Big Idea : Management meets Marxism

27 year old Chepuri Srikrishna from IIM A has created history of sorts by volunteering to intern at the CPI(M) office. He is the first guy in IIMs 46-year history to opt for this experience...

When I read about him in ET, I instantly loved his guts and 'thinking outside the box'. Says he - "The CPI(M) is not against reforms. They are against the pace of reforms. It is trying for industrialisation in West Bengal. The party stands for a certain section of people. It is not anti-people" He added that - " the IIMs are not anti-Left either".

Srikrishna had been impressed by Sitaram Yechury's speech and then set his mind on doing his intern at the CPI(M).

A self-proclaimed "left-of-centre" individual Srikrishna sees no alternative to economic reforms. "How to control the pace of reforms to allow the under-privileged sections to cope with change" is the challenge he hopes to meet partly through his internship at the CPI(M).

Maybe its time to do the reveres as well. Get some fire-brand young party workers from the heartland into advertising to shake up things a little:-)

Will Street Meet Strategy?

Was speaking to David, our regional training head in the morning. Predictably like most non-Indians he too was struck by the vibrant colour and diversity of our country.

Later, on board the flight to Delhi, came across a feature on street art in the in-flight magazine JetWings!

There is so much ingenuity in the street. Something which we must capture while we tell our brand stories. The 'Street' is far more original, colourful, messy and alive than the manufactured images in most of our ads...Picture from Jetwings : Paining on a house wall in Calcutta by the popular local artist, Ajay Kar
Picture : Paintings on the bodies of trucks
This is a really unusual cross-over of ethnic cultural motifs and practical messages. A medium which has barely been tapped into by big brands.
The format is very Indian, very street and the content 'very native Indian wisdom'!Picture : A mural at Bandra Reclamation
Any form of street art not only produces a gallery of colourful images but also provides a platform to explore regional variations.

Will commercial communication tap into street art or will we just allow homogenised electronic-age images to smoothen all our diversity into a blander, uniform landscape...

Where's the Glue around here?

I have often ranted at the lack of disruptive systemic level changes in the Indian advertising business...Be it a culture of open-source creativity or the subject of a creative-planner formalised partnership, Agency 2.0 and more...

Between Prasoon, Balki or Piyush - I have rarely heard them speak about the agencies/ creatives/ creative products of the future...In fact of the trinity, only Prasoon appears to be wired into the new world/ new media space. At least that's what I get from his heavily PRed thoughts...

However, a flat world ensures that one at least knows of the disruptive business models emerging in other parts of the globe. The Glue Society is one of the agencies/ creative fraternity that is at the fore-front of systemic changes in the way they approach the advertising business...

Came across this interview of co-founder Jonathan Kneebone at this website.

Capturing the essence of his thots peppered with a few of my own.

1. The Glue Society is a creative collective based in Sydney and New York comprising of writers, designers, art directors and film directors. Founded in Sydney in 1998 by Jonathan Kneebone and Gary Freedman.

2. "Rather than become an agency with permanent clients, we decided to work project by project. That way we would be able to ensure all the projects we worked on were those we were suited to and interested in".

I feel the planning fraternity in India could possibly adopt this project/ free-lance approach. Not all clients are worth the jet-miles:-) or the long hours...I would be happier building a domain expertise in my interest area rather than head a geographically demarcated client base.

3. "Rather than just come up with ideas then outsource them to other people to make, we decided to combine concept and execution into the same four walls".

Advertising is amongst the only industries where the central product(still the 30 cc commercial) is out-sourced to the producers...I guess its high time the concept and execution be combined together. It will be a viable, nimbler, happier model.

4. "Our catalogue of work tends to attract clients who are similarly interested in breaking down walls and being brave to new opportunities".


This piece of glue society creative is actually a sculpture(installation) at a beach. It depicts melting ice-cream!!

5. "Bad advertising agencies have a tendency to copy the latest fads or mimic other popular things. This simply won't wash anymore. Why would someone spend time with a fake piece of entertainment, when they can spend time with the original. The industry is being forced to change by the realisation that everyone is creative (something we've long believed)."

6. Advertising is like art in some respects - in that there's a hell of a lot of crap and some things that resonate. The difference for me between the two is at the conceptual level. Advertising tends to be where we solve other people's problems. Art tends to be where you get to solve your own.

I wish we had more thinkers like Jon Kneebone & Gary Freedman closer home...

This is the famous Chicken Sandwich world championship work conceptualised by CP+B and directed by the Glue Society!

Open Source Creativity

Was chatting with a fellow planner who said she is 1/4 copy-writer, 3/4 planner...Well I too think/ feel/ believe to be part copy-writer-part planner:-)

This reminded me of some print ads that me and my friend Shantanu had done while at TBWA - the agency where I think I was the most prolific!



Agency : Open Source
Ideators : Shantanu + Manish
Art : Prashant

This is roughly how I think it happened.
1. We were at a TBWA party, getting drunk and bored.
2. The discussion somehow veered around to the subject of 'Tsunami'. A spirited
Shantanu mouthed this nice line - 'Duniya Se Dard Mita De'. We
felt we had to use it somewhere!
3. Next morning, we exictedly plugged it to a creative team.
4. Waited for about a month. Nothing much happened. More dard:-)
5. Then I had this Bollywood idea.
6. Roped in Prashant - the art guy...who gave this look!
7. Then Shantanu left and we waited another 2-3 months before we presented these
ads to the client along with a media plan! Ambrish was a great help!
8. The client liked and approved the ads.
9. Then I quit TBWA.
10. The ads were given a quiet burial...End of 'Open Source'

Shantanu - Apne dard ki kya dava hai??LOL

Luxury Jeans - A Cross Over Canvas

They sound like two ends of the scale! Therefore, I was curious to read this India Today article(Feb 19 issue) under Society & Arts fashion.

Like elsewhere in the world, India is ready for designer jeans. Looks like the days of jeans-as-only-workwear is fast getting over! Even though, most people still care less about the label and more about the fit!

Even Indian designers are fast catching the luxury jeans band-wagon.

Rocky S, the Mumbai designer was the first to launch a jeans label Rocky S in 2002.
Designer Arjun Khanna's - 'Rockstar in Morocco' was a success!
Though even now, only a very small section of the buyers can afford to shell out 8K or more for luxury jeans.

Levis has its own Diva line endorsed by Sushmita Sen and the Redwire DLX jeans that are iPod compatible. There are also talks of a Levis-Manish Arora collection...

Wrangler has it's own 'John Abrahan by Wrangler' collection at the top end.

Designer Narendra Kumar Ahmed is set to showcase his signature jeans at the Lakme Fashion Week in March.

Then there is the Sevens brand detailed in Swarovski and the Jap-gone-global brand Evisu's hand painted jeans and stuff from Diesel!

I guess 'Luxury Jeans' would be yet another example of 'Massclusivity' - the marriage of 'mass' and 'exclusivity'!
I also feel jeans is the perfect canvas for cross-over adventures in India where...
East meets West
Denim meets Designer
Casual meets Party-wear
Blue/ Mostly White-collar meets Pink/No-collar
Ubiquity meets Fashion/style statement

Luxury jeans(and its various mutants/ avatars) would see an increasing rise in popularity as it would also in a way fall in the category of 'personalised' stuff. The growing digital, connected and participative world loves 'personalised' themes - be it a $20,000 car or a blog or a 'personalised' jeans!

And therefore I think the timeless blue denim has once again re-invented itself for the next decade!

Or am I reading too much:-)

PS. Images sourced from gettyimages.com & India Today

Flash Brands. Flash Thoughts

Like most of us, I have been privy to the out-of-work Bollywood actor Shilpi Shetty's bizarre turn-around in fortunes through the British reality show Big Brother! It's been a 100m sprint towards famedom for Shilpa...

From 'nowhere' to 'everywhere'
From relative joblessness to a flood of Bollywood offers(a report said 74!!)
From a 2nd rung Bollywood star to an 'overnight diva'
From an ill-dressed actor to an icon of 'fusion clothing'
From a 'dumb bimbette' to an 'Indian Icon'(of course debatable and with large dollops of media frenzy!)

Over the last 12 months, I have viewed few such Flash Brands, built solely by media who rise to prominence and share of mind and then fade away. But while they last they are a brand no less!

Some other flash brands( if I can say so) would be 'Prince'(the Haryana boy who fell in a hole and shot to national recognition, Budhia, the Orissa marathon kid who generated TRPs for close to a month for all the Indian news channels and of course Laxmi Niwas Mittal...

Unlike Shilpa, of course, Prince and Budhia did not generate commercial opportunities(at least I am not aware of). Was wondering if there could be a science/ art of the flash brand. In our attention-deficit world, can we create them...Or do flash brands happen only by chance?

I think flash brands might have the following traits...
1. They have a strong topical core. In the case of Shilpa it was 'Resurgent Indian Pride'. More about it here. Budhia = Super Kid Archetype...

2. Built by PR and media reportage and not by advertising.

3. Largely unpredictable. But the flash-timing has to be right. The media must be relatively free to build stories and feed the public. So. flash brands are unlikely to be created in the week preceding KBC's launch or the Union Budget week:-)

4. Indian Flash brands(Shilpa, Budhia, Prince, LN Mittal...) in the recent past have mostly been human. As opposed to the Western/ Japanese ones - Harry Potter(a fictional character), Rubiks Cube, Pokemon, Sudoku!!

5. Flash brands generally follow a story, a quick trajectory of facts, fiction and spice...They ride on a wave of media frenzy and 360 merchandise(Harry Potter, Sudoku)

6. While the origin of a flash brand might be serendipitous, it needs sustained interest by media to keep it going through its relatively short shelf-life...


7. Flash brands might happen with greater frequency today. In the digital age, with the democratisation of technology tools and creative expression, if a flash brand core has an appeal, it encourages an active participation from the masses rather than a passive, push-only communication strategy of most conventional brands...

Would love to hear of more examples, counter-views, other flash brand traits...

Wiki Woman, if that's the way it must be, okay...

Read a small article in HT some days back about the new boss at Wikipedia - Florence Devouard...Everything about her company and her job is pretty new-age!!

1. She runs her office not from NY, London, Hongkong or Shanghai but from a village in central France.

2. Her company - the Wikimedia Foundation in it's present avatar came into being as recently as June 20, 2003! Yet in a crazily short span of 4 years, last month it was voted among the world's 5 most influential brands!! No ads. Pure sampling and co-creation brand!

3. Florence's corporate climb(if we can call it corporate or climb) is equally fascinating...
Her first contact with Wikipedia was in 2001, when it was still a fledgling org.!

She started editing entries on genetically modified organisms and was gradually drawn into the community of volunteer editors...

Pretty soon, she started focussing on internal organisation rather than writing/ editing articles. 3 years later, she was elected to the Wikimedia Foundation board.

And last summer it was agreed that she would step into the shoes of the founder Jimmy Wales, as Chairperson!

4. She is a woman with 3 kids, who works from home in a village and heads among the world's most influential brands. All in 6 short years!

This is a really different world. A world my father can't even dream about. A world my MBA never cautioned me about!! But a world that gets bloody exciting every single day:-)

A world shaped by technology, possibility, serendipity and collaboration...

Organisations like Wikimedia are...

More concepts than companies
More collaboration than hierarchy
More content-driven than products/ services driven
More open-source than closed looped
More virtual than physical
More about volunteers than about employees
More hyborg(hybrid organisations) than anything we have previously known

But if that's the way, it must be okay...

Image sourced from Pixelache

Arranged Love, Love Arranged

I have written earlier on the subject of marriage portals and how these portals are more about family psychology than technology!

The Great Indian wedding is amongst the most colourful, engaging, furiously-reinventing, cross-over social concepts of our times. And therefore of utmost interest and curiosity to me. Found this very well written and researched piece by Tavishi P. Rastogi in HT Brunch.

I have tried to summarise the main points raised over this business of 'arranged love' or better still 'love arranged' marriages.

A recent survey of 603 young men and women in Delhi and Bombay(between the ages of 17 and 25) revealed that a staggering 93% approve of arranged marriages!!A generation ago, metro India rebelled against the very idea of arranged marriages. So, why does Gen Now want Mummy-Papa to find them spouses?
Many cultural/ societal/ individual shifts have been happening often at high pace that have resulted in this...

1. Defiance --> Compliance
Then - The caste/sub-caste restrictions on marriage were far more stronger; so young couples in love had to necessarily rebel.

Now - The new nuclear family parents are far more accomodating and relenting to inter caste/ even inter religion marriages...hence, love is accepted and complied with and almost invaribaly accompanied with the pomp and panache of an arranged marriage! I just attended one such marriage in Mangalore last week. In fact at the sangeet, the love story of the bride and groom was enacted as street theatre with the accompaniment of Bollywood music in front of parents, elders and close friends and relatives!!

2. Risk Takers --> Risk Averse
Then - Love was worth taking the risk of parental disapproval and societal flak.
Love marriage was an emotional decision!

Now - Career obsession by both partners, extremely busy lives and a comfortable lifestyle are too tempting to risk over the mundane but necessary subject of marriage.
Arranged Love marriage for many is a 'considered decision'.

3. Social Decision --> Individual Decision
Then - Part of the angst among young couples was that almost everybody(except the groom and the bride) had a role and decision/ veto power. Arranged marriages involved joint/ consensual decisions.

Now - Arranged love/ love/ love arranged are individual decisions, aided by the internet/ open source parents/ nuclear lifestyles. Diasporic joint families are more for props in the back-drop of a well choreographed sangeet than for 'decision making'.

4. Life Partners --> Lifestyle Partners
Then - Arranged or love marrianges were to get a spouse as life partner.

Now - Young men and women today are looking for perfect spouses/ complete packages/ perfect 10 partnerships that will complement their carefully constructed lifestyles.

5. Hi Tolerance, Lo Expectations --> Lo Tolerance, High Expectations
Self explanatory. Bound to happen when marriages are increasingly being treated as lifetsyle choices/ decisions!

6. Then : Arranged = The arrangement of finding a nice match(status & family compatibility) done by elders

Now : Arranged = The convenience of a finding a safe match(individual compatibility and parental acceptance)

For an increasingly consumerist culture, the market forces are bound to intersect personal spheres. Therefore, marriage contracts, arranged loves, and lifestyle partners are it's natural fall-outs...


Of course no trend completely replaces the earlier patterns or basic human needs, values and aspirations...