Recession Busters - Part 1

The two topics, which have been consuming unreasonable reels of newsprint & airtime on news channels off late, are Terrorism & Recession.  While terrorism could be quite a sensitive topic to blog about, recession is already sensitive. So thought of starting off a series of posts on various ways to bust the recession. Obviously in the style that suits me the most. So lets get rolling.

Hoard your Monies

While we hear stories of people getting retrenched, laid-off, kicked-off & think, lucky us to have made it through another day, I think it’s a good idea to start hoarding our monies before the pink slips make us go red in our face & elsewhere. So here are a few tips & ideas to help us hoard truckloads of money, for those dry days.

• Pick the damn phone, call your insurance company & stop investments in all your pension plans. Needless to say the pension plans are planned to get you monies after 15, 20, 25 years. But it really does not put monies in your pocket in the next 15, 20, 25 days or worst 15, 20, 25 minutes. You never know whats gonna hit you in these times, so might as well have the money lying with you rather than the insurance company

• A friend of mine at Infosys was talking about how his boss decided not to buy a car he was planning to buy & rather settle down for a bike instead. After a few days he decided to not buy the bike as well. He obviously wanted to hoard that money for unforeseen days ahead. So all of us who are already using public transport to commute, hats off to their foresight. If we could probably cycle it down to our work places or walk down, we could save on the monies spent at the health club & add it to our ‘Hoard Fund’

• Liquid is the buzzword here my friend. Stay liquid at all times no matter what. Obviously not referring to martinis or cognacs or tequila or any other form of fluid, me talking about cash baby. So go ahead sell off the piece of inherited land in your home town, withdraw the Provident Fund stuck in your previous company, liquidate the low interest paying FD you got into a few years back, sell your old car lying unused in your garage, the old camera, the old denim jacket from your college days (which does not fit you any longer), the old music cassettes and any other vintage & antique (fancy names for old & useless) stuff you think might fetch you a few bucks to add to the ‘Hoard Fund’. Ebay it man, just inacse you are feeling lost.

•  Any other money hoarding ideas that come into your mind while you read this post, are to be strictly adhered to. If you think your idea is smart enough do not hesitate to share it with your colleagues or me. Happy Hoarding. 

The Economy of Loose Cigarettes

Loose cigarettes to be bought or sold in any country other than the third world countries & obviously India is a crime. I was trying to figure out why is it a crime to sell or buy loose cigarettes? What is so wrong about it that the developed nations categorize it as a CRIME. And if it is such a crime why don't we recognize it as a crime when more than 60% of cigarettes sold in India are loose.

So Swaminomics got the better of me & I got behind this to understand the economics & logic behind this. India is probably one of the largest cigarette/bidi markets in the world. We sell over 100 billion sticks of cigarettes & 800 billion sticks of bidis annually so that makes it close to 8 billion cigarettes & 64 billion bidis in a month. Phew, that got the smoke coming from my ears. India smokes man, like nobody's business. Over 85% of excise revenues collected in India amounting to whopping 8500 crores come from the tobacco industry alone. But the insight is not in this, it is about the excise revenue which never comes to the GOI (Government of India, what did you think) 

That's exactly what the loose cigarettes add up to. Now lets take a closer look, I smoke the Gold Flake king size which for a pack of 10 costs INR 40. This has all the excise revenues & other taxes added in it. When I go to buy a loose GF I pay 4.50 INR per stick. That's 5 Rs. more per pack of 10 or 0.50 Rs. for each stick which goes absolutely unaccounted for. A quick math here will say that considering 100 billion sticks of cigarette alone ( I am not calculating loose bidis) sold every year of which close to 60% are sold loosely, the amount of excise & tax loss to the exchequer is close to a whopping 300 billion Rs. Add the bidi figures to it & you could be zapped. Phew, smoke coming out of my ears again.

So after all the math, now I realize why its a crime to sell or buy loose cigarettes in developed nations. And why they are DEVELOPED nations in the first place. And in these times of recession I hope that the GOI reduces the Income Taxes & VAT's & Service Taxes and all the burden on the common man & look at various ways to earn revenues. And loose cigarettes is definitely a good start. Declare it a CRIME Mr. Ramadoss, we are with you. Save us the burden.

Nilesh Ghai      

Plastic Aficionados

Indians are in love with plastic ( POLYETHYLENE for those of you who like the technical name). So much in love with it that you will not find anything else but plastic in any format in any corner of India that you visit. Plastic bags, plastic buckets, plastic bottles, plastic sheets, plastic on your new car seats, plastic on your new TV set, plastic on your new water bottle, thankfully our better halves don't come wrapped in plastic when we get married.

OK, just last month, Ajay from our society bought a shining new car. He met us, distributed sweets, threw a small party for his newly acquired possession. We ate, drank, couldn't stop appreciating the power, looks, bhp and the food & wine & all other sundry things that we knew about the automobiles. For a moment I thought everyone in the room knew so much about automobiles that I probably was the only person who knew so less and was hardly able to cope up with the bhp's, and the torque's and any of the auto lingo. I started feeling I was at Detroit to attend a party.

Incidentally his car park is just next to mine and I have been seeing his car for all this while. The newness is still there, it still shines and looks like a brand new car which he just bought yesterday. And the reason for that is the PLASTIC again. The car seats, handle bars, gear knob, and anything & everything inside the car is still wrapped in the plastic that was there when he bought the car. I don't think he plans to remove the plastic atleast for the next one year or little more than that. After all its a new car damn it.

I was going through a report which talks about USA being the largest consumer of plastic with per capita plastic consumption being a little more than 20 kgs. I would beg to differ here as I strongly feel that India has the largest per capita consumption of plastic in the world the only difference being that we love to preserve plastics The buckets in our house, the dustbins, the kitchen storage bins, the plastic bags and everything else in plastic has been there from the time we bought it which could be a decade or more. 

We Indians strongly believe in the adage: If it ain't broken, don't mend it. 

Hail PLASTIC !!!!!!!!!!!

Nilesh Ghai

 

OOH Bursting At Its Seams...........

OOH is bursting at its seams atleast thats what it looks like nowadays. Everyone is talking about its growth rate, investments are pouring in, innovations are at their best & the biggies from the globe (JC Decaux, News Corp) are here to rock it further. So next time when you are Out Of your Home you are bound to be exposed to a media property no matter where you are, what you do & what your frame of mind is.

Gone are the days of traditional billboards, today you might be shopping for groceries, having a cafe latte with your girl, watching a movie at a multiplex, travelling by air/train/bus, surfing at a cyber cafe, in the lift of your office building you have atleast one OOH media property trying to woo your attention. The clients seem to be liking it as well. So what have you from FMCG's to durbales to alcobev to automobile to lifestyle evereyone is on one or more of these media properties. And it is growing. Well good going you might say.

Now let me play the devil's advocate here. So where are the authentic figures validating the reach like your TRP's & TAM's & ABC's & NRS's for the other mediums. Well that doesn't seem to matter here as evereyone in OOH seems to have their own figures and it all looks so very exciting & promising. I came across an innovative OOH media property based at cyber cafes in form of a desktop screen. Now it got me thinking about how much time does one really spend looking at desktop screens at the cyber cafes? Probably a few seconds before you start surfing and looking at other sites of your interest. Apparently this media property also received a venture funding in exess of 5 million USD for the venture & the early adapters to this medium
are the likes of Pepsi. I was having a discussions the other day with an executive from one of the OOH media ventures having media properties targeting shopper's while they are about to make purchasing decisions aiming at influencing those decisions in the favour of the brands advertising. Good idea, an established concept in the West. How do you measure the reach & effectiveness of the media & who autenticates it, was my question. Is mere footfalls a good measure? I don't think so. When I am out shopping I am kind of getting tierd looking at the over crowded shelves, where I am spoilt for choice. Do I actually look at the lcd overhead display, didnt I get enough of it at my home, in my car, on the way to the shopping mall and evereywhere else where I looked at? And if I am actually watching the lcd overhead display then in all porbablities I am not shopping while my wife is actually shopping. So I am not there to make a purchase & the ads are not going to make me buy something which I am not there for.

This is quite debatable you may say & have your views which might be quite the opposite from mine. You are welcome for a discussion. Thinking about the OOH media innovations infact made me think about a place where it has not reached extensively but there is no reason not to be there. The 'LOOS' at these places which have high footfalls, talk about malls, multiplexes, night clubs and anything else where people gather in numbers. Well atleast thats where I am exposed to nothing else for those few moments & porbably most receptive to communication of any kind. And go to think of it I can be not only doing branding but also sampling.

I will not be surprised if we have a media property going forward at the LOOS and it could probably be touted as one most INNOVATIVE OOH ideas of the decade.

Nilesh Ghai

Controversy of Advertising or Advertising for Controversy

Being a recruitment consultant makes you meet so many diverse people from diverse backgrounds and discuss their specific manpower requirements (I know it sounds crude, but thats what talent, human capital & other such fancy names are).Its quite interesting when you get to hear some real 'path-breaking' manpower requirements from people.
The last time I was sitting with a Copy Head of a leading advertising agency here at Pune trying to get a brief about his urgent requirement for a Copy-Writer it got me thinking really beyond the scope of recruitment.The requirement sounded something like this: I am looking for very dynamic copy writer, with about 2-3 years ofexperience, with an impeccable English language skills & whos done some path breaking work which incidentally does not happen in Pune advertising circuit.
He went on discuss the scene of advertising in Pune where creative guys dont get enough opportunities to vent out their creativity. True, I said, look at the work around and really makes you think about the creative quotient of Pune. I know its quite a debatable issue this. But what got me thinking is when he told me about the creative culture at their agency where they encourage their creative talent to create controverisal work,something that rocks & shocks world.
Hmmm, now thats something which is interesting I thought.
So what makes a great piece of communication? Is it the controversies or the simplicity? I always thought its simplicity which creates great & lasting communication. Look at Fevicol's communication very simple & very memorable. Anyways the point here that I am trying to make is that should you ever start the creative process with an objective which is to create a controversy I am sure you will endup making something which is short-lived for sure. I bet Alyque, the creator of some of the most controversial communications (Kamasutra & Lyril) of his times will also agree to this. Also when you groom fresh talent with this objective you will create a talent pool of creative guys who can't think of anything beyond controversy and their creativity thrives on controversy. They will always look at opportunites to create elements in their communications which create controversy, even if it never exists. The worst scenario is when the creative quotient of the creative person willbe benchmarked against so called controversial pieces of communication.

I think the copy head & the agency need to do an introspection of their orientation towards what makes a truly great piece of communication before the hire people & groom them, lest it becomes an agency creating only controversies & no communications.

So What's Cooking Tonight?

Men at Kondhwa, Wanowrie & NIBM have certainly learned a thing or two from Mr. Ambani. Atleast thats what its looks like when you go to visit the Relaince Fresh outlet at Salunkhe Vihar Road. So next time when you walk inside the store you hear Mr. sharma telling Mrs.Sharma that he feels like eating Kaddu (pumpkin) tonight and he picks up the Pumpkin, sees it for its freshness, weighs it and moves ahead to pick up other vegetables which he would like to relish over the week. Not unsual you may say, I do the same every time I visit a Reliance Fresh or a More or a Spencers.
Let us now put things into perspective. Rewind a couple of years when such stores never existed & your favourite 'Bhajiwalla Bhaiya' was your sole pick up joint for all your vegetable supplies. And the wife would think about what her husband's savoured delicacies are & would pick & choose the vegetable, check them for freshness, get them weighed, bargain rates & the go home to keep food ready for the hubby once he is back from work. That's so traditionally Indian and thats what wife's are for. Sighting men at these 'Bhajiwalla Bhaiya' was like sighting a shooting star or worse sighting an UFO. Even if he were there the husband would stand aside, go on long conversations over the mobile phone with some tom, dick & sultry & be inconscipicious of everything going around.
So now what has happened to this same man who is not only vocal about what he would like to eat tonight but also equally involved in the entire process of picking his favourite vegetable, weighing it, and packing it. And he looks so involved & excited doing the same. What has brought about the transformation? The retail revolution has struck him in all probablities. This revolution has indeed brought about a change not only in the way we shop but also in the waywe think. And all this for some clever thinking from the new-age 'Bhajiwalla Bhaiyas' aka Mr. Ambanis, Mr Birlas & Mr. Goenkas. I think the wifes are not complaning at all. After all its all about gender equality, ain't it.