a second or two, the audience will return to the presenter to validate or understand what is depicted on the slide. If the presenter adds value through relative examples he connects with the audience for that slide. Do it slide after slide after slide after slide!"


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

You are the torch !!

Buddha said, "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned."

I met a few of my ad friends after a long gap. They were lambasting the industry, the new trends, the defaulting clients, overbearing clients and they forsee death of branding, creativity and what not. I think if you believe that the industry needs to change, help it to change - mentor your juniors or even go to the educational institutions to build things ground up.

In fact, I am doing the same, I care to spend a couple of hours a month to mentor students about the practical fundas of brand building. I am doing a session in LIBA in the first week of September.

Instead of bitching about the state of branding and advertising, please go do something on the ground. Mentor and transform.


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Digital East !!

In terms of total broadband users, the US leads the pack with more than 60 million subscribers. But second-placed China is fast closing the gap. From 41 million users a year ago, China now has more than 56 million and looks set to overtake the US as the world's largest broadband market this year.

There are more than 1.1 billion of the world's estimated 6.6 billion people online and almost a third of them are now accessing the internet on high-speed lines. According to the internet consultancy Point Topic, 298 million people had broadband at the end of March and that is already estimated to have shot over 300 million.

Digital west? East is fast moving north to beat the west. Sorry for the pun here. The whole business dynamics will change in the coming years and these numbers are only indicators !!


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in