Chaitanya’s OWN

Gazing in the night remembering when
I met you last, the beautiful face
Gentle voice and the patient stare
My nucleus is you darling dear

Blurry eyes and the fading screen
thoughts from today and the dream
nothing else on mind, you so far away
My nucleus is you darling dear

Your strong self and pain you now endure
all I can think is get well and take care
thoughts in my mind and in my heart
My nucleus is you darling dear

My friends and I were planning a weekend vacation in a lesser known hill station near Pune. The last two days were spent on attempts to contact the only hotel operating in that area. This lone hotel does not have its number listed either on the local search directories or with the travel agencies (Private or State). Despite being the only player in the region it depends on another website for its internet promotion.

The only way to contact them was via e-mail. A couple of mails (from different mail accounts) were send seeking details on room reservation and possible ways of getting there. The response was delayed and disappointing. None of the queries were answered; instead a road map for reaching the hotel was send as an attachment. After a few more hours of online hunting we managed to get in touch with the person in-charge for room reservation. He choose to respond to our queries with statements like “As we are new to this and far from the city, that would not be possible”, ”Travel agencies numbers are difficult to find, so I am not sure if we can arrange car hiring”.

You would think that small hotels would be more proactive and aggressive in their approach. Startups are known to provide better service, in their quest to gain word of mouth and a loyal customer. In this case however, being small was used as an excuse for the lack of service and poor quality of experience provided.

Examples of small businesses that have made it big, challenged reach and used imagination to advantage are many.

Small should not be an excuse for mediocrity or lack of preparedness, it should be more reason to use possible opportunities to gain more ground.

Three of us were browsing around in Walden - a local Hyderabad book store. The stacks of books kept us from seeing each other. The common need for adventure made us climb up that steep cliff.  The two strangers seemed to be at ease, gauging the best way to to dive in while I shivered at the thought of the steep fall, and the freezing water. The first man dove right in - his victorious scream, music and encouragement. It took me exactly 10 seconds to take the plunge.

The cliff, the waves, birds and distant traffic all lost for one glorious tremendous moment. Washed away I sat on the clear sands of a wide beach. A reel played and flashback showed me the troubled times that this region had faced. Men, women and children tormented by the rulers. Timings for everything and a bulldozer that killed at sight. But that was in the past, now a tiny mermaid is calling out to me from the beautiful waters. No more strangers, everyone a friend for life. I get introduced to ten more people.

We swim underwater for miles (the sea huge and clear), and when our heads pop out the warm sun brightens everything. “We have reached the secret island” the lady tells me. The sand is caressing my feet and magic is everywhere. I decide on another swim, this time I turn to see mermaids catching up with me. They want to tell me a story.

This island has a twin on the other side of the road, far apart, and barely 10 K.m wide. Each time a new person comes the beach widens-eating away the water. Each time any person talks of this experience a sound of the island dies.

I swim back, time for me to go home, return to the book store. We all swim back accompanied this time by singing dolphins. We swim, underneath the clear water and crash into solid road - a motorcar waiting. As we zoom through I see great big bubbles rising up. The sea takes over me and washes us ashore. In the tangled mess of weed lies a baby mermaid telling me I will live a 100 more years if I tell no one about the Island of Bemair.

Already the shores seems wider and what is that? The twin who was so far apart slowly creeping in. People everywhere and one lonely road in sight. I know that this trip will never happen again, nor will the mermaids talk.

The water is being eaten , each time I say Bemair.

Immediately much more than the regular stock clearance or end of month sale.

Summer jobs provide companies with a fabulous opportunity to market themselves. It is during this time of the year that they can gain a great future employee or a loyal consumer. The opportunity important to the intern is of far greater value to the employer.

Despite this, students are seen doing meaningless door to door surveys, making presentations on topics that have long lost relevance or doing clerical work as part of their internship program. Why is there such a blatant waste of fresh ideas and young talent? Blame on a poor mentor, excessive hiring of interns are mere excuses, which encourage further negligence towards the students and the projects assigned to them.

Examples of wasted talent are many. Interaction with a intern may appear to be of low consequence, but think of the bad word of mouth that a disappointed student can generate. What of the lost talent , the missed opportunity to position the brand, the monetary loss from carrying out this exercise year after year…think about the image of the industry that the student now shoulders.

What could possibly have been a valuable close interaction between the consumer and the brand, is turned into a mere exercise. What is being done to stop this from happening at your workplace? Are enough opportunities provided for the intern to learn? What kind of industry knowledge is imparted? Has the company succeeded in sharing the essence of its values, beliefs and work culture? More importantly will you be hearing from the student again?

News as I remember began as a half hour of power packed no-nonsense coverage on national television. Later on with the advent of cable television, independent 24*7 news channels came into being.

The face of the Indian News channels has since undergone many make-overs. It began with the war between channels to bring the latest news first, followed by providing distinct personalities as news analysts and then came the war of sensationalising. The objective was not about providing the true picture and real breaking news, it was about bringing in viewership…the capsule of daily news steadily replaced by a mix of news-entertainment. 

  I increasingly see comedy routines, videos available on the net and bollywood trivia seeping through the news segments. There is nothing on the news channels that is not available faster or with greater covergae either on the internet or on print. Very few channels can today boast of exclusivity , be it the news or the insight with which it is covered.

In an attempt to be everything to everybody the news channels seem to be losing out on the loyalty of a valuable section of the market.

This choice that the channels seem to have willingly made is cause for concern. Great channel, great people, existing loyal viewers … and yet following that path that others take. What if you stuck to the original concept of providing truly exclusive first hand information.

What have you been great at? What if you continued to excel? What if you stopped being just another channel?

If you are not going to make the best use of a resource, then why build/hire it?

Walk inside the compound walls of most of Hyderabad’s apartment complexes and you will know what I mean. There will be a huge, shallow, clean swimming pool strategically placed for constant visibility to visitors and residents, and that is where its functionality ceases (almost). 
What is the point of this pool? Women residents do not use it as there is zero privacy, men probably don’t use it because it is too shallow and kids mess the whole place by turning the pool into a giant puddle of dirty water.

What appears as a benefit on the brochure, does not necessarily translate into a benefit for the buyer or the seller. Is your business also suffering from the swimming pool syndrome? Are you promising too much in theory but not able to render the product useful?

An apartment with a well designed pool that addresses the issue of privacy, standard dimensions and specific timings for men, women and children, will definitely be more beneficial to the residents. To gain visibility the pool can be placed within a recreational zone where visitors are allowed.

Takeaway: Provide service that truly matters. If you are going to promise more than what you deliver, do not kid yourself into believing that the customer is the loser. Providing no service is better than forcing redundant, over hyped services which carry a fee.

Two great books I have recently read:
1. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
A book in which every character is pivotal, including the cats. Unlike any book I have read in the recent past, the book has charm, comedy, fear, action, adventure, mystery and twists in bursts of vivid imagination. The characters just don’t talk about then and now but weave you along the time frames. Each incident is a blend of the bizarre and the normal.
Highly recommended for a lazy crazy Sunday afternoon.

2. The CEO of the Sofa by P.J. O’Rourke
Hilarious. Every sentence cracks you up (no exaggeration here). The topics are wide ranging - Hillary Clinton, the UN, wine tasting, parallels in child upbringing and success at work etc. .
It is like listening to really great stand up comedy with no commercials breaking the spontaneity of the speaker. Highly entertaining.

An offshoot of my previous post.

In-site advertising - to know what I mean follow this link on the NDTV Good Times site and click on the hyperlinks ‘married’ and ‘relationship’.

Simple and highly effective this form of advertising has been around for a while. The concept assures a click from almost every reader and hence sure shot visibility for the brand.

Another bonus is the amount of information the reader is lead to. Unlike its television counterpart in-site advertising allows the reader to explore the product.

However, a clutter of hyperlinks with tangential relevance to the article can ruin the reading experience causing damage to the site.
While discretion and choice of brands is absolutely essential, the trick lies is maintaining the quality of the article while keeping the brands few and far between.

It is not enough to have a 10 second commercial aired every 5 minutes in the commercial break slot. With almost every brand, churning out commercials with great storyboards, memorable punchlines and characters, visibility is a constant battle. Celebrities’ endorsing multiple brands also dampens the exclusivity and uniqueness of the product.

The most obvious approach in such a scenario is to catch the audience’s attention by creating opportunities in the untapped prime time segment - the serial itself. Forget commercial breaks, welcome in-program advertising.

Although the concept of in-program advertising is no news, its presence on Indian television is greater now than ever before. While the Indian idol judges on Sony television channel sip Pepsi and Aquafina water on and off for 30 minutes, would the audience really remember the 10 second Coca Cola commercial?

Whether it is an anchor eating Maggie on a adventure show in a lifestyle channel or the Get Gorgeous girls checking their own pictures on Yahoo.co.in, in-program advertising is here for now.

So is television viewing minus the commercial breaks a possibility? Are brands, ad-agencies ready to take on this situation? More importantly, how are the viewers going to react to this?

Although it would be interesting to see how products are incorporated into the program, I don’t see many takers for a complete shift in how brands are advertised.

If cleverly done in-program advertising fetches the brand greater coverage and recall value, however how much of the brand to use is eventually the decision of the television channel and the writers.
An overkill may cause some harm to the brand but the negativity of the television viewing experience may keep the viewers away. Remember the movie Yaadien, which got a lot of flake for “over endorsing” and an eventual damp box-office response.