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SUPER ADS, AT THE SUPER BOWL

Sunday, February 5, was a big day for advertisers in America. The Super Bowl, the most watched show on TV, was aired that day. For the third year in a row, Super Bowl has set the record as the most watched television show in US history. Not just the game, the Super Bowl has become a showcase of some of the most remarkable advertisements, and people wait to see the commercials aired during this time as much as the game. After all, some of the most iconic ads have made their debut here. This year also witnessed some of the best ads and taught us a thing or two about what good ads are made of.

An estimated 111.3 million people watched the Super Bowl this year. The only other program that beat this record was Madonna’s show during halftime of the game. It was viewed by 114 million people . There seems to be something about ‘halftime’, for the most acclaimed commercial during the Super Bowl was Chrysler’s ‘It’s Halftime in America’. Aired during the game’s halftime, the commercial started by equating the game’s halftime with America’s halftime. Just as during halftimes, teams are discussing strategies to win the game; America also needs to find a way out of this mess that the country is in right now. The one city that is showing the way is Detroit. It lost everything with nearly all car companies going bust, but it did not give up and today, it is slowly but surely making a comeback. The Americans should do the same. After all, as the advertisement says, “This country cannot be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do, the world is going to hear the roar of our engines”. The commercial was so inspiring that in many places, people gave it a standing ovation.
The message was right, the time it was aired (during halftime) was right and the star of the commercial Clint Eastwood was just right too. He had starred in the much acclaimed film ‘Gran Torino’, which was set in Detroit City, making him the right choice for the commercial. Overall, it worked out to be the perfect package, which is why, out of the numerous ads aired during the game on Sunday, this one stood out. No blondes, no blokes, no stunning locales; just a plain simple message that touched people was what was responsible for its success. That is the power of a commercial. It makes a place for itself in your mind whether you want it or not. It’s much like ‘Jerry’, the cute little naughty mouse in the Tom & Jerry show, which we loved watching as children. If advertisements are ‘Jerrys’ then we are the ‘Toms’. Tom, like us, believes that Jerry cannot overpower him, just the way we as viewers believe that advertisements cannot influence us. But just as Jerry always wins, good ads always manage to make a place inside our subconscious mind and influence our buying behavior. How many times have you caught yourself singing the tunes ‘Har ek friend zaroori hota hai’ or ‘Hum mein hain Hero’? Good ads have the power to remain in our minds and our thoughts, and even change them.

GOOD ADS MAKE US LAUGH

If you can make someone laugh, it is the quickest way to bring down barriers and make a friend. A lot of advertisers use this trick. It is very effective, but it is also very risky; for if humor goes wrong, it can seriously offend people. This particular commercial managed to offend its competitor. Aired during the Super Bowl on Sunday, GM advertised for its Chevrolet Silverado. The commercial showed how the world would end in 2012 (according to the Mayan calendar) and only those who drove the Chevrolet Silverado had chances of survival, not the ones who drove a Ford. The advertisement showed how a man and his dog managed to survive the catastrophe because they were safe inside their Chevrolet. As he drives around, he meets his friends who also survived because they were inside their Chevrolets. However, one friend is missing, so he asks, “Where is Dave?” His friend answers, “Dave could not make it; he drove a Ford.” As expected, Ford did not take it lightly and its legal cell filed a complaint demanding that GM apologize and withdraw its ad from everywhere. GM, in return, said that the ads were over the top and in a fun filled manner, they tried to bring out the fact that their pick-up truck was dependable even in the most dangerous of circumstances. They believed in their claim and were ready to wait till the world ended to prove their point… and then apologize if needed. But till then, all people who were worried about the Mayan calendar prophecy coming true had better buy the Chevrolet Silverado!! Not only did Chevrolet get noticed and talked about, but Ford was left rubbing its hands for it had not aired any commercial during the Super Bowl and therefore could not make its presence felt.

The Super Bowl actually turned into a cheeky war zone where brands took a dig at their competitors. After all, not everyday do you get more than 100 million people to watch you. So Samsung continued to take a dig at Apple. Its positioning strategy is to be remembered as the ‘anti-Apple phone’. Apple, on the other hand, is known for its most iconic Super Bowl ads (remember the 1984 ad), but was conspicuous by its absence and Samsung had a field day advertising its phone as the ‘next big thing’. The oldest rivals Coke and Pepsi had a face-off too. While Pepsi played it safe with an interesting commercial featuring Elton John, Coke decided to poke Pepsi; albeit in a very pleasant, interesting and indirect manner.

As the Super Bowl started, so did Coke’s Polar Bowl. Two polar bears rooting for opposing teams, drinking Coca-Cola and watching TV in their igloos were seen in the Coke commercial featured during the game. However, viewers could visit cokepolarbowl. com, which was hosted within Facebook, to see the bears watch the game. Now why would you do that? Because the bears were reacting to the action in the game and also to tweets and comments from viewers.

The cute polar bears made an interesting view and soon more and more people logged on, to see how they were reacting to the game and the commercials and their tweets. Their reactions had the social media world buzzing. The bears crossed their fingers during tense moments of the game and they stood with their paws to their hearts during the Clint Eastwood commercial. They dozed off during the Doritos ad (it’s a part of PepsiCo!), and they walked out of the room during Pepsi’s ad. They even read out interesting tweets from fans. Getting the polar bears to respond in real time was a difficult task and the team at Coca-Cola rehearsed for three months, using footage of old games to prepare themselves. It all paid off, for viewers enjoyed it so much that not many left the page after logging in, increasing traffic way beyond the expectations of Coke. Many even put their laptops next to the TV to enjoy the game and the reactions of the bears simultaneously!

Polar bears had been a part of Coke’s commercials in the 1920’s, and Coke decided to bring them back. This was the best way to bring back the old mascots and also take the old rivalry (with Pepsi) a notch higher!

The right dose of humour wins all battles, especially those of market share. And Coke has once again proved with this strategy why it’s the ‘Real Thing’.

GREAT ADS MAKE US SMILE

The cute ad of McDonald’s, where a little boy refuses to be a boyfriend of the little girl because girlfriends are too demanding, but changes his mind instantly once he comes to know that all she ‘demanded’ was a McAloo Tikki burger, makes you smile. The innocence touches you. So does the Cadbury ad where the wife asks the husband, “When was the last time you said ‘I love you’?” and then blushes as she realises that everyday that he gave her a Cadbury bar, it was his way of saying, ‘I love You’. Sweet gifts for sweet words.

Indians love emotions and feelings and ads that make them smile or laugh are always a big success. The Tanishq diamond jewellery ad starring Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan made many men smile.

Be it advertisements or movies or even your Tom & Jerry show on TV, the reason they are so popular even after so many years is because they make you smile & laugh and no one gets hurt. A good advertisement makes you smile without poking fun at others. So if you want to make a good ad, it’s time to watch some TV shows, and get inspired.

Peace of mind By Santosh Kumar

Once Buddha was walking from one town to another town with a few of his followers. This was in the initial days. While they were travelling, they happened to pass a lake. They stopped there and Buddha told one of his disciples, “I am thirsty. Do get me some water from that lake there.”

The disciple walked up to the lake. When he reached it, he noticed that some people were washing clothes in the water and, right at that moment, a bullock cart started crossing through the lake. As a result, the water became very muddy, very turbid. The disciple thought, “How can I give this muddy water to Buddha to drink!” So he came back and told Buddha, “The water in there is very muddy. I don’t think it is fit to drink.”

After about half an hour, again Buddha asked the same disciple to go back to the lake and get him some water to drink. The disciple obediently went back to the lake. This time he found that the lake had absolutely clear water in it. The mud had settled down and the water above it looked fit to be had. So he collected some water in a pot and brought it to Buddha.

Buddha looked at the water, and then he looked up at the disciple and said, “See what you did to make the water clean. You let it be ... and the mud settled down on its own – and you got clear water... Your mind is also like that. When it is disturbed, just let it be. Give it a little time. It will settle down on its own. You don’t have to put in any effort to calm it down. It will happen. It is effortless.”

What did Buddha emphasize here? He said, “It is effortless.” Having 'peace of mind' is not a strenuous job; it is an effortless process. When there is peace inside you, that peace permeates to the outside. It spreads around you and in the environment, such that people around start feeling that peace and grace.

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The Five People You Meet in Heaven By Santosh Kumar

The End
This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But allhttps://sksingh20081.blogspot.com. endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.
The last hour of Eddie's life was spent, like most of the others, at Ruby Pier, an amusement park by a great gray ocean. The park had the usual attractions, a boardwalk, a Ferris wheel, roller coasters, bumper cars, a taffy stand, and an arcade where you could shoot streams of water into a clown's mouth. It also had a big new ride called Freddy's Free Fall, and this would be where Eddie would be killed, in an accident that would make newspapers around the state.
At the time of his death, Eddie was a squat, white-haired old man, with a short neck, a barrel chest, thick forearms, and a faded army tattoo on his right shoulder. His legs were thin and veined now, and his left knee, wounded in the war, was ruined by arthritis. He used a cane to get around. His face was broad and craggy from the sun, with salty whiskers and a lower jaw that protruded slightly, making him look prouder than he felt. He kept a cigarette behind his left ear and a ring of keys hooked to his belt. He wore rubber-soled shoes. He wore an old linen cap. His pale brown uniform suggested a workingman, and a workingman he was.
Eddie's job was "maintaining" the rides, which really meant keeping them safe. Every afternoon, he walked the park, checking on each attraction, from the Tilt-A-Whirl to the Pipeline Plunge. He looked for broken boards, loose bolts, worn-out steel. Sometimes he would stop, his eyes glazing over, and people walking past thought something was wrong. But he was listening, that's all. After all these years he could hear trouble, he said, in the spits and stutters and thrumming of the equipment.
With 50 minutes left on earth, Eddie took his last walk along Ruby Pier. He passed an elderly couple.
"Folks," he mumbled, touching his cap.
They nodded politely. Customers knew Eddie. At least the regular ones did. They saw him summer after summer, one of those faces you associate with a place. His work shirt had a patch on the chest that read Eddie above the word Maintenance, and sometimes they would say, "Hiya, Eddie Maintenance," although he never thought that was funny.
Today, it so happened, was Eddie's birthday, his 83rd. A doctor, last week, had told him he had shingles. Shingles? Eddie didn't even know what they were. Once, he had been strong enough to lift a carousel horse in each arm. That was a long time ago.
"Eddie!" ... "Take me, Eddie!" ... "Take me!"
Forty minutes until his death. Eddie made his way to the front of the roller coaster line. He rode every attraction at least once a week, to be certain the brakes and steering were solid. Today was coaster day - the "Ghoster Coaster" they called this one - and the kids who knew Eddie yelled to get in the cart with him.
Children liked Eddie. Not teenagers. Teenagers gave him headaches. Over the years, Eddie figured he'd seen every sort of do-nothing, snarl-at-you teenager there was. But children were different. Children looked at Eddie - who, with his protruding lower jaw, always seemed to be grinning, like a dolphin - and they trusted him. They drew in like cold hands to a fire. They hugged his leg. They played with his keys. Eddie mostly grunted, never saying much. He figured it was because he didn't say much that they liked him.
Now Eddie tapped two little boys with backward baseball caps. They raced to the cart and tumbled in. Eddie handed his cane to the ride attendant and slowly lowered himself between the two.
"Here we go.... Here we go! ..." one boy squealed, as the other pulled Eddie's arm around his shoulder. Eddie lowered the lap bar and clack-clack-clack, up they went.
A story went around about Eddie. When he was a boy, growing up by this very same pier, he got in an alley fight. Five kids from Pitkin Avenue had cornered his brother, Joe, and were about to give him a beating. Eddie was a block away, on a stoop, eating a sandwich. He heard his brother scream. He ran to the alley, grabbed a garbage can lid, and sent two boys to the hospital.
After that, Joe didn't talk to him for months. He was ashamed. Joe was the oldest, the firstborn, but it was Eddie who did the fighting.
"Can we go again, Eddie? Please?"
Thirty-four minutes to live. Eddie lifted the lap bar, gave each boy a sucking candy, retrieved his cane, then limped to the maintenance shop to cool down from the summer heat. Had he known his death was imminent, he might have gone somewhere else. Instead, he did what we all do. He went about his dull routine as if all the days in the world were still to come.
One of the shop workers, a lanky, bony-cheeked young man named Dominguez, was by the solvent sink, wiping grease off a wheel.
"Yo, Eddie," he said.
"Dom," Eddie said.
The shop smelled like sawdust. It was dark and cramped with a low ceiling and pegboard walls that held drills and saws and hammers. Skeleton parts of fun park rides were everywhere: compressors, engines, belts, lightbulbs, the top of a pirate's head. Stacked against one wall were coffee cans of nails and screws, and stacked against another wall were endless tubs of grease.
Greasing a track, Eddie would say, required no more brains than washing a dish; the only difference was you got dirtier as you did it, not cleaner. And that was the sort of work that Eddie did: spread grease, adjusted brakes, tightened bolts, checked electrical panels. Many times he had longed to leave this place, find different work, build another kind of life. But the war came. His plans never worked out. In time, he found himself graying and wearing looser pants and in a state of weary acceptance, that this was who he was and who he would always be, a man with sand in his shoes in a world of mechanical laughter and grilled frankfurters. Like his father before him, like the patch on his shirt, Eddie was maintenance - the head of maintenance - or as the kids sometimes called him, "the ride man at Ruby Pier."
Thirty minutes left.
"Hey, happy birthday, I hear," Dominguez said.
Eddie grunted.
"No party or nothing?"
Eddie looked at him as if he were crazy. For a moment he thought how strange it was to be growing old in a place that smelled of cotton candy.
"Well, remember, Eddie, I'm off next week, starting Monday. Going to Mexico."
Eddie nodded, and Dominguez did a little dance.
"Me and Theresa. Gonna see the whole family. Par-r-r-ty."
He stopped dancing when he noticed Eddie staring.
"You ever been?" Dominguez said.
"Been?"
"To Mexico?"
Eddie exhaled through his nose. "Kid, I never been anywhere I wasn't shipped to with a rifle."
He watched Dominguez return to the sink. He thought for a moment. Then he took a small wad of bills from his pocket and removed the only twenties he had, two of them. He held them out.
"Get your wife something nice," Eddie said.
Dominguez regarded the money, broke into a huge smile, and said, "C'mon, man. You sure?"
Eddie pushed the money into Dominguez's palm. Then he walked out back to the storage area. A small "fishing hole" had been cut into the boardwalk planks years ago, and Eddie lifted the plastic cap. He tugged on a nylon line that dropped 80 feet to the sea. A piece of bologna was still attached.
"We catch anything?" Dominguez yelled. "Tell me we caught something!"
Eddie wondered how the guy could be so optimistic. There was never anything on that line.
"One day," Dominguez yelled, "we're gonna get a halibut!"
"Yep," Eddie mumbled, although he knew you could never pull a fish that big through a hole that small.
Twenty-six minutes to live. Eddie crossed the boardwalk to the south end. Business was slow. The girl behind the taffy counter was leaning on her elbows, popping her gum.
Once, Ruby Pier was the place to go in the summer. It had elephants and fireworks and marathon dance contests. But people didn't go to ocean piers much anymore; they went to theme parks where you paid $75 a ticket and had your photo taken with a giant furry character.
Eddie limped past the bumper cars and fixed his eyes on a group of teenagers leaning over the railing. Great, he told himself. Just what I need.
"Off," Eddie said, tapping the railing with his cane. "C'mon. It's not safe."
The teens glared at him. The car poles sizzled with electricity, zzzap zzzap sounds.
"It's not safe," Eddie repeated.
The teens looked at each other. One kid, who wore a streak of orange in his hair, sneered at Eddie, then stepped onto the middle rail.
"Come on, dudes, hit me!" he yelled, waving at the young drivers. "Hit m -"
Eddie whacked the railing so hard with his cane he almost snapped it in two. "MOVE IT!"
The teens ran away.
Another story went around about Eddie. As a soldier, he had engaged in combat numerous times. He'd been brave. Even won a medal. But toward the end of his service, he got into a fight with one of his own men. That's how Eddie was wounded. No one knew what happened to the other guy.
No one asked.
With 19 minutes left on earth, Eddie sat for the last time, in an old aluminum beach chair. His short, muscled arms folded like a seal's flippers across his chest. His legs were red from the sun, and his left knee still showed scars. In truth, much of Eddie's body suggested a survived encounter. His fingers were bent at awkward angles, thanks to numerous fractures from assorted machinery. His nose had been broken several times in what he called "saloon fights." His broadly jawed face might have been good-looking once, the way a prizefighter might have looked before he took too many punches.
Now Eddie just looked tired. This was his regular spot on the Ruby Pier boardwalk, behind the Jackrabbit ride, which in the 1980s was the Thunderbolt, which in the 1970s was the Steel Eel, which in the 1960s was the Lollipop Swings, which in the 1950s was Laff In The Dark, and which before that was the Stardust Band Shell.
Which was where Eddie met Marguerite.
Every life has one true-love snapshot. For Eddie, it came on a warm September night after a thunderstorm, when the boardwalk was spongy with water. She wore a yellow cotton dress, with a pink barrette in her hair. Eddie didn't say much. He was so nervous he felt as if his tongue were glued to his teeth. They danced to the music of a big band, Long Legs Delaney and his Everglades Orchestra. He bought her a lemon fizz. She said she had to go before her parents got angry. But as she walked away, she turned and waved.
That was the snapshot. For the rest of his life, whenever he thought of Marguerite, Eddie would see that moment, her waving over her shoulder, her dark hair falling over one eye, and he would feel the same arterial burst of love.
That night he came home and woke his older brother. He told him he'd met the girl he was going to marry.
"Go to sleep, Eddie," his brother groaned.
Whrrrssssh. A wave broke on the beach. Eddie coughed up something he did not want to see. He spat it away.
Whrrssssssh. He used to think a lot about Marguerite. Not so much now. She was like a wound beneath an old bandage, and he had grown more used to the bandage.
Whrrssssssh.
What was shingles?
Whrrrsssssh.
Sixteen minutes to live.
No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river.
The end of Eddie's story was touched by another seemingly innocent story, months earlier - a cloudy night when a young man arrived at Ruby Pier with three of his friends.
The young man, whose name was Nicky, had just begun driving and was still not comfortable carrying a key chain. So he removed the single car key and put it in his jacket pocket, then tied the jacket around his waist.
For the next few hours, he and his friends rode all the fastest rides: the Flying Falcon, the Splashdown, Freddy's Free Fall, the Ghoster Coaster.
"Hands in the air!" one of them yelled.
They threw their hands in the air.
Later, when it was dark, they returned to the car lot, exhausted and laughing, drinking beer from brown paper bags. Nicky reached into his jacket pocket. He fished around. He cursed.
The key was gone.
Fourteen minutes until his death. Eddie wiped his brow with a handkerchief. Out on the ocean, diamonds of sunlight danced on the water, and Eddie stared at their nimble movement. He had not been right on his feet since the war.
But back at the Stardust Band Shell with Marguerite - there Eddie had still been graceful. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to summon the song that brought them together, the one Judy Garland sang in that movie. It mixed in his head now with the cacophony of the crashing waves and children screaming on the rides.
"You made me love you - "
Whsssshhhh.
"- do it, I didn't want to do i -"
Splllllaaaaashhhhhhh.
"- me love you -"
Eeeeeeee!
"- time you knew it, and all the -"
Chhhhewisshhhh.
"- knew it ..."
Eddie felt her hands on his shoulders. He squeezed his eyes tightly, to bring the memory closer.
Twelve minutes to live.
"'Scuse me."
A young girl, maybe eight years old, stood before him, blocking his sunlight. She had blonde curls and wore flip-flops and denim cutoff shorts and a lime green T-shirt with a cartoon duck on the front. Amy, he thought her name was. Amy or Annie. She'd been here a lot this summer, although Eddie never saw a mother or father.
"'Scuuuse me," she said again. "Eddie Maint'nance?"
Eddie sighed. "Just Eddie," he said.
"Eddie?"
"Um hmm?"
"Can you make me ..."
She put her hands together as if praying.
"C'mon, kiddo. I don't have all day."
"Can you make me an animal? Can you?"
Eddie looked up, as if he had to think about it. Then he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out three yellow pipe cleaners, which he carried for just this purpose.
"Yesssss!" the little girl said, slapping her hands.
Eddie began twisting the pipe cleaners.
"Where's your parents?"
"Riding the rides."
"Without you?"
The girl shrugged. "My mom's with her boyfriend."
Eddie looked up. Oh.
He bent the pipe cleaners into several small loops, then twisted the loops around one another. His hands shook now, so it took longer than it used to, but soon the pipe cleaners resembled a head, ears, body, and tail.
"A rabbit?" the little girl said.
Eddie winked.
"Thaaaank you!"
She spun away, lost in that place where kids don't even know their feet are moving. Eddie wiped his brow again, then closed his eyes, slumped into the beach chair, and tried to get the old song back into his head.
A seagull squawked as it flew overhead.
By Santosh Kumar

ye kya ho rha hai .......... gift hai ya cheating

Railway connectivity, Mamata's gift to Nandigram

Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee Saturday inaugurated a project for laying 17 km of railway tracks in West Bengal's Nandigram and promised jobs or houses to those whose land may be acquired for the project.

'The 17-km long railway track will connect Nandigram with Deshapran railway station in East Midnapore district. The railway track construction work would be completed within one-and-a-half years. The project has already been sanctioned and tenders issued for the first phase.

'If we get the required land early, we might finish the project within one year also,' Banerjee told the gathering, adding that her ministry will provide proper compensation to seven families in Nandigram whose land will be acquired for the project.

She said: 'We will build houses or get them jobs in the Indian Railways, if we find it necessary.'

Banerjee also promised rail connectivity in the near future to Nandigram's adjoining Khejuri area.

'We have a plan to connect both Nandigram and Khejuri with the neighbouring Haldia township and with the rest of India. A computerised ticket reservation counter will also be set up in Nandigram next month,' the minister said.

She said two stations between Nandigram and Deshapran would be named after freedom fighter Matangini Hazra and Martyr's Station respectively.

'We'll dedicate the Martyr's Station to those villagers who lost lives in the struggle against the state administration to save their farmland. The railways will also set up an archive at the Martyr's Station,' Banerjee added.

Banerjee's Trinamool Congress had led a successful peasants' agitation in Nandigram against a proposed chemical hub project of the state government in 2007-08. Irked over the state government's bid to acquire large tracts of agricultural land for the project, the farmers joined Banerjee's movement in large numbers and finally the communist regime was forced to scrap the proposed chemical hub.

The success of the Nandigram movement as also similar protests against the Nano project in Singur - that ultimately forced Tata Motors to shift the Nano plant to Sanand in Gujarat - acted as an elixir for Banerjee's party, which had been badly mauled in the 2006 Assembly polls. The agitations reversed the state's electoral script and since then the Trinamool and its associates have won a series of polls.