Merchant Clark, Cecil Hotel and a 30 year dream...

It's been a hell of a long time away from the blog. I feel guilty, anxious...and the fingers feel a bit rusty!! So where was I and what kept me so busy for almost 4 months!

Here's the story. A story of a small dream that first took root in the eyes of a 6 year old/ maybe 5. That's me. A dream that sort of has had a gestation period of 30 long years!!

Merchant Clark. When I was of Neo's age(that's about 6 yrs) I had learnt a new word Merchant which I thought was a cool word(cool and merchant sounds weird I know:-) and there was this 5 star hotel in Patna called Maurya Clark. So my little innocent dream was to open a hotel for travellers called Merchant Clark which would be the finest hotel in the country.
I don't think I ever shared this story with anyone. Locked in my head for 3 decades...

And that's where the dream/ desire stayed for the next 30 years. School. College. Engineering. Servicing. Creative Planning. Consultancy. The journey through life. But the dream like the stickiest of post-its never left me. I had ideas but no money. Ideas but no time. Some money but no team. Team but no consensus. And the dream gathered moss...Thick green, slippery moss...

Dare to dream. And then I read this fascinating biography of Rai Bahadur M. S Oberoi by Bachi Karkaria some years back. Of how Sr. Oberoi dared to dream. As the hotel bell-boy had the audacity and ambition to pawn his wife's jewellery to buy the Cecil hotel from the gora owner.

And the dormant thoughts of starting a hotel/ service brand again floated in my mind...I remember finishing the last pages of the book in the wee hours of morning. Warm tears on my cheek. Of life passing by. Feeling inspired. But that was the max that happened again. Work. Life. Sceptics. Naysayers. More work. Energy sappers. More Life. I-know-why-it-won't-work well-wishers...Tum to planner ho. Business-pehle-kiya-hai gyan!!

And then when I shifted to Gurgaon mid last year, between lazy beer sessions and some back of the napkin calculations, the truncated idea of a service apartment/ brand(prequel to the grand hotel) started taking shape...

It took a dedicated/ passionate team of four, four months and a couple of lacs to turn the 30 year old idea into a small reality! Our service villa - it's an apartment in a villa called Cinnamon Corporate Stays(it's got 5 interesting rooms - Green, Grand, Unwind, Doodle and Puraani Jeans and a bit of story everywhere.) Far from perfect but it's happened...

Cinnamon for us/me is a story of belief. Belief that stuff happens when you push it hard enough. Stuff can happen when you really wanna make it happen. That stuff happens not in a grand planned way but in the most random way when you least expect it to happen...

It took me/us a lot of time to convert the idea into reality. To convince a small team to move ahead when budgets and time were huge constraints. It's still some months to break even. But it's there. Our first brand/ service. Not to a client's brief but to ours. And it has been sweat, passionate obsession and bloody tiring. Especially with a full time day job! But immense lot of help, support from my team.

Along the way, I picked up a couple of lessons in brand building. This time around not between the pages of a book, but between visits to Lajpat Nagar and worrying about the leaking tap and the 'garam chai'. But more about that later...

Today I just wanted to share that it's important to hold on to your dreams. However, weird, wild and wishful. And sometimes it may take up to 30 years for a dream to shape up...But don't let any one's laughs or cynicism get you off-track.

If you really want something bad enough, the universe conspires to help you...Paulo Coelho saheb was right in his book Alchemist...At least even if I fail. I will have a story to tell my grandchild around the fireplace...LOL

You could check us out here. But in case you are travelling to Delhi/ Gurgaon and want to stay in a cosy little place mail us at cinnamonstays@gmail.com

We would be happy to host you...Cheers

The Joy and Despair of Flying

Disclaimer: I like/okay love XYZ Airways. Last year I made 83 trips...I am their platinum card member...And the free air miles financed my Kerala trip in December:-)

So this rant against their public address system(and many other airlines) is just one peeve among the many joys!!

Hey guys, do something about it...The more I hear, the more I hate!!

Sample this(of course hugely contrived and exaggerated for effect:-)

1.This is your captain speaking from the cock-pit.
Oh great I thought you were making out in the loo...

2. Whether you are in business class or economy, I have pleasure in announcing that all of you are flying to Mumbai. Window, middle, aisle seats. All of you guys...
Thank you so much captain! I was waiting for that re-assurance from you!!!

3. It's a pleasure having you on-board.(Actually in a 2 hour flight this message often comes after 90minutes of flight...LOL

4. The temperature outside is -38.673 deg Celsius. This is 2.456 degrees less than normal. Mind it!!

3. But we have somehow managed to maintain the temperature inside the cabin at an annoyingly high 26 degrees...Since we love playing with the temperature knob. And pushing down our otherwise high consumer satisfaction scores!

4. We are now flying over the lovely city of Jaipur. If you manage to strain your neck 254 degrees from the aisle seat, you will still not be able to see anything...It's just a practical joke we play on the aisle seat passengers!!

5. The aircraft is flying at 854km/hr. But we will still be late by 55 minutes. Please ponder over this meaningless statistic. We get joy at throwing random numbers at people.

6. As per the current report from the control-room, we are number 12 in the Mumbai air-traffic-queue. But you know the fickle minded, twice-divorced air-traffic controller...By the time we approach Mumbai, he may put us at number 21!! So, don't take any of these announcements at face value...

7. I hope you followed my delayed, mostly irrelevant information read from a script outsourced by the legendary Rapidex guys and delivered in our trade-mark English which only frequent flyers can understand or so we think...

(We at XYZ airways have collectively failed the 'Lagey Raho' speech improvement programme...But Hum Honge Kaamyaab Ek Din...)

Finally the last of these messages put you to deep sleep despite the insidious 'temperature knob playing tactic!!!

I don't know who looks after the public address systems of most airlines...But they are uniformly crappy and banal...

For all brands, specially the service brands, the last mile customer-exchange/ conversation/monologue is quite important...

No, I wouldn't ever change my airlines because of this. I have far too many reward points to take care off:-)
But there are no diminishing returns for a service brand for being interesting, witty, human and sensible even at 45000ft up in the sky when the temperature outside is -38.679 deg Celsius...LOL

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

A Bank Full of Surprises

This morning as I stepped into the Bandra branch of HSBC to pay my monthly home loan EMI, the sight of a huge teddy bear sitting on a chair greeted me. I thought it must be part of the extended children's day celebrations!

But a closer look made me realise that this teddy was on IV drip!!

Actually the cute teddy-on-drips was a display for an HSBC and Tata AIG critical care insurance plan...Generally one would not even look at the in-bank hard/ soft sell...
But the teddy surprise made me click a snap and snap a leaflet as well as pose a query to the personal banker!

And this was not the first time that HSBC has done some memorable 'last-mile' stuff!
Around the time when Hanuman( the movie) was released, they were giving free Hanuman-pencil-sharpeners to the kids who came to the bank. My son, Neo was thrilled with this gift!

Again on Diwali, the bank was decked up with 'diyas', festoons, etc. They again gave a small Diwali gift to Neo who was tagging along with me.There was a stall selling small festive items (arranged by an NGO) - bank-that-reaches-out-to-the-needy-space!

The staff was wearing ethnic attire. And these are not one-off gimmicks. Even in the past, HSBC has celebrated other local festivals as well...
HSBC through its ATL and BTL communication has been really making an honest enough effort to connect locally.

HSBC communication( the World's Local Bank) has been quite clear, consistent and one can actually perceive the localization( increasingly even the models used in the print ads and posters are Indians).

On the other hand you have Standard Chartered, a brand that I know(or claim to know) a lil better as I used to handle it at TBWA. SCB makes great pompous sounding statements on the bill-boards and in print ads. But the in-bank-experience is quite the opposite!
Of course my sliver of experience is based again on the Bandra branch and my credit card transactions( have a 9 year old card with them)...

To give SCB credit, while they do invest heavily and consistently in the Mumbai Marathon, I suspect the act has now become a part of their annual corporate communication check-list...

And while the tag-line to the Mumbai Marathon says 'Feel the Spirit'. Unfortunately it is sorely missing in the in-bank environment.

One of the problems with a financial brand I feel is that it is heavily transaction driven. Therefore, every touch point every-time enhances or takes away from the brand experience. And while you may need the umbrella of great-canvas-thematic-ads, the excitement and the passion shown in brand initiatives at the last mile count a lot!

And HSBC clearly knows how to deliver those small touches. Oh, I forgot to mention, everytime I go to check my home loan status, I feast upon the Re 1 candy!
I feel even the most sophisticated and demanding of customers can be delighted with a small dollop of surprise. Check out the related Oct 12 post on Hedonistic Treadmill and Customer Service . And yes, mail me your own surprise stories!