Teach India : Wish I Had Thot Of It

There often comes an idea you wish you had done it/ thought about it. The Teach India campaign from TOI is one suck kick-ass idea!

Brutally simple, yet immensely powerful and so sorely needed for India.

"Teach India" is an initiative by 'The Times of India' to help provide an equal opportunity for education to underprivileged children.

The aim of "Teach India" is to provide a platform to educated Indians to provide assistance in basic education to the unprivileged children.

"Teach India" will connect educated individuals with the specialist education providers.

'The Times of India' has tied up with select NGOs in the field of education in multiple cities across India.

Participants have to devote just 2 hours a day to teach underprivileged children, either in a formal environment or even informal teaching like story telling.

There were mote than 10K responses on day one. Some companies are volunteering batches of 50 employees for this...I just signed up!

The Anaesthesia of Unconcern

Before the story gets buried in the debris of a hectic life, I wanted to do something about it.

Mohd. Javed, a 7 year boy was stoned while in a train to Bihar by our reality politician - Raj Thackeray's misguided goons. Because this boy is poor, a Muslim and from Bihar, there will be no more media mentions of him. Read the story on e-TOI here.

No candle marches. No NDTV sponsored sms frenzy. No 'Prince-styled-boy-in-a-ditch' drama!

A life might be lost while Mumbai police watches Raj tapes and gleefully finds nothing wrong!

A week later, there will be another rabble-rousing rally targetting north Indians.
The anaesthesia of unconcern dulls us all.

Drop in STD rates, liquor at 5-star hotels to be cheaper and sundry such stories jostle for our attention and Mohd. Javed is already forgotten by the city!!

Have mailed Mateen.Hafeez@timesgroup.com(the journo covering the story) to get the boy's contacts. He needs about 50K. Maybe we all can help him! Although Raj Thackeray should foot the hospital bill for Javed if he is a saccha Manoos(Marathi or otherwise).

Power of Sub-titles

I had to write about this.

Girirajsingh Natubha studied up to Class 2 in Jamnagar. All his life he struggled to read simple words. A few years ago, however, he found to his surprise that he had begun to read.

It happened quite amazingly after he began watching Chitrageet, a Gujarati television programme of film songs, which had subtitles at the bottom of the screen.

Since he knew many of the songs, he could anticipate the next word. When it appeared he would read it unconsciously and sing along, karaoke style. Soon he found he was able to recognise words in the bazaar and before long he was reading headlines in the newspaper.

A brainchild of Dr Brij Kothari, a social entrepreneur and an IIM Ahmedabad professor(now at Cornell), 'Same Language Subtitling' is a simple but powerful idea which is proven to improve literacy among adults and children.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Dr. Kothari won the $250,000 global innovation prize from the World Bank, which he has used to pay for the cost of subtitling.

For the past five years, every Sunday morning, 15 crore persons have watched Chitrahaar and Rangoli with subtitles. A Nielsen-ORG study, conducted in 2002 and 2007 to assess the impact of subtitling, showed that only 25% school children could read a simple paragraph in Hindi after five years of schooling.

However, this jumped to 56% if they were also exposed to subtitling for 30 minutes a week on Rangoli. Equally dramatic results were found among adults.

Is there a way to micro-fund Dr. Kothari and his efforts. And not just in money. Imagine, all the Internet connected people, the active user base of 20mn volunteered to sub-title the TV content for a literacy movement in India!
Far better than mere burning candles to support causes!

Could Infosys, Wipro, or some company volunteer their computing capacity to help in this endeavour. What better way if some of us can help all of us!

Dr. Kothari gets the Grand Prix for his big idea!! How do we help such social entrepreneurs guys?

The strands of DNA

About a year back, two newspapers were launched in Mumbai - HT and DNA! Contrary to my initial expectations, DNA outsells HT by a good margin...I guess DNA Mumbai was amongst the most hi-profile and expensive media brand launches in 2006!

I regularly read(okay snack) both HT and DNA and have been following the brand trajectory rather keenly. My thots on brand DNA(triggered by their new campaign)in no particular order...

1. The Dainik Bhaskar group(which co-owns DNA) has perfected the art of launching newspapers in new markets after doing a huge consumer research...Full points to people-led-marketing . It works.I think it helped DNA get its initial lead over HT in Mumbai. The marketing efforts also looked sufficiently distinct from the leader TOI.

2. I sort of liked the voice-of-people tonality of the launch campaign. Of course, it helped that HT had a totally ambiguous 'Let there be light' launch campaign done by Ogilvy!

3. On any given day, I have always found more content(in an absolute sense) in DNA than HT.

4. But what's perhaps lacking in DNA is a POV, a sharper articulation of what brand DNA is...On the other hand, HT under Vir Sanghvi appears to me a newspaper brand with a balanced POV. Though ironically it's Mumbai launch was with the cover story on the scandalous Salman - Ash tapes:-)

5. I feel DNA should have worked more on the people-generated content/ brand landscape. A more approachable, a more conversational brand. Not just in content but also in tonality.
Clearly the current campaign - 'Start a Conversation' is a bit distant and cold for the brand as I carry it in my head as a reader...

Conversations with strangers/ anyone often start with a degree of hesitancy, a certain languidness and a general warmth over chai/coffee tonality...
Which this campaign with its stark images sorely lacks even as it hits you from massive hoardings in the city.

6. As a reader I have felt more comfortable with the design/lay-out of HT. It's smart, it has an even spread of content...Neither too text heavy. Nor too visually indulgent. Just the right amount of information for a quick but relaxing browse.

DNA on the other hand chokes me with information even though I admire its attempt to feed me more news every morning. Relative to HT its not easy on the senses. I would have loved a little more naturalness in the lay-out rather than a sense of contrived exactness. The DNA layout appears a bit FMCG-ised...

The models in the current ad campaign are like that. Cardboard picture-perfect-caricatures...Like the product, the brand communication could do better if it loses its stiffness...

I think in the case of DNA, its a case of the product leading the brand...And a change of agency from Rediffusion-DY&R to Contract hasn't helped much.

The brand needs to focus on its DNA, which to me the reader appears to be a strand of collaboration, conversation, cause and of course good content!!