Light bulb moment!!!.. I’ll start my own agency

Read an article in the TOI that dealt with Ex-BPO employees foraying into business ventures that work as support structures to the outsourcing industry. After having first hand faced the pros and cons of the ‘Call center industry’ these young turks have ventured into businesses like stress management, voice training workshops, recruitment for BPO…

A parallel can be drawn to the advertising and media industry where now, we have an array of service providers who act as support systems. A model coordinator turned event management firm cum celebrity management agency. Two young guys fresh out of college decided that the advertising and media world already had enough of third party bodies to contend, so what better way to smoothen the ripples than to provide a consolidated array of services with a one point contact.

Another facet to the well-entrenched youth magazine is the new quite hush hush role this magazine plays of an event management company. Having a strong hold in college campuses and easy access to the youth this magazine has leveraged this position and now act a mini event organizers for MNC and corporates that wish to participate as sponsors for college festivals.

Talk about leveraging contacts and making your biz work for u!!!

Swinging 180 degrees??

As cleavage comes out of the closet, skirts make an upward run, clothes go on a diet and shrink and shrivel up, while make up makes merry in its abundance!! Raunchiness amongst the youth today has taken on a completely new face. Here is an attempt to delve deeper into the subject to better understand the reasons, expressions and possible repercussions. When sexual repression reaches breaking point, the pendulum swings 180 degrees.

Sex sells!!It sells because there is a need in the market, this need may stem out of frustration, a sense of modernity or more aptly put aping the west, a feeling of liberation, where there is no bar on expression of feeling. Another reason for the upsurge of the raunch culture could be the attempt at changing the power play equation. Women have always been the subservient, repressed sex. With this magical word ‘raunch’, the tables has turned over night, women now have the upper hand and can make men gravel on their knees!

From PDA galloping leaps and bounds from the innocent entwining of hands or the shy peck on the cheek to the now very sexually explicit display of affection. The rising belief that small is better at least in attire and the polar opposite belief when it comes to ‘bodily assets’, has lead to t eh jubilant clicking of champagne glasses of plastic surgeons. Focus on appearance has moved miles, away from ‘my body my temple’ to the domain of contorting, starving, even punishing the boy for its compliance to these preset norms of the perfect body.

A sense of superficiality and shallowness is setting into the youth today; this changing concept raises its ugly head in the form of decreasing commitments levels in relationships, increase in promiscuity, teenage pregnancies and sexual crime. More young unwed mothers, abortion…have found their place in the lives of the youth today The act of making love ahs shed its garb of sanctity in the minds of the youth today and moved out of the confines of the bedroom, smack dab in the glare of the public eye.

Is raunchiness here to stay or will the pendulum swing 180 degrees again??

Gibberish!!!

Today I was witness to a mesh mash, a jumble mumble of far too many things put into one. I went for a play directed by a well know face in the ad circuit as well as the theatre circuit. I was sold on his name and went head long and bought the tickets to the play without doing the usual WOM round up review...

I can very safely say without exaggeration that i have never felt like crying with self pity or hurling a shoe at the performers more in any shoddy play or movie I’ve be subjected to!!! In the grueling two and a half hours of torture. I was subject to a hundred different messages trying to be sent, characters who seemed to have violent personality shifts, almost as if they were suffering from Multiple Personality disorder culminating in an absolute disarray!

Many a time we commit these very same blunders in advertising [though it was terribly ironical that this play was directed by an ad guru!!].In our endeavor to create resonating ads, we land up saying ten different things all at once. We give birth to brands, instill in them values and a personality, but cease to let it transcend in the following communication. Maybe at times we land up listening to everyone but the consumer, or maybe we don’t listen hard enough!!

Stepping out!!

Its always nice to step out of your comfort zone and try something new!!
We tend to get stuck in the rut, going about our day like creatures of habit, even at times getting irritated at the thought of a disruption of daily routione!!

I stepped out!! I did some interesting stuff this week and am proud to share it:-

Mahayana Buddhhist session

I attended my very first Mahayana Buddhist session on Sunday. It was truly an eye opener of many sorts. I went for this meeting with no expectations or beliefs .I am an Atheist, but don’t feel averse to trying out something new. Don’t get me wrong I mean no disrespect to any religion. I see no wrong in attending any religious meet and seeing if there is a practice or faith that I can connect with. Every religion has its own core philosophy and if I can connect to any religion it can only serve to make me a better human being.

Alarmel Valli
I have yet to see a more stunning Bharatnatyam performer than Smt. Alarmel Valli.I have seen her perform on numerous occasions and she never fails to hold an audience spell bound throughout the duration of the show. What was interesting about the performance I went for last week was, the show started of with a violinist performance followed by an Odyssey and Bharatnatyam performance. Valli and an equally renouned Odysee dancer Smt .Madhvi Mudgal took creative expression of the two dance form to the next level. A creative leap indeed, they performed a duet as well as solo performances. In the duet performance what was a visual delight was how right before ones eyes the similarities and differences in the two art forms became evident .Both International artists took their respective dance style to a whole new level through this performance!!

Retail Endeavour
I cant delve too deep into this, but today after a long time I decided to get out and try something new, a new venture, a new passion , maybe even a new career...who knows ...

My learning from this week-"life’s to short...its time to live life!!
Resolution:-Try and break out of my comfort zone at least once a week if not more!!

The Female Chauvinist Pig...

Air heads soaring high in a land of their own, perceptions of flying high above the rest, floating on the surface, superficial, pseudo...

The Female Chauvinist Pig [FCP] as it turns out is the latest raging personality prototype that is sweeping over the youth like a fire gone wild with great fervor. FCP is the polar opposite of feminist ideology. Girls today are finding solace in and in a way identifying with ‘dumbing’ themselves down to fit in. School and colleges cliques today are being defined holding this parameter as of utmost importance, the latest shade of pink nail polish, or lipstick seems to have made its way up the ladder to top priority topic of discussion for months on ends. Giddy headed laughter, an image of fluffy brainless chickens its what these girls crave. Being a bimbo today is cool!! Its en vogue!!

This is a case of identifying with the oppressor; here it is women who are now oppressing women, culling out these personas of acceptability. The foundation stones have been laid, the smart, the opinionated, the informed, the intellectual, etc are to be ostracized.

Videos featuring women bearing much much more than their souls, increasing focus on physical appearance, the defamation of women, the disrespecting women reducing them to objects of lust work in tandem at influencing many a mind creating and reiterating a belief system where what’s on the outside out weighs what’s on the inside

WHEN GODS WALKED THE EARTH

Advertising has an aura of surrealism that envelopes it like a garb it flaunts unabashed .It churns out vivid expressions of creativity, ever expanding; it conceives the unconceivable…images, words carrying with them a potent power to move billions. Advertising has this innate sense of being and not being all at once, even when you’ve toiled in the industry, rolled up your sleeves and done the dirty work.

It manages with a blink of an eye to create brands from the products it gives life to, right from its christening to etching a personality, beliefs and at times gently putting it to the grave when time takes its toll on the brand. Advertising extrapolates these almost ‘Bhramanical’ virtues to the gurus of advertising, from giving birth to the unique, the quirky, the flamboyant, the weird… all brands with distinct personalities. Names, images, symbols, we tend to view with tainted glasses, they seem mythical, unreal as we plebeians gawk in awe staring up at the podium upon which we thrust them.

Once in a blue moon when the stars are aligned and cosmic forces work feverishly to create this one moment in time. They bleed, they bare their all “Adversity introduces man to himself…”It is only in these rare moments that lie suspended in a twilight zone, do we see raw emotion from the splinters pain, the gnawing nibbling of anxiety, the volcanic spurts of ecstasy…Its only then that Gods walk the Earth!

Honey did I really take that long???

Wide hips, thunder thighs, thin lips, dark circles, flat hair…try and conjure up any unflattering physical attributes and chances are you’ll find at least one in ten women [if not more] who believe they are victim to it!!.

Maybe its Sigmund Freud’s Id in everyone speaking” we want what we cant get!!’. Women have however mastered the art of disguise in every day life, they strut around each day with self imposed restrictions on the colour of clothes, type of clothes worn, the choice of make up applied.

What’s amazing is women do it almost naturally all those tit bits of information that float around aimlessly [black colour thins, flared pant accentuate thighs, low waist pants elongate the torso, short hair take away at least 5 years] These bits of information at some point in time get absorbed into the female psyche and unveil themselves in the spontaneous repulsion and obsession with different styles, colors…

What Emile Durkheim terms as the ‘collective consciousness’ is what woman all over the world share and guard with their lives, this collective consciousness, about appearance altering facts has its International brand evangelists in the form of an Oprah Winfrey to name but one of many, who take it upon themselves to reiterate these pillars of womanhood and spread these secrets world wide.Maybe, just maybe it is this need or urge to comply with these ‘sacred truths to a better looking you’ that show themselves in the ridiculously long hours women spend shopping!!!

That 'love-ly' feeling!!!

Stone cold elderly eyes watching their prey with hawk like precision, watching for them to falter- a phenomenon once termed as “supervised visits” or “chaperoned meetings”, defunct, lost in an extinct world of etiquette, reservation and mores of conduct.

PDA has traversed a long way, evolved from the sly meeting of eyes of a couple, to the very physical display of affection be it smooching or caressing in public.

The youth brigade seems to be the instigator, the fire starter this revolution of public display of affection, relentlessly seeking out new nooks and crannies to “express themselves”[at times even braving the police batons when society frowns upon them].

PDA has transcended from an activity only young blossoming love-struck couples engage in, its found its place even amongst the married. Today many a couple don’t hesitate to display their affection in front of their in-laws or parents and neither do the older generation feel squeamish or insulted at such displays as they probably would have felt a decade ago.

Maybe PDA in the movies, music videos, ads or hoardings we watch have had a hand in the increasing acceptance toward PDA.

Some might view this changing trend in expression as the western influence, the corroding of the Indian value system, to me the spotting of city walks, promenades, cinema halls, trains or buses with budding love-struck couples isn’t such a bad thing after all. Its better out in the open than having to slink around on the sly …

Chaaaaaaacalate Cadbury chaaaaaacalate!!

Train travel always has a surprise up its sleeve…the other day as I boarded yet another crowded Mumbai local train I was greeted by usual harsh stench of underarm odor, the waft of jasmine scented oiled hair intermingled with a days sweat taking its toll

As I squeezed into the bowels of the compartment I heard a screech smack dab right in my ears, full throated yelling “Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacalate Cadbury chaaaaaaaacalate!!!”

Being the chocoholic that I am I spontaneously turned to peep into the basket of goodies she was flaunting. Sitting there in the midst of a crowded train compartment in a dilapidated wicker basket lay an array of chocolates from the jungle look Safari chocolate to names unheard of .I strain my eye to locate the purple & gold wrapping I’ve grown to recognize so well over the years to find none.

An old woman with paan stained teeth, almost surely uneducated, has understood the power of branding without any formal training, no marketing gurus words of wisdom, no weighting lifting text books to lead the way, no pie charts or graphs…Here’s someone who knows that the name Cadburys is so well entrenched into the minds of consumers that now it has come to own the chocolate category. What better way to attract that first glance or as in her case the many glances other than to build on a well established name, even if she didn’t carry any of the Cadbury wares. Her strategy seemed to be working even on me as I landed up buying the wannbe Cadburys instead of the real thing, since she got me salivating over the thought of chocolate already. In such case scenarios people generally tend to make do with what’s available!!

Hats off to the Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacccccalate woman!!

A whole load of fart…

At the risk of sound crude and crass most advertising people are a whole load of all fart and no shit!! Its all about building up the persona the imagery it rarely traverses into the spectrum of execution…Sadly I’ve seen this farting skill extended into the products clients lay on our platter. Open vulnerable their destiny determined by determined farters!

In advertising the current hot favorite is to ASSUME!! Translation- making an ass out of you and me, we sell assumptions to our client everyday packaged as hard core research findings.

The crux of this industry is built on the unreal and it seems to be dying in its essence a little by little everyday. All I can do is await an divine intervention maybe the bigwigs of the ad world will have a down to earth experience that might pave the way for a small by significant ray of hope

Stifling of the mind...

Walls have been erected& erected high…strong sturdy almost unsurpassable walls. Walls defining age old boundaries, dividing, segmenting…The end result the compartmentalization of the mind and spirit.

Ideas are free flowing, an idea can strike anybody at any point in time, it doesn’t discriminate…then I ask why we must??? In an industry where good people and good ideas are hard wouldn’t ad agencies want creative stimulus from anyone bold enough to voice it barring the job title they currently hold? I would want to try my hand at everything in an ad agency rather that create these mind blocks induced by the current agency structure.
This is a humble plea to break the cycle of the generation of mindless soldiers …