When I was still a child, I was asked to write the relaunch campaign for Red Eveready, India's biggest battery brand. (Shown with this article: an ad from that campaign.)
I don't know why.

The campaign ran for 13 years.
I don't know why.

It was apparently very successful.
I don't know why.

It appears they teach it in business school in India.
I don't know why.

DesiCreative.com recently wanted to interview me about this campaign.
I don't know why.

But I do know where the interview is.
Click on the article title to read it at desicreative.com, which by the way is an excellent site for anybody interested in the new wave of Indian creative talent.

The art director who worked with me on this campaign was Sharad Nigvekar and he did a splendid job.
Kasa aahe Sharad?



Article and image of advertisement: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



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A bus wrap from our current winter campaign for York Region Transit.
Snow mobility. Now on a street near you.


Article and blog, copyright Gavin Barrett 2008.

A Brampton woman was recently accused of threatening the Premier of Ontario, in this article by Toronto Star.
Did she? Click on the link above and see what you think for yourself.
Send your comments. I'll give you my take on the whole thing soon.

Once again I am in debt to Harper's, without a doubt the best damn magazine in the world.

In the February 2008 Harper's Index I discovered that Shaadi.com, an immensely popular matchmaking site for South Asians (or "matrimonials site", as we beige folk like to say) allows listees to choose from no less than six skin tones and 275 castes.

I poked around the site and discovered they also offer a menu of 28 communities and 67 mother tongues.

Does this make it impossible to choose a mate? Far from it.

Shaadi.com estimates it has made between 800,000 and a million successful "matches".
It has over 10 million members, numbers that make it one of the most successful and most admired online companies in all of Asia.

It even lets you search for matches in the USA and Canada.

Now you know where to look if you're in the market for a wheaten complexion male Iyengar Brahmin MIT engineer with a green card or a very fair, tall Sikh lady doctor coming from a very respectable family based in Malton, Ontario.

And oh, every single shaadi.com page is in English.


Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

photo of mehndi at Indian wedding: by Riffat, via flickr
Some rights reserved.

Cantonese pop music.
Dominated by the Four Kings (Jackie Cheung, Leon Lai, Aaron Kwok and Andy Lau) in the 90s.
Current stars include scandal-tainted Gillian Chung.


Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

Meaning Chinese outside, white inside.

Pejorative.

Usually employed by Chinese-Canadians to describe some second generation (or, occasionally, first generation) Chinese-Canadians (or -Americans or -Brits) who are thought to have lost too much of their culture or language.

Like coconuts, a banana typically hangs with other bananas, and often does not speak any Chinese.

Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.