Yet Another Point of View

The Bangalore skyline saw plenty of psychedelic hi-jinks when the IPL cricket tournament kicked off tonight. I cant help thinking this whole thing is more tamaasha than sport. Not that I am complaining. All that razzmatazz - dancers on stilts, fairies inside bubbles, trapeze artists swinging down to the field, it was one hell of a show! And the cricket-crazy Indian audiences anyway make it an electrifying atmosphere. But then I am one of those armchair audiences who watch cricket from the couch at home. So, while the tech city's Royal Challengers got clobbered, I tore my hair out frustrated with all that onscreen TV advertising. The screen splits up sometimes or shrinks in to a small window while multi-color graphic vines creep across the margins trailing "Godrej". Or worse, stick figure pop out from the edges and break into ridiculous jigs hoping to prompt viewers to subscribe for Vodafone alerts. I was expecting atleast one Shahrukh Khan sighting. He didn't come in ...

I chanced upon this marketing insight , perhaps in last week’s newspaper, and thought it would be good to share it with the hapless visitors to my blog. Some of the brains at Wharton have researched and proven this hypothesis that ‘exposure to environmental cues can prime the consumer’s memory to favor certain products’. It seems when NASA landed the Pathfinder spacecraft on Mars in July 1997, the sales of Mars bars shot up. Apparently, consumers, barraged by news of our little red neighborly planet, somehow felt more inclined to nibble on a chocolate bar of the same name. What does this tell me about consumer choice? Around Valentine’s Day, thanks to the profusion of red hearts festooning every conceivable, advertise’able’ space (including toilet seats, yes, I have seen that!), I am probably going to drink a lot of Roohafza (ugghh..that will be the day). Marketers may find that Tide (the detergent) vanishes off the shelves quickly in coastal towns than inland. (Tide. Oceans. Coastal c...

Can someone please tell me why Giancarlo Fisicella (or Fisi, as he so endearingly wants to be called) is inviting us to speed with him at 300 kmph in all his bare-chested 'Adonis' glory? I don't really follow racing but last time I checked they climb into those hot wheels fully suited up like astronauts. For all you know he is probably Adonis in his birthday suit. Leaves much to imagination! Hmmm..an ad for ForceIndia with a buck naked Italian.... PS: Good eye candy

Correct me if I am wrong, but it’s so much more difficult and time-consuming for a working woman to get dressed for business than a working man. A few days ago I attended a marketing conference at one of those snobby, up-market, ultra-luxe hotels in town. My employer was a sponsor at the event, so I knew I was not to have any escape from the series of keynote speeches and presentations and panel discussions, all tailgating each other as if their life depended on it (but perhaps it did - God forbid a participant’s attention should wander away if you allowed him a breather between sessions!) To break the monotony I digressed every now and then to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes – observing people. Sticking to the superficial (and sartorial), I scanned the corporate honchos on the stage, the execs in the audience, the marketers at the booths and a scattering of the event organizers too. The men were mostly in the standard ‘business formals’ – you know, the dark suit, light shirt, b...

Someone once asked me 'What are your principles in life? What do you believe in?' It’s a loaded question, almost burdensome. If I claimed to be ‘principled’ should I be carrying around a bag full of solid, defined, ‘value’ nuggets that I can use to weigh each situation in life? Or is it more like a bound volume of neatly-outlined instructions that I can refer to every time I am in a fix? I actually got into a fix trying to answer that question. Wish I really had the ‘bound volume’! So much easier, isn’t it, if you know exactly how to measure up an issue or person or situation? If only there were some kind of depth markers which gave you an indication of where you stood! From all the living I have done so far (and, it’s a respectable amount), I have a strong feeling there are no such lines on the wall. It’s really about the angle you look at things. It’s all about your point of view. There, I have nailed it. I have a Point of View (POV). Or maybe, several points of view. Not to ...