Hu Ha India, Aaja India

But eventually it is a game of cricket. - Sachin Tendulkar

Itz easy for him to say and ago ahead to throw a sunfeast biscuit at u in ur television. But what about the real billions who are in blue now ?

We all love cricket, won’t we. When the intensity fades in us, then there is media which rekindles the josh in you. We remember the few match dates like we remember our loved ones birthday. Literally the roads of Bangalore were choking at 5.00 pm when people were rushing out of their offices with only one mission, not to miss a single ball or run. Ironically Ganguly wasted more balls than the fans would have missed watching. The whole India was elevated when jayasuriya was dismissed cheaply but they feel deeply within few hours.

Yep. its just a game. We should not get disturbed. But if it just a game, then the players should not be given a demi-god status. they should not be hyped, worshipped, and elevated. they should not be in every other advertisements and every who -is who should not come and encourage the team to win the cup while they are not out there encouraging jaspal rana or anju bobby. Why the hell we didn’t bother about not winning much gold in commonwealth games or not winning at all in Olympics but cried in our pillows when india lost to srilanka. Two guys didn't die because anand lost a chess game on the same day. they died because india lost, not few individuals ....

Indian cricket fell to new low now and has to rise. Apart from blame games and sacking few who are remotely responsible, a serious thought should be given about the importance of the game itself in our lives.

Did u regret today ?

How many Ads are u thrown at every day?

I can't say a figure, but a minimum of 50 will be my guess. Say, In home - Newspaper, magazine, TV - On Road - the bill boards on either side of the road, RJ's of radio-city and In office - every website I visit have a pop-up and to top it all Google ads are there everywhere. This doesn’t include the covert advertising in the movies and the serials which we watch.

Point is not that. The point is how many bill board ads led u to open their webpage?

Till recently - none. Most often I forget them as soon as I cross the board except for real catchy ones like Fitness one which filled the city with boards having two good looking couple and lines with 'in-depth' meaning like - ”After a hard day's work, we can't wait to do it”. I was waiting to find out what those ads were for and was bit disappointed after knowing it is for a gym. But still, I didn't enroll myself to fitness - one though the ads made me smile whenever I look at them.

I hear to Radio City or Radio Indigo while riding to my office. Sadly from Jan end onwards these folks were just filling u with what u can do on every minute on ur valentine day with ur valentine. Buy this… buy that to her .. crap crap crap. They fill u too much to make u feel guilty for being alone. And then, on Feb. 13th, I saw a board on Marathahalli bridge which read, “Did u ever regret for not saying those three words?"

I was surprised to see this. The ad had that line with a link www.myregret.in below. Entire travel time to my office I was pondering over the purpose of this ad. I went to an extend of assuming it to be a Yet another Virtual social networking site for those who don't have it in real life.

The website repeated the same but this time it generalized the regretting factors and asked me to enter my regret reason and asked me to come back on 15^th for a surprise. I too entered my regret and entered my mail-id to register. Since the whole concept of valentine, partner, love vanished from radio city after feb 14^th , I forgot about this.

I remembered recently when I was regretting for some real thing. Since the site name is chosen such a way that its easy to remember, I opened and BANG, found out that it is actually an ad of kotak mutual fund!!!

Bit surprised but I liked the idea. Rightly timed with right words and made people (at least me) to visit the website. Good thinking. These ads make u smile when u remember them. One more such ad is ads based on munna and circuit. Lots of ads were created after lage raho munna bhai became a super hit. I probably enjoy them just because they remind me of the characters of the movie. But at the same time, not ads with celebrities are creative and appealing. Now-a- days I really hate ads in which multiple cricketers appear. For instance the recent Pepsi ad in which a boy runs away with a Pepsi bottle from sachin. Not sure why I hate it, but I do.

More and more innovative types of advertising need to come into existence as the advertising world matures. That leaves me with the questions. What if all of fifty ads are innovative? How many in those fifty ads have an affect/effect on you?

Not sure. But I know one thing. At least a catchy subject line (borrowed from yahoo) brought u till the end of this post!!!