New Mobile, Boring Weekend & "It's Pink"

I am at sea to understand this puzzle. For the past three weekends, I have been forced to sit at home, unable to venture out to meet friends or have some sort of a time pass. As if on purpose, three cyclonic systems have been lashing Tamilnadu coast for three consecutive weeks, spoiling my weekends.

I had earlier decided that I would be getting a new mobile on Saturday. The thrill of having a new mobile, coupled with the fact that it would be a better one that I was owning till date, made me venture out of my house in the rain. Since, good things do not happen smoothly, the mobile purchase journey was also an adventure.

During the second weekend of this month, I had gone to the Reliance Webworld in T Nagar, and enquired about the mobile exchange options. I liked a model and since the person who was incharge of exchanging was not available, I could not buy it last week. So Saturday was the day.

I left home in the afternoon, had lunch and headed straight to the Reliance Webworld in T Nagar. When I enquired with the staff regarding the exchange of mobiles, I received the shocker that the exchange offers were withdrawn in Webworlds. The lady there directed me to head to any of the Webworld Express outlets where the offer was still valid.

So I head to the nearest Webworld Express outlet, which happens to be in Kodambakkam. There again, I meet a sweet lady in the reception, who, to my horror, denied any knowledge of any exchange offers. She told me that her shop has never exchanged any mobile till date. I pleaded with her to ask her boss, or someone who could help me out in this. So she calls up the Webworld Express in Virugambakkam, and delivers the happy news to me – I could go to the outlet there and exchange my existing mobile.

I reached the outlet in no time, selected my mobile, tried in vain to bargain, but the shopkeeper was not ready to pay me more than 400 bucks for my old Samsung model. Finally I gave in, paid the money and got my new mobile – Nokia 3125.

Plain simple color mobile, with no FM or Camera or Video recording or MP3 Player. It looks stylish and is very sleek and light. Other than the features I mentioned above, the phone has all other features, and is definitely worth the money spent on it. I spent the remaining time of Saturday going through the user manual and understanding various features available in the mobile.

I had finished Mahabharata on Friday night itself. Planning to write a review on the book, which should follow soon.

Found it very hard to kill time on Sunday. Spent most of the time looking at the rain from my bedroom window or from the balcony. Started reading “The Day of the Jackal”; so far so good.

Last week, I was surprised by the latest campaign from Radio Mirchi. One fine day, they dropped their “It’s Hot” tagline, and hit with “It’s Pink”. Changed the names of all their programs, so that the word pink could be added, even some RJ’s had the word pink prefixed or suffixed to their names.

Since I listen to Radio Mirchi for a maximum of 30 mins in a day, I was unable to figure out why they were doing it. Only when I read yesterday’s newspaper I could make sense of it. There was a one page ad from Hutch, which said that they are changing their corporate logo’s color from orange to pink.

Then it dawned on me that this would be a marketing strategy by Hutch to create awareness amongst its customers regarding its change of identity. Hutch’s advertising has always been excellent. The video advertising campaign which showed a dog following its kid master everywhere, with the background score “It’s a beautiful world” captured all hearts. This latest campaign by Hutch along with Mirchi is surely going to be a huge hit.