The Hindu Business Line : Top moves for Rajeevs

We barely got over the surprise of hearing about Rajeev Karwal's remuneration package (it sounded as big as Mukesh Ambani's retail plans, and as well deserved, we are sure) when the news arrives that he has moved on. This is the first casualty in terms of top guns at the Reliance retail venture. Something tells us the high-flying executives are taking their management training about making quick moves to reach the top a little too seriously. Now we are very keen to know who can better Mukesh bhai's remuneration to Rajeev. That will be the next headline corporate India would like to read.

And a happy one.

Rajiv Bakshi must be smiling. He has ridden out two pesti cola imbroglios, he has starred in a TV commercial, Coke isn't really the most profitable venture in India, and he is now headed to Hong Kong to oversee the Asian operations at Pepsi. Someone was commenting on the cola responses to the pesticides scam, and noted that Coke chose Aamir Khan as their brand ambassador to endorse their stand. Pepsi could have chosen their own brand ambassador, the hugely popular Shahrukh Khan, yet they decided to go with Rajiv Bakshi. Now does that tell us something about Shahrukh, or about Rajiv?

Good Network

When Network Advertising lost the Thomas Cook account it must have been a body blow to it. Now it has used its experience in the travel business to impress tour major and arch competitor of Thomas Cook, SOTC, to appoint Network as its agency. Congratulations to them. SOTC must be happy to have on board an agency that knows all the competitors' strengths and weaknesses.

An industry watcher commented that if Network uses the same strategy again, it could bag a big airline account. Remember, it lost the huge Jet Airways account too. Now who would that big airline be?

Mumbai's high

Mumbai was reeling under the news that five youngsters, allegedly inebriated, had driven a car over six innocents sleeping on a footpath. The media was full of statistics about under-21s who drink far too much. Psychoanalysts were debating what was going wrong with parents and their children. In the midst of all this, on 14th November (Children's Day), a morning tabloid ran an advertisement for an event where "you can't stop drinking". The advertisement was aimed at the youth of Mumbai. For crying out aloud, is this the Mirror of Mumbai? Can we have some sense, if not sensibility?

Shaken but not stirred

Daniel Craig, the new James Bond

As the new James Bond readies to storm theatres in Mumbai, Smirnoff has been releasing full page advertisements as a part of a joint promotion for the movie. The advertisement has a quiz and seeks to know what was Bond's favourite drink. Well, one must agree that for Smirnoff, this is a great opportunity to really go to town and take some of the rub-off effect from the Bond movie. After all 007 really liked his martinis. And Smirnoff's vodka forms the main ingredient in a martini these days.

The dampener, however, is the fact that the allegedly inebriated kids mentioned earlier were coming out of a Smirnoff event and they apparently even had a bottle of liquor in the car, which, judging from their age, should not have been sold to them at all.

Well, Smirnoff advertisements even after the event show it is neither shaken nor stirred. Even James Bond's stiff upper lip would have slipped.

Whither originality?

We noticed a rather nice TVC from the Shriram Motor Finance people, and it had a very hummable and somewhat familiar song playing out as the camera followed truck journeys around India. Some seniors (those golden oldies) remarked that the song (Musafir Hoon Yaron) was a direct lift from an old Hindi movie starring Jeetendra. Though the singer was not Kishore Kumar, every word and nuance of the tune was the same as in the original song. It kind of spoilt it for us. This has to be the easiest way of making a TV commercial. Grab a song, tune and all, and place some visuals that go with it. Do you think the agency must have paid some royalty or a fee to the movie maker or the music director? One hopes so.

Victoria

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