I am a big fan of the IPL. But IPL brought with it, its share of bad advertising. At the cost of company brand image, came worst ads I have seen in recent times.

JK Cement - The Model with No Purpose!

The first ad that comes to being the worst of all time, is by JK Cement.

What’s wrong with the Ad:

• Ugly Model
• Bad Bikini
• What’s the message?
• Tag Line: “Vishwas hai, Kuch Khaas hai” My question, vishwas is khaas? WTF!

Verdict: Please stop modelling, and leave cement selling to Big B.

Pepsi Youngistaan ka WOW Campaign

What they might have tried to do: Target the Youth

What they ended up doing: Made them stay away for good

What could have worked for the ad: If someone in this world actually told us: WHAT THE HELL YOUNGISTAAN KA WOW means!

What went wrong:

Brands in India believe to reach their target consumers they have to invest in traditional marketing and advertising; television, print, electronic, events etc. It is probably true.

However, they often and more times ignore the impact that word of mouth marketing creates on their consumers. Here’s one such story that made waves in India last year and continues to do so in 2009.

We’ve all heard of Polo, Ralph Lauren and we all know how their Rugby/Polo Pony’s with the single digit number on the sleeve became the biggest ‘style’ statement in India for 2008.

There was no advertisement in print or television. There is no Polo store in India. There is no marketing tactic that Polo used for the Indian market. So then how and why did this story become such a big rage? I decided to ask around and see how the Poly Pony tee became the most talked about and worn brand in India last year?

“Most advertising tends to be”, Edward Kosner once said, "a trailing indicator of popular culture". 

This might have been true 30 years ago, but the scene today is different. Advertising is actually CREATING culture(s) and is more and more targeted at changing the basic psyche of the target customers.