Seven minutes of fame!!

The word-digit combo 'CDC H1N1' sounds like a near chemical formulae of a sexy hydrocarbon.However,far from being a part of elementary chemistry , it has managed to evoke emotions mimicking fear,anxiety and to people like me- a generous dose of hypchondriac-ism.









Swine is one animal that will be extremely proud of the way it has managed to create havoc among us homosapiens. The pioneering breed of pigs that showed signs of it initially are ones belonging to the North America. Not that it puts shame acrss the faces of our ubiquitous desi ones.They seem to be way too happy as well- a momentary freedom from slaughtering and thus ramifications on businesses in fine dining that use them as inputs like TGIF n Ruby tuesday .







Long considered the most wretched creatures to set foot on this planet and never having been venerated in any of the religious scriptures unlike other more fortunate ones,it is their sole chance for a well deserved riposte. Let 'em enjoy their seven minutes of fame-they would nt get another shot at this for sure anytime soon!!This is cos scientists have managed to discover the gene that leads to the flu.







Given the seriousness of the flu in India esp with the installation of health personnel in airports to check on foreign nationals n NRI's visiting India either in a bid to make emselves seemingly recession proof or to find a desi bride, one never expects to keep reminding oneself of the prevalence of such a thing wherever your legs lead you. Since my astrologer for a long time has not been in a mood to predict a foreign trip for me , I had to make my way to the tech city -B'lore. As is my customary habit during the flight,I was reading a novel n listening to the ipod intermittently.






Then suddenly, I coughed. Then without missing a breath, i sneezed. Without apologizing for the impoliteness as is usually my wont, I continued devouring my book. As i glanced across the seats,i saw a beefy foreigner( I ve grown slimmer u c-hence the comparison) training his eyes on me suspiciously.I was ready for the embarassment that is reserved for a passenger who 's deemed unhealthy and in fact dangerous for co-passengers. The self respecting guy I am , I was ready for a verbal duel with the beautiful Indian- Nicaraguan accented air hostess, should the person complain.Beware!! I growled in my mind.


Then Alas!! I realized I did nt even suffer from anythng in the first place,leave alone the swine .. Then why the hell should I help accelerate my systolic pressure??.. With my mind entertaining all these apparently virulent though in actuality benign thoughts-more aptly confabulations, i kept seated and wondered about the possible sequence of events of my own crafting. The guy was still inspecting whether my cough and sneezes resembled the pattern that a swine.. ahem swine flu infected person would exhibit. My physiological condition fortunately did not concur.

Looking back, I wonder how a few creatures in North america could cause near mental trauma in a guy who s far far away from the action. Blame programmes like 'Hoshiyaar' and 'Khabardar' aired 5 times a day on some select news channels. A bit pondering reveals Food-chain as the answer . Being a vegetarian, albeit a grudging one helps a bit you see!!!!!

People@mindspace

I have decided to pass up jotting down only the major life events that I usually do in my posts for a weekly random update about activities that you may not find as idiotic as you would have earlier. Here, I list down a random profile of some of the people/organization/events who have impacted me this week in some way or the other.In fact, most of 'em have been a part of my Hippocampus for some while now. However, this list is by no means exhaustive.

Tim Berners Lee-the man who invented the World wide web(www) is someone me and everyone who says 'digital' should revere. Its only because of him that Dell computers is able to transact with its customers and build up its competitive advantage,Amazon.com work the way it does , people like me are able to apply online for a job in this deadly downturn,enable me to take pride in my googlability,peep into others' profiles via Facebook and orkut,put to exercise my eyeballs watching evrything from mimicry to songs to funny animal videos on Youtube among other trivial things .

Sachin Tendulkar & Brian Lara-the first one for combining everything the best batsman in the world should have -technique, consistency and records as a token of symbolism to make the commentators yap endlessly on them rather than on his cricketing prowess. The latter because in the 16-17 years I have spent watching and playing the game , I have nt seen any other guy who has the ingenuity to showcase 3-4 spectacular shots for a particular ball. Like almost evry Indian who views himself as an armchair Indian team member, I have contemplated very seriously about who's better, often ending up with never -to-be repaired fights with my friends. Employing subjective methods like Analytical absolutism,(Characteristics - good player) did not in any way alter the result of the slugfest either!!

Nokia-Even though this is an organizational entity, I admire its ability to reap scale economies (thus lessen the prices we pay for a mobile ) and expand to geographies that has helped change the way we communicate.The mobile phone today is more ubiquitous than a bathing soap!! I found that to my amazement when I visited Indian villages as part of my internship project.They unwittingly( to marketers of soap) had more reasons to offer for using a mobile phone than a soap which according to them did nothing to enhance their business and social productivity. I have always been a person with a very low gratitude quotient; so it becomes rather difficult for me to think of all those who have affected my daily life profoundly.

Indian financial sector liberalization (1991-92): Oxymoronic as it may sound, the economic liberalization has made me a captive of the subject of Economics all through my graduation and a bit into my Post grad.An appreciation for the pathbreaking usage of the grey cells displayed by the then government makes me often wonder about the aptness of Dr. Singh as our PM. Blame the General elections and the vitriolic statements by the Opposition party for such a thought entering my otherwise ignorant mind space.

I ve so much more to write!!

Sir Richard Branson-irreverent,outre,unconventional,rebellious,disruptive are not the traits that one would associate with this man but to the various companies he has a stake in. Starting off his business intitiative with what we say is a 'back of the napkin' business model , the man has successfully managed to consume a fair share of time in my Strategy class that was based on Leadership styles. He radically altered the '3-6-3 model' that had till then characterized firms in various sectors.

Deepak Chopra-I admire his ability to transcend from being a specialist in internal medicine (Graduated from the hallowed portals of the AIIMS, Delhi)to becoming a staunch advocate of the connection between the mind and the body.Being quagmire-d in the illusions of the material world and what it has on offer , I like the many other ordinary mortals find it a bit tough to put to test what all the man has to say.But must say that he makes it sound simpler than most others do.



Mark Twain-Samuel Langhorne Clemens is one of my fav humorists. He seemed to have had the immense ability to combine philosophy of life's travails and dealings with a generous and heady mix of humour. The following are the ones that I manage to remember jogging down my quotation storehouse and are unfortunately by no means philosophical and probably not that funny. Sample these: "Get your facts right n then you can distort them as much as you please". "Concerning the difference between man and the jackass : some observers hold that there is nt any. But this wrongs the jackass." " I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

Arun Jaitley and P.Chidambaram : Two of the very few politicians I admire . Their ability to stand tall amidst the ever penetrating Papparazzi (the Indian Media sure is graduating towards becoming one) and their ability to float statistics liberally to augment their speeches.Their lawyering background certainly does help. Which makes me wonder whether its a logical progression for lawyers to move to being politicians ? I can count at least 7-8 of em among the two major national parties. Oratorical skills do help but not more than working with and for the mass. We see Advani challenge his incumbent counterpart for a debate with the Congress admitting the lack of penchant of the latter to engage in one. Somebody tell them : We'd wish a Obama too!! But that is a different debate altogether !!!The context and the structure as they say is crucial to solving this . Some other day some other time. CHAO!!

Disruptive innnovators-Welcome the breed!!

That news channels have wreaked havoc in my life is well demonstrated when one sees me interact with my friends. Most of my discussions with them seem to more often than not veer towards detailing the snippets that I end up watching on these channels.
Move over information and entertainment –curiosity is the king here!!When other news channel focused on what they should be –that is News providing vehicle, there were channels that trained their eyes on creating an amalgamated concoction of News n entertainment-‘newstainment’.
Sharing their deep insights about Bollywood to Sports to Politics to Candid camera to sometimes “news err..Breaking news” and packaging it in a way none other has have earned them numerous eyeballs (TAM-Television Audience Measurement sadly doesn’t do a great job of capturing that). That the savvy marketers at Colors, Sony, Zee , Star(GEC-General Entertainment Channel) as well as in the entrenched news channel space undermined their potential was a pity!!Or so would hope the Masaledar TV channels!! Memorizing Porters’ 5 forces and anticipating newer, disruptive competitors is something incumbents should have done.

Segmentation and Target audience : Some would argue that by virtue of attracting viewers from both GEC and news channels , these might end up targeting the ‘entire set’ of TV viewers. Should then it be called “Mass segmentation” or some form of “hybrid segmentation”. My take is somewhat different. The segmenting variable here is “Curiosity” here for one never knows what to expect from an otherwise ‘usual Tendulkar interview’ or the “Filmfare award function” when these are beamed on these particular channels .The post mortem of these is something that is sure to baffle any sane person watching it. Thus, one would assume that Creativity is the key here.

Organizational structure : Such an atmosphere of creativity and daily innovation is often the result of a carefully crafted Company culture. Let us delve a bit on their unique Organizational structure that fosters disruptive innovation of such degree. These channels replace “information gatherers” with “creatives” as in those found in Ad agencies. These are people with an IQ beyond 200(According to Lewis Terman,these are people with ‘Unmeasurable genius’ )having an innate ability to craft and transform ordinary TV viewing stuff to something that is out of the world both literally and metaphorically( I am referring to the Alien’s case here!!).However, they need to ‘Value Add’ on what is forwarded to them- just to justify the peanuts that they are awarded every month end.
Any segmentation based on the curiosity plank is bound to be successful and captivating enough for the audience to avowedly be a part of its fan base.
One of the innovators responsible for such a format has been a person who was last seen on Zee TV interviewing people, bowling them with his own personal grouses and cleverly masking these in the form of what he referred to as ‘janata ka aarop’. He seems to have been an ardent student of Porter and Drucker for he has not failed to imbibe n implement all that he could from the great thinkers.

Here's more!!

aCompetitive advantage : Moving on , their competitive advantage though imitatable, has to be their Human resources and thus the creativity that emanates from them. It becomes difficult for other organizations to recruit and retain such employees as they are known to put to display “a unique form of emotional catharsis” post which “creative juices start flowing” thereby rendering masterpieces like the Alien story. These people achieve such ‘flow states’ as Daniel Goleman defines it, with easier and frequent regularity than ordinary mortals inhabiting the planet. But these gifts of god may be inept as far as social niceties are concerned!!! Even though I am sure that the sequence of my writing doesn’t strictly constitute a Business Plan nor a Situational audit, I continue with this display of my unintelligent,infrequent creative bursts for the benefit of these very News channels that I am discussing about.

Entry strategy and Positioning : Before you ascribe their viewership to the ‘First mover advantage’,I may bring to your ‘attention’ (diminishing though!!)to the real market creator in the form of Aaj Tak. While Aaj tak remained restricted to displaying exaggerated version of humans n their quirky dealings and subsequently ceded turf, there were these channels who had till then already specialized in this and graduated to higher beings—again literally n figuratively. These talked about “Ravan’s(The villain in the epic Ramayan) ma in law s residence’ when other channels were busy talking about Bollywood villains and Politicians, about “alien n cow” when others focused on Hrithik’s performance in Koi mil gaya and on random rumoured -to –be UFO videos.

Case study : My personal favourite is the Alien and cow case: The piece shows an Alien(almost jadoo like)strolling the earth for some much needed meal and god-o-god finds an unassuming cow which gets whisked right away. The Alien for starters is also fluent in Hindi and gives an exclusive interview to the esteemed news channel reporter who for the benefit of viewers had unearthed the mystery that has only been speculated about hitherto . At the end of the ‘torture’ is a search by the distressed owner of the animal who all the way curses his plight but never manages to find the cow!! No wonder that people like Piyush Pandey(a Creative) and Prahlad Kakkar(an Ad director) rightly believe these people are breathing right down their neck!!

Market growth strategy : Moving on to funnier things, I attempt to invoke Mr. Ansoff’s aid (The person has devised a useful matrix to aid businesses decide their market growth strategy)to help me chalk out a possible diversification strategy for these channels. I am sure this is at the risk of inviting chagrin from my friends who by now would be dead sure about my famed intellectual abilities. Here it goes : These channels should start defining their business as that in “Entertainment” and not just News. I am sure doing that would put them in strict competition with Disney which also views itself as an “entertainment provider” that makes people happy. And so does brighten its chances of an International foray to challenge Disney’s might!! Only that these “news channels” evoke feelings closely mimicking distress and with days of increased exposure, alienation (from people around!!) and mental depression. Diversification strategy: 1. Into Comics-they should view themselves as those entrusted with reviving Comic reading among children. 2. Content provider for Stage plays n theatre –Apart from ‘ commercialising’ theatre and getting more money into it, this may force stalwarts like Nasser uddin Shah to do some self introspection and probably inspire him to add a new dimension to his acting skills.

Finally, they should at the earliest call up an IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) expert so that the “mind blowing idea(s)” that generate/s content for these channels do not get replicated and thereby get confined within our country .This would help spare us the embarrassment that the TV audience of other countries might generously afford, if these channels do get beamed on their idiot boxes. Ever that is!!