Brand Profile: Mazda

The Japanese Mazda was founded in 1920 by  Matsuda Jyujiro, initially under the name of Toyo Cork Kogyo Co. In 1927 the brand changed its name to Toyo Kogyo Co.  Slowly they diversifying its production and manufacture first motorcycle and, later, small tricycles for urban freight transport and in 1931 began to produce Mazdago, a three-wheeled wagon.

The word Mazda is a blend of the name of the brand's founder, Matsuda Jyujiro ("tsu" in Japanese is pronounced "Z") and the Assyrian god Mazda.

Ahura Mazda is the abstract and transcendant god of Zoroastrianism. Ahura is the adversary of Angra Mainyu, the Zoroastrian representation of evil. Ahura has no image and cannot be represented in any form . Ahura Mazda, derived from the Old Persian Aura-Mazda ("Aura" - Lord, "Mazda" - Wisdom) symbolizes the supreme deity of Zoroastrian and Mazdean religions.
Ahura Mazda is refered to as Ormazd in modern Persian.


During World War II the brand started to produce weapons for the Japanese army, leaving the Type 99 rifle widely known.  Mazda's first vehicle to be produced was the sporty Mazda R360 coupe launched in 1960, followed by the Mazda Carol in 1962.

Like other Japanese brands, Mazda began its expansion in the late sixties. With Carol and Family models fully consolidated in the domestic market, the company began exporting in 1967 the first units to Europe, and three years after the United States.

Logo
The brand logo has changed a lot. The latter, which represents two wings, dating from 1997. Coincidence or not, 3,500 years ago, the symbol of Mazda, the only god of the Assyrian religion, or Zoroastrianism, also were two wings.

Current Logo: Capturing the spirit of Mazda, the stylised “M” evokes an image of wings in flight and symbolises the Mazda’s flight toward the future. The “V” in the centre of the “M” spreads out like an opening fan, representing the creativity, vitalty, flexibilty and passion that is Mazda. The symbol as a whole expresses the sharp, solid feeling that Mazda will be seeking in all of its products. The dynamic circle symbolises our readiness to spread our wings as we enter the 21st century.

FACIT Teez by Forbes (a Shapoorji Pallonji's branded apparel venture)

Shapoorji Pallonji's branded apparel venture Forbes Brands launched its youth-centric men's T-shirt brand FACIT Teez.



FACIT Teez range will focus on the experimental and mobile youth by offering them collection of T-shirts imprinted with the funkiest and fashionable graphics. The USP of the range lies in the fact that every design and print has a single piece manufactured, making it unique.


Trivia:-

Established by John Forbes of Aberdeenshire in Scotland in 1767, Forbes is the oldest surviving company in India and one of the oldest in the world. It forayed into apparel retailing when the Mistrys, the single largest shareholder of Tata Sons, acquired Forbes Gokak from the Tata group.

Absolut Vodka and advertising

The roots of vodka
The history of vodka in Sweden dates back to 400 years ago in the early sixteenth century when people began to distill grain alcohol for medicinal purposes and also to make gunpowder for cannons and rifles used by the Swedes in their frequent conflicts with neighboring countries. However, human nature will quickly find more recreational use to "bränvin"-meaning burnt wine, "and then in the seventeenth century, was made home, even in the humblest cottage, acquiring the status of a national drink, but of very uneven quality because of its homemade.

Lars Olsson Smith, the King of Vodka
Entrepreneur at age 14, the Swede Lars Olsson Smith already controlled one third of the domestic market of vodka when he was a teenager. He became known as the "King of Vodka", appeal it held for nearly half a century. In 1869 he built the country's largest distillery in Reimersholme, an island which now forms part of the city of Stockholm, and began producing a new type of vodka with a refined and pure flavor with a revolutionary method of a process to distill spirits from wheat, called rectification ... method is still used today.
The story of the Absolut Vodka advertising campaign was born in the late 1970s when the brand presents the challenge of conquering the American market, consumer 60% of global vodka market. Competing against less expensive brands of domestic production for local consumption -99%, and the exotic Russian Stolichnaya - which dominated the imported-Absolut enters the U.S. market in 1981 with a pack inspired by a Swedish medicine bottle of the last century, a label transparent and a name that eludes understanding. With such a range of elements seemingly against him, the media campaign had to be very special. The relationship with TBWA started on the eve of the launch of Absolut in Boston, USA when his then U.S. distributor, Carillon Importers, won the attention of all advertising of alcohol products to the agency.
Faced with limited knowledge of Swedish culture and identity, the TBWA team had to establish the concept that Absolut vodka was the best verbatim without affirming. They did it with Absolut Perfection, combining excellence with humor in such a simple concept like infinity which would mark the next 15 years of creativity.
Geoff Hayes, art director of the agency, discovered the concept while watching television at home one night, idly doodling in his notebook ... bottles above a drew a halo, like an angel and wrote down: "Absolut. The perfect vodka. " The next day, his colleague Graham Turner, suggested to be left, quite simply, as "Absolut Perfection" ...
This was the basis of the formula of two words that somehow praising the product or the person taking it. Also it was the touch of humor that remained arrogance implicit declaration of superiority.
The first attempts to photograph the bottle failed utterly, with results showing a flat, white object without grace or beauty. Finally, the creative team came up with a then unknown photographer, Steve Bronstein, who was able to resolve the problem of how to photograph an object whose main attraction lay in its clarity and transparency. Instead of using a black background, placed a plastic sheet behind semi-transparent bottle, lit by a dim light that left the bottle three-round and clear in the photo.

Series and variants that maintain the freshness of the brand
Using these same criteria of quality and imagination, the TBWA team developed other variants such as:
Absolut Cities: subtly transforming a known feature of a city in a notice to remind the bottle, it appears as the arches of the famous Brooklyn Bridge in the notice of the same name or the shape of Central Park in Manhattan Absolut. Later in 1993, appeared Absolut Eurocities series under the same concept, a flock of pigeons clustered on the bottle shape in the Piazza San Marco in Absolut Venice, one piece of the Wall in Absolut, and entry into the Tivoli Gardens in Absolut Copenhagen, among others.

Absolut Art: Absolut has worked with leading artists from around the world to produce works inspired by the bottle as Keith Haring and George Rodrigue.

Absolut Holidays: Christmas of 1987, the TBWA’s creative team was invited to the prestigious New York magazine to propose ideas for a special announcement. During that year, they had surpassed the Stolichnaya brand in sales, and expected an explosive consumption boom for the holidays.

Absolut Fashion: David Cameron was the first fashion designer who was inspired by the clarity and unity of design of the bottle. In 1987 he opened a silver mini dress simple but attractive lines that was modeled by Rachel Williams and photographed by Steve Bronstein.
Absolut Film & Literature: In 1994, they launched a series of three ads - Wells Absolut, Absolut and Absolut Shelley Stoker, paying homage to the three great writers HG Wells (The Invisible Man), Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) and Bram Stoker ( Dracula).

Famous Dropouts who made bucks in Business

Steve Jobs (a college dropout) Jobs graduated in 1972 from Homestead High School in Cupertino, California and enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon. One semester later he dropped out. In 1976, Jobs started Apple with another fellow college dropout Steve Wozniak in his family garage in Los Altos, California. 

Bill Gates, a Harvard university dropout, based on his score 1590 in SAT test out of 1600 got admission in Harvard University in the year 1973. At Harvard University, Gates and his high school friend Paul Allen worked on a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer -- MITS Altair. Two years later in 1975, he decided to opt out of college to start Microsoft. However, in 2007 Bill Gates finally got a degree from Harvard, when the university conferred him with an honorary degree.

Michael Dell while studying at the University of Texas at Austin, started a computer company called PC's Limited in room 2713 of twenty-seven story residence hall Dobie Center. Then 19, Michael decided to drop out of college to run PC's Limited, which later became Dell Computer Corp, and finally Dell Inc.

Paul Allen too dropped out of Washington State University in 1975, to build the software giant Microsoft. Allen left Microsoft in 1983 after being diagnosed by Hodgkin's disease. Allen also owns three professional sports teams: The Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League, the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association. and The Seattle Sounders FC. Paul Allen has 9th largest privately-owned super yachts in the world called Octopus.

Larry Ellison, the co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation left the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after his second year. Later he went on to join the University of Chicago for one term, however, didn't complete it either. In 1977, Ellison put up $2,000 to start Oracle Corporation. Interesting fact is that, two years younger to arch rival Microsoft corp, Oracle went public a day before Microsoft in 1986. 

Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) in 2004 while studying at the Harvard University started the social networking site Facebook. However, soon after he decided to drop out of college to run the site. Initially Facebook was supposed to be a networking site for university grads, but was thrown open for everybody in 2006. 

Jerry Yang, Ex-CEO of Yahoo, while studying Electrical Engineering at Stanford University in 1994 with fellow David Filo co-created an Internet website consisting of a directory of other websites called "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web". The site was renamed `Yahoo!' in April 1995. The same year the duo took a leave of absence and postponed their doctoral programmes indefinitely.

Mike Hudack, a high school dropout, founder and CEO of blip.tv. Blip is presently backed by venture capital including Bain Capital Ventures. Prior to Blip, Hudack worked as a developer and administrator for the National Hockey League, where he managed the team responsible for one of the biggest IT projects in the history of the League -- consolidating and re-developing the NHL's internal applications.

Well the list of dropouts is too exhaustive which also includes some Indian biggies, like

Gautam Adani (College dropout)

Dhirubhai Ambani (High-school dropout)

If you know some then share with us.

HP Engine Oils: New TVC

Hindustan Petroleum (HP) Engine Oils has released a corporate brand film.
Created by:- Leo Burnett
Theme:- 'Zindagi nahi rukti' (Life doesn't stop)

Father of PC - A Legacy

The "father of the personal computer" who kick-started the careers of Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen has died at the age of 68.

Dr Henry Edward Roberts was the inventor of the Altair 8800, a machine that sparked the home computer era.

Gates and Allen contacted Dr Roberts after seeing the machine on the front cover of a magazine and offered to write software for it.The program was known as Altair-Basic, the foundation of Microsoft's business.

"Ed was willing to take a chance on us - two young guys interested in computers long before they were commonplace - and we have always been grateful to him," the Microsoft founders said in a statement.

"The day our first untested software worked on his Altair was the start of a lot of great things."

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told technology website CNET that Dr Roberts had taken " a critically important step that led to everything we have today".

'Fond memories'

Dr Roberts was the founder of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), originally set up to sell electronics kits to model rocket hobbyists.

The company went on to sell electronic calculator kits, but was soon overshadowed by bigger firms.

In the mid-1970's, with the firm struggling with debt, Dr Roberts began to develop a computer kit for hobbyists.

The result was the Altair 8800, a machine operated by switches and with no display.

It took its name from the then-cutting edge Intel 8080 microprocessor.

The $395 kit (around £1,000 today) was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics in 1975, prompting a flurry of orders. It was also sold assembled for an additional $100 charge.

Amongst those interested in the machine were Paul Allen and Bill Gates.

The pair contacted Dr Roberts, offering to write software code that would help people program the machine.

The pair eventually moved to Albuquerque - the home of MITS - where they founded Micro-Soft, as it was then known, to develop their software: a variant of the Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (Basic).

"We will always have many fond memories of working with Ed in Albuquerque, in the MITS office right on Route 66 - where so many exciting things happened that none of us could have imagined back then," the pair said.

Dr Roberts sold his company in 1977.

He died in hospital on 1 April after a long bout of pneumonia.

Google changed its name to Topeka

On 1st April Google became Topeka.

On March, 2010 the mayor of Topeka, Kansas surprised the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. In return of gesture Google, or rather Topeka said its Employees will be referred to as “Topekars” or “Topekans” instead of “Googlers”.

Reckitt Benckiser roped Sridevi for Vanish

Reckitt Benckiser India has roped in Bollywood actress Sridevi; as the brand ambassador. 

"I AM'' Sushmita Sen

Sushmita Sen has launched her own brand I AM. The first offering is called I AM She.

The brand is a franchisee of Miss Universe Organization. Gradually it will diversify into education and Hospitality. The girls’ training will be shown as a reality show by two television channels. The contestant who will ultimately represent the country will be chosen among the top five finalists through public voting before April 15.

Trivia:-

• The ‘I Am She’ Platform is part of Sushmita Sen’s Tantra Entertainment.
• Sushmita Sen was the first Indian to win the Miss Universe pageant in the year 1994.

Kingfisher ''Ooh la la la'' for IPL

Kingfisher is back with its copyright jingle “Ooh la la la”.

Twenty-one players from the IPL teams Royal Challengers Bangalore, Delhi Daredevils, Deccan Chargers and Rajasthan Royals have come together to sing for Kingfisher.

Cricket stalwarts Anil Kumble, Rahul Dravid, Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne, Gautam Gambhir, Andrew Symonds along with 15 others feature in the latest advertising campaign launched by Kingfisher for IPL 2010.