marketing anyone?

It was Déjà vu. Not again , i thought. The guy had followed me from the seven-two-four to the four-two-five. So i braced myself for the same rote discourse of his. I'd seen him earlier, but this time was a bit different. Apart from the Delhi Information booklet, he now carried a quiz book, a book containing alphabets for children, gell pen sets, pencil sets(with free erasers) ; all for 10 per item. After his melancholy and monotonic speech, he scanned the bus for any buyers waving the booklets at them. Unlike previous instances , the 10 rupee notes did not come out, and he had to disembark without any fresh notes in his pocket. I couldn't help but smile. The entire stretch was jammed, and buses were lined one after another. "So many customers", thought I. I could have definitely done better than him. He did not strike a correct chord with the consumer even though he had products which were easily sell-able. The key was marketing, and he was a non-thinker.

Looking at a much bigger medium, Tata Docomo was the first network to offer 1p/sec calls and they had literally spammed the whole cricket match with their silly docomo-docomo-o-re-aaaaa-oooo  (someone throw out the TV please!) ads. What a waste of money. What's worse is their recent futile attempt to imitate the carefully thought out ZooZoos with silly cartoons and text on the screen which disappears faster than I can say 'I love you'.  A much better thought out advertising and marketing campaign would have helped Tata use the advantage they had.

I'm reminded of the train journey that i took with my dad to Chandigarh. Chaiwallahs shouting "chai-chai" crisscrossed the train's compartments at the rate of 1 compartment/minute. My dad had tea at the rate of 1 tea/7 chaiwallahs (ok .... maybe 9), but I didn't. Then came one who shouted "Punjab di tarka maar ke chai, pee ke aadmi gungunaye" (lolz...) . I had a cup.

ps : this is an aise-hi-likh-diya post.
- bhaiyajii