Mr Prime Minister
I hope you, your party bosses and your colleagues are watching the news channels right now (1845 hours, India time) - and I hope you are learning right lessons for the future.
You are seeing the people of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, and other cities sending you one clear message - "zero tolerance from now on".
Zero tolerance for terrorism.
Zero tolerance for apathetic administrators and politicians.
Zero tolerance for corruption, which has led our beloved country to a state of complete alienation from your tribe, the politicians.
Zero tolerance for lack of accountability.
Zero tolerance for inaction.
Zero tolerance for passing the buck.
Zero tolerance for political interference in our security, police and defence forces.
Zero tolerance, Mr Prime Minister, zero tolerance from now on.
Now, it's your turn to tell us what you are going to do to ensure that our demands for zero tolerance are met.
Happy viewing!
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
The real terrorists
In a few hours, it would be a week since the horrible attacks took place in Mumbai. We citizens, wherever we reside, are outraged and baying for blood.
Our Government, the media, everybody is pointed fingers largely at Pakistan, and many of the bodies of governance are busy pointed fingers at each other. There is a lot of debate and discussion about what gives rise to terrorism, the root causes, etc etc. All valid debates and points of view.
Since 1993, Mumbai and other parts of our country has suffered from bomb blasts, random destruction, from terrorists. But who helped them?
Our institutions have been systematically eroded and virtually destroyed. Our judiciary is open to bribery and corruption; our law and order machinery most certainly so; our laws can be manipulated depending on who you are or who you know; corruption is rife in all states in our country. Our media is sensational, insensitive, irresponsible, unprofessional and downright unethical.
Who makes all this possible?
Walt Kelly in one of his Pogo comics, made this statement: "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us."
We pay bribes - small bribes, large bribes, but bribes none the less; we work with the underworld (ask any hotelier in Mumbai, ask anybody in the Mumbai films and TV business); we reward TV channels with the highest viewership ratings - it doesn't matter how idiotic the content; we do 'huzoor maa baap' to politicians; we invite them to our social functions; we brag about who we know and how we can get things done; we don't cast our votes because 'who's going to stand in queue in the hot sun?'; we despise the cops, so none of our children want to be cops; we pay lip service to the armed forces, but I wonder how many of us would be delighted if our offspring told us that they wanted to join the Army; we reward a bridegroom who's in the government services by paying the highest dowry; this list is endless.
So, for once, let's, for once, be honest with ourselves and say
I’m starting with the Man in the Mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you want to make the world a better place
take a look at yourself, and make that change.
Only then will we have earned the right to say "Jai Hind" and mean it.
Our Government, the media, everybody is pointed fingers largely at Pakistan, and many of the bodies of governance are busy pointed fingers at each other. There is a lot of debate and discussion about what gives rise to terrorism, the root causes, etc etc. All valid debates and points of view.
Since 1993, Mumbai and other parts of our country has suffered from bomb blasts, random destruction, from terrorists. But who helped them?
Our institutions have been systematically eroded and virtually destroyed. Our judiciary is open to bribery and corruption; our law and order machinery most certainly so; our laws can be manipulated depending on who you are or who you know; corruption is rife in all states in our country. Our media is sensational, insensitive, irresponsible, unprofessional and downright unethical.
Who makes all this possible?
Walt Kelly in one of his Pogo comics, made this statement: "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us."
We pay bribes - small bribes, large bribes, but bribes none the less; we work with the underworld (ask any hotelier in Mumbai, ask anybody in the Mumbai films and TV business); we reward TV channels with the highest viewership ratings - it doesn't matter how idiotic the content; we do 'huzoor maa baap' to politicians; we invite them to our social functions; we brag about who we know and how we can get things done; we don't cast our votes because 'who's going to stand in queue in the hot sun?'; we despise the cops, so none of our children want to be cops; we pay lip service to the armed forces, but I wonder how many of us would be delighted if our offspring told us that they wanted to join the Army; we reward a bridegroom who's in the government services by paying the highest dowry; this list is endless.
So, for once, let's, for once, be honest with ourselves and say
I’m starting with the Man in the Mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you want to make the world a better place
take a look at yourself, and make that change.
Only then will we have earned the right to say "Jai Hind" and mean it.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Beyond rage: action
Finally, I am in a condition to put my thoughts together in a coherent manner. The murder and destruction at the Taj, the Trident and the Nariman House - the pictures, the videos, the stories, the soundbites - they have shocked all of us in Mumbai, India, and the civilized world.
Now, the blame game, the rolling of heads, the scoring of brownie points have started. From the POV of political parties, this is a great time to do this - elections are just a few months away.
But what of us? What do the citizens India, who happen to live in Mumbai, get out of this? Another round of unkept promises? Another round of mumbled words and meaningless gestures passed off as action?
We won't be fooled again. Not any more. In the Mahabharata, Vidur tells us that one of the six things a man should avoid is "a king who fails to protect". We are now livid and we want to get rid of the kings and queens who failed us.
What do I want to see thrown out from our country and our system?
What do I want to see happening now?
Now, the blame game, the rolling of heads, the scoring of brownie points have started. From the POV of political parties, this is a great time to do this - elections are just a few months away.
But what of us? What do the citizens India, who happen to live in Mumbai, get out of this? Another round of unkept promises? Another round of mumbled words and meaningless gestures passed off as action?
We won't be fooled again. Not any more. In the Mahabharata, Vidur tells us that one of the six things a man should avoid is "a king who fails to protect". We are now livid and we want to get rid of the kings and queens who failed us.
What do I want to see thrown out from our country and our system?
- cynical corrupt politicians
- inept politicians and bureaucrats who have corrupted our systems, by making 'politically convenient' appointments at top levels in our security and police forces
- ineffective politicians who hold positions as rewards for services rendered to their power mentors in their parties
- criminal politicians with track records, and underworld connections - banned for life
- a government that has demoralised our defence forces - the whole row about pay for our soldiers is an incredible and outrageous farce. Our soldiers are a million times more dedicated to our nation, and a million times more valuable, than our politicians
- accountability which is now to the party bosses and not to the electorate
What do I want to see happening now?
- Public and published accountability of all politicians - what have they accomplished against their promises? Public review to be held every six months, and each candidate will be given one grace period of another six months, if he's failed against his promises. If their is shortfall of performance after this grace period, we the public will physically and through media agitate for his removal.
- Meritocracy, and only meritocracy, in senior security (that include police) appointments.
- Removal of all security appointments from political influence. To start with, ensure that the federal investigation agency is itself free from political interference
- Removal of political interference in the day to day functioning of all security and police forces
- Publicly punish all politicos with criminal records and connections with the underworld. They cannot be allowed to participate in political life ever again.
- Strengthen our laws and our security forces equipment and training - it's pathetic that Mumbai policemen died after being shot through the head, while he was wearing a helmet. Surely, somebody took a bribe to accept low quality helmets which is supposed to save lives!
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The time to reap what you sow
On Nov 22, 2008, the New York Times this article on Citigroup: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/business/23citi.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=business
As usual , NYT does an excellent job of description, analysis, and collecting together various strands to make up this long article. As an ex-customer of Citibank, and one who has had long associations with Citi staffers in India and a few other countries, I can only add some specific comments and observations to the NYT story.
My customer experiences as well as those dealing with the Citi staffers have given me two clear impressions about Citibank (maybe it's true of Citigroup as well):
The culture of risk also runs contrary to my expectations - I always believed that banks have to run on two principles: prudency and conservatism. After all, a bank runs its business on money taken from depositors, who expect their money to be safe in most cases.
The NYT story I have mentioned above tracks the sorry tale of Citigroup from 2007, or thereabouts. NYT also carried a story four years ago, on Whether or not Mr. Prince succeeds will speak volumes about how effectively a chief executive can change the culture of a company as large as Citigroup, as well as offer a test of whether the bank can still dominate markets and rake in profits without crossing regulatory and legal boundaries."
Obviously Mr Prince failed in that job. Maybe he was destined to fail - unless he could replace a whole generation of managers overnight, he couldn't have changed the culture. Maybe he didn't want to succeed - he was being advised by Robert Rubin, and here's NYT from the Nov 2008 story:
“Chuck Prince going down to the corporate investment bank in late 2002 was the start of that process,” a former Citigroup executive said of the bank’s big C.D.O. push. “Chuck was totally new to the job. He didn’t know a C.D.O. from a grocery list, so he looked for someone for advice and support. That person was Rubin. And Rubin had always been an advocate of being more aggressive in the capital markets arena. He would say, ‘You have to take more risk if you want to earn more.’ ”
Rubin was the Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration, when he "helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made the creation of Citigroup possible by allowing banks to expand far beyond their traditional role as lenders and permitting them to profit from a variety of financial activities. During the same period he helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products, a development he had previously said he was helpless to prevent." Looks like Rubin is one of the architects of the mess that US banking is in now.
Now, I read that he is (was?) an advisor to Barack Obama during the period of transition. If he continues to advise the new President of the USA, God save America, and more importantly God save the World! Nothing short of divine intervention may suffice.
As usual , NYT does an excellent job of description, analysis, and collecting together various strands to make up this long article. As an ex-customer of Citibank, and one who has had long associations with Citi staffers in India and a few other countries, I can only add some specific comments and observations to the NYT story.
My customer experiences as well as those dealing with the Citi staffers have given me two clear impressions about Citibank (maybe it's true of Citigroup as well):
- a culture of risk
- a culture of short-changing the customer to the point of being dishonest
The culture of risk also runs contrary to my expectations - I always believed that banks have to run on two principles: prudency and conservatism. After all, a bank runs its business on money taken from depositors, who expect their money to be safe in most cases.
The NYT story I have mentioned above tracks the sorry tale of Citigroup from 2007, or thereabouts. NYT also carried a story four years ago, on Whether or not Mr. Prince succeeds will speak volumes about how effectively a chief executive can change the culture of a company as large as Citigroup, as well as offer a test of whether the bank can still dominate markets and rake in profits without crossing regulatory and legal boundaries."
Obviously Mr Prince failed in that job. Maybe he was destined to fail - unless he could replace a whole generation of managers overnight, he couldn't have changed the culture. Maybe he didn't want to succeed - he was being advised by Robert Rubin, and here's NYT from the Nov 2008 story:
“Chuck Prince going down to the corporate investment bank in late 2002 was the start of that process,” a former Citigroup executive said of the bank’s big C.D.O. push. “Chuck was totally new to the job. He didn’t know a C.D.O. from a grocery list, so he looked for someone for advice and support. That person was Rubin. And Rubin had always been an advocate of being more aggressive in the capital markets arena. He would say, ‘You have to take more risk if you want to earn more.’ ”
Rubin was the Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration, when he "helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made the creation of Citigroup possible by allowing banks to expand far beyond their traditional role as lenders and permitting them to profit from a variety of financial activities. During the same period he helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products, a development he had previously said he was helpless to prevent." Looks like Rubin is one of the architects of the mess that US banking is in now.
Now, I read that he is (was?) an advisor to Barack Obama during the period of transition. If he continues to advise the new President of the USA, God save America, and more importantly God save the World! Nothing short of divine intervention may suffice.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The Promise
I never thought it would happen in my lifetime. I wanted it to happen, but at the back of my mind, I believed that Bush and his Republican bunch of thieves would steal the electoral college away from Obama, like he had done to Gore eight years ago.
But I am glad I was wrong. I am glad I over-estimated the powers of the greedy military-industrial complex commanded by the Republicans. I am glad that Americans finally stood up and voted to get a new man into the White House - Barack Hussein Obama II.
He couldn't become the Prez of the US, right? He's black, with a Kenyan father, and his name is all wrong. It's not British Isles - like Kennedy or Clinton or Bush. It's not a German or a Dutch sounding name, like Eisenhower or Roosevelt. It's not North European at all. And worse, it's got Hussein as the middle name!
Anyways, when it came to the chase, these didn't matter. What mattered was what Obama stands for, and his ability to inspire the grassroots to come out and be counted.
He's got his job cut out for him. The US has become the most disliked, and indeed possibly the most hated nation on earth, for some years now. That doesn't stop people from migrating there - it still is a nation of opportunities, and doesn't discriminate against you when you are making money for yourself and others. But, outside of the US, most of the world tends to bridle a bit about the US. Many, including me, believe that there is only one rogue state in the world, and that's the US; it's still the most powerful nation on earth, and we can't ignore it, even if we wish to. That image is not a nice one to begin with - and Obama has to change that.
Having lost political credibility in the world, it is now losing economic credibility thanks to the meltdown of Wall Street, and the ham-handed efforts of Paulson and the Bush administration to save their rich cronies, and let the taxpayer go to hell. Again, not nice for a new Prez.
The promise is that Obama will tackle these with the basic values of humanity, which belong everywhere to everyone. Decency, honesty, prosperity WITHOUT greed, respect for others which breeds others' respect for you, and working together for a better world.
Sounds idealistic? Utopian perhaps? Maybe, but that's what Obama has done to me. Like a old diehard romantic idealist, I believe there is space in the world for ideals, and that you can live your life by your ideals, and that you can inspire others to share in those ideals.
And Obama has the next four years, at least, to show that ideals can make a big difference to the world. Tough, but I believe that he can do it. At least, now there's somebody in power in the US whom I like and can support.
Monday, October 27, 2008
"Indian media one of the best in the world"?! Surely you jest, Ms Sen!
While reading the DNA newspaper a few days ago (Mumbai edition, October 26th, 2008), I was stopped by a text box in a piece by Ms Antara Dev Sen. The text in the box read “Indian media is one of the best in the world. Our press is critical, combative, entertaining, thought-provoking, and free.'
This box really got me, not least because I have long held a pretty dim view of Indian media (which includes our press). Now that we are in the midst of the Diwali vacs out here in Mumbai, and the family is busy with whatever keeps them busy and me out of their way, it seems like a good time to put down my thoughts, and mayhap share them with Ms Sen.
I am not making a distinction between press and media – in this day and age, TV, and increasingly the Internet are asimportant as print. Also, I must confess that I watch about 6 odd TV channels, including one in Bengali, read some 5 newspapers (4 in English, and one in Bengali), and 3 magazines all in English - the sum otal doesn't even begin to be representative of all Indian media. But, I think this net is representative of the English media in India.
“Critical” – sure, the Indian media is critical of everything, and not necessarily supportive of much that needs to be supported. I was a member of the studio audience the other day – they were taping a show on the impact of Raj Thackeray on Mumbai, for the We the People show on NDTV. Quite naturally, the audience, and the panellists, were anti Raj Thackeray’s party for the violence and fear his party has inflicted on North Indian labourers in the state. This, of course, has received widespread and highly well-deserved condemnation in all media vehicles.
The audience and the panellists, though, were uniformly supportive of a key plank of the MNS – preference for the bhumiputra for unskilled jobs in the state. As an Indian born in Kolkata, Bengali by birth and upbringing, resident in Mumbai since 1973, and proud to call himself a Mumbaikar, I too support this plank – this has to be a priority in all states of India, and not just Maharashtra; otherwise the local governments will have failed in their very purpose of existence. But I don't recall much media coverage on this need for the benefit of any state, and the failure of governments and industries to put in place a strategy for large scale local employment.
I have not seen much coverage in media about two things – first, that the Railway Board examination papers were not made available in Marathi, but were available in other Indian languages; second, past records of similar examinations show that there is a very high percentage of passes from candidates of one state, and a very low percentage from Maharashtra – the difference is so huge that it begs the question as to whether the whole examination thing was a fraud in the first place.
In short, these two things indicated to me that had the Railway Board, or a higher authority, had conducted the whole exam process in a fair, just and transparent manner in the first place, one key reason for Raj Thackeray’s party to go out rioting would have vanished into thin air.
And I should have expected the ‘critical’ media to have taken this up and ‘criticised’ the Board, the Railway Ministry, etc to ensure that there is a thorough overhaul of these and similar other processes for large-scale recruitments.
“Critical?” Of course, but selectively so. If there’s an easy target, great. If it’s an issue which looks likely to live beyond a few days, then perhaps not; after all, the whole world is after the short-term, so why bother about the long-term?
“Combative” – yes, of course, so much so that the Shiv Sena mouthpiece is called ‘Samna’ (confrontation) and Narayan Rane’s paper is called ‘Prahar!’ Anyways, let’s be serious. Combating who or what is what I’d like to ask. Whenever I see Karan Thapar on TV (thankfully, not very often), and I see him contracting his eyebrows, and chewing up the words in his teeth, he seems to be ‘combating’ the interviewee rather than an issue, a point of view, or a policy, or something more substantive than just the individual. His heroes are, presumably, Larry King, or maybe David Frost; in any case, someone should tell Thapar that he will always remain a disaster by comparison – his research is minimal, his body language abrasive, and his mannerisms irritating.
Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN is so combative that he shouts every time he’s doing the news, as if he wants to be heard by his audience without the help of broadcasting technology. Surely, he is combative. So is Arnab Goswami, who sometimes is combating his own ground reporter, live on TV! I kid you not! There was one story he was doing himself on Times Now TV, in which he asked his
“Entertaining”. You’re bang on the button, Ms Sen, absolutely right on this. I always watch TV news in English and Hindi, mainly to be entertained. The English news channel Headlines Today seems to cover only Bollywood, fashion shows, parties, etc – I love this, since I don’t get invited to these parties, I feel like a guest who’s successfully sneaked in past the guards. Most of the Times of India is entertainment – the City Times (as in Mumbai Times, Delhi Times, etc) section is all entertainment, and you can get covered if you pay for the space. The editorials are also entertainment since most of the times, they are written by Jug Suraiya and Shobha De; it’s been such a long time since I have read anything by the editor that I don’t even know if they have an editor any more.
News media became entertainment the day the Times of India decided some years ago that news is trivia, and trivia is news. That’s the whole paradigm shift that’s taken place over the last decade in
When I checked it out in July, the main story every evening was that aliens have landed, have set up camp on the moon, they’d done it years ago and when Armstrong et al had dropped in, they’d been told by the aliens that they can go back and tell their masters (Armstrong and company's) that they should never come back to the moon.
A week later, the story changed – 8th of August 2008 is the day on which the world will come to an end. The ancient Mayans, or the ancient Egyptians, or someone equally ancient had said so, and one current Godman appeared on TV to tell all and sundry that the world was surely, definitely, absolutely positively, without fail, going to end on 8-8-8.
Another week later, I was really glad to know that we’ve all won a reprieve; the destruction of the world had been postponed. To 21st December, 2012. But this was the final date, no postponements, no more reprieves, no use praying, no use weeping, nothing. On that date, time not specified yet, we shall all be cast to the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
If this doesn’t beat saas-bahu dramas, I don’t what does. Properly packaged and presented, this could even beat twenty20 cricket.
“Thought-provoking”. Mmmmyess, really Ms Sen I would agree with you here too. Indian media does provoke a lot of thought, like
- Why is it so short-term in its outlook?
- Why doesn’t it investigate and talk of the larger and deeper issues?
- Does the media, by and large, actually recognize and understand what are the larger issues?
- Why is there so little research in their ‘stories’?
- Why does it love sensation? If there a video of someone throwing a stone, why is this shown 300 times on the day, and another 100 times in repeats over the next few days?
Monday, October 13, 2008
Bengali poem
Just got this by email. A prayer to Maa Durga:
Chaturthi-te ‘nano’ galo,
Ashtami-te Saurav;
Ake Ake jachchhe chole
Banglar sob gaurab.
Dohai ma tui rehai de re,
Aar kichhu ma nis na kere,
(Shudhu), ‘Mamata’-ke uthiye ne tui,
Banchuk Bangla natun kore.
Rough translation:
On Chaturthi, Nano went. On Ashtami, Saurav went (he announced his retirement from international cricket on that day). One by one, all the things that made Bengal proud are going away. Please, Maa, please take pity on us, please don't take away anthing more from us. Just take away Mamata, and Bengal can live once more.
Don't know who the author is, but so totally heartfelt!
Chaturthi-te ‘nano’ galo,
Ashtami-te Saurav;
Ake Ake jachchhe chole
Banglar sob gaurab.
Dohai ma tui rehai de re,
Aar kichhu ma nis na kere,
(Shudhu), ‘Mamata’-ke uthiye ne tui,
Banchuk Bangla natun kore.
Rough translation:
On Chaturthi, Nano went. On Ashtami, Saurav went (he announced his retirement from international cricket on that day). One by one, all the things that made Bengal proud are going away. Please, Maa, please take pity on us, please don't take away anthing more from us. Just take away Mamata, and Bengal can live once more.
Don't know who the author is, but so totally heartfelt!
Finally! I got it figured!!
What was it that the old adage said - I am slow, my boss is thorough!
Right, I am slow, but I am also thorough! I have finally figured what was it that led to the global financial meltdown. Here goes:
fn (wealth) = (value of initial stuff bought) to the power infinity
In elegant mathematical symbolical representation, the equation looks like this:
fn (W) = (0) ^ ∞
The whole problem was a misunderstanding. If you solve the equation, do you get 0 or do you get ∞?
Now, to wait for my phone to ring to tell me they're giving me the Nobel! In the meantime, I am open to offers of lectures and keynotes.
Right, I am slow, but I am also thorough! I have finally figured what was it that led to the global financial meltdown. Here goes:
- you buy a lot of stuff which is of zero value
- you sell these for a price to a bunch of people
- these people then sell them off to others at a slightly higher price
- and this goes on ad infinitum
fn (wealth) = (value of initial stuff bought) to the power infinity
In elegant mathematical symbolical representation, the equation looks like this:
fn (W) = (0) ^ ∞
The whole problem was a misunderstanding. If you solve the equation, do you get 0 or do you get ∞?
Now, to wait for my phone to ring to tell me they're giving me the Nobel! In the meantime, I am open to offers of lectures and keynotes.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The bailing out of the bailout
The story of the bailout of Wall Street is becoming curiouser and curiouser. The President is a lame, or perhaps even a dead, duck. Democrats or Republications, all of them, want to come out looking like Superman after rescuing a dying patient - but they are terminally afraid that the other guy will steal there thunder. Main Street is worried about their future - and all, repeat all, common men and women on the streets hate the bankers and financiers who created this godawful mess, and want to walk away with their bonuses and leave the crap with the government - read, the tax payer.
Not just common men, either. Joseph Stiglitz (awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001), has this to say here (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/30/marketturmoil.wallstreet). Excepts from his interview:
"To be sure, the rescue plan that was just defeated was far better than what the Bush administration originally proposed. But its basic approach remained critically flawed. First, it relied – once again – on trickle-down economics: somehow, throwing enough money at Wall Street would trickle down to Main Street, helping ordinary workers and homeowners. Trickle-down economics almost never works, and it is no more likely to work this time.
Moreover, the plan assumed that the fundamental problem was one of confidence. That is no doubt part of the problem; but the underlying problem is that financial markets made some very bad loans. There was a housing bubble, and loans were made on the basis of inflated prices.
That bubble has burst. House prices probably will fall further, so there will be more foreclosures, and no amount of talking up the market is going to change that. The bad loans, in turn, have created massive holes in banks' balance sheets, which have to be repaired. Any government bail-out that pays fair value for these assets will do nothing to repair that hole. On the contrary, it would be like providing massive blood transfusions to a patient suffering from vast internal hemorrhaging.
Even if a bail-out plan were implemented quickly – which appears increasingly unlikely – there would be some credit contraction. The US economy has been sustained by a consumption boom fueled by excessive borrowing, and that will be curtailed. States and localities are cutting back expenditures. Household balance sheets are weaker. An economic slowdown will exacerbate all our financial problems.
We could do more with less money. The holes in financial institutions' balance sheets should be filled in a transparent way. The Scandinavian countries showed the way two decades ago. Warren Buffet showed another way, in providing equity to Goldman Sachs. By issuing preferred shares with warrants (options), one reduces the public's downside risk and ensures that they participate in some of the upside potential.
This approach is not only proven, but it also provides both the incentives and wherewithal needed for lending to resume. It avoids the hopeless task of trying to value millions of complex mortgages and the even more complex financial products in which they are embedded, and it deals with the "lemons" problem – the government gets stuck with the worst or most overpriced assets. Finally, it can be done far more quickly."
For more about what the Scandinavians did, go here (http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSTRE48M9ON20080923?sp=true).
What was it that someone had said - those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it? Probably I got that somewhat wrong, but anyways, you get the point.
Not just common men, either. Joseph Stiglitz (awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001), has this to say here (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/30/marketturmoil.wallstreet). Excepts from his interview:
"To be sure, the rescue plan that was just defeated was far better than what the Bush administration originally proposed. But its basic approach remained critically flawed. First, it relied – once again – on trickle-down economics: somehow, throwing enough money at Wall Street would trickle down to Main Street, helping ordinary workers and homeowners. Trickle-down economics almost never works, and it is no more likely to work this time.
Moreover, the plan assumed that the fundamental problem was one of confidence. That is no doubt part of the problem; but the underlying problem is that financial markets made some very bad loans. There was a housing bubble, and loans were made on the basis of inflated prices.
That bubble has burst. House prices probably will fall further, so there will be more foreclosures, and no amount of talking up the market is going to change that. The bad loans, in turn, have created massive holes in banks' balance sheets, which have to be repaired. Any government bail-out that pays fair value for these assets will do nothing to repair that hole. On the contrary, it would be like providing massive blood transfusions to a patient suffering from vast internal hemorrhaging.
Even if a bail-out plan were implemented quickly – which appears increasingly unlikely – there would be some credit contraction. The US economy has been sustained by a consumption boom fueled by excessive borrowing, and that will be curtailed. States and localities are cutting back expenditures. Household balance sheets are weaker. An economic slowdown will exacerbate all our financial problems.
We could do more with less money. The holes in financial institutions' balance sheets should be filled in a transparent way. The Scandinavian countries showed the way two decades ago. Warren Buffet showed another way, in providing equity to Goldman Sachs. By issuing preferred shares with warrants (options), one reduces the public's downside risk and ensures that they participate in some of the upside potential.
This approach is not only proven, but it also provides both the incentives and wherewithal needed for lending to resume. It avoids the hopeless task of trying to value millions of complex mortgages and the even more complex financial products in which they are embedded, and it deals with the "lemons" problem – the government gets stuck with the worst or most overpriced assets. Finally, it can be done far more quickly."
For more about what the Scandinavians did, go here (http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSTRE48M9ON20080923?sp=true).
What was it that someone had said - those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it? Probably I got that somewhat wrong, but anyways, you get the point.
The bell tolls for industry in Bengal
For some time now, the following note has been circulating on the Net. Heartfelt and true, I just had to post it here, I don't know who the author is, otherwise I would have mentioned his or her name. The closure of Tata's Singur venture is the death knell of large industry in West Bengal for some decades now.
"A PUBLIC APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE OF
"A PUBLIC APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE OF BENGAL "
What has happened to the people of Bengal? Have we actually become mindless intellectuals that the people of the world claim we are? Why are we allowing one mad woman to take up a crazy stand with her useless senseless attitude against a set of people whom we all genuinely respect? When I was young I remember watching a TV commercial elaborating picturesquely all that a company has been doing for its locality – water plants, sanitation, urbanization etc and finally reminding us humbly, that "We also make Steel". With nerves of steel the Tatas came to
The Tatas are, to a great extent, single-handedly responsible for changing the face of
And today when the Tatas need reassurance, when they need our support in the face of all the madness raised by one mad woman, are we, the people of
Just take a drive down the highway, (now of course it is out of the question), and you cannot but let out a sigh of despair at the sight of innumerable factories shut down. They have taken the form of horrifying carcasses stinking of shattered dreams of some brave entrepreneur and his family. Years of toil, a lifetime of investment… all gone down the drain because of someone's craziness. Then it was red madness, now it is craziness at the grass root level.
People of
Because that is what will happen to us if the Tatas bid good bye to
We will become laughing stock for the world. R. N. Tata will lose nothing if he decides to pull out Tata Motors from Singur. We will lose. We will lose everything, our self-respect, our pride in
My work often leads me to the interiors of rural
Ironical, right? I do not represent either the reds or the grassroots, or the Tatas or anyone for that matter. I am a fiercely patriotic Indian who simply refuses to allow my country to be ruined by a crazy selfish woman. I have been indulging in conversation with several rural people quite near the affected areas of Singur and Nandigram and most of them would rather that the Tata Motors factory begins at the earliest and they embark on a better lifestyle. They sincerely believe that not only will they get a job, they have been paid for their land, a sizable amount which they have invested for their children's future, they are of the firm conviction that working for the Tatas will yield for their families a far better lifestyle which their wee acres of land, divided and subdivided would never be able to.
After all it is the legacy of the Tata Business House to take care of all its people. They are one industry house who do not talk about Corporate Social Responsibility. They live it out and not only we `literate' people, but, `illiterate' village people blindly believe it. Their conviction is written all over their faces.
It is wonderful to dream of a green
She is like those insecure people who refuse to do any kind of introspection and busy themselves blaming everyone. The Chief Minister should resign if the dog next door sneezes more than a couple of times. The Chief Minister should resign if the cat in Mamata's community decides to elope with a tom cat of a different community. The Chief Minister should resign if he dreams a modern industrialized
She behaved hysterically every time
Frankly, I fail to understand why we are putting up with her at all? Why don't we physically throw her out? If she misuses democracy, then why don't we use the power that we have? Our own power. The power of our voice, the power of our pen. The most trusted name in the Indian industrial scenario has uttered the word `unwanted' in our state three consecutive times. Is this what
They bring us light after a long darkness of almost 35 odd years and we turn them out. Who is Mamata to voice the feelings of
Rise people rise, from your apathy and show the Tata Group of Industries that
Mamata Banerjee your days are now over. Pack your bags and go elsewhere. We shall bid Tata to you.
People of Bengal, I do not need to tell you that if the Tatas go away then the door through which they leave will be the door of Industrialism, a door which will shut open our faces forever and ever. And then the whole of
Blood on the dance floor
Gloat time, folks! The self-appointed policeman of the world, the Great Hypocrite, the Big Mouth is finally getting its comeuppance, and aren't I glad!
For decades, the US has ruled the world, through its economic colonialism, its home market protection and insistence of opening up other's home markets, its industrial and military dominance, and of course, through its arm twisting diplomacy.
The political high ground had gone some time ago, thanks to the eight years of Bush II, and his incompetent bunch of buffoons. Now, Wall Street is crashing, and Bush, his cronies, his pet rich folk, and others who had bled the country are running to the US taxpayers, crying "Save us!"
For years, these same bankers, financiers, and so-called rulemakers, had been trading in nothing. They bought stuff worth zilch, sold them to others for a fancy sum, who in turn sold them to others for a fancier sum of money - but all the time, the stuff was still worth zilch. When the whole thing collapsed, the bankers, financiers, et al had zilch in their hands and millions of dollars to pay to their creditors.
So, what do they do? Go to their cronies in the government - after all, Paulson is one of them, till recently the chairman of Goldman Sachs. Surely, he won't let his kinda people down. He tries his best to save them - proposes a bailout which would buy the garbage from the banks for USD 7 trillion of taxpayers money, and leave the banks with the real assets. A perfect Bushian plan - the rich folk would retain the goodies, while the poor folk (read the tax payers) will get the 'toxic' assets from the bank. Joseph Stiglitz was right - in times like these, Bush's first instinct is to rescue the rich.
So banks and institutions close and go bankrupt. The managers therefrom run off into the sunset with their guaranteed multi-million dollar bonuses, while hundreds of thousands of taxpayers have their savings and other assets devalued.
And the world laughs. It's lovely to see the clay feet of self-appointed Titans.
For decades, the US has ruled the world, through its economic colonialism, its home market protection and insistence of opening up other's home markets, its industrial and military dominance, and of course, through its arm twisting diplomacy.
The political high ground had gone some time ago, thanks to the eight years of Bush II, and his incompetent bunch of buffoons. Now, Wall Street is crashing, and Bush, his cronies, his pet rich folk, and others who had bled the country are running to the US taxpayers, crying "Save us!"
For years, these same bankers, financiers, and so-called rulemakers, had been trading in nothing. They bought stuff worth zilch, sold them to others for a fancy sum, who in turn sold them to others for a fancier sum of money - but all the time, the stuff was still worth zilch. When the whole thing collapsed, the bankers, financiers, et al had zilch in their hands and millions of dollars to pay to their creditors.
So, what do they do? Go to their cronies in the government - after all, Paulson is one of them, till recently the chairman of Goldman Sachs. Surely, he won't let his kinda people down. He tries his best to save them - proposes a bailout which would buy the garbage from the banks for USD 7 trillion of taxpayers money, and leave the banks with the real assets. A perfect Bushian plan - the rich folk would retain the goodies, while the poor folk (read the tax payers) will get the 'toxic' assets from the bank. Joseph Stiglitz was right - in times like these, Bush's first instinct is to rescue the rich.
So banks and institutions close and go bankrupt. The managers therefrom run off into the sunset with their guaranteed multi-million dollar bonuses, while hundreds of thousands of taxpayers have their savings and other assets devalued.
And the world laughs. It's lovely to see the clay feet of self-appointed Titans.
TURKEYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS
Life’s hard. Really hard. Just when you think you’ve cracked a brilliant idea, and you settle your feet on the cushions of your favourite couch, pour yourself a tall glass of the stuff that cheers as well as inebriates, and switch on your TV to your favourite programme, life sneaks up from behind the couch, and lands you a whammy on your occipital with a sock full of wet sand. That famous observer of the vagaries of life, the late sainted Bard of Remsenburg, Long Island, P G Wodehouse, had commented on this extensively in his writings. If he hadn’t, he should have.
The turkey of the month
This grim reality of life came home to me when I was watching the recent advertisements launching Idea cellular service in Mumbai. I put myself in the shoes of the agency team and the client team, who had just put together the Idea School campaign, and shown themselves to be capable of creating a really great idea, and executing it really well. And then, this turkey!
OK, I know the brief would have gone something like this: “Right guys! We’re launching in Mumbai, and I want a breakthrough campaign, all media, blanketing the city, telling the lucky Mumbaikars that Idea cellular is finally here.” And the response was – get yourself an Idea cellular connection, and you belong to Mumbai??!!! So, before Idea cellular, we Mumbaikars lived in limbo? Or hung about in purgatory like a few million Trishankus? And if so, so what? Why should we choose Idea? Where’s the proposition for the brand? Where’s the killer punch telling us what’s in it for us if we choose Idea cellular for Mumbai? Something tells me that what we are seeing is one of the classical agency cop-outs – the ‘launch’ campaign, which is just to create the ‘noise’, the ‘impact’ of launch – and soon enough we’ll have the campaign proper which will tell prospective customers in Mumbai why they should choose Idea. If that does happen, it will be worth debating as to why the client and the agency deemed it fit to release advertising worth some crores of rupees, whose only objective was to create awareness, where our case books abound with examples of others having achieved both awareness and putting forth a ‘reason why’ in the same campaign. Awareness can be achieved by visibility alone; to tell a ‘reason why’ story needs an idea. However, we shall wait and watch before we get to this debate.
I wonder that the agency creative head let this campaign pass, and I wonder even more that the client bought it. In my last article, I had mentioned the need for recognising good ideas and throwing out the chaff – this time, my guess is that in this instance, quality control had gone south.
I realise it’s a helluva tough challenge to follow-up on a great achievement. Years ago I used to work with Rediffusion (now Rediffusion-DY&R) in Kolkata, and we had a paints account called Jenson & Nicholson, where we had faced the same challenge. The agency had created a landmark ad campaign on outdoor – “whenever you see colour, think of us.” This ran for some 8 years or more, but after 3 years, the pressure was on to find the follow-up, or to refresh it with something even more brilliant. And we couldn’t come up with anything close in terms of quality.
The Idea School campaign has an idea that can indeed change the world; the Mumbai launch campaign has an idea that’s really bad, a terrible, godawful, seriously bad idea, which in no way can change anybody’s world. The only saving grace is that this campaign will run its course in a few weeks’ time, and then it will vanish from our memories even faster. At least I hope so.
Tell me why…
This brings me to one of the mysteries of the last fortnight, which also I hope disappears soon – Aamir Khan doing the ardhanari act in the Tata-Sky TVC.
Fine acting, changing from a woman to a man and vice versa by doing a half turn live on camera, all in a single take – pretty brilliant as a performance. But why do this ad anyways? Tata-Sky has been around for some 2 years; in some markets, it is a market leader. The virtues of the brand Tata do not need explication or even emphasis, after more than a century in the Indian market.
So, what’s the problem? Was it that customers did not understand what Sky was doing in the Tata-Sky offering? Can’t be – homeowners are happy to buy a Tata product, just because they know it’s a Tata branded product; they are happy to shop at Westside and Croma since they know these are Tata initiatives – they don’t know or care to know about who Tata have partnered with. And in any case, all that the TVC tells us of Sky is one half sentence about world-class quality from Sky. And further, if customers had expressed any apprehensions about not knowing what Sky brings to the table, that should have been addressed at the time of launch of the DTH service.
So, I don’t get it. As a Tata-Sky user from the beginning, the TVC gives me no additional reinforcement about my purchase decision. I don’t see the strategic or tactical need for this ad.
The one concern that I do have with the product is that the Tata-Sky set-top box blinks out 3 minutes before a shower, and in our household we use this as an early warning system in the monsoons. This doesn’t happen with the other STB we have which we got from our cable-wallah. I would like to know why the two STBs behave differently – a simple phone call would be sufficient; I don’t want to see a TVC telling us all why the pre-shower warning is a free bonus that comes with buying a Tata-Sky STB.
The big turkey
The big sneeze blows away enemy tanks. The big scream clears a traffic jam. The big moustache scythes through enemies. The big, I mean really mind-bogglingly unbelievably fat, king creates a hole big enough to find water. All this to sell Big TV DTH system. The promise, as far as I can decipher: MPEG-4 technology, and double the number of channels. So I guess the proposition is BigTV gives me more than the competition. Interesting to me as a customer, so I guess the agency can say that the ad worked. Since the communication re the proposition comes in the last third of the ad, this last third worked all right. What happened in the first two-thirds? What was this part doing to help or build up to the proposition?
The point is this: I guess that the idea was – somewhere during the ideation stage – “bigger than life”. But in the execution, it becomes big moustache, the big sneeze????? Who’s keeping quality control? Who’s out there saying, “This is no good; I need you guys to better than this?”
What can one say? Some things leave one bereft of speech. Respect for the laws of libel and slander have something to do with it. A visit to the website home page (http://www.bigtv.co.in/index.htm) told me a lot more, and I am quite interested – the ads merely succeeded in putting me off my tall glass of the stuff that cheers and inebriates.
The turkey of the month
This grim reality of life came home to me when I was watching the recent advertisements launching Idea cellular service in Mumbai. I put myself in the shoes of the agency team and the client team, who had just put together the Idea School campaign, and shown themselves to be capable of creating a really great idea, and executing it really well. And then, this turkey!
OK, I know the brief would have gone something like this: “Right guys! We’re launching in Mumbai, and I want a breakthrough campaign, all media, blanketing the city, telling the lucky Mumbaikars that Idea cellular is finally here.” And the response was – get yourself an Idea cellular connection, and you belong to Mumbai??!!! So, before Idea cellular, we Mumbaikars lived in limbo? Or hung about in purgatory like a few million Trishankus? And if so, so what? Why should we choose Idea? Where’s the proposition for the brand? Where’s the killer punch telling us what’s in it for us if we choose Idea cellular for Mumbai? Something tells me that what we are seeing is one of the classical agency cop-outs – the ‘launch’ campaign, which is just to create the ‘noise’, the ‘impact’ of launch – and soon enough we’ll have the campaign proper which will tell prospective customers in Mumbai why they should choose Idea. If that does happen, it will be worth debating as to why the client and the agency deemed it fit to release advertising worth some crores of rupees, whose only objective was to create awareness, where our case books abound with examples of others having achieved both awareness and putting forth a ‘reason why’ in the same campaign. Awareness can be achieved by visibility alone; to tell a ‘reason why’ story needs an idea. However, we shall wait and watch before we get to this debate.
I wonder that the agency creative head let this campaign pass, and I wonder even more that the client bought it. In my last article, I had mentioned the need for recognising good ideas and throwing out the chaff – this time, my guess is that in this instance, quality control had gone south.
I realise it’s a helluva tough challenge to follow-up on a great achievement. Years ago I used to work with Rediffusion (now Rediffusion-DY&R) in Kolkata, and we had a paints account called Jenson & Nicholson, where we had faced the same challenge. The agency had created a landmark ad campaign on outdoor – “whenever you see colour, think of us.” This ran for some 8 years or more, but after 3 years, the pressure was on to find the follow-up, or to refresh it with something even more brilliant. And we couldn’t come up with anything close in terms of quality.
The Idea School campaign has an idea that can indeed change the world; the Mumbai launch campaign has an idea that’s really bad, a terrible, godawful, seriously bad idea, which in no way can change anybody’s world. The only saving grace is that this campaign will run its course in a few weeks’ time, and then it will vanish from our memories even faster. At least I hope so.
Tell me why…
This brings me to one of the mysteries of the last fortnight, which also I hope disappears soon – Aamir Khan doing the ardhanari act in the Tata-Sky TVC.
Fine acting, changing from a woman to a man and vice versa by doing a half turn live on camera, all in a single take – pretty brilliant as a performance. But why do this ad anyways? Tata-Sky has been around for some 2 years; in some markets, it is a market leader. The virtues of the brand Tata do not need explication or even emphasis, after more than a century in the Indian market.
So, what’s the problem? Was it that customers did not understand what Sky was doing in the Tata-Sky offering? Can’t be – homeowners are happy to buy a Tata product, just because they know it’s a Tata branded product; they are happy to shop at Westside and Croma since they know these are Tata initiatives – they don’t know or care to know about who Tata have partnered with. And in any case, all that the TVC tells us of Sky is one half sentence about world-class quality from Sky. And further, if customers had expressed any apprehensions about not knowing what Sky brings to the table, that should have been addressed at the time of launch of the DTH service.
So, I don’t get it. As a Tata-Sky user from the beginning, the TVC gives me no additional reinforcement about my purchase decision. I don’t see the strategic or tactical need for this ad.
The one concern that I do have with the product is that the Tata-Sky set-top box blinks out 3 minutes before a shower, and in our household we use this as an early warning system in the monsoons. This doesn’t happen with the other STB we have which we got from our cable-wallah. I would like to know why the two STBs behave differently – a simple phone call would be sufficient; I don’t want to see a TVC telling us all why the pre-shower warning is a free bonus that comes with buying a Tata-Sky STB.
The big turkey
The big sneeze blows away enemy tanks. The big scream clears a traffic jam. The big moustache scythes through enemies. The big, I mean really mind-bogglingly unbelievably fat, king creates a hole big enough to find water. All this to sell Big TV DTH system. The promise, as far as I can decipher: MPEG-4 technology, and double the number of channels. So I guess the proposition is BigTV gives me more than the competition. Interesting to me as a customer, so I guess the agency can say that the ad worked. Since the communication re the proposition comes in the last third of the ad, this last third worked all right. What happened in the first two-thirds? What was this part doing to help or build up to the proposition?
The point is this: I guess that the idea was – somewhere during the ideation stage – “bigger than life”. But in the execution, it becomes big moustache, the big sneeze????? Who’s keeping quality control? Who’s out there saying, “This is no good; I need you guys to better than this?”
What can one say? Some things leave one bereft of speech. Respect for the laws of libel and slander have something to do with it. A visit to the website home page (http://www.bigtv.co.in/index.htm) told me a lot more, and I am quite interested – the ads merely succeeded in putting me off my tall glass of the stuff that cheers and inebriates.
Ideas – the good, the bad and the downright m************* ugly
In ad agencies all over the world, kids are taught about the power of the idea. Creative heavies, client servicing suits, heads of offices and other seniors face their teams with stern faces during the periodical agency reviews and talk of the power of the ‘idea’. Greybeards carrying titles like Executive Creative Director, National Creative Director, CCO and the like, inveigh against the sins of creating advertising without ideas. Gentlemen and ladies from agency offices outside of their home countries, from both sides of the table – the client and the agency – talk of the power of the ‘idea’ after going through agency reels, with the knowledge and authority given by their job titles.
The sum total of all such lectures is just one sentence: ‘advertising which is based upon an idea is good advertising; all other advertising is a waste of time.’ And, you know what! I agree, with one qualification – advertising which is based upon a good idea can be good advertising; if not, it’s a lottery. The word good is my qualifier.
Once you’ve bought into this precept, there are two obvious questions: “How do I know I have an idea?” and “How can I distinguish between a good idea and one not so good?” In response, agency heavies normally stretch out their long arms to show off some more ads, and try to help the kid learn this basic requirement – judgement. Forget the irony and the cynicism of my language – this is still the best way to learn, from the material which we see every day on our TV screens.
What follows is neither a lecture, nor a set of examples to prove I am right, but some bouquets and brickbats based on my perception about how good or bad an idea is. To me, an advertising idea needs to fulfil a very short set of criteria:
What an idea, sirjee!
To start with, the new Idea ‘School’ Cellular TV campaign, about teaching children in remote villages, is just mind-blowing. I quote from the website: “Demonstrating our brand promise, this campaign asks a simple question, ‘Why should a child be deprived of education if there are no schools close to him/her?’” And indeed, these TVCs do show the power of the idea – that mobile telephony can reach where other media may not be able to, that mobile telephony is not just about basic personal communication, that mobile telephony can indeed do something fundamentally powerful for communities – indeed the power of the Idea is that it can change lives of millions of people in our country. You can see the ads here:
http://www.ideacellular.com/IDEA.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=IDEA_Page_Advertisements&displayParam=IdeaSchool.html
Does that mean that education through mobile telephony is a reality? I have no idea (no pun intended!), but perhaps it will spark questions from many people who have never thought of this medium as a means of education. Perhaps some will examine this medium for this purpose, and perhaps a few will take the plunge of actually going ahead and doing it. Perhaps people in India already have done so. And that would change the face of basic education in our country all right.
Or perhaps education through mobile telephony is not possible, or too expensive, or there are other insuperable problems. But that’s not really my point. I have actually two points to make, for which let’s go back to the two questions I had asked earlier, slightly paraphrased this time around:
Read these, together with Idea's published brand mission.:
The dog, the girl and tying the knot
First the dog came back, finding the missing sock for the little girl going to school, then chasing her school bus carrying her tie in his mouth. Then he was there again, licking her stamps for her greeting cards. Everybody in my home went all dewy-eyed and spouted baby talk when these ads hit the airwaves – we had been desperately in love with the pug ever since we saw him when Vodafone was Orange, and when my son insisted that we buy him the same dog (I am glad to say he, the son and not the dog, grew up fast).
The dog personified the brand – lovable, childlike, simple, friendly, helpful, warm, etc, etc. Even hardcore career-building MBA students loved him – I know this, I have taught some 2,000 of them over the last few years: every time I showed them the ads, they all used the adjectives I have listed above.
So when the pug was back a few months back, it was time to quote Robert Browning:
The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn
Morning’s at seven
The hillsides’ dew-pearled
The lark’s on the wing
The snail’s on the thorn
God in His Heaven
All’s right with the world!
The return of the pug was followed by the story of the little girl whose pen ran out of ink just before the end of the exam. The look of distress on her face would have melted the soul of a Ghenghis Khan. But help was at hand – a combination of Sir Galahad in his shining armour and the Scarlet Pimpernel arrived in the shape and size of a small boy who stretches his arm and deposits one, single, solitary, priceless drop of ink on her table.
The girl and pug is called “happy to help”, the boy and girl is called “Chhota credit”, and the tying the knot is called “call conference”.You can see Vodafone ads at http://www.vodafone.in/existingusers/Pages/vodafoneTVC.aspx?yr=2008
Beautifully simple and touching, and stunningly effective, this TVC reinforced all the values of the brand which the pug TVCs did – the adjectives I heard about Vodafone the brand by my friends who happen to buy advertising were ‘lovable’, ‘friendly’, ‘helpful’, ‘warm’, and others of the same ilk.
What I see on the air now is a bunch of kids trying to teach a friend how to tie a knot on a conference call. Now, all of us know that tying a knot is a difficult task, requiring the fullest concentration and considerable dexterity and finger strength – not something to be undertaken lightly. And what do we see in the commercial? These four kids pulling the poor fellow’s legs! Far from helping him, one guy lounging on the sofa guffaws loudly at his friend’s less than successful attempts to get the knot right. Would we use the adjectives ‘friendly’, ‘helpful’, etc to describe the brand Vodafone in these TVCs? I don’t think so.
When I first saw this TVC, I thought this was the latest in the ‘think hatke’ series from Virgin Mobile. The personality coming through in the call conferencing TVC was Virgin Mobile and not Vodafone. (You can find Virgin Mobile ads at http://www.virginmobile.in/tv_ads.php)
So here’s my point – even if the idea of the TVC is a good one, fun, works with the TG, you need to think about whether it’s in line with the established personality of the brand. If not, you better think of another idea.
The serial torturer
You know the old old story:
Girl gets boy.
Girl loses boy. To girl no 2. (I am told by those who know that boy actually cheats on girl no 1, but that is frankly incidental to the whole story.)
Girl no 1 still loves boy and wants him back.
Girl no 2 is a b**** loses no opportunity in snubbing girl no 1.
Girl no 2 also has a temper, and snubs boy a few times.
Girl no 1 happens to be around at various places frequented by boy. Girl no 1 runs into boy at airport, and recognizes pendant they had gifted each other in happier times.
Girl no 1 gets boy back.
At least that’s the story so far. A simple, innocent, five-handkerchief story that can and probably does happen to any girl next door. Girl no 1 may lose him again, or dump him deciding that he’s not worth all this trouble. But we shall see how the story progresses thereafter.
No, this is not the latest piece of tripe being peddled by one of our so-called entertainment channels. You can see the ads here - http://www.truveo.com/tag/POND'S This is an episodic set of TVCs created by one of India’s finest ad agencies for Pond’s White Beauty Cream. Girl no 1 looks truly white and cherubic – but unfortunately through my bifocals so does Girl no 2, so I guess both had been using the Pond’s and the fact that Girl no 1 gets her boy back cannot be attributed to her use of the product. Indeed, the TVC does not claim that she uses the product; nor is her winning back her boyfriend attributed to her use of the product. In fact, the brand and the product is completely incidental to this bunch of TVCs. In the last dog that I watched, where boy and girl no 1 meet at the airport, and she recognizes the pendant the boy is wearing, I thought that the TVC was for a jewellery brand; which was a nice change, I thought, from the normal vacuous puffs of hot air one sees in the jewellery category.
And now for the loud guffaw
Some months ago, I found this ad in one of the pink papers – I forget which. Interesting idea, but such an inept and memorable execution! Feast your eyes and mind on this one:
The sum total of all such lectures is just one sentence: ‘advertising which is based upon an idea is good advertising; all other advertising is a waste of time.’ And, you know what! I agree, with one qualification – advertising which is based upon a good idea can be good advertising; if not, it’s a lottery. The word good is my qualifier.
Once you’ve bought into this precept, there are two obvious questions: “How do I know I have an idea?” and “How can I distinguish between a good idea and one not so good?” In response, agency heavies normally stretch out their long arms to show off some more ads, and try to help the kid learn this basic requirement – judgement. Forget the irony and the cynicism of my language – this is still the best way to learn, from the material which we see every day on our TV screens.
What follows is neither a lecture, nor a set of examples to prove I am right, but some bouquets and brickbats based on my perception about how good or bad an idea is. To me, an advertising idea needs to fulfil a very short set of criteria:
- Does it support my brand promise, personality and character?
- Does it dramatise my brand’s benefit?
What an idea, sirjee!
To start with, the new Idea ‘School’ Cellular TV campaign, about teaching children in remote villages, is just mind-blowing. I quote from the website: “Demonstrating our brand promise, this campaign asks a simple question, ‘Why should a child be deprived of education if there are no schools close to him/her?’” And indeed, these TVCs do show the power of the idea – that mobile telephony can reach where other media may not be able to, that mobile telephony is not just about basic personal communication, that mobile telephony can indeed do something fundamentally powerful for communities – indeed the power of the Idea is that it can change lives of millions of people in our country. You can see the ads here:
http://www.ideacellular.com/IDEA.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=IDEA_Page_Advertisements&displayParam=IdeaSchool.html
Does that mean that education through mobile telephony is a reality? I have no idea (no pun intended!), but perhaps it will spark questions from many people who have never thought of this medium as a means of education. Perhaps some will examine this medium for this purpose, and perhaps a few will take the plunge of actually going ahead and doing it. Perhaps people in India already have done so. And that would change the face of basic education in our country all right.
Or perhaps education through mobile telephony is not possible, or too expensive, or there are other insuperable problems. But that’s not really my point. I have actually two points to make, for which let’s go back to the two questions I had asked earlier, slightly paraphrased this time around:
- Is the idea in the TVCs support the brand?
- Does the idea in the TVCs support the brand’s benefit?
Read these, together with Idea's published brand mission.:
- The India footprint Idea: Anywhere connectivity - bringing India closer
- The Technology Advantage Idea: Tomorrow's technology to enrich today.
- The Customer Focus Idea: Make a single interaction a lasting relationship.
- The Employee Focus Idea: Nurture the roots that nurture our ideas.
The dog, the girl and tying the knot
First the dog came back, finding the missing sock for the little girl going to school, then chasing her school bus carrying her tie in his mouth. Then he was there again, licking her stamps for her greeting cards. Everybody in my home went all dewy-eyed and spouted baby talk when these ads hit the airwaves – we had been desperately in love with the pug ever since we saw him when Vodafone was Orange, and when my son insisted that we buy him the same dog (I am glad to say he, the son and not the dog, grew up fast).
The dog personified the brand – lovable, childlike, simple, friendly, helpful, warm, etc, etc. Even hardcore career-building MBA students loved him – I know this, I have taught some 2,000 of them over the last few years: every time I showed them the ads, they all used the adjectives I have listed above.
So when the pug was back a few months back, it was time to quote Robert Browning:
The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn
Morning’s at seven
The hillsides’ dew-pearled
The lark’s on the wing
The snail’s on the thorn
God in His Heaven
All’s right with the world!
The return of the pug was followed by the story of the little girl whose pen ran out of ink just before the end of the exam. The look of distress on her face would have melted the soul of a Ghenghis Khan. But help was at hand – a combination of Sir Galahad in his shining armour and the Scarlet Pimpernel arrived in the shape and size of a small boy who stretches his arm and deposits one, single, solitary, priceless drop of ink on her table.
The girl and pug is called “happy to help”, the boy and girl is called “Chhota credit”, and the tying the knot is called “call conference”.You can see Vodafone ads at http://www.vodafone.in/existingusers/Pages/vodafoneTVC.aspx?yr=2008
Beautifully simple and touching, and stunningly effective, this TVC reinforced all the values of the brand which the pug TVCs did – the adjectives I heard about Vodafone the brand by my friends who happen to buy advertising were ‘lovable’, ‘friendly’, ‘helpful’, ‘warm’, and others of the same ilk.
What I see on the air now is a bunch of kids trying to teach a friend how to tie a knot on a conference call. Now, all of us know that tying a knot is a difficult task, requiring the fullest concentration and considerable dexterity and finger strength – not something to be undertaken lightly. And what do we see in the commercial? These four kids pulling the poor fellow’s legs! Far from helping him, one guy lounging on the sofa guffaws loudly at his friend’s less than successful attempts to get the knot right. Would we use the adjectives ‘friendly’, ‘helpful’, etc to describe the brand Vodafone in these TVCs? I don’t think so.
When I first saw this TVC, I thought this was the latest in the ‘think hatke’ series from Virgin Mobile. The personality coming through in the call conferencing TVC was Virgin Mobile and not Vodafone. (You can find Virgin Mobile ads at http://www.virginmobile.in/tv_ads.php)
So here’s my point – even if the idea of the TVC is a good one, fun, works with the TG, you need to think about whether it’s in line with the established personality of the brand. If not, you better think of another idea.
The serial torturer
You know the old old story:
Girl gets boy.
Girl loses boy. To girl no 2. (I am told by those who know that boy actually cheats on girl no 1, but that is frankly incidental to the whole story.)
Girl no 1 still loves boy and wants him back.
Girl no 2 is a b**** loses no opportunity in snubbing girl no 1.
Girl no 2 also has a temper, and snubs boy a few times.
Girl no 1 happens to be around at various places frequented by boy. Girl no 1 runs into boy at airport, and recognizes pendant they had gifted each other in happier times.
Girl no 1 gets boy back.
At least that’s the story so far. A simple, innocent, five-handkerchief story that can and probably does happen to any girl next door. Girl no 1 may lose him again, or dump him deciding that he’s not worth all this trouble. But we shall see how the story progresses thereafter.
No, this is not the latest piece of tripe being peddled by one of our so-called entertainment channels. You can see the ads here - http://www.truveo.com/tag/POND'S This is an episodic set of TVCs created by one of India’s finest ad agencies for Pond’s White Beauty Cream. Girl no 1 looks truly white and cherubic – but unfortunately through my bifocals so does Girl no 2, so I guess both had been using the Pond’s and the fact that Girl no 1 gets her boy back cannot be attributed to her use of the product. Indeed, the TVC does not claim that she uses the product; nor is her winning back her boyfriend attributed to her use of the product. In fact, the brand and the product is completely incidental to this bunch of TVCs. In the last dog that I watched, where boy and girl no 1 meet at the airport, and she recognizes the pendant the boy is wearing, I thought that the TVC was for a jewellery brand; which was a nice change, I thought, from the normal vacuous puffs of hot air one sees in the jewellery category.
And now for the loud guffaw
Some months ago, I found this ad in one of the pink papers – I forget which. Interesting idea, but such an inept and memorable execution! Feast your eyes and mind on this one:
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
What do you mean, no Plan B?
Finally, the long unhappy saga of Singur comes to an end. The attempt by the West Bengal Government to reignite industrial investment in the state has ended. The promise made by the Tatas to the State could not be carried out. The objective of Mamata Banerjee has been achieved - she has managed to hog the media limelight for all the wrong reasons, and come out looking like Jhansi ki Raani to her constituents.
This is not surprising - not surprising at all, given the way the whole thing started. The WB government bulldozed their way through all local opposition, very much like the comrades in the old USSR used to, and today's China are wont to do. But India is a democracy - and in a democracy, winning hearts and minds is a more effective way of implementing decisions than diktat, read "coercion". The worm does have an nasty of habit of turning just when you think it's gone away. This time, thanks to Mamata, the worm did turn and nastily too.
So, that's that. The Tata Group has dropped a packet on Singur, and will have to invest another packet in a new plant somewhere else, and hit the market with Nano some months behind schedule.
The reds in WBengal have come out of this looking definitely second class. Ultimately, it's their ham-handedness which created the problem which saw the Tatas exit Singur.
There are two things which I find really interesting:
* Mr Ratan Tata's comment some days ago that there's no Plan B to Singur. As a shareholder, I certainly have the right to ask the Chairman why there's no Plan B. The investment is a significant sum of money, the issues about Singur have been front page news since the beginning, and the whole journey has been rocky from the start. But, the Chairman and his Board did not feel it necessary to have a Plan B?
* Mr Mukesh Advani, not normally an ally of the Tatas, came out in support of the Nano project in Singur, pretty loud and clear. Stranger things have happened, but I can't of many offhand.
I shall watch how things progress on the second front. Perhaps tete-a-tetes between M/s Tata and Ambani are not beyond the realms of possibility even now.
This is not surprising - not surprising at all, given the way the whole thing started. The WB government bulldozed their way through all local opposition, very much like the comrades in the old USSR used to, and today's China are wont to do. But India is a democracy - and in a democracy, winning hearts and minds is a more effective way of implementing decisions than diktat, read "coercion". The worm does have an nasty of habit of turning just when you think it's gone away. This time, thanks to Mamata, the worm did turn and nastily too.
So, that's that. The Tata Group has dropped a packet on Singur, and will have to invest another packet in a new plant somewhere else, and hit the market with Nano some months behind schedule.
The reds in WBengal have come out of this looking definitely second class. Ultimately, it's their ham-handedness which created the problem which saw the Tatas exit Singur.
There are two things which I find really interesting:
* Mr Ratan Tata's comment some days ago that there's no Plan B to Singur. As a shareholder, I certainly have the right to ask the Chairman why there's no Plan B. The investment is a significant sum of money, the issues about Singur have been front page news since the beginning, and the whole journey has been rocky from the start. But, the Chairman and his Board did not feel it necessary to have a Plan B?
* Mr Mukesh Advani, not normally an ally of the Tatas, came out in support of the Nano project in Singur, pretty loud and clear. Stranger things have happened, but I can't of many offhand.
I shall watch how things progress on the second front. Perhaps tete-a-tetes between M/s Tata and Ambani are not beyond the realms of possibility even now.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Size does matter
In my book, WrapAround, I had written about a chain of music stores in India called Planet M - then advertised as the music store of the universe. This was two years ago, and since then, the stores have changed hands, and I have acquired those large USB HDDs with 600GB storage - so I didn't go out buying cds and dvds for a couple of years.
Then I got an email saying that Planet M in CST in South Mumbai was shifting home - and I really really had to go to see the new home. I used to love the old place - situated as it was in the ground floor or one of the heritage buildings of Mumbai, acres of space, lots and lots of goodies where you could fill up the vacant spaces of your cd library (talk of the long tail!) and, this is a rarity in most Indian stores, attendants who actually listened to music and knew something about it.
The new home is a disaster - like the Queen of England has moved to a studio flat in Croydon. Enter the shop, and on your left is a dozen mobile handsets for sale; anon a few ipods, and in between about a hundred cds and mayhap a couple of dozen dvds. My personal cd and dvd collection is larger by far than the stock in the racks - I need say no more.
So, AFAIAC, I won't disturb the Queen in her new studio flat any more.
Before the large chains came in, didn't small shops survive, and indeed thrive? Don't they do so even now in many parts of the world? They do, because they go for depth and not for width, and because their staff/owner really know their subject. So if you go to a small shop which specialises in crime fiction, the owner/manager/staff is a fan himself of herself, has read through the genre, and a visit turns into a lovefest, with the result that you stagger out of the shop with another couple of dozen books, and a thinner wallet.
However, if you have a brand established as a large format chain, then rejigging yourself to a small mom&pop corner store is death.
Early days, though. I have been to just one store, albeit the erstwhile flagship store. I need to visit the other stores to check out on a larger sample base. Will report back, but right now, I am really disappointed to see the Queen in a 3BHK flat with all mod cons one among a whole bunch of row houses, all exactly alike.
Then I got an email saying that Planet M in CST in South Mumbai was shifting home - and I really really had to go to see the new home. I used to love the old place - situated as it was in the ground floor or one of the heritage buildings of Mumbai, acres of space, lots and lots of goodies where you could fill up the vacant spaces of your cd library (talk of the long tail!) and, this is a rarity in most Indian stores, attendants who actually listened to music and knew something about it.
The new home is a disaster - like the Queen of England has moved to a studio flat in Croydon. Enter the shop, and on your left is a dozen mobile handsets for sale; anon a few ipods, and in between about a hundred cds and mayhap a couple of dozen dvds. My personal cd and dvd collection is larger by far than the stock in the racks - I need say no more.
So, AFAIAC, I won't disturb the Queen in her new studio flat any more.
Before the large chains came in, didn't small shops survive, and indeed thrive? Don't they do so even now in many parts of the world? They do, because they go for depth and not for width, and because their staff/owner really know their subject. So if you go to a small shop which specialises in crime fiction, the owner/manager/staff is a fan himself of herself, has read through the genre, and a visit turns into a lovefest, with the result that you stagger out of the shop with another couple of dozen books, and a thinner wallet.
However, if you have a brand established as a large format chain, then rejigging yourself to a small mom&pop corner store is death.
Early days, though. I have been to just one store, albeit the erstwhile flagship store. I need to visit the other stores to check out on a larger sample base. Will report back, but right now, I am really disappointed to see the Queen in a 3BHK flat with all mod cons one among a whole bunch of row houses, all exactly alike.
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