Amul toasts Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his 80th birthday

Amul has a typically utterly-butterly treat for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his 80th birthday - a Facebook album of all Amul ads that have featured him. This ad from July 2012 is the brand's take on Time magazine labelling the PM an underachiever on it's cover. The Amul girl, bespectacled like Dr Singh, holds a slice of buttered bread and is captioned the 'wonderachiever.'

January 2012: This ad shows UPA allies Sharad Pawar and Mamata Banerjee sitting beside Manmohan Singh with the headline 'Amul Allied to bread'- a spoof on the compulsions of coalition politics.

April 2012: Amul's take on Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari's visit to India to give a fillip to peace efforts. The caption aptly states ‘For butter relations.'

July 2011: A typically tongue-in-cheek take on Prime Minister Singh's reshuffle of the Cabinet.

April 2010: The ad was a spoof on US President Barack Obama assuring PM Manmohan Singh access to 26/11 mastermind David Coleman Headley.

May 2009: The ad refers to the landslide victory of the Congress in the General Elections.

July 2008: A spoof on the trust vote faced by the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government in the Lok Sabha on the Indo-US nuclear deal.

August 2007: The ad was Amul's satirical look at political parties opposing the Manmohan Singh-led UPA's nuclear deal with the United States.

June 2007: Amul's comment on the UPA and Left's nomination of Pratibha Patil as candidate for the presidential elections.

November 2005: This ad came out in the wake of a UN committee indicting the then Minister for External Affairs Natwar Singh in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal.

May 2004: Amul paid tribute to Manmohan Singh after he was elected as the head of state in the General Elections held in 2004. The poster terms him 'Manmahan Singh'.

1991: The ad came after Manmohan Singh's fine-balancing act in his maiden budget as the Finance Minister.


1991: Manmohan Singh's liberalisation policy allowed multi-national companies such as Coke and Pepsi to sell their brands in India. This ad features the Prime Minister, dressed in a western outfit, offering Coke to a beggar- a possible echo of the debate on whether liberalisation would really benefit the downtrodden sections of society.

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Customer Delight - GoDaddy.com

On September 10, GoDaddy.com experienced an outage that affected a lot of its customers. For the hundreds of thousands of people who rely on the company's hosting services, DNS services, and secure certificates, this kind of service outage can spell disaster for their online businesses. Years ago I switched hosting providers after such an incident, and GoDaddy.com is not ignorant to the cause/effect relationship between a service outage and a mass exodus.

Then, Wednesday morning (September 12), I awoke to an email from GoDaddy.com explaining the outage and what it affected. They also said "we are sorry." More than that, they issued a full one-month refund for each site customers have hosted on their systems.

All too often, companies have hiccups (large or small) and are less than transparent with their customers. They don't address the issues head on, and they don't feel they owe anything to their customers.

When something happens that affects your customers, whether it’s big or small (in your eyes), your customers want to know:

• What went wrong?
• What effect did it have to my business?
• How are you preventing it from happening again?
• How are you going to make it up to me?

For business-to-business companies and other companies relying on your systems for daily functioning, any service outage means a lot of money lost by your clients. As GoDaddy.com showed, a simple apology or “sweeping it under the rug” simply isn’t an option. You need to be completely transparent, plus you need to render an apologetic action (such as GoDaddy.com's credit) that puts your money where your mouth is.

On the other side of the spectrum, airlines tend to get this wrong. When a flight is cancelled, the airline doesn't do a whole lot to help you or make amends. All too often I (and most likely you) have been told that a flight has been cancelled and that the next flight is at 5 a.m. the next day.

While that might mean you missed an important meeting that was scheduled on your original arrival day, the bad news doesn't stop there. In my experience, the airline rarely pays for a hotel for you stay at. I can only remember once when an airline paid for my hotel. Usually it's up to me to pay for that.

Where GoDaddy had a "we're sorry and we will pay for it" approach, airlines tend to have a "we're vaguely sorry, and now you will have to pay for it" attitude.

Most companies fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. The question is: where does your company fall in this spectrum?

Certainly, a company shouldn’t bend to every instance of "crying wolf." Consumer businesses handle customer complaints fairly well. Amazon, for example, will refund shipping if you paid for an item "next day" and it took a week to arrive.

But business-to-business companies aren’t typically as forward thinking when it comes to this kind of customer support.

Business-to-business companies should take some time to review continuity plans and see what remedies (if any) are built into the process. If there are none, take a page from GoDaddy's book and figure out how to turn a potential catastrophe into a loyalty-making inflection point.

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Known Logos ! Unknown Stories !!

How many times have you recognized a car by the four intermittently woven rings on its grille? Or preferred a bold ‘tick mark' while shopping to assure the quality of the product?

Company logos are critical to a brand and its success as consumers associate the brand's value to the image, sometimes more than to the product.

Here are some interesting insights into the corporate logos of some of the most successful brands.

Mercedes-Benz

One look at the three-point star perched atop the grille or the bonnet and you know it's a Merc. But that wasn't always so.

Gottlieb Daimler, one of the founders of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) which originally owned the Mercedes brand, sent his wife a post card in the 1870s, marking his residence with a three-point star.

"One day, this star will shine over our triumphant factories," he wrote. Prophetic? This stuck with his sons—Paul and Adolf Daimler—who suggested the star logo to the DMG board after the brand's success in the 1900s.

While the company registered both the three- and four-point stars in June 1909, it has only used the three-point star as its logo, which has seen various makeovers in its lifetime, especially after the merger with Benz.

Apple

The famous tech company founded by Steve Jobs has a partially-eaten apple as its logo in monochrome. But not many know that its first logo, designed by Ron Wayne, depicted Sir Isaac Newton siting under an apple tree.

However, almost immediately, it was replaced by Rob Janoff's design—a partially-eaten apple, except in a rainbow-coloured silhouette. Later, when Janoff presented Jobs several different monochromatic themes for the ‘bitten' logo, the legendary founder of Apple instantly liked the logo since it seemed to “humanize” the company. The bite was designed to differentiate the logo from the fruit. The coloured theme was finally discontinued in 1998.

Nike

Nike's logo, very effective in all its simplicity, is the most powerful weapon of the US sports apparel company. Nike is the Greek goddess of victory, and the company's logo is derived from her wing, ‘Swoosh'. According to Greek mythology, the Swoosh motivates and gives warriors immense power and strength. Also, the logo stands out in the simple inscription of Nike in dull orange.

Nestle

The Nestlé logo was launched by Henri Nestlé in 1868 based on the meaning of his name in German, little nest, and of his family emblem.

In 1938, the traditional nest design was incorporated with the Nestlé name. In the later years, the worm in the mother bird's beak was removed and the fledglings became two instead of three to reportedly depict an average modern family of two children.

Toyota

Toyota began as Toyoda, the founder's family name. In 1936, it held a contest for a new logo to represent speed, and received 27,000 entries, from which one was finally selected. This also led to a change in the company's name to ‘Toyota' since it sounded better in Japanese. The eight-stroke count in the new name is reportedly associated with wealth and good fortune. The original logo is no longer found on the vehicles it manufactures, but remains the corporate emblem used in Japan.

In 1989, to commemorate its 50th year, Toyota introduced the logo that it is using until today—the three ovals in the new logo that combine to form the letter T, which stands for Toyota.

The overlapping of the two perpendicular ovals inside the larger oval represents the symbiotic relationship between the customer and the company, while the larger oval represents the “global expansion of Toyota's technology and unlimited potential for the future”.

Android

The Android robot is a prime example of a playful logo made of fairly simple shapes. The logo was designed by California-based graphic designer Irina Blok, while the Android word mark was created along with the Droid font family by the Chicago-based type foundry Ascender Corporation.

‘Android Green', the colour of the Android Robot that depicts the Android-operating system, stands for growth, freshness and prosperity.

Ferrari

Ferrari's logo is inspired by the character of Count Francesco Baracca, the star of Italian Air Force during World War I. The designer of the logo painted the ‘prancing horse' on his plane. After Baracca's demise, the company—founded by Enzo Ferrari—decided to use the horse emblem.

BMW

The circular blue and white logo, or roundel, evolved from the Rapp Motorenwerke logo, from which Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, or the BMW company, grew, combined with the blue and white colors of the flag of Bavaria.

The logo portrays a moving aircraft propeller with white blades cutting through a blue sky, first used in a BMW advertisement in 1929, 12 years after the roundel was created.

Audi

Audi, which means ‘to listen' in Latin, was formed after its founder August Horch was forced out of his former auto company—Horch—which in German means ‘hark' or ‘hear'. In 1932, Audi merged with Horch, DKW, and Wanderer, to form Auto Union, which used the four interlinked rings that make up the Audi badge today. While it was earlier used only on Auto Union racing cars in the World War II period, it later became the official emblem.

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Apple’s iPhone 5 Launched With LTE, Starts $199

Live from San Francisco, its live blog of the big Apple press event, where the new iPhone 5 will almost certainly be announced, along with new iPods, iTunes 11 and more.

How can we say that so confidently? Well, 9to5 Mac spotted pages within Apple.com’s own search results. While you can’t get to the actual pages, they pretty much speak to these product coming out. The tech blogs have gone wild, though these were largely expected.

What remains a mystery is whether we’ll get the rumored iPad Mini. Another rumor is that this will be announced later this year.

Stay tuned. The event starts at 10am, inside the Yerba Buena Center For The Arts.

I’ll be constantly updating this page (as wifi allows). It’s not a fancy setup that auto-refreshes, to yeah, you’ll have to reload. But I’ll let you know when it’s done. We’ll also have formal coverage after the event here on Marketing Land and on our sister-site, Search Engine Land.

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Tim Cook has come out, welcome, “have some amazing” things to share.

But starting with Apple retail and showing a store in Barcelona. Now a video of the opening.

On to the Mac. Busy summer

7 million copies of Mountain Lion sold, fastest selling of any OS X 10 release.

Last three months, Mac notebooks have ranked number one in the US. Over last year, Mac has signficanlty outgrown the PC, in fact past 6 years.

“We’re really happy with how we’re doing with the MacIntosh.” On to iPad, great reviews. 17 million sold last quarter, a new record. Sold more iPads than any PC maker sold of entire PC line. “Yes, we are in a post PC world.” Total 84 million units. “Aboslutlye shocking when you think this is a product category that didn’t exist”

Competitors have taken note launched hudnreeds of products. Year ago, iPad had 62% share. Now up to 68%. As for traffic.

“I don’t know what these other tablets are doing,” in that iPad has 91% of web traffic. Jokes must be on shelves.

Recently crossed 700,000 apps in store, 250,000 just for iPad. “There’s somehting in theapp store for everyone.”

90% of apps are downloaded each and every month and average customer uses more than 100 apps (wow, really? each month? each day?)

Just sold 400 millionth iPhone device. And now Phil Schiller invited up to tell us more about iPhone.

Today we’re going to introduce iPhone 5. Now it rises up on stage.

“most beautiful product ever” they’d made, all glass and aluminum.

7.6mm thin, world’s thinnest. 112 grams, 1/5th lighter than iphone 4s. 1136X640 4″ screen, same retina.

Why this size? Should fit perfectly into your hand. And shows more of what you’re working on, browsing, email, etc. New apps from Apple being designed to take advantage of the extra space.

But apps work good either way. Open Table before and after:

And after:

LTE support added in a single chip. (which is cool, because it should mean you can go from AT&T or Verizon in single phone) AT&T, Sprint, Verizon will all support it in US. Huge lists now going around the world.

802.11n 2.4 and 5GHz for wireless now working.

New Apple A6 chip, 2X faster in CPU and graphics.

Rob Murray from EA Studio now out to show a racing game. There’s time shifted multiplayer, one person can race, the next day someone else can race against them.

Phil is back. Matched and exceeded batter life of 4GS, 8 hours of LTE browing, 225 hours standby.

On to the camera. 8MP and lot of specs, see slide below:

Also dynamic low light mode. Faster photo capture. Noise reduction, smart filter to prevent noise reduction when not needed.

“The ocean just looks bluer on the iPhone 5. Kids look happier. And the world is a more beautiful place,” he jokes as he shows some pictures:

Shared photo streams and (finally) a panorama mode to stitch. You can even include the same person if you figure it out in different areas:

Three microphones now, front back and bottom. Improved speakers.

Now for the connector. Original one launched in 2003 “but so much has changed” so much done over the wire is now done wirelessly he says.

It’s time for our connector to evolved. Called Lightning. So now we have Thunderbolt & Lightning. Working with partners on connectivity into new products.

There’s also an adapter to change old to new:

Scott Forstall now out showing the new maps with local search:

Turn-by-turn navigation:

And flyover views:

Browsing has iCloud tabs that let you keep track of where you left off browsing on other devices, if I heard correctly.

Mail gets flagging ability of messages (I though it had this).

Passbook to store store cards (most of this stuff we’ve all know was coming). Integration to lockscreen so what you need is ready to go on the right day.

Shared photo streams let you share pictures with others, and they can subscribe to them.

Siri has learned about sports scores and movie recommendations. You can launch apps by speaking. You can post to Facebook with Siri:

Note Siri joking about movie recommendations here:

Facebook posting with Siri:

But this might be tied to apps themselves posting. Will have to check on this more later.

Now video. Now prices $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32, $$399 for 64GB. When can get them? Pre-order Sept. 14. Ship Sept. 21 to many countries including US. Shifts prices around for other phones as shown:

iOS rolls out next week to wide range of devices as shown below for free on Sept. 19:

On to iTunes, now in 63 countries, 435 million account, new design for iPad:

200 million use iCloud, and that’s integrated into new version of iTunes for desktop:

You can now see what’s in a playlist and your library at the same time:

Improvements to search, like you can do it within the mini player.

Watch a movie on one device, iCloud remembers and picks up in iTunes. Now Avengers scene where Hulk smacks down Loki. Love that scene.

New iTunes in late October.

Now iPod. The Nano. How to recreate it? Bigger display. Easy controls. Thin, light. Lightning connector. Here it is, actually bigger than Fred:

Play/Pause/Forward/Backward buttons on the side with multtouch display. FM Tuner with live pause. Video back in it. Bluetooth part of it. I wish wifi was (doesn’t sound like it, unless I missed that).

iPod Touch (wish they’d call it the iTouch). 6.1mm thick/thin. 88 grams in weight:

7X faster graphics. And now developer up to show us the Clumsy Ninja game. It’s cute. Touch also getting a 5MP iSight camera. Panorama will also come to it.

iPod Touch Loop is a small button at the bottom that really is meant to allow you to add a wrist strap.

Siri will now be supported. And can pick colors.

New EarPods headphones.

These ship today. Overall iPod family pricing (it’s $299 for the part he covers):

Cook back, wrapping up. “Only Apple could create such amazing hardware, software and services … and bring them all together.” That’s a strength. ”Apple has never been stronger.” Apple employees are doing “the best work of their lives.”

And now the Foo Fighters are on stage singing:

I’m not going to live blog them singings. I’m just going to listen, OK? Two songs so far.

That’s it. Hands on time.

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