Hero Honda, which is obviously tied somehow to Honda, but is definitely seen as its own Indian brand, is setting up Just4Her showrooms across India – for women only, as they launch a female-targeted scooter, Pleasure.

The company has plans to open 22 such showrooms, exclusively for women customers across the country.
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Elaborating on the features of the scooter, Pleasure, Mokashi said it was available in five exciting colours with 100 cc self-start variomatic transmission, multi-reflector headlight and body-coloured mirrors.
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According to Mokashi, the exclusive outlets will offer special facilities to women customers. Added to this, the showrooms would also have female service supervisors and sales executives for attending to the ladies.

Grant McCracken offers up a provocative post entitled Brand theatre and the experiential brand, with some rules to create effective storytelling experiences

1. First, discover [and] obey the local culture. Use its favorite media.
2. Second, proceed as if less is more. Engage their detective work.
3. Third, invite completion. In this case, invite them to tell more stories.
4. Fourth, keep a small footprint (fewer reps better than more).
5. Fifth, practice brand murmur (aka brand diffidence). Don’t go crashing in there.
6. Sixth, engage theatrical resources. In a world saturated with mediated communications, there’s nothing quite like the real thing.) (Besides, we’re Elizabethans, too).

I was recently involved with a corporate retreat for marketers and was amused by the jargon I heard in the warmup session, including:

• boredom busting
• a light and airier eat
• laddering up
• slice and dice the consumer
• cut up the consumer
• the consumer
• need states
• more simplistic taste profiles

Once we had a chance to interact in a less formal setting I found them to be very personable, great storytellers, curious about people and the world, open-minded, funny, and everything great you’d want in someone that is honestly trying to satisfy needs. But why, then, does this horrifying lingo emerge so prominently when they are forced to strut for each other?

Edited from this story

With Taiwanese youngsters increasingly drawn to Western hamburgers and fries, government researchers are trying to lure them back with something more traditional – sort of: rainbow-colored rice.

Yellow rice gets its hue from curcumin, an herb that’s a spice in curries and is believed by some to be an antioxidant that may help prevent cancer. Green rice comes from the nutritious bitter gourd, often used in Asian soups and stir-fried dishes. Pink comes from tomato, and purple from a mixture of vegetables.

The colored rice will likely cost about twice as much as plain rice.

Besides the obligatory “wow aren’t they weird in Asia” reaction (which is ridiculous, because didn’t green ketchup start in the US, after all?), it seems like the story is equal parts science and technology, culture, marketing, fashion, and of course economics (2x for healthy rice? nice price!).

Twenty-Five Years of Post-it Notes is a fantastic essay covering the innovation, technology, inspiration, invention, manufacturing, marketing and ultimately the cultural impact of the little, yellow, and different semi-sticky pages.

Post-it Notes, on the other hand, were dynamic, customizable, business casual. They inspired spontaneity, rapid ideation, free association. You could link one seemingly unrelated idea to another without worrying about any logical cohesion of ideas; that’s what the glue was for. After all, the digital drudgery of Office Space and Dilbert didn’t tell the full story of office life in the eighties and nineties. It was also the era of Wired and Fast Company, the rebel businessman, thinking outside the box.

The California Supreme Court denied review of a dismissed suit from PETA, claiming that consumers were being misled with the California Milk Producers ads claiming that happy cows come from California, when in fact, PETA points out, the cows couldn’t be very happy since they live in dirt, are repeatedly impregnated, milked while pregnant and then slaughtered.

Jeez. I mean, it turns out Mayor McCheese wasn’t really the mayor, either. Plus, he was eventually going to be eaten, which I believe violated the second element of the Charter of Office.

A full page ad is running in daily newspapers today, incredibly pretentious and self-righteous. I can reproduce the text (below) but it will definitely be missing something without the blurry ALL CAPS type. I missed the whole Superbowl ad and other promotions they have done along the lines of “here’s to the heroes” but somehow the horses aspect here just seems goofy. The photo of the old-timey Clydesdale delivery wagon with the yellow ribbon magnet on the back is cheese-o-rama.

Clydesdales Across America
The Clydesdales Across America Tour will be appearing at SBC Park for a special Heroes’ Night tribute before and after San Francisco Giants games. Come visit from 6:00 to 6:45 on Friday, April 22nd at Willie Mays Plaza and on Saturday, April 23rd in parking lot A.

Don’t miss the chance to meet these great American icons [ed: this refers to the horses, I think] and send a message to our troops overseas.

The Clydesdales Across America: Here’s To The Heroes Tour is more than an amazing journey, it’s a chance to pay tribute to America’s everyday heroes who put their lives on the line to make our country safer, better and stronger.

Don’t miss the chance to visit with these great American icons, and to thank our troops overseas with a video message of your own. The messages will be aired on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Services (AFRTS) Network and transmitted to 177 countries around the world.

The Clydesdales Across America Tour. It’s a show of support for America’s Heroes that stretches clear across the country.

New York Times story about car manufacturers using video games and other gimmicks to promote new models

DaimlerChrysler’s research found that one-third of all gamers are 35 to 49, with an average age of 28, up from just 18 a decade ago. Women also have increasingly picked up on gaming, particularly online, in which they play against other people around the world. “There’s a growing wave of women gaming,” Mr. Bell said. Even though many of the corporate-sponsored games mimic ones that do not carry a commercial message, they are primarily a sales tool – just like traditional television campaigns.
But unlike television, which is virtually impossible to track in terms of actual sales, Mr. Bell said he has been able to match people who download games with sales results. For example, of the first 1,000 people to buy the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon when it was introduced, he found that 500 of them had downloaded and played the computer game created for the new model.

Kiss Kondoms, apparently. How this could be news, after the Kiss Kasket, I don’t quite understand. And hey, in Japan, they’ve got Hello Kitty douche. I just purchased one, since it’s the kind of story you want to have proof of. I do. I have proof.