Masterly inactivity

We have been seeing months of (3 months to be precise) masterly inactivity here. Things should get better in the coming days and I shall raise out of this slumber.

I would be back in action soon...

Entrepreneurial Generation

Here is a thread to an interesting speech made by Jeff Cornwall, Director of the Belmont University, Center for Entrepreneurship.

It is an interesting read.

Tragic & Spellbound

I managed to spoil my DVD of Spellbound. As of yesterday morning I was half way through this Hitchcock classic and I was supposed to finish this movie yesterday evening when tragedy struck (may be I dropped it down or something). I am going to give it another try to see if the DVD works this evening. If that doesn't happen, I would have to wait till the weekend to see if another copy is available in the local store and watch this movie.

Indeed a great tragedy that has left me spellbound.

Aesthetics, airlines, advertising and the Rio Carnival

In the ancient Olympics the competitors ran naked for a prize of an olive crown. This was more looked at as a celebration of the human body, the male body to be precise. The organizers and the elite of Brazil have now (this year) compared the Rio Carnival to the Olympics.

A quote attributed to them in one of the website's says this "It is the celebration of body, closer in sprit to the Olympic games than a Strip bar". May be had they mentioned "ancient" before Olympics and "predominantly female" before body, it would have been more appropriate.

It also quotes a scholar saying ''Here, nakedness doesn't only lead to sexuality, it leads you to aesthetic appreciation,'' said Roberto Da Matta, a retired University of Notre Dame sociology professor and author of the book ''Carnivals, Rogues and Heroes: An Interpretation of the Brazilian Dilemma.''

Whatever said, the aesthetic appeal of the carnival pulls in aircraft loads of people from around the world. And this makes the carnival a delightful period for the airlines, hospitality and tourism industry. It is also an advertiser's delight, with so many advertising options available including the beautiful bodies of the samba dancers (Is anyone exploiting that media??) and a very captive audience.

The blog profile

I have got a new profile note in here... I suddenly decided to leave out the mundane details like me having worked across some 10 different places spanning 5 industry sectors. This one up there I think gives a good account of what I do now. I have also added a couple of interesting books I read over the last couple of months.

This change is part of my "Greener the better" drive

Semi Spellbound…

Another Hitchcock, starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. I could only help watching half this classic late yesterday night. I'm sure I would have a small post once I am finished with this movie.

The Wrong Man (1956)

Actors: Henry Fonda, Vera Miles
Dir: Sir Alfred Hitchcock

Classic Hitchcock, that would be the one phrase definition of this movie. Based on a true story, this movie is more a gripping documentary of the events which happened. Sir Alfred has also used many of the locations where the events happened and has also used the people involved in the case in some small roles in the movie.

The story… In New York, a wrong man is accused of hold-up and robbery. All the witnesses and the circumstances point to this man, who is a honest, law abiding musician who works in a local club as a cello player. How is he absolved of the acquisition? That is the story.

Henry Fonda plays Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero Aka. Manny Balestrero. Vera Miles plays Mrs. Balestrero. Sir Alfred moves the story around how things unfolded and the court room drama before Manny is acquitted, but that is not before he checks his wife into a mental asylum.

One thing very unlike many Hitchcock movies is the final frame of the movie, a super saying Mrs. Balestrero came out of mental rehab 2 years later and they lived happily after. This is very unlike Sir Alfred, who normally prefers an abstract ending for his movies giving freedom for the viewer to come to his own conclusion about the ending (necessarily a happy one!!).

That said, this is a great movie and a must watch for anyone who likes Sir Alfred and his movie making style, Suspense, tension and those will he or will he not moments.

Trivia: Sir Alfred Hitchcock appears early in the movie. Introducing the movie to the audience and familiarizing them that this is a true story.

This film is based on the book "The True Story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero" by Maxwell Anderson, who incidentally has penned the screenplay for this movie.

Maxwell was contracted by Hitchcock to write the screenplay for what would become Vertigo later. But unfortunately his screenplay was rejected by Sir Alfred.

Insights - The lethal weapon for any good communication

Insights kick-off the planning process. It is the insight that determines whether a creative rendition is cutting edge or crap.

Wikipedia says that Insight is the act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively.

An example for an insight

This is something I did sometime ago for a consumer durable major back in India. They wanted to launch a Picture-in-Picture television. I drew the insight from my experience back home. When my mother would want to watch a daily soap on TV, my father would fight her to watch his day-night cricket match.

Hence the insight "People fight over which channel to watch" gave birth to the creative expression which had the proposition "You don’t have to fight for control anymore".

I particularly like the great Jeremy Bullmore's expression of an insight "It is like a refrigerator, the moment you open it a light comes on". I love this analogy of the great man.

Here's some more about what the other planners around the world say about insight…
Russell Davies has some exciting threads about insights in his blog. And here is something from Abu Dhabi.

The DM dilemma

The more we talk about Direct Marketing, the more we seem to be confused. This is primarily because most of us have still not attemped to understand what Direct Marketing is. Most of us look at DM from two angles...

a. A creative work with an address label pasted on it

b. A clean address (without the usual mistakes!!) printed on a label pasted to a pack containing some information

Now, which one of these is right? Is DM just the creative? Or is DM mailing list lead?

The answer is simple. It is a combination of both. The following are the most important things that would differentiate between a good and mediocre DM.

1. The database - The mailing list (in layman's terms)

2. The offer - What are you offering the target audience ?

3. The relevance - Are you trying to sell dating services to a monk? How relevant is your offer?

4. The creative - The presentation

5. The timing - There is an obvious difference between sending an offer for an Airconditioner at the starting of the summer and the end of it

6. The vehicle - Regular mail / e-mail / Web / Blog / Personal contact etc.

7. The response - How was the response? respose (Vs.) conversion

Only when you are able to tick off all seven you would be able to claim that you did a successful DM exercise. Even one cross would mean that your exercise was not as successful as you meant it to be.

So next time you see an amazing DM creative, wait till you take a look at the other six parameters till you rejoice.

Remember DM is a multi-dimensional stream, your approach has to be correct across the board to be successful.

The joy of living on the 14th floor

It was a Sunday morning and time to go to office. Sunday is the first day of the week here in Dubai. As you are stepping out of your house, you see a nice little notice pasted on the wall of your floor.

"We regret to inform you that there would be a power cut till 11.30a today morning"

The gravity of the damage didn't strike me till I turned right to take the lift. Alas, Mr Baradwaj the lift wouldn't work if there is a power cut!

The thought of walking 14 floors to your car made more damage to me than the physical activity itself. But it was inevitable, I had to reach office in time.

I searched for the stairs with the help of whatever little light my mobile phone could offer to carefully tread my way down. And I successfully managed to do so in 12 minutes.

Good day Mr Baradwaj!!

Another one from Sajan

Client: Matchpoint, Taj Coramandel Hotels, Chennai
Agency: Rubecon, Chennai
Medium: Poster

This is another good creative piece of work done for the Matchpoint coffee shop at the Taj Group of Hotels, Taj Coramandel property in Chennai. Done for the "Thanksgiving day", I thought this is a fantastic creative.

A nice creative

Client: Fruit shop @ Greams Road, Chennai
Agency: Rubecon, Chennai
Medium: Outdoor - Hoarding

Fruit shop is a fresh fruit juice place. One of the must go's in Chennai. This is a hoarding my good friend Sajan has created for Fruit shop - Nice, clean & refreshing!!

Mobility and the saga of Du

Du is the second operator in the GSM mobility space in the UAE. The country has been waiting them for almost an year now to launch their services. They are out with a million dollar marketing campaign for more than 3 months now. This includes those colorful hoardings across the city, those many full page color advertisements in the national newspapers – Arabic and English, kiosks at vantage points and not to mention the many thousands of Du staff in their uniform with a prominent monogram of the logo.

All this multi million dollar spend not withstanding they seem to go nowhere. They are simply not moving, no sign of them starting their service in the near future. Calls to their customer care center gets you the most ambiguous answer like “May be end of December, may be sometime in 2007” or even the mindless “I don’t know”.

They started their brand campaign “Du – Add life to life” about 3-4 months ago. It was a campaign based on water and its importance in a human beings life. This is what a spokesman from Du has said about this campaign “Water brings people together, it comes from inside us, it allows us to travel far, and it expresses itself with power or as a whisper. And of course, it is all around us in our daily life. This is how we see communication and we want to take it further.”.

Two months of teaching me the importance of water in my life?

Enough of it! Now, tell me what you have to offer me, as a mobile service provider.

And then comes the reserve your number campaign. The older operator Etisalat has a ‘050’ code and Du has been allocated ‘055’. Therefore Du has started a campaign asking people to retain their old number (Etisalat number) but with a ‘055’ code. They charge you somewhere ranging from Dh.100 to Dh.4000 depending on the novelty value of the number you want to reserve. And, yes you could use this number whenever Du decide to start its service. And when? God knows!

But how on earth would someone go on to reserve a number without even knowing what Du has to offer? I wouldn’t unless I suffer from a chronic numeric fetish.

There are no signs of Du telling people what they would bring on to the table in terms of service, costs etc. All they want people to do now is to rush to their kiosks or the website to reserve a number.

Very funny!

They have also extended the deadline for reserving numbers by a month. May be no one is reserving. While they started this campaign of theirs in newspapers, they now have started using radio (almost all the radio channels in the UAE, I presume). There is a cheap spot that appears in one of the Hindi FM channels I heard.

My first remark “Du is running out of water”

There are a couple of things I would like to advice Du and its marketing communication partners on.

1. Figure out who you are first. What business are you in? What do you have to offer to the consumer tangibly? What differentiates you from Etisalat?

2. Sort out the ambiguity in the tone and manner of communication – Figure out who your primary target audience is, speak to them in their language. Don't try win everyone on day one. Remember "Rome wasn't built in one day"

3. For gods sake don’t just plaster the walls and newspapers – Think about why you are.

4. Most importantly, don’t fool people anymore. Put a date for the launch of your services and launch it first before you speak further.

A commercial from Lowe, Mumbai

This is a brilliant commercial Lowe, Mumbai has done for Camlin Permanent Markers. Camlin is one of the big stationery brands in India.

It is a simple thought all Indians would be aware of. For Indian women, married women in particular their bangles, the vermillion mark on their forehead and the sacred thread the husband ties around the wife’s neck called the mangalsutra (when a man and woman are married) are three important symbols.

The vermillion mark in particular is supposed to be associated with the life of the husband. They retain these marks as long as their husband is alive. Once they loose their husband they loose these sacred symbols too. In rural India, when the husband passes away the symbols are ceremonially removed from his widow. This process is done by a group of elderly widows in town.

The guys from Lowe, Mumbai have effectively exploited this insight to produce this brilliant commercial.

The story here is simple. Camlin Permanent Marker is after all a permanent marker, indelible. This is a story where the husband has used the marker instead of the traditional vermillion powder, and hence indelible. As mythology has it, as long as a woman doesn’t have the vermillion mark wiped off her forehead, her husband is deemed to be living and has to be living with her.

Brilliant… See it for yourself.

What am I watching now?

It is time for one of the famed BBC comedies, Yes Minister. I bought a boxed set of 3 DVD’s over the weekend.

I remember watching "Yes Minister" as a kid in Doordarshan, the only television channel available in India those days. I particularly loved the character Sir Humphrey played by Nigel Hawthorne. Stiff upper lipped, cynical and the champion of redtape-ism. This character is simply brilliant.

For starters, Yes Minister is a political satire that revolves around 3 three characters (mainly). James Hacker MP. (played by Paul Eddington), who becomes the Cabinet Minister of Administrative Affairs (and later the PM), his Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby (played by Nigel Hawthorne) and his Principal Private Secretary Bernard Woolley (played by Derek Fowlds). In some episodes there comes a fourth major character Frank Weisel (played by Neil Fitzwiliam), Hackers Political Advisor.

The advantage watching a British comedy is that even in case you don’t understand the English or the humour, you could time your laugh. This is made easy by the sound of people laughing in the background (an integral part of British comedies), one could time his / her laugh based on that. This would limit the embarrassment and make others think you understand and appreciate the British humour.

A good watch either ways, you understand or not!

Out to help those lads in South Africa...

The bread, butter & jam effect

Recently one of my friends felt cheated by his bank. The result of this feeling, he has stopped transacting with the bank and is doing his best to reach the gospel of the good customer service the bank offers across the UAE.

This bank in question is one of the top banks in the region. I believe, this bank has leadership position when it comes to auto loans. Being one of the oldest banks in the region they also boast a good number of companies being their corporate clients and a good number of influential individual customers.

I was thinking about how long it would take before the public en masse decides to pull out of the bank. I was also thinking about how this would happen.

Obviously this has to be a great snowball effect.

At present it is my friend who is the messiah, assume he manages to convince 50 of his friend's and then the word of mouth spreads, gaining momentum. People would add to my friend's story their own stories and their experience with the bank. Finally there would be a situation when a majority of the banks customers share the same opinion of my friend and pull out of the bank. This can’t happen immediately, for snowballs are not created out of the blue (of course unless they are man made - artificial). It is a process and this process of people (read customers) blacklisting this bank would easily take years before it happens, if at all it would.

For this to happen quickly the bank should do some sloppy work with their corporate customers and their hi-end individual customers (read Platinum customers). This wouldn’t happen in all likelihood as banks normally take special care dealing with these people. Agreed that individuals like you and me join hands to make a corporate but at the end of the day we would also agree that the way the bank treats me and you vis-à-vis our companies is very different.

Hence it is going to be ages before this bank in question is made an outcast by a majority of its customers, unless the bank doesn’t mess up drastically with every customer's monthly statement or some other services they offer.

While thinking about the time this bank would take to be boycotted by public I came up with an analogy.

To understand the anology I have come up with, let us assume every bank has three types of customers (broad based segments)

1. The individual customers
2. The hi-end individual customers (platinum or gold etc.)
3. The corporate customers

The individual customers are like bread.

It is the most essential thing for one to survive. But if one starts to notice that it is getting spoilt, we can afford to pick the spoilt side off and still consume it. And it takes a longer time for the whole loaf to get completely stale.

Likewise if one or some individual customer is dissatisfied or grumpy, the bank can afford to throw him out and still service the rest of the population. It would take a while before this dissatisfaction snowballs to a big issue covering a majority of the individual customers. And another advantage the bank has is that all the customers don’t essentially communicate with each other on a daily basis and hence no big badmouthing happens in a short span. Whereas when it becomes a dissatisfied or a grumpy hi-end or a corporate it becomes a larger issue involving press, PR and new media and hence the effect is immediate.

So I could liken the hi-end and corporate customers to the Jam or Butter that one applies on the bread.

If the Jam or Butter goes stale, the bread loses its taste and at times becomes inconsumable. But people take good care about their Jam or Butter, they refrigerate it or find other means to preserve it.

Hence, whatever my friend does now to blacklist this bank among the general public would mostly go into deaf ears or it might take ages before his efforts bear fruit for him. The best way for him to go about is to find a few Jam or Butter category people and try spoil them, then the effect should be immediate and apparent.

So until this bank's JAM or BUTTER is fresh, they would be under an illusion that all is well with the BREAD.

Business as usual…

Well, the last two weeks of Sir Alfred Hitchcock frenzy comes to an end with today’s review of Psycho.

This means I have finished watching and reviewing all 14 movies from the boxed set of Hitchcock movies I had bought.

Now I shall watch the boxed set again and again. I am going to start my re-viewing process with “Frenzy”.

Psycho (1960)

Actors: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles
Dir: Sir Alfred Hitchcock

Psycho is acclaimed as one of the best Suspense / thriller / horror movies of all time. It is based on a novel by Robert Bloch. Critics rate this as one of the most effective horror movies ever. Movie buffs, critics and film makers still talk highly about the famous “shower murder” scene in the film. Another reason why the “shower murder” sequence is thrilling is because of Bernard Herrmann’s superb background score.

This film is around the Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) aka. Split personality disorder. That is, a person carrying dual personalities in his mind. This disorder makes a person act like two different personalities at times and the person also suffers a memory loss. While the affected person doesn’t know that there are two personalities in him or what the other personality does to him. At the end the dominant of the personalities win resulting in the person losing his own identity or even death of the person.

Marion Crane embezzles $40,000 from her office. She does this to help her struggling boyfriend, Sam (without his knowledge though) and get him marry her soon. While decamping with the cash and on her way to her boyfriend's place she is faced with heavy rains. She decides to stop for the night a nearby motel, at a deserted road which used to be a highway. The owner of the place Norman Bates claims to be living there with his aged mother all alone. She hears the mother telling Norman to keep away from strange women. In a bizarre turn of events Marion is murdered while she is in the shower of her room. It seems that Norman’s mother is the murderer, Norman like a dutiful son clears up the murder scene and wipes of the remains by drowning them in a nearby swamp.

Arbogast, a private detective hired by Marion’s employer also faces the same fate when he goes in search of Norman’s mother to have a word with her about Marion’s disappearance. Fortunately Arbogast speaks to Marion’s sister Lila just before he is murdered about his suspicion on Norman and his mother. Sam and Lila approach the local sheriff for help. The sheriff laughs off at the complaint saying Norman’s mother had died years ago, commiting suicide and Norman was all alone.

Sam & Lila embark on finding the truth. After the usual Hitchcockian moments it is revealed that Norman is suffering from MPD. He takes his mothers identity to kill people who get close to Norman’s identity. And Norman thinks the murders have been committed by his mother and destroys evidence to save her.

An amazing movie and a must watch for all thriller / horror movie lovers.

Trivia: Sir Alfred appears four minutes in to the film. As Marion comes back to her office after meeting her lover Sir Alfred is seen behind the glass door of Marion’s office, wearing a cowboy hat

Vertigo (1958)

Actors: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes
Dir: Sir Alfred Hitchcock

A psychological thriller, it is one of the best movies of Sir Alfred. This is a fantastically designed movie right from the title sequence, where Sir Alfred has used some graphic elements to drive the Vertigo name through the viewers mind.

Given all that, the fact that Vertigo was recognized as a culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant film by the National Film Registry (USA) in 1989 is not at all surprizing. This monumental film had to be restored in 1996 and if you watch it now (like I have) you wouldn’t even believe that this film was made way back in the 50’s.

John Ferguson (aka) Scottie is a San Fransisco detective retires from the force because of an acrophobia (fear of heights) he has developed. While he is contemplating what he should do post retirement, he meets one of his old classmates, Elster. This man is now the husband of the last living heiress of a large business family. The man believes his wife is now being possessed by her great grandmonthers spirit and she is being forced to commit suicide by the spirit.

This man wants Scottie to follow his wife and prevent her from commiting suicide. Scottie reluctantly agrees to trail his wife and even falls in love with her. He manages to rescue Madaleine once from drowning but couldn’t the next time when she climbs on top of a tower to plummet to death, because of his acrophobic tendencies. Because of the death of Madaleine, Scottie becomes mentally depressed for a while.

Later Scottie finds a girl called Judy who resembles Madeleine in every aspect. This is when Sir Alfred’s master directorship comes into play. The story then takes a complete U-turn. It turns out that Elster had hired Judy (who resembled his wife) to kill his Madaleine, threw her body from the top of the tower making Scottie a witness. He makes Scottie the witness by making him first believe about the sprit story and exploiting Scottie’s acrophobic tendencies.

It is amazing to see the way Sir Alfred produces twists and turns to keep you at the edge of your seat throughout the movie. A must watch.

Trivia: Sir Alfred makes his cameo 11 minutes into the film. He is seen walking in the street dressed in a gray suit.