It's back again...

The latest of the Indian cricket captains, Mahendra Dhoni is currently talking about player burnout.

Too much of cricket = lots of hardwork = I should speak to the media, and like his captains before Mr Dhoni also feels the pinch, for his team...

http://www.rediff.com/cricket/2007/oct/22dhoni.htm

I had done a piece about this some time ago, which talks about burnout and its financial implications...

http://rajabaradwaj.blogspot.com/2006/05/player-burnout-why-is-it-farce.html

Burnout, for me is as diabolic a word that could take many meanings as anybody's imagination would workout. I wouldn't mind burning out the Dhoni way. For, with the money I would get paid would secure my life for the next 3 generations at least.

Barking dogs never bite. My mother told me when I was 4...

Mr Dhoni stop barking about burnout and concentrate on your job.

Alfred Hitchcock presents - The signature tune

This tune and the iconic Sir Alfred silhouette, which was drawn by the master himself personified the “Alfred Hitchcock presents” television series. Famously dubbed the Hitchcock music, this piece is actually composer Charles Gounod's Marche Funèbre d'une Marionnette (Funeral March of a Marionette). One of the most memorable signature tunes I have heard. And this is Anirudhha’s favorite too, he begins to dance whenever he hears this tune playing.

My two bit on T20 and the future of world cricket...

I was listening to an evening drive time cricket show in one of the FM stations here, it was about whether T20 would contribute to the growth of cricket or will it spell doom for the game. I always thought that cricket has more become a batsman’s game, bowlers are slowly loosing their importance in the game.

In a couple of years now countries would have ceased producing world class bowlers like Kapil Dev, Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner, Anil Kumble, Shane Warne, Muralidaran etc. I can’t recall the last time a 9 year old (cricket playing) kid I had met said he wanted to become a Kapil Dev or a Venkat? We are at the end of the day looking at thousands of wannabe Tendulkar’s, Dravid’s and Ponting’s. The reason cricket has become a game of the batsmen.

I agree with those commentators who fear the bowler would become an endangered species, looking at the proliferation and popularity of the more batsmen friendly formats such as the T20. If you are a bowler, you would be clobbered all round the park. I am sure any kid would agree with me in saying you better clobber than the clobbered (Chris & Stuart Broad would agree the most). So what is the solution? Here, my two bit…

The new format I propose would be called “Mech 20”.

1. Here you have the batsmen on one side and the bowling machine developers on the other side.

2. The developers would innovate in terms of the pace at which their machines would hurl the ball, spin, swing, reverse swing and so on.

3. The batsmen would simply stand in the other end and clobber and of course run.

4. The rest of the field wouldn’t be touched. You would still have 11 men on the field doing the fielding drills and trying to catch, save runs or run the batsmen out.

For example the Indian cricket team of this format would comprise of the 11 batsmen, who would also field and feed the ball to the machine. And a couple of developers, who would develop, innovate on this machine and improve it to beat the opposition batsmen.

For those who would ask how technologically advanced, say a Namibia can get. Here is the solution… Now you don’t need to hire a coach for those obscene salaries, you simply hire your developer.

I personally think “Mech 20” could well be the future of cricket, the batsmen’s game.

(For those who heard the show in Dubai… You might remember that a certain Mr. B had sketched this format out through his SMS to the show. If you want to know more about the Mr B, click here…)

I got the picture for this post from here

The Triumph of Bullshit

Is a poem written by T S Eliot somewhere between 1910 and 1916 in the form of a ballade.

I stumbled upon this poem trying to google out the origins of the word bullshit. Bullshit was first used in 1915 in the American slang and later popularized by the American servicemen during the Second World War. More bullshit here.

And now the poem… A dictionary would come in handy while you are reading this poem.

Ladies, on whom my attentions have waited
If you consider my merits are small
Etiolated, alembicated,
Orotund, tasteless, fantastical,
Monotonous, crotchety, constipated,
Impotent galamatias
Affected, possibly imitated,
For Christ's sake stick it up your ass

Ladies, who find my intentions ridiculous
Awkward insipid and horribly gauche
Pompous, pretentious, ineptly meticulous
Dull as the heart of an unbaked brioche
Floundering versicles feebly versiculous
Often attenuate, frequently crass
Attempts at emotions that turn isiculous,
For Christ's sake stick it up your ass.

Ladies who think me unduly vociferous
Amiable cabotin making a noise
That people may cry out "this stuff is too stiff for us" -
Ingenuous child with a box of new toys
Toy lions carnivorous, cannons fumiferous
Engines vaporous - all this will pass;
Quite innocent - "he only wants to make shiver us."
For Christ's sake stick it up your ass.

And when thyself with silver foot shalt pass
Among the Theories scattered on the grass
Take up my good intentions with the rest
And then for Christ's sake stick them up your ass.

(I found this piece of T S Eliot’s work thanks to this website here)

One word I fail to understand...

PROACTIVE, I am at loss whenever this word is used. And to my dismay I hear this word at least 10 times a day. Therefore, I decided to figure what exactly "Proactive" meant. Surprisingly, this is what I found.

The word Proactive was coined by psychiatrist, Victor Frankl. He used this word to discribe a person who rather took charge of his life than looking for circumstances or people to dictate what should be done. More on this here.

This term was later popularised by Stephen Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as the first habit. He had used the word proactive in the Victor Frankl sense, but unfortunately we have managed to give it a new dimension, the opposite of Passive.

More about Covy's book and his 7 habits here.

I am back...

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.