BRANDS AND THEIR KABALI CAMPAIGNS

 “Say no to piracy. Please don’t download the internet from Kabali”

There are numerous such jokes which we hear every day. This is because the legendry super star deserves all the respect and appreciation for all his work.

The most awaited films generally hit only the cinema screens, but Kabali is taking on marketing campaigns of various big brands too. These brands are getting into the marketing bandwagon of Kabali, hoping to reach out to millions. Even before the release of the movie, we saw a spate of products themed on the film and Rajinikanth.

Below are some Kabali themed products from different brands:

AIR ASIA

Air Asia is the official airline partner of Kabali. It announced special flights for the film's first day, first show. Die-hard fans of this superstar will now be able to catch the first show in Rajnikanth’s home town. The package, priced at Rs. 7,860, will be inclusive of the flight ticket, a movie ticket, an audio CD, Kabali merchandise, breakfast, lunch and snacks, reported Rediff.

AIRTEL

Rajinikanth fans having Airtel connections are getting a treat from this mobile service provider. Kabali SIM cards, caller tunes and recharge packs with unlimited 2G internet. Also as per their new campaign, Airtel users can send their wishes and regards to Rajinikanth via SMS. All the SMSs received will be compiled into a coffee table book and will be presented to him as a memorabilia.  

 

MUTHOOT  FINCORP

This Kerala-based non-banking financial company too joined the Kabali Mania. They are also an associate sponsor of the film. They have introduced silver coins with face of Rajinikanth embossed on it, giving a unique opportunity to the fans to own one such coin.

“This is for the first time an embossed silvercoin is being introduced for an actor. About Rs 20cr has been invested for manufacturing and branding activities. The silver coins will be available from the day one of the movie release,” Muthoot Pappachan Group, Precious Metals Division, CEO Keyur Shah said.

These silver coins would be available in denomination of five grams, ten grams, ten gram pendant and a twenty gram coin for fans priced from Rs 300 and goes upto Rs 1,400.

PVR CINEMAS

The multiplex giant too is cashing on the success of Kabali. Gautam Dutta, CEO, PVR Cinemas said, “The producers of the movie had approached PVR due to its pan India reach much beyond Tamil Nadu considering the mega star Rajinikanth has die-hard fans across the country to introduce exclusive Kabali merchandise at its cinemas. The patrons will not only have access to special Kabali merchandise at PVR cinemas but can also buy exclusive movie digital poster from its website.”

The range of merchandise includes Rajnikanth figurines, mugs and tee-shirts related to the film and superstar. These will be available at PVR properties across the country. 

START UPS

Not just big brands but also small start ups are taking slices from the Kabali cake. A mobile accessories platform based in Chennai, 'Cover it Up' has also tied up with the makers of the movie to feature funky Kabali-themed merchandise on its website. Chennai Gaga, a souvenir store is selling Kabali T-shirts featuring Rajinikanth

CADBURY

When all big brands are running behind Kabali, how can Cadbury be far behind? Cadbury promoted their popular product '5 Star as 'Superstar's Five Star. They have booked panels in buses plying in Tamil Nadu to have the Kabali posters with the tagline `Superstar ka 5 star’ and ‘Superstar in 5 star’. Not just this, they were also intending to conduct a road show opposite colleges and schools as well as in popular malls by parking buses with LED screens that will screen teasers, trailers and air songs of the film. They also came up with Cadbury5 Star Kabali Ad in their old series featuring Ramesh-Suresh characters.

FAIR AND HADSOME

FMCG major Emami has made its Fair and Handsome fairness cream a brand partner of this blockbuster movie.  Mohan Goenka, director at Emami said, “For Fair and Handsome, a leader and pioneer, associating with Superstar Rajinikanth, a leader and pioneer, is a natural fit.” A new #BeTheFire contest had been launched, where 50 winners were gifted ticket to Kabali success meet.  its commercial also features scenes from the Kabali movie.

AMAZON

Kabali waves have splashed water on the online e-commerce giant Amazon too. Amazon India has opened an exclusive Kabali store, which sells a wide range of Kabali branded mobile cases. They have stocked five different Kabali posters in a wide range of shapes like A3-1, A2, A2-1, A3-2 and A3-3. Other merchandise like key chain, statue, audio CD, Kabali Figure and lot of other things too are available at their Kabali store. 

It needs no mention that the power and stature of Rajinikanth is immense. Right from big brands to start ups all are trying to taste the success of Kabali. “Movie Kabali” has now turned into “Brand Kabali” Do watch the movie in theatre and enjoy the biggest hit of the year.  

To Do And Not To Do On Social Media

-Pratiti Nath

Social Media enables us to connect with people, share our lives, conduct business, exchange ideas and information. All of this in a quick and hassle free manner. It isn’t devoid of certain drawbacks. Similar to all other modes of communication like telephone, SMS or letters , social media too is plagued by certain problems. These problems can only be countered by following certain decorum. Here are some common social media etiquette to keep in mind while using any social media platform.

 1. Choose a proper profile picture and name

You are very fond of your pet and have it as your profile picture. You are book-lover and choose your favorite character as your name on social media channels. While these things display your likes and your personality it raises a question about your genuineness. Remember this may appear in Google search when someone searches for your name. Always opt for a decent genuine picture of yours along with your name. If you don’t want your picture in the public domain refrain from adding any instead of relying on pictures of places or superstars. In case of a business account make the company logo or the company building showing the name as the profile picture. Share your vision in the about yourself section and the company tagline for cover picture.  

2. Separate your personal and professional life

Similar to your real life, your virtual life should have separate forums for professional and personal spheres. You definitely don’t want your boss browsing over your late night clubbing or weekend beach gateway pictures. Leave it for your friends. Likewise you don’t want to bore your friends with unnecessary work details. Having separate accounts for your business or work related handle and for your personal use is the key. If you are not one of those who can handle multiple accounts then customize your posts. Control who can view your posts.

 3. Do not write posts when you are angry or feeling low

You are feeling low tweet, a philosophical quote or a sorrowful vague post. While these posts might serve the purpose of relieving the burden of your emotion, they don’t go down well with others. Frequent such posts will often lead to people associating negative attributes (like complaining) with you. Hence, they will start avoiding you. Think before posting such things. Think of its viability after a few months. If it isn’t then discard it. If you cannot do without posting such things customize them to “friends”, “only me” or any other that you prefer. 

 4. Refrain from tagging and sharing pictures of others

You uploaded a picture of your friends chilling on beach and that landed her in trouble in her office. You have posted an old nostalgic picture of your high school batch mate. He isn’t comfortable of it. Thus, refrain from sharing pictures of others without their consent. People have a definitive way of projecting themselves in public which might not gel with your perceived view. Hence, always ask before posting. Another problem is of unnecessary tagging. Don’t tag people to pictures when they aren’t in it. Nobody wants to see a picture of your cat tagged along with 50 people and 20 comments. 

5. Refrain from Oversharing

People need not go through everything you find interesting on Facebook. Of course you find those memes and short stories hilarious. You need not share each and every item you like. Restrict the number of posts you share. Only share the ones which you find of utmost importance. Oversharing will clutter other people’s news feed leading people to ignore or unfriend you. 

6. Restrict from badmouthing anyone.

You had a fight with your partner or had a bad day at office and you start lamenting it out on Social Media. Remember these are public forums and hence the thing you are posting is available for everyone to see. Thus, refrain from making resentful posts or badmouthing anyone. 

7. Do not jump on the bandwagon and start a debate war.

Social media is a platform for sharing things and connecting with people. One such way of doing it is sharing your views and opinions about current affairs. Be tolerant and understanding of other people views and opinions. Your friend changes his profile picture in solidarity of the Paris attack whereas you didn’t. Politely disagree with his views and convey your message privately. Don’t start a debate over it. Some friends have shared something about your favorite superstar and you find it offensive. Instead of quarreling it out in public discuss it privately. If possible ignore such things.

8. Refrain from spamming people with gaming requests/friend requests/apps request.

You like to play online games and can’t help people sending request. While you might not control these things, you can certainly control the number of such requests you send. Prevent from recommending unnecessary pages and apps to people. In case your friends do so, convey it to them that you don’t like it or stop notifications from those apps. 

9. Refrain from making personal conversations on posts

Suppose you have uploaded a picture of yourself in a restaurant. You friend likes it and starts asking questions about it. Gradually the conversation starts drifting to other things. Now, this could irritate others who have liked/commented on your pictures and getting cluttered by your notifications. The best way to deal with such things, is politely answer the first question and then allow the conversation to flow on a private chat. If you are bogged by such notifications from anyone’s profile just turn off future notifications from them.

10. Check your grammar, spelling, facts and don’t overuse abbreviations/hashtags

The things which you post will remain online in the future. Anyone can view it by searching about the topic. Hence, you should be absolutely sure about facts before posting them. Read the full document or view the full video before making a comments about it. Grammatical errors and typos can make you seem insincere. Use abbreviations but don’t flood your entire writing with it. It might make you cool in your friend’s circle but it puts a question mark on your credibility. Hashtags are important to make people notice certain issues or points. Thus, hash tagging is for particular words or phrases. Don’t hashtag every word in the sentence. 

These are the essential habits one needs to keep in mind while using social media platforms. Abiding by these rules one can easily prevent any nuisance from occurring.

The Story of Alma Mater

-Pratiti Nath

Ever dreamed of a store delivering customized t-shirts, tops and all other kinds of apparel? Alma Mater is just that. Now wait! it isn’t just any other kind of customized product selling merchandise. Here you get products customized according to the institution you are affiliated to. Your very own customized college products.

Origin of the idea

"Three years ago, two friends, one too many beers, one kickass business idea, one million dollar company… This, in a nutshell is how Alma Mater came about."- this is how the alma mater story begins in their facebook page. This company is a brain child of 2 people- Varun Agarwal and Rohn Malhotra way back in 2009. They hit upon this idea while reminiscing their good old college days over a chilled beer. That’s when the idea of catering to the needs of alumni of various colleges came into light. Thus, the name Alma mater. Varun started this apparel store targeting the necessity of memorable items and apparels for different institutions alumni. Soon, after that he wrote a book titled ‘How I braved Anu Aunty and co-founded a million dollarcompany’. This became an instant hit paving the way for him and his company. The company is based in Koramangla, Bangalore.

The Journey So Far

The major feature of this online apparel website is its “PLAY” tool.  As the name suggests you can literally play with the design, graphics, colour, fabric and other aspects of your desired products. Unlike other websites they don’t offer you selected choices. Here you can make your own designs and order them. Their unique outlook and aesthetic designs led to huge leap in profits. They manage to ship 15000 products every month. 

Keeping the target audience in mind the price range remains at an affordable limit of 450-700 rupees. Till July, 2013 they have sold 3,00,000 products. With the help of these tool you can draw doodles, make designs. As many as 800 fonts and 2000 vectors are at your disposal. Apart from that you can add your institution logo and change the background colour. Thus it provides huge pool of creative potential to unleash your creativity and wear it on your t-shirt. A plus point of this tool is its social forum. One can form groups here and easily discuss & build design with their friends. Till 2013 the response is substantial with almost every associations using it – from school students, college students to start-up companies to individual group associations. The company first started out-sourcing their work but now the manufacture & printing process is solely done by their 200 dedicated workers. This has removed the hazard of relying on others and minimized errors. With the incorporation of the PLAY tool, work has cut down further as continuous involvement with the customers aren’t required. One can just create their design and order it. As of now, they have worked for 2500 schools/colleges, 600 corporates, 100 start-ups spreading over 180 different cities of the world. This includes India and 6 other countries. Till May 2016, the company website registers 323401 happy customers, 15232 customized designs, 3554 college clients and 458420 likes on facebook 

Future outlook

The current focus of the company is to be the number one merchandise in customized t-shirt & products market. Their sole agenda is to completely monopolize this market and rake the 25-30% gross margins to even greater percentage. 

The Story Of Chumbak

-Pratiti Nath

We all like to travel and collect souvenirs and mementos from places we have visited. Now, think of a foreign traveler, travelling to India and looking for objects to remember the place. Well, here the market is flooded with conventional showpieces and mementos of monuments like Taj Mahal, Howrah bridge, India gate or Qutub Minar. At best clothing like saris and pashmina shawls.

A couple from Bangalore got bored of all this. Vivek Prabhakar and Subhra Chadda thought of channelizing their frustration to come up with a business enterprise. Thus, in 2010, started the journey of Chumbak, the popular lifestyle brand. The name by itself attracts like a magnet, and indeed true to its property. As illustrated by the co-founder Vivek Prabhakar, the name means “kissing stones”. As they wanted to monopolize the Indian refrigerator magnets market. Their tagline “home is where the love is” delivers the ultimate attraction punch for a lifestyle 

The Journey so far

Chumbak with just 45lakhs arranged by the couple by selling their house. It started as a 30 member souvenir store and ended up being a 150 member lifestyle store. The duo coupled their knowledge with pragmatism. It started as an online store that continued to flood the e-commerce market. 2012 brought the opportunity of seed funding via Matrix partners. Then , in 2013 they opened their first flagship store in Bangalore. 

Visiting their store or browsing through their products will make you gasp in disbelief. It has a quirky, colourful and vibrant range products. They have a magnificent range which spoils you for choice. It has  a wide range of lifestyle products – from key chains to mementos to dresses to footwear to apparel to jewelries to bags, wallets, watches, phones- all under one roof. 38 categories with more than 500 products. Thus, here is a brand which perfectly understands your needs. Price, design, style, range, colours EVERYTHING!!!

Like all start-ups they wanted to be different but in a different way. The company philosophy is to do it in a fun and lively way. This is visible in their public interaction and eccentric vibrant range of products. They team up the curiosity of a child, the innovation of youth and the experience of a knowledgeable person. 

Another potent problem for a start-up is real estate. Subhra and Vivek were pragmatic in this matter. They started with small kiosk of 150-200 square feet and then made it to 2500 sq ft. They have 20 such kiosks with more than 60 outlets in 5 major Indian cities. Of them Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore gathers the maximum revenue (60%). 15% of sales are made through online. They are first of its kind store. They are quick to adapt with changing market dynamics and fashion trends. This lead to an unprecedented growth rate of 300%  in 5years. 

Future Venture

In the coming years they are targeting a 400 crore annual revenue. It is vying to spread its wings all over India. Their future target is to open more such kiosks in other cities. Chumbak planning to boost is online sales percentage to meet the target. 

Overall, with their unique set of ideas and executions they are a force to reckon with it. A viable start-up story for every entrepreneur dreaming to make it big.

Why Teleportation is Awesome!

-Ankita Roy

Quantum teleportation is a process by which quantum information(e.g the exact state of an atom or photon)can be transmitted(exactly, in principle) from one location to another, with the help of classical communication and previously shared quantum entanglement between the sending and receiving location.

All those who didn’t understand a word of what has been written above, put your hands up!! Above stated was a paragraph copied and pasted straight out of Wikipedia. To explain what has been written above, lets put it this way...remember how we all watched star trek and gazed in amazement as captain kirk and his crew constantly used their transporter to move between the enterprise and another world, an asteroid, another spacecraft and into an exact place in any of these locations. Or remember harry potter?! The floo powder, port-keys and apparition. This, my friends is what teleportation really means. 

It is the art, or ability (or anything you would like to call it, as it doesn’t exist in reality yet)to disappear at one place and instantly reappear at another place, a place of your own choice.

Why teleportation would be awesome is not difficult to imagine.

1.People would be able to transport themselves in no time to a different place at any place in any time. Distance, would in fact become a theoretical thing. We would need no visas and passports to travel from one country to another, free as a bird.

2. Cars, trains and airplanes would not be needed anymore, doing mother nature the favor that has been long due to her. Lesser pollution will solve a lot of environmental as well as health problems.

                         

3. If the ability to teleport were given to me with absolutely no holds barred on its potential ,I would definitely teleport myself to the future and first and foremost, wait-for-it, watch the entire series of "game of thrones" and find out how it ends because being made to wait for months for a new season of this particular series is definitely the most torturous act of all, worse than the beheading.    

4. Having satisfied myself of the future I would teleport myself back to the past, to old England, to the era of gallant young men and chivalry, to those wide frilled skirts and bonnets, to the age where Mr. Darcy thrived(aahhh….drool!).i don’t think I could ever teleport myself back from that age so that’s a dangerous gamble to play.(if it only wasn’t for the dynamic  Mr. Darcy).

5.As for the present ,I would definitely want to teleport myself to the secret mysterious lair wherein our college exam papers are evaluated. I wish to drench the burning thirst of a burning question in the minds of majority of the students in India-“that person and I have written the exact same answer, then why did he get more marks than me?”. What force of nature is it that prompts such injustice? Teleportation could definitely help provide an answer to all those students in agony who can do nothing except go “why you do like this?!” *weeping internally* 

6. So having made it clear that giving me the power of teleportation would do no good to the world lets come back with what its other general awesomeness could be. For starters, it could save you a lot of money. You could just teleport yourself to the concert of your choice without having to pay for it. Free events=saving money+having fun!!Cant dispute mathematics now, can we?

                                                                                                            

7. Teleportation is more discreet than other powers like flight. Less people find out, you don’t get mobbed by people asking for favors and you are less likely to be captured. And even if you are, well you can always be…*poof*..gone

                              

10. Also, crime would fall with the ability to teleport being placed in responsible hands and the world would become a safer place to live in. Needless to mention the positive impact on the environment.

Teleportation if it ever comes into existence would be a boon for mankind, at least for a while before we somehow manage to turn it into a lethal weapon.

  

                                          

If Dogs had Twitter Accounts

-Ankita Roy

Happiness my friends is a warm puppy. Dogs are undoubtedly man’s best friends. They are the only creatures on earth who can love you more than they love themselves. No matter what you do, you can not dissuade them from leaping in joy when he sees you .A dog is a little heartbeat at your feet. All this and more. Dogs these days are smart too! They have taken this tech-savvy generation tail-on. With Meredithswift(Taylor Swifts dog),cookie(bethannie frankels dog) and many more celebrity canines joining the twitterati, we thought of a world wherein all the dogs had twitter accounts. After all….never underestimate the power of the common dog.

Just look at that puppy dog face!