The Pursuit of Bollyness – I

There are some who have the ability to catnap anytime, anywhere.

An enviable trait, unless they happen to be sitting next to you at a movie show.

Having snoozed peacefully through the crucial part of a thriller*, they awake newly refreshed, demanding that you fill them in on the intricacies of the plot.

* A Hindi movie allows a lot of opportunity for the sleep deprived, as the average flick is a three-hour long saga. At least.

Knowing they won’t connect with the rest of the movie unless you do, you summon all your extempore précis skills to give an expert synopsis of the story so far, in a very audible whisper.

How the (tycoon) male action lead or the “hero” – actual age 45, playing 28, in a complicated flashback recalls how he met and fell for the yet-to-be brutally murdered (impoverished & orphaned) female lead – actual age 16, playing 22, ultimately executing violent, gory revenge to the evil doer. Note to global readers: Yes, such movies exist.

If you’re lucky, a Hindi song starts just in time, sparing you homicidal glances from neighbours as you yak on.

Such an audience is however an exception. The average Hindi movie addict would willingly watch any movie released, over and over again, with complete attention.

Entertainment apart, Bollywood fascinates one and all.

If there is a common element that brings people together – young and old, homemaker and the career oriented, scientist and DJ, teacher and socialite, whether slumdog or penthouse millionaire, man and woman, it has to be the Hindi Movie. Or even, the Hindi movie star.

Our clients were no different.

They would simply lose their heads at the dizzying thought of attending their ad film shoot with a leading luminary of Bollywood.

Throwing caution and indeed, their budgets to the winds, they were suddenly willing to overlook a lot of past parsimony.

Having spent the last two quarters of the year haggling over not having to hike budgets, employee bonuses and even employee strength, they were categorically ready to pay obscene amounts to see their favourite film star shooting loving glances at or cuddling their bottle of hair oil, shampoo, toilet bleach, wall paint, soap or toothpaste as the case may be. All permanently frozen in celluloid.

Just in time for boosting the bottomline, final quarter. I refer ofcourse to the balance sheet bottomline, as in, profits. Not keeping your bottom in shape by dancing to the latest Bollywood track. Don’t be offended. This clarification is meant more for a certain cross section of ex-clients who may be reading this, like the one written about here, not you. Just pre-empting queries, as it were.

In some cases, we were able to make their dreams come true – not so much we, but the media pundits who ruled all things Bollywood – the well connected ad folks and the production houses, including the occasional Bolly movie director, like Karan Sabjan who also made ad films on the side just for fun and some pocket change. Given that he had direct access to most of the top stars, he was one of our most popular and in demand ad makers.

On this day, one of our cow belt* clients settled himself down for our next meeting. He headed a (largely) junk food company that was mid-sized, unheard of in the West zone, but popular in the North.

* It was interesting to discover that the media world referred to the certain sections of the North and Central zone of India as the “cow belt”. This may give a general impression of dairy farming, rustic poverty and the simple life, which is indeed the common man’s way of life in rural India. However, the entrepreneurs that belonged to the ‘cow belt’ are multi-millionaires to say the least. Their lifestyles are luxurious owing to the subsidies they enjoy as “farmers” and forget to pass on to their farm labourers. Modern day zamindars, they own sprawling designer farmhouses, a fleet of cars, and their wives would put any fashionista to shame given her accumulated knowledge and wealth of international designer labels. Don’t believe me? Go see. No surprise that Indians hold the largest number of offshore Swiss bank accounts.

“I want Amibath Machchan*“, said Mr. Prakash, once ensconced comfortably in our conference room. His bratty offspring, let’s call him Bottompincher Jatin or BJ, was busy settling his array of four cell phones in front of him. Two of them were the latest models of mobiles, just launched. Each meeting that he attended once a month, at least two of his phones were replaced by a newer model.

* Since am painstakingly disguising all identities here, this is just to keep up with the overall theme.

Amibath Machchan also known as the Big M, is one of the leading stars here. Which is an understatement as anyone knows. For those who are visiting our planet from elsewhere in the universe and still haven’t understood his significance, it would suffice to say that in certain parts of India, he had temples dedicated to him, with people garlanding his effigy.

I looked over at LL and he at me. For once, we were in empathy.

“Well, he’s certainly the biggest”, said LL. What he meant is, the Big M had been around since the last 30 (or was it 40?) odd years, having in no way eroded his appeal. Nor his price.

He was also known as the King of endorsements. Not wishful thinking, in this case.

A fact we were sure Mr. P was missing the significance of – financially speaking.

“Exactly why he would be perrrrfect ji. Our sweets are the best and so is he. A best to best* tie-up, as you always say, ha!”, countered Mr. Prakash. “Besides, he’s doing Badur’s ads! If he doesn’t mind selling their hair oil, mosquito repellent and Gawd knows what else, then he should certainly have no problem with our brand. Everything of superb quality! What say Jatin?” BJ, jolted from his unmoving gaze at his new palm pilot, nodded.

* The term we used was ‘leader to leader’. Not quite ‘best to best’, but I guess Mr. P had absorbed the point well, which is the important thing.

Badur was Mr. Prakash’s pet bugbear. Now, we happened to have heard only last week from Karan Sabjan, the exact amount Big M had negotiated for the Badur campaign for a two year exclusive. Nothing less than Rs. 12 crores. Or 120 million.

Mr. Prakash’s new brand wasn’t even selling that much yet. Realistically it wouldn’t, even for the next 5 years.

This was going to be difficult. There was no way of breaking it gently to Mr. Prakash.

He was one of those obstinate ones who once having made up their minds, considered it unthinkable to change it. Failure on our part to follow his decree would mean loss of face for him, and loss of revenue for us. Why? Because he’d drop our consultancy like a hot brick.

Bitten by the Bollywood bug, he’d have to be weaned off some other way. It was easy to guess why he’d succumbed. All the top actors were on an endorsing spree, from male innerwear to outerwear, shoes to hair gel, perfumes to pens. Small wonder that Mr. P felt the urge to take a flying leap onto the celebrity bandwagon.

“Okay, we’ll see what we can do”, said LL, taking the easy way out.

I let my jaw get back to normal position before the client could notice.

We’d ended the meeting satisfactorily. I backed out of the room, making sure never to face my bottomline, er, behind towards BJ. The small matter remained however, of signing up Big M for Mr. Prakash’s cow belt brands.

If A. Machchan could be called the King of Endorsements, and M. Jackson the King of Pop, then that would make LL the undisputed King of Manipulation.

If anyone could do this, he could. It was time to wag the dog.

To be continued…

The Point is Missing

In the course of acclimatization to the new work-world, which seemed to have till now few opportunities of applying what we had slogged over in b-school, I sometimes felt that my new work life was full of plain good old troubleshooting.

At this stage, I was assigned clients for Account Planning/ Client Servicing, which is the function I was handling within my firm. A lot of it involved receiving and making telephone calls to clients, and ancillary organizations like ad agencies, outdoor media specialists, media agencies, direct marketing companies, PR firms and Event management companies.

Most calls were mundane; fairly routine in nature. However some ended up being a little unusual. Far from the hallowed semi-intellectual, insightful discussions I’d imagined myself participating in.

Particularly so when they were in full hearing of my by now inevitable audience. The same pair who witnessed my embarrassing personal call a few days ago, had walked into LL’s cabin where I had to take the call as per our ever helpful Executive Assistant’s suggestion. This maneuver was necessary as our workstation was so noisy that it easily sounded like peak lunch hour at an Udipi restaurant.

On this day, Mr. Sen, the General Manager-Marketing, of one of the largest industrial houses of India dealing in commodities had called up. India, still largely 70:30 urban-rural, this was one of my largest-sized clients in terms of revenue.

Mr. Sen was a somewhat elderly gentleman, and spoke with a lisp, in a pronounced Assamese accent, which took some getting used to. Every conversation with him usually left me with a surreal feeling, and this time was no different as I was still rusty at interpreting his accent. I liked him though, as he was always polite and spoke with respect, which was a distinct pleasure in the new circles I found myself moving in, primarily consisting of disgruntled and tough as nails sales managers.

“Ah shit… “, he drawled, “thank you for sending the meeting report on time.”

No, he wasn’t being profane. That’s how he pronounced my name, Ashita.

He continued, “However, as I went through it, I realized that the whole point is missing.”

Now, the last meeting was pretty much as per the agenda framed earlier and to my mind had gone well, with each point being discussed, debated upon and a consensus reached quite satisfactorily.

Consequently, getting this feedback from the client really shocked me. He was questioning the way I had planned it all.

“The whole point’s missing?” I blankly repeated. This was a person who usually never had a negative word, or always phrased things diplomatically. Plus, this was an account where I was involved right from the pitch stage and had the joy of having them sign up with us. I had left no stone unturned and had created new standards of servicing for them. Each interaction was a new discovery into the world of commerce, the diversity of each geographical zone and I was thrilled with mini-new epiphanies every now and then.

A new account for us, this was the crucial stage where the company could easily decide to cut their losses and move on (from us) if they were dissatisfied with anything. Also, their move would influence a lot of future, Potential clients. (Refer to the Glossary section for definitions).

Having an audience at the wrong moment, that too, the same one, was yet another instance of the aforementioned Murphy in my life. Why no one was around to witness it when I received a professional compliment, I could never understand. Yet, the first whiff of negativity from the client and hark – there you had a ready pair of interested ears perking up.

“Yes”, replied Mr. Sen with what seemed like ghoulish insistence on the subject.

Deciding to defend my reputation and put up a fight, I firmly responded with, “Mr. Sen, we went as per the pre-decided agenda, covering a few additional matters as well and we made great progress on several key issues”. As you can see, I’d by now got the hang of saying a lot without actually saying anything, if you know what I mean.

Mr. Sen responded very nicely to this and affirmed that yes, everything was covered, however the point, as he could see, was missing.

Despite the negative feedback, I felt a tingle of pleasant surprise. Till now, he had seemed a man of simple thinking, very easy-going, almost bucolic. While talking with him, one always felt that he wasn’t quite all there. Discovering this philosophical depth to his mind was intriguing.

Pondering on his comment, I had to agree. There were times when I’d wondered at the futility of what we did for the brands we handled as it seldom translated into the utopian objectives we had for it. Of course, I say this in confidence. You’d never catch me admitting this to a client.

What I mean is, I could make a research analysis interpretation on the product attributes with consumers sound positive or negative by interpreting it’s findings accordingly. Devious LL was an expert at this. My conscience was still alive and kicking so I’d managed to avoid manipulating results thus far.

Spiderman really had it all figured out. With great power came great responsibility. You’d have a hard time convincing LL of though. He would agree and yet manage to convince you that manipulating research results was being responsible. More on this some other time, though.

Anyway, getting back to the call, I decided to go with the flow, consequences be damned.

“You know, Mr. Sen, its true. This needed to be said. Am so glad someone did. I do think about it very often. Am relatively new at this and still trying to make sense of the corporate world, but working for someone who makes a hundred thousand a day while I make under a thousand and for clients who very often are purely into profiteering makes me wonder what the point of it all is. We get stuck with our own selfish money-making agendas and it’s not fulfilling…”.

“Yes, yes… so you’ll send me the point?” interrupted Mr. Sen who was clearly not paying attention.

“What???”. I wondered why Grammar was such a neglected subject.

Thinking feverishly about what he could mean, I gestured to my team-member who’d entered a minute ago, to bring me a copy of the alleged report of the meeting, from notes I had taken. Since I was now Manager, I had people reporting to me. In effect, the only difference was it meant that they keyed in the report, not me. And I could delegate the more boring tasks to them.

My hopes of breaking into new insightful territories with Mr. Sen was all too good to be true. He clearly wasn’t commenting on the futility of most of what we did. I thought about Mr. Sen and our past conversations. And suddenly got it.

I heard the door open and spotted my boss about to walk in. He was partly wedged into the room as his opening the door meant that my team-mate was half squashed behind the door and the cabin wall. No other sight made my mind race as much. If LL smelled a complaint, it meant a blot on my as yet unblemished record. Not to mention my reputation to be salvaged in front of my interested audience.

I suddenly felt a burst of goodwill towards Mr. Sen. Must be the endorphins from the adrenalin rush, a reaction to the stress I always felt on seeing LL. In a way, I was happy. With Mr. Sen, what you saw was what you got. I’d rather have a client who was easily satisfied. Knowing LL was keenly listening, I continued.

“Mr. Sen, before I respond, let me state how much of a pleasure it is to work with you and your team. Let me assure you that there’s no ‘point missing’. Yes, the automatic paragraph numbering in the MS-Word typed report has jumped from 14. to 16. Am planning to write to Bill Gates on this matter. Why the numbering goes haywire in a saved document, whenever a print command is given to the printer shall always remain a mystery to me. Meanwhile, I’m sorry for the inconvenience, and Seema will re-send the report with the correct numbering in serial order.”

As I paused to draw in breath, Mr. Sen slowly said, “So, the point is not missing?”

“No, Mr. Sen.”

I sent an obligatory frown to Seema to indicate the least she could do was check the bullet point numbering on what was sent out. In case you are smarter than the average reader and use some an operating system different from Microsoft, then read this explanation. He had meant “a” point was missing.

A numbering point like this:-

1.Phase I of Product launch to be on Dassera*

2.Media rollout on 1st Dec

4.Phase II commences 15th Jan

Notice how 2 skips to 4. I swear it happens. For anyone who’s suffered this, and wants to gripe, do get in touch. Will be happy to offer words of wisdom and the solution.

(*Auspicious day of launch as per the Hindu calendar. All clients were deeply terrified of earning the ire of Gods by launching at an inauspicious time. All us Group heads had a mandatory calendar of religious dates taped to our desktops).

“Are you sure?”, repeated Mr. Sen.

Clearly he needed time to get used to the new state of affairs.

“Yes, Mr. Sen. Everything discussed and every decision taken has been included fully in the report. How did you find the report otherwise?” I quickly added.

“Oh, excellent, excellent as always” replied Mr. Sen, very gratifyingly, and clearly enough for LL to hear. “They are always helpful. So all points are there, eh?”

I reflected on how one never learned things like this, how to interpret and use keen psychology, deep perceptual insights, to understand what the client actually meant.

After due reassurance I bid adieu and turned to LL.

I felt naughty and bold. It was time to say it. Especially, with the right number of witnesses present. I looked straight at my nemesis.

“Don’t you think I deserve a raise, LL?”.

I saw my faithful audience nod.

Good Manners

“May I speak to Manisha please?” asked the deep and polite male voice in my entire history of working here. Man, I thought, transferring the call, who says, “please”? Certainly not callers to Marrkit.

Though designated “Group Brand Head”, am expected to pick up phone calls as we supposedly cannot afford to hire a telephone operator. Special timings are allocated for calls to be picked up in rotation by everyone who works here. The list of timings was taped to my Workstation desktop.

By the way, when I joined, I was designated Brand Executive. Then I was confirmed as Brand Executive. The career path then dictated that I become a Senior Brand Executive, then Brand Manager and then Senior Brand Manager. This was as per the Marrkit Career Path. This was also framed by LL.

However, fate and perhaps my work skills intervened and I received an “accelerated promotion” which meant I became a Brand Manager directly after Brand Executive.

It did make me proud.

At this stage, I was a Group Brand Head. Go figure.

Not! far from the madding crowd

This is a narrative with a difference.

That it reflects what went on in the past, being jotted down only now, experience by experience. Another difference is that names have been changed, as the objective is not to be offensive to any one or provide publicity, positive or harmful, to any of the personalities mentioned.

This is about my first job. In the most ‘happening’ city of India – Mumbai. This is also a compilation of conversations and experiences from my somewhat eventful life (at least to me) interspersed with meeting an astonishingly varied and interesting set of people, some nice, some odd. I haven’t simply invented this. There are frequent jumps between space and time and myriad digressions, so pay attention. If it still doesn’t make sense, I’ll endeavour to clarify.

So what is this about? Read on to know more. Some of it would be in the form of conversations, or just plain rambling. Do visit often and comment if you like. Would be nice hearing from you.

I’m a single gal, living in India, in a city called Mumbai, also known earlier as Bombay, a teeming metropolis; like no other.