Last but one

As I try to write up my annual year ender column for indiantelevision.com, I am a bit stumped. What was so special about this year that Sonali Krishnan and her tribe have not already done to death? New channels, new stations, new magazines, new movies...the same old blah blah.

Maybe I should write about all the unusual gifts I received instead. Like the imagine pad Bamboo (pen tablet) from NDTV Imagine "capture an idea before it runs away". The wooden toys fridge magnets from Dilli Haat. The DVD of "an inconvenient truth" sent to me twelve months before it became a fad, and four months before it won an Oscar. The bucket of colostrum enriched puppy formula from Australia. The 3D holographic sculpture of the Laughing Buddha sent by Peter whose grin welcomes me home every Mumbai evening. The in-room golf set from Sony. Mary's blue fleece and Marie's brown cape to warm me up in a cold Chicago. A three bedroom apartment in a plush Khar lane. Two three-wheeler animal ambulances. A graphic designer's first attempt with oils on canvas featuring three gauti pups lounging inside a splash of deep ocean blue. The magical heat sensitive colour changing coffee mug from Bindaas. Our first pineapple.

This is not my last post this year. I still have to write that year ender, and publish that here before it goes up on their site. Meanwhile, let me leave you with this ad for HP, featuring my most favorite TV star, without his face - but with a sqeaky screechy world's most recognisable voice like that, who needs a face?

Views from windows

December 5th, Chicago. There were snow showers all night long. In the morning, I woke up to this sight - my first encounter with fresh snow on the streets, made even more beautiful by a cheerful smiling sun and glistening pine trees.



December 15th, Dandeli. A river flowed right in front of our tents, set in a jungle lodge in the teak and bamboo forests of South West India. I woke up to a darkish twilight, the clear waters barely visible through the overhanging branches.



Black and white views that spoke volumes and still do. I have learnt much in 2007. Thank you, nature.

Lost!

My template, and all my XML files. While our systems department attempts to recover the lot, I've used a temporary template, only because I was eager to post this incredibly sweet video I just received, and wouldn't be able to do that for the next four days - yes travelling again.

This describes the reunion between a lady and a lion she rescued and nursed back to health. She placed him in a zoo and when she visited him, he gave her what is known as the 'hug of the millennium'. Watch it to know what a real real hug is :-)

Old Turkey Buzzard

Eyes of all kinds fascinate me. I tend to judge a person by his/her eyes and I connect with animals most through their eyes. Birds' eyes specially are riveting, disproportionately large and heavy lidded when blinking. The opening shots in Mackenna's Gold featuring Old Turkey Buzzard's eyes, do you remember them? If not, here is a reminder.



I was a very little girl when my brother took me to see the movie and for weeks after that we sang about gold and gold, men will do anything for gold. As I grew older, the bird itself and what he stood for became more understandable. He inspired the opening frames of our first GSPCA film, posted here. Today, I am humming these lines and find the truth in them uncanny.

Old Buzzard knows that he can wait
For every mother's son has got a date
A date with fate, with fate.......

Note in my diary - 2008, got to visit the Grand Canyon.

Thanksgiving

Today, Americans all over the world celebrate their National Thanksgiving Day. Here is the text of their President's sealed proclamation for the day :

Thanksgiving Day, 2007
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

Americans are a grateful people, ever mindful of the many ways we have been blessed. On Thanksgiving Day, we lift our hearts in gratitude for the freedoms we enjoy, the people we love, and the gifts of our prosperous land.

Our country was founded by men and women who realized their dependence on God and were humbled by His providence and grace. The early explorers and settlers who arrived in this land gave thanks for God's protection and for the extraordinary natural abundance they found. Since the first National Day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed by President George Washington, Americans have come together to offer thanks for our many blessings. We recall the great privilege it is to live in a land where freedom is the right of every person and where all can pursue their dreams. We express our deep appreciation for the sacrifices of the honorable men and women in uniform who defend liberty. As they work to advance the cause of freedom, our Nation keeps these brave individuals and their families in our thoughts, and we pray for their safe return.

While Thanksgiving is a time to gather in a spirit of gratitude with family, friends, and neighbors, it is also an opportunity to serve others and to share our blessings with those in need. By answering the universal call to love a neighbor as we want to be loved ourselves, we make our Nation a more hopeful and caring place.

This Thanksgiving, may we reflect upon the past year with gratefulness and look toward the future with hope. Let us give thanks for all we have been given and ask God to continue to bless our families and our Nation.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 22, 2007, as a National Day of Thanksgiving. I encourage all Americans to gather together in their homes and places of worship with family, friends, and loved ones to reinforce the ties that bind us and give thanks for the freedoms and many blessings we enjoy.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-second.

GEORGE W. BUSH

The proclamation thanks God for freedoms, friends and prosperity. If India had a thanksgiving day, what would we be thankful for? Poverty, corruption, inequality? Don't mock me for thinking this.

Because as I look back on my own life, I find more often than not that I am grateful for adversity rather than fortune. Fortune comes and goes, and brings indulgence and corruption in its wake. Adversity however teaches one to be strong, composed and resourceful, and helps one discover true friends. One always comes out better after adversity. Not so after fortune.

America should learn to be thankful for the lessons learnt from 9/11 and Katrina, just as much as it rejoices in its prosperity - otherwise, at a totally other yet fully related level, its dollar will continue to depreciate...

Meanwhile, 92% of American households will eat turkey tonight. If you want to know what happens to the birds that get the presidential pardon or are otherwise rescued and adopted, read this front page story in the New York Times today - "In some households, every day is turkey day"

Big Apple bytes

Backwards from Scotland, the setting was New York's classy Park Avenue, where all the buildings are dressed in brown, and the people are dressed in black. A few pretend trees line the street, and the lamp posts look better than they do. At one end is the Grand Central Station, a masterpiece of architecture, borrowed from several countries, as all things American are. People walk their dogs at all hours of the day, so yes all said and done, I think I still like New York.

A cosy terrace outside our meeting rooms offered a grand day and night view of the Empire State Building, and we had dinner with the Board of Directors of Interpublic at the Lincoln Center, following a special jazz recital by an impromptu ensemble that was both enthralling and educational. I had the good fortune to sit next to Michael Roth, Chairman and CEO of IPG, a warm genuine and humble person, who has taken great pains to turn around a once 'beleaguered' company (as he unabashedly puts it) and now he can look back with a sense of quiet achievement though of course the journey is only beginning, and he recognises that.

I especially felt glad to discover that social and civil work is so much a part of their lives. A newly inducted director has given up a senior marketing career to run schools for the underprivileged. And it was truly heartening to learn that one of the senior most directors, Reg Beck, kept asking to meet me! A former Chairman of Time Inc, he and his wife are active supporters of the Help in Suffering animal charity at Udaipur (run by the Brahms), and his wife Barbara sits on the Board of the Humane Society of the US.

Obviously I cannot divulge the proceedings of the actual meetings, but suffice it to say that there was plenty of food, and food for thought, and I have put on several pounds - some around the middle and some inside my brain.

Hope you spot my tiny smiling colourful persona in the picture above:-)

From the Dorothy in me

"Somewhere over the rainbow,
Way up high
There's a land that I heard of,
Once, in a lullaby.

Somewhere over the rainbow,
Skies are blue.
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true."



Last week, I learnt three things.

1. Nature gets more and more beautiful each day. The grasslands of the Serengiti, the woodlands of Corbett, the cashew and mango orchards of Torda, the eucalyptus covered Queensland bush, the pine walled Alps and the chinar lined foothills of the Himalayas, I had found them all breathtaking. Till I met the Birks of Aberfeldy, Loch Tay, Glen Lyon and Ben Lawers. In autumn. White, yellow, orange, russet, red, green, purple, brown. Nothing can be more beautiful than nature.

2. Preparation of any kind happens quite fast. Mixing, mashing, churning, just a couple of hours. Fermenting it however, now that takes a little longer. And then, distilling out the essence of whatever it is you want to say or do - that takes quite a few days. How strange that we tend to spend more time preparing and much less distilling, when we should be doing the opposite. And then finally of course, the maturing - slow and gentle, requiring just the right environment, and time, plenty of time. Sometimes even 30 years, standing still in one place, mellowing down to an ageless spirit.

3. History is always written in stone. Always.

I hope you like my little rainbow - he appeared outside the windows of our wooden log cabin in Aberfeldy last Wednesday, bringing with him dreams that I now must dare to make true.

The comma

A dear friend once described himself to me as a comma. The strategic pause before the next important phase in the lives of all his key relationships. The mark that makes sense out of disconnected phrases, that glues together connected thoughts, that allows for that most important of all needs - time to stop and ponder.

It's comma time for me, folks. Time to leave a phrase behind while I go in search of the next one. Time to answer some internal questions, erase some full stops and add a few exclamation marks to my already oh-so-interesting life. But not before taking full advantage of the comma.

I will be back here someday soon. Till then, may the good Lord bless you with love, joy, peace, security, and success. Boa Sorte.

'Beautiful Inside'

I came back to office on Friday after several stressful meetings (no guesses why!), to discover this crown on my chair with a bouquet of red carnations and white gladioli, a Rs 5000 voucher from some exotic Mumbai spa, and a letter from Femina telling me that I had been voted the most beautiful woman in my office.
Apparently I will feature in Femina along with four others from here (Deepam and Priya btw are genuinely pretty and petite unlike moi). I have often appeared in Femina over the years, as author, media planner, tennis player, animal person, whatever, never never as beautiful. So ofcourse I did a double take, but then the letter went on to talk about being beautiful inside and making other people happy and all that jazz and then I got the drift.

The folks in Parel voted for me for one reason and one reason alone - I call it the "Fear Factor"! They got too scared not to! But thanks anyway, guys and gals, I love you lots, but sorry, am not sharing the massage or the crown with any of you.

Rainbow, Red, Mirchi, Meow

My perspective on the radio measurement debate which has appeared in Campaign India dated October 12, out today. I am shocked by the number of printer's devils in a publication with international antecedents. Read it anyway, please.

World Animals Day

Today is World Animals Day. Also the GSPCA Foundation Day, when we planted Leopoldina, now a tall and slender badam tree. This year we dispensed with the traditional mass in honour of St Francis of Assisi, who is the patron saint of animals and nature, and the blessing of all the plants and animals. Instead, I just prayed and blessed all of them myself before rushing to the airport to meet a torrential downpour before heading back to Mumbai.

Terribly sad therefore to come back to an email from Chinny, that the CBI had raided the homes of erstwhile office bearers of the Animal Welfare Board of India - and his Blue Cross office too in the bargain. War is like that - the good and the bad both get hurt. St Francis always believed in the power of nature - when push comes to shove the universe finds a way to come to your side, like the wolves and the birds came to his in his last hour. Maybe all the thousands of animals that the Blue Cross has rescued and rehabilitated in the last thirty years will do the same for Chinny and his staff.

Above is a picture of Pravin, veterinary assistant with us since inception, with one of his friends at Ashwim beach last Independence Day.

Vodafone does NOT get my vote

Such a perfectly wonderful media opportunity killed by lousy lousy creative.

Star discussed the day branding opportunity with us a couple of months ago and we rallied hard around one particular launch to make it happen, but just couldn't muscle up the required money. Plus I was very keen to get the creative people from the agency and the channel involved too - when you have thousands of seconds to use, you've got to use them right - and was therefore willing to trade time for immediacy, and still am. (In those far distant "Real Value on Sholay" days, we came up with nine TV commercials for that one day!)

Alas, all Vodafone could come up with were three uneventful capers by H and I, and poor Chico heaving and huffing his way in the hot sun on an open field to find a silly red kennel that he is too plump to get into or out of. Even his protesting whimpers didn't seem to catch the attention of the guys at Hutch.

The original Chico lived in Porvorim (the original boy-and-dog Orange film was shot in Goa), and has been treated by three or four vets in the area, including my hospital. None of them enjoyed doing it. A few months ago, Dr Deby, who runs my hospital, inspected a breeder at Margao, who keeps pug parents in miserable cages. So that unsuspecting little pug pups can find their way into metropolitan homes for Rs 35000 each. We went there after a complaint of a parvo viral outbreak among pups sold by that breeder.

Since Hutch, now Vodafone, refuses to accept its responsibility in the 'production' of thousands of ill-bred pugs in India who will be doomed to short suffering lives, I have decided to release an ad with a picture of the pugs we found in dirty cages and a byline that says "Change is good. Will someone please come forward to change the lives of these poor creatures?"

My family uses BPL, Airtel and Dolphin. Hutch never did get our vote. And with this new cruel, irresponsible and unimaginative avatar, Vodafone certainly won't.

Where have all the ads gone?

(published on agencyfaqs.com, and the Brand Reporter in September 2007)

We presented a television plan for a new product launch to a leading client last week. Across the 5000 odd exposures scheduled, I observed that over two thirds consisted of stings, and sponsorship tags, and vignettes, and break bumpers, and screen shots of logo and sell line, and in program product placements, and scrolls, and several other elements of the telecast that showcased the brand and what it stands for without actually featuring the entire ad.

We presented another media plan for a new theme campaign to another leading client today. With more of the same across all media. RJ mentions, specialized print units, search engine optimization, virals and games. Where on earth was the ad?

Then I observed that close to 80% of the money was indeed being spent on exposing the 60 second TV commercials created by the two best creative agencies in this country, and breathed a sigh of relief. (After all, one of them pays my salary!). But the media planner in me couldn’t help but notice that 20% of the money bought over 60% of the exposures. That these exposures were embedded into content, or interwoven into the telecast in a manner in which advertising avoidance was suppressed to the bare minimum. That these exposures may not pass the test of a creative planner’s powerpoint or a creative director’s viewpoint, but they will be seen by the consumer, understood by the consumer, perhaps even acted upon by the consumer (some of them had short message response codes inbuilt). These exposures would undoubtedly contribute to ad awareness and recall scores, even if their individual impact may not be singly measured up in these tests.

These exposures were entirely conceived by the media management team on the account – planners and buyers – in consultation with the programming and marketing teams at the channel end.

Switch on your tv set to any channel on any genre, turn on your radio, run thru the morning newspaper, flip thru the pages of your favorite magazine, browse thru your regular websites, and you will see this for yourself. You see ads, yes. But you are also being insidiously bombarded at by brand messages where you really don’t expect them. If you think Lead India is a Times Group initiative to find the next Indian leader, think again. It’s just an incredibly smart way to get you exposed to the brand values of the paper and the group in an associative form that makes you go hmm! instead of ugh! Ditto with Airtel’s sponsorship of the national anthem rendition by classical musicians.

The Wills Lifestyle Fashion Week has very little ad support. However, besides lending itself automatically to great editorial coverage, the event allows for full length tv shows that subtly promote the brand and its attributes, news clips, a WLS “look of the day” in newspapers, some of which are paid for, some not, but all at a cost that is far below advertising rates. A cost that more than makes up for the cost of the event. If you asked the client, where would you rather put your money – behind sponsoring this event, or behind producing and airing 30 second commercials that show one girl, two guys, half a celebrity, and lots of clothes on a boat in Europe, I guess you know what he would say.

This may sound rather rude of me, but quite honestly, I do feel that over the past few years the baton of good creative talent and work has been handed over by the ad agencies to the media owners. Content and marketing guys in the channels and radio stations seem to find the pulse of their consumer quicker, know how to engage them, and are able to achieve much faster turnaround times. I daresay they also tend to be more result oriented.

As I watch my planners and buyers toss ideas and compare notes over pizza and coffee with their friends in the media, I am reminded of the days when I did the same. Except that I would be with Chris Rozario and the venue would be Trishna. The passion for good work, for new ideas, for the brand and its health, hasn’t changed, but the players have. I still look forward to the day when creative directors and media planners once again break bread together. But I am not sure that it will ever come. The rules of the game have changed, maybe forever. No single player has control over content, whether advertising or editorial. Perhaps the only real control is now with the consumer, the viewer, the listener, the surfer and the reader, and that’s how it should be.

I rather like it actually.

Comments welcome.

Whirling dervish

That's what I've been for the past ten days. Dashing from city to city, client to client, pitch to pitch, one annual strategy presentation after another, high level media negotiations, and a conference thrown in.

In the middle of all this, I spent last Thursday morning at Corbett. Sounds like a strange thing to say. Nine hours of serenity and sanity, needing twenty hours of travel to get there and back, to spend just thirty minutes with my Initiative friends from around the country. That's me in the Corbett hat.


We reached Corbett at 3.30 am, woke up at 6 am, took a Gypsy ride into the forest, where we met monkeys, spotted deer, kingfisher, woodpecker, school kids, mules, an olde english bridge, sal and teak, and a museum with the usual taxidermist handiwork. No tiger, because we didn't have time to get to the only open gate 25 kms away, but having once sat on the chest of a 250 kg tigress to stitch up tear wounds in her armpits, her eyes and jaws wide open beneath my face in a ketamine induced stupor, spotting tiger now holds no particular fascination for me.

Back at the lodge after a few short but splendid hours, after which I spent another hour with Laxmi the elephant whose wide hazel eyes had me smitten. I suggested a homemade lep to her mahout for her inflamed right flank, he promptly sent out for the ingredients (glycerine and maxsulf), and I hear she was back on her safari rounds the next day.



The Initiative gang arrived at 11.30 am after a gruelling 12 hour coach ride from Delhi including five hours of being stuck in a traffic jam. Since Sudha and I had to leave by 12.30, we all just stood around under the trees by the banks of the river Kosi for my opening address, a gentle mist all around, the melodious gush of freshly flowing water in the background, with birdsong for accompaniment.



There's nothing like a river in a forest to bring you back to earth after spinning around like a whirling dervish out of whirl. I later lost the multicolored riverbed pebbles I had collected at Delhi airport, my flight back hovered over Mumbai for two full hours, and at 1.30 am I found myself tending to an ill family member before falling into a deep sleep. But I am wide awake and ready to take on the next four weeks in which, sigh, there will be more of the same mad rush. This time around I hope there will be a refuelling stop at the Salvador-do-Mundo forests, my very own personal Corbett.

Two to Tango

I still haven't figured out whether I find the Indian Cricket League a good or bad idea. Meetings are being held, data is being crunched, information is being gathered, journalists and clients are calling. I am reminded of what Subhashji said at the 2006 Goafest in reference to the two TRP systems then being debated (yours truly having fuelled the fires in a 'historic' Business Standard interview). He said, 'Competition is always good. The incumbent wakes up and gets better. Monopoly breeds complacency'.

The Zee group sure believes in this dictum. I stumbled upon it when I tried naively to bring the NRS and IRS together - Pradeep and his ilk offered the indisputable but heart sinking logic that if the two would merge, a third would emerge anyway. Ditto for the TAM-aMap story. And now there's BCCI-ICL.

Subhashji has a point of course. Overnight the BCCI have upped player salaries and prize money by over 50%. Star Cricket, ESPN and Ten Sports will need to relook at their rate cards as Zee Sports begins to serve up prime time 20-20 fours and sixes. A new breed of brand ambassadors will step out of the pavilion and wave to the crowds. It could all well be a marketer's dream.

Has Zee really done this for cricket, for the country? The ICL format will encourage a more aggressive energetic game for sure. But I can't help thinking - oh no, it's not about a patriotic zeal to create Indian winners, any more than the Times is really looking for the next Indian leader. It's simply about the money, honey, always about the money, and that's what has murked the muddy waters of the BCCI to begin with.

And many other waters too, alas.

Amazing India

These are two of the posters sent out by our HR department to mark our I-Day celebrations tomorrow, this year's theme being the Magic of India. The office is already looking so festive, it leaves very little room for each department to dress up their areas even more to win the theme prizes.

Parel and its inhabitants are special people indeed, insulated as we are from all the hot air in the ivory express towers. Take a look at the server room floor flower rangoli.
And also to all my angels in Gurgaon, MG Road, Ballygunge and Mount Road, a happy independence day to you too. God bless us all and our motherland forever.

'If I were a rich man'

Zee Studio aired Fiddler on the Roof last weekend. I can see this film a thousand times and then a thousand times again. I like Tevye's conversations with God best of all. Like a best friend, he questions Him, humours Him, makes fun of Him, loves Him, hates Him, but always always defers to Him. With so much talk of money circling the hallways these days, his mocking frustration-airing appeal before launching into one of the world's most famous songs, takes on a meaning of its own. (I can almost see another bearded gentleman take Tevye's place, in my cheeky mind's eye! Can you?).

Well, I'm not really complaining.
After all, with your help,
I'm starving to death.
Oh, dear Lord!
You made many, many poor people.
I realise, of course,
it's no shame to be poor.
But it's no great honour either.
So what would have been so terrible
if I had a small fortune?

Here is a video of the song, complete with the impromptu jigs, the screeches, the pony whistle, animal sounds at just the right moments blending perfectly with the musical instruments, the staircase going nowhere just for show, the peacock strut, the double chin, the 'ifs'.

The 'ifs'. Without the 'ifs' in our lives we'd have nothing to strive for. Enjoy.

Friendly Foe

Here's my take on Vikram Sakhuja, COO of Group M, who made it to DNA's top 50 most influential people in Mumbai, published today. He emailed me his thanks, truly touched!

Pilgrim's Progress

I travel too much.

This last round has been different though. North, South, East, West, all in one monsoon week. Before I post random observations from my travels, here are the lyrics of an Enya song I once liked a lot, which suit the mood of these days :

Pilgrim, how you journey
On the road you chose
To find out why the winds die
And where the stories go.

All days come from one day
That much you must know,
You cannot change what's over
But only where you go.

One way leads to diamonds,
One way leads to gold,
Another leads you only
To everything you're told.

In your heart you wonder
Which of these is true;
The road that leads to nowhere,
The road that leads to you.

Will you find the answer
In all you say and do?
Will you find the answer
In you?

Each heart is a pilgrim,
Each one wants to know
The reason why the winds die
And where the stories go.

Pilgrim, in your journey
You may travel far,
For pilgrim it's a long way
To find out who you are...

1) I often meet the rural folk. In Maharashtra, I find them simple but smart. In UP, just plain stupid. On the four hour journey to Fort Unchagaon driving past verdant fields, palpable unemployment, drab uninspiring brick and mortar houses, children swimming in canals when they should have been at school, and body breaking non-roads, I also spotted several jugaards, which coincidentally I read about in yesterday's Business Standard. Indian ingenuity at its peak, that too in UP. Here's the article.



2) I love Kolkatta. I am always happy in Kolkatta, even when I'm sad. Kolkatta is a friend for life. I think that's because a good Coastal Indian only feels at home wherever there are palm trees. North India is bereft without palms. Driving past both the bypasses yesterday, I feasted my eyes on the light green grassy swamps fringed by dark green brush and majestic swaying palms. Sweet.

3) Bangalore. Once I looked forward to going there, now the traffic and the power cuts frighten me off. Something's just not right in Bangalore. From a bubbling adolescent, the city has turned into a scheming adult. An unnatural darkness is creeping into its soul. Bangalore needs saving.

4) Pune, and the expressway, past Northpoint on the right after the Khandala junction. Smooth, fast, efficient, great looking, that's just like us. How come there are no expressways in the NCR?

5) Money. It's a gas. Wish the journalists would stop bugging me. I hear Edel's voice calling out my name several times on the phone in sheer wonder, it's far away in the middle of UP, but I can feel her joy, I read Premjeet's shy words in his email, I watch the tears welling up in Santosh's eyes, I laugh at Mani's description of DDG's expression when Partha tells him the figure ('have you added a zero?') before he takes out a glass of whisky and counts the amount on each of the checques sip by sip, I lecture my PGPAMMer's - save some of it, don't pour it all down the pub, I hug and am hugged by old people, young people, people who are the wind beneath our wings and need a windfall of their own, people who need some Cheeni in their lives and got it. Balki my dear, don't be such a killjoy.

6) Horror. This is just one of the many pictures framed up at the Fort Unchagaon haveli. A cub, for God's sake, a cub?!



It's a long way indeed.

Speaking up for the voiceless

Despite having three important presentations around the corner, I am overcome by a strange ennui, and just can't seem to get cracking on them. Inspiration, where art thou? I have been unnaturally silent this year. No scathing columns about TAM or ABC in the business press, no interviews to the websites. Indeed, for almost four months this is the only place I have put down any thoughts, and most of them borrowed. I was asked to do a piece on radio, which I ignored, but I did send a short number on Vikram Sakhuja for DNA last week, he is coming up in the 50 most influential people in Mumbai list. Noor says I must talk, I say ok ok, next week maybe.

Perhaps it's due to the covert guilt I feel about a completely separate issue - that I have not yet spoken up about the stray dogs issue this year. No ads, no columns, no interviews, no letters to the editor. The news channels footage of the dogs being dragged off in trucks in Bangalore, carcasses piled up and tossed around, the sms campaigns, the WSD calendar, the high court judgement, and the madman Phatak's pronouncement - they all leave me with a sense of 'let it be'. Sound and fury signifying nothing. Bad men will be bad, dogs will be dogs, good people will be good.

My darlings in Torda vaccinated 157 dogs against rabies free of cost this Sunday in a camp conducted for the Merces panchayat. Next Sunday, we will do the same number at Mapusa, sponsored by the local MLA. While protesters shout from the rooftops, we go about quietly doing real work.

Red FM's Malishka did a good show this morning featuring the issue, promoting the adoption of stray pups by societies etc. Sort of similar to the one Radio City did for me last August, which actually went on for a week. While Maneka has sent me this little film, which Pedigree has kindly produced for PFA, to get telecast on all the networks. Am posting it here, in case the film inspires you to do something too.

Ace men

When you serve 25 clean aces, how can you not win?

Still there were some tense moments there, especially in the fourth set when I shut off the TV not wanting to watch Federer lose. But of course he bounced back in the fifth set, how could he not? What a wonderful evening of some really great tennis amid good weather and Borg himself watching.

I found this clip on Youtube today, the song isn't good but the maker has edited together some fine moments indeed.

As a kid, when I played tennis for the state and was nationally ranked (all 35 frailweight kilos of me!) I once played a bet match with an American pro and won. The winnings were a Donnay that Borg himself had used and given him. I treasure the racquet and don't have a picture of it with me here in Mumbai, so I hope this one (taken off the net to show you what it looks like) will do instead.

Raindrops keep falling on my head

Everyone has a favorite cinema moment. Interestingly enough, a really touching personal cinema moment may not be one that was cinematographically pathbreaking, or one that has been written about, copied, referred to, praised or criticised. It would probably just be something that stirs up a sweet memory, or fuels a new dream. There are many cinema moments that still bring out the goose pimples or catch my breath every time I watch the scene.

Appropriate to the weather then, here is a clip of an all time favourite - the cycling song from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - BJ Thomas's "Raindrops keep falling on my head".

As a child, I was 'rained on' several times by older relatives who found creative ways to pour water over my head every time I warbled out the song. Once I was sitting on the potty when my cousin ingeniously emptied a lota of water on me through the grills separating the toilet area from the main bathroom. He himself had to stand on a high stool to reach the grills. Another time, the shower came down from a bucket emptied by my aunt sitting atop a ledge overhanging the balcony I was standing on. That didn't stop me, I still sang the song, loving its rhythm and its lyrics. Even to a child, the message carries a strong meaning. As an adult, even more so. "I just did me some talking to the sun, and I said I didn't like the way he got things done, sleeping on the job.... coz I'm never gonna stop the rain by complaining...."

As for the cinema moment, I'm sure you know which one it is - that cheeky exchange between Paul Newman and the bull of course! Enjoy the goosebumps as you approach the end of the song and remember that no matter what, you're free...

A historic day

Later this evening, people all over the United States will queue up to the i-phone, one of the most highly promoted and publicised launches this century. We have to wait for a few months before it hits our shows leagally, and even then we aren't sure who the service provider will be now that AT&T is no longer a part owner of our client Idea Cellular.

Later this evening, the media planning and buying fraternity in Mumbai will be gathered at the Emvies, an awards show we have developed serious doubts about. Still, the Idea ringtone innovation just might win, who knows! It surely deserves to.

And lastly today is the day when Lintas India has finally become a 100% Interpublic Group owned agency. Welcome to a whole new world. "Turn it on".

An ode to the rains, in Khar and Torda

Funny flies around gaily. She has grown into a pretty petite little crow, and by the end of this week I think she will be able to get her own food. Here is a picture of her settled on a leaf in one of the palms outside my bedroom window in Khar, the little black spot somewhere on the right, taken just before the rains hit Mumbai on Friday evening.

The TANUVAS vets came over to Goa this weekend to inspect all the AWO's at the behest of the AWBI, and were overawed by the weather. We however have learned to take the rains, the beauty and the destruction they bring with them in our stride. Things grow in the rains, and that's all we really want to care about.

Here are my weekend phone pictures of the Torda forest, here is the jungle outside my bedroom window purpling in the settling dusk.




This one is an early morning shot of the forest on the right of our shelter, the left is just as dense!










This is the view from my backyard, where you can just about sight the rust and blue of the surgery past Noella, the canna and the lime and mango trees.









This is a little calf we are looking after, he got hit by a truck on the NH17, and was brought in laterally recumbent, now he can stand and walk around and also run a little.





And here's leaving you with a final glimpse of Torda from my verandah, the hills beyond and yellow traces of the ancestral home below. Next time images of some of my darlings in Torda, walking on two and four legs.

Watching baby birds fly

In an earlier post I asked you to spot the crow's nest in one of my tree shots. Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. The nest will soon be history as Funny has finally learned how to fly! Her parents, Specky and Fluffy, with us for the past year and a half, raised two nestlings to adulthood last summer, while their neighbours were less fortunate and ended up raising only one survivor - a cuckoo! Fortunately Funny is doing well, she took her first flight a couple of days ago, just a tentative hop from branch to branch. This morning she soared up to the top of the chinars and reappeared only after a few minutes. I hope she learns to fetch food for herself before the rains really hit us with full force.

Every attempt I make to capture her on film has been thwarted by Fluffy, who comes swooping down on me if he sights me pointing at her with anything metallic. So instead, I leave you with this darling film to mull over on the weekend. Enjoy!

Magic from Bindass and a new tarot

Yesterday a large team from UTV made a two hour presentation to us on their new channel offering for young people called Bindass. Great insights, great showmanship during the presentation led by Zarina Mehta at her effervescent best, and a real live magician who passed on an electric current through his fingers on to our guys, and played some really good card tricks. The icing on the cake was a leave behind. Not the usual channel mug at all. This one is a nondescript black one that magically turns white after you pour something hot into it, and the words and logo then leap out at you!

Here is the before and after. I am having lots of cuppas today!













While on the subject of magic, I'm wondering how my tarot card has changed so much. Have posted what it looks like now on the right above the links, it's a far cry from my tarot posted two months ago, but definitely more credible this time. Go check out yours too again, and enjoy the change.

Sound of Music

Consider this. The things we remember most vividly are usually those we didn't see, that used a non visual sense - like one's first kiss (tactile), a fine wine (taste), unusually bad or good smells, unforgettable songs and speeches.

A sound that first opened my mind to nature's limitless possibilities, a sound I will never ever forget, is the whale song. While studying at Brisbane, I had volunteered with injured dolphins at Sea World and then hand fed wild dolphins at Tangalooma before moving on to a whalewatching trip at Harvey Bay. The first sight of a breaching whale and her calf was memorable no doubt, but it was the hydrophone that really got to me. Web 2.0 hadn't arrived back in 1998, and I have long since lost whatever I captured on camera. Till I found something on YouTube today.

Enjoy the sounds. If you know the significance of the song of the humpback whale and the fact that she never repeats a tune the following year, you will love this even more. In this video, her song has been set to native American flute music.

Creative copycat

I attended an unusual business creativity workshop on Friday which featured Carnatic music. I intended to blog about it on the weekend, and then discovered this writeup from a fellow blogger that has done excellent justice to the learnings, pictures et al, so let me be lazy and just give you the link.

http://indiadrant.blogspot.com/2007/06/carnatic-music-business-creativity.html

Meanwhile, here are two images of the trees outside my fifth floor windows in Mumbai, wet with the first raindrops of the season.











Try and spot the crow's nest. And more pix from the Goa monsoon later.

A flower for Pixie

"Kishmish is back.

It's one of those Biblical moments. Kishmish is our dog and she came to us nine months ago, from a local shelter called Friendicoes. As is the case with most relationships, the reaction to her went from ecstatic cooing to slight smiles to 'will you STOP peeing on the carpet.' All except in the case of my daughter Aalia, who has, on several occasions, clearly stated that she loves Kishmish (Hindi for 'raisin' - her colouring) more than her parents.

Almost a week ago, she disappeared. And since then, we have all been stumbling into or walking awkwardly around the big hole in the house.

Everyone, especially our maid, had their own conspiracy theory - attacked by the big kids down the lane, kidnapped, silenced, experimented upon - dark alleys I did not want to dwell on.

This morning, she came back. Apparently, as I thought, she had been hanging around the neighbourhood and seems none the worse for 6 days on the mean streets.

I'm off to get a new collar."

I have borrowed this little story from a blog posted by a friend nearly two years ago. I understand about stumbling into and walking around a big hole in the house. But my little one is never coming back. So starting tomorrow, I will place a new flower into a vase in my room every week, in memory of her.

In my heart and in my soul I know that she hasn't really gone away.

Experimenting

This is my first attempt at uploading a video onto my blog. Hope it works out. This 45 second film was made by young Kajal Srinivasan five years ago, using only computer graphics. We ran it foc on several channels during World Animal Week. Kajal also created our website www.goaspca.org which is now badly in need of updation. If you know of any young web designer, Goa or Mumbai based, who would like to do so for love and not money, tell me!

Shiva and the star tortoises

I spent this morning at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park at Borivli. A batch of over 2000 star tortoises confiscated by the customs department are being looked after there waiting for transport back to Tamil Nadu. I had gone to help arrange for this and inspect their condition. The staff were cleaning and feeding them well, all little babies poor things. They were laid out in plastic trays, about fifteen to a tray and two rooms were filled with these trays while two boys sat chopping vegetables into tiny bits for them, and another two were cleaning them one by one.

I didn't take a picture of them, since that wouldn't be right. But here's one of Shiva the tiger, majestically wandering about in the safari enclosure. Some years ago, he was a drab bored circus tiger rescued from Kankavali with all over skin infection. Now he is more handsome than John Abraham.

Time

I've been going over the events of the past week as they unfolded in my life.

And I think that there are some situations for which the time can never be right.

Or then again, it can never be wrong.

For these things, time....just comes.

I wonder what the next week has in store. Will He come quietly unannounced, or blazing in with the sound of trumpets and flashes of neon?

Or will He just...not come?

A diabetes pandemic

Here is a link to an interesting post I read recently. It's scary but I think it's true.

http://shajikrishnan.blogspot.com/2006/04/south-asians-eat-less.html

About a boy

A few months after I returned to media in 2003, we had a conference for all employees at then-still-new Northpoint. I remember Sujaya had set up a series of value search workshops for various levels, and I was required to drop in on each session and say an intelligent thing or two ('intelligence inside' being the theme that I had come up with for our journey going forward, disillusioned as I was then with the state of affairs I saw it - all hype and no substance).

In one of the juniormost groups, participants were required to briefly present to me their individual takeouts. One by one, they trotted up to the centre of the room, said their piece, took my feedback and so on. It was going rather well, till ...the boy. Tall, gangly, very young and extremely nervous, he froze on his words. Like a mute puppy he stared down at the floor then looked up at me and down again and kept this up for about three minutes while the whole room of thirty odd managers watched in silence. Finally, he blurted out that he just couldn't remember what he had prepared and asked to be excused. A mixture of sympathy and scorn circled the room, while the boy walked back to his seat dejected but not defeated.

Over the years, I have watched him grow. Physically he is now a strapping young man. Emotionally he is strong, confident and incredibly tenacious. Most of all he remains humble and cheerful especially under pressure. From number crunching beginnings, he has begun to appreciate the value of creative thinking and, along with his seniors, he has worked on some of our more innovative projects.

The most recent being the Bol Bindaas Bol campaign to promote asking for condoms unselfconsciously. His team created half hour programs for news channels which got the man on the street to speak up about his shyness on this issue. This won us two silver medals at the Goafest Media awards - for best use of tv, and for cause marketing.

Before a gathering of thousands of ad revellers, the boy and I walked up to the imposing stage set up on the silver sands of Goa to collect the award for cause marketing. As he proudly held it aloft and waved to the crowds, I stood by his side with a deep sense of gratitude. Once silent before an audience of 30, now smiling before an audience of 3000, the boy is now a man.

Can you tell who he is from this picture?

Trillion dollars vs lead poisoning

With the rupee having broken the 41 mark to the dollar, my exporter cousin is biting his nails while the rest of us rejoice at India becoming the 12th nation in the world to be a trillion dollar economy. Even as the Govt has lowered its estimate of annualised GDP growth down to 8.5%, there is a strong sense of 'future' everywhere - especially in the media and entertainment, telecom, money and travel spaces. We remain a country of contrasts, with more corruption and less discipline than we ought to have. Healthcare and education are still floundering even as copious money flows into infrastructure which shouldn't be a bad thing except for that fact that less than half of that actually makes its way into projects - the rest is quickly gobbled up by graft.

I am not a fan of the SEZ, and hope good sense prevails. Why is there this constant need to compare ourselves or try to copy China? State directed capitalism may work in the short run, but do we really want to poison off the next generation in doing so? 34% of Chinese children are reported to have higher than normal levels of lead in their blood. Lead is a cheap ingredient into most of the Chinese manufacturing units, its effluent resulting in alarmingly high levels of pollution. There are villages where all the kids have black and blue fingers, being slowly poisoned to death.

I met a British gentleman yesterday whose chose to come here to work rather than China, because he believed that we had more humanity. That was a nice thing to hear. Trillion dollars worth of money goes well with a billion minds that never say die, and a billion hearts that still seem to care. Mera Bharat Mahan!

Tarot says

I found this interesting widget on Meenakshi's blog. Her tarot card says she is the World. Here's mine. Go check out yours. While I wait for that unexpected help, water and guiding light....(didn't even know I was thirsty!) Though I think it's true I'm not the only dreamer, having just crossed paths with someone who sounds like he might dream along with me!

You are The Star

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

To everything there is a season...

..and a time for every purpose under heaven...
a time to plant, a time to reap...a time to rend, a time to sew.

I guess you all the know the full lyrics of this song.

This year we decided to plant a little, to take awards more seriously even though our big sister frowns upon this. So far we have won five: Two golds for branded entertainment - for Idea and ITC; two silvers for Bindaas Bol - best use of TV and cause marketing; and agency of the year at the Indy's.

Here is a picture:



Kunal and Himanka are missing from it, they weren't here when we clicked, but are here anyway. Seems like it's time to reap.

And then I hear about a friend gone astray - a kind soul who couldn't say no when he needed to, not to others and more important not even to himself. So for his organisation, it became a time to rend. But I hope that wherever he goes he will learn to sew up the tears in his moral fibre.

Media agencies didn't win enough media awards

I didn’t keep an actual tally – but it sure felt like the creative agencies – JWT, Contract, Rediff Y&R, etc walked away with most of the media awards. Among the media agencies, Mindshare got four and the rest of us – Madison, Lintas, Lodestar and Starcom got two each. I think Maxus and OMS got an award each.

But it was good fun. The sands were hot and the weather was hotter, but drinks flowed freely, and the under 30’s had a whale of a time. Akanksha and Hardik went parasailing, Sharad and Deepa went jetskiing, Venky and his gang of girls caught up with old friends from other agencies, and we all agreed that next year we should send in a larger contingent. With a hooter.

Goafest is a good idea. It goes beyond awards, and in doing so, sends out a subtle message. I hope it lives.

Divine discontent

When I was growing up at Ogilvy Benson and Mather in the eighties, the agency mantra coined by David Ogilvy himself was ‘divine discontent’.

The second half of the Goafest Advertising Conclave yesterday morning expressed a great deal of that. Rifts between business partners were exposed. Pent up pressures found unlikely outlets. Media agencies got pelted at by both creative agencies and media houses, and its leaders (us) came away rather bemused. Speaker after speaker expressed negativity and angst against the advertising industry, eventually concluding that it didn’t even act like an industry in the first place. Harish Bijoor, the suave and intelligent moderator, tried to draw up a way forward action plan nevertheless.

In other words, there was a lot of discontent, but much of it wasn’t divine, so I am a little worried. I hope that the ‘builders’ among us will prevail over the ‘scavengers’ and raiders’. What is needed is ‘discontinuous social value addition’ as succinctly described by Uday Kumar, CEO of Star News, and the ability to act as ‘change agents’ and not just commission agents, as Meenakshi Madhvani so aptly put it.

As Shanta Kumar of Saatchi and Saatchi said, some years ago holidays were about going home to grandma in native place. Now it means taking grandma away for a holiday. That’s the kind of paradigm shift we are all looking for, and whether it lies in re-integration of services or not, we sure have to find new ways to operate because we seem to be seriously pissing off our business partners in the media houses and the creative agencies.

Horseshit, and how to clean it up

It was a fairly lacklustre start to the Goafest Advertising Conclave. I got the impression that there were more journalists than senior media and advertising people in the room. If it weren't for Pratham Raj Sinha (CEO of the Anand Bazar Patrika Group) and his enlightening speech, we would all have come away thinking that the even the tip of the iceberg wasn't touched.

Taking the advertising industry from Rs 15000 crores to Rs 50000 crores may be no mean feat. But as Dr Sinha opined, our industry seems bent on playing a 'zero sum' game, with egos and factions taking precedence over a common agenda of progress and growth. Unless drastic steps are taken by its associations, and clear thought leadership emerges, we may not make it. I liked his analogy of the 17th century London city council fearing that they had such a problem of horses defecating in the streets, that within a short time the streets of London would be steeped in horse manure.

But how do we clean up the horseshit? Hopefully the panelists tomorrow will shed some light. In the meantime, I am going to bed pondering over the more encouraging words of Martin Sorell delivered by videotape - that Indian advertising has been growing at twice the rate of our GDP growth, and that we should not doubt our abilities so much. So true. Four hundred years later, the streets of London are still pretty clean, aren't they? Lesson : replace the horses, the horseshit will go.

Writing for the Goafest

I will be blogging for the Business Standard at the Goafest on the media side of the business. So watch out for my posts here and at businessstandard.com from 19th to 21st.

Meanwhile here is an article written for the festival concept which appeared in Financial Express last week.

Patriotism

Yesterday we did jury duty for the Goafest Media Awards. The Cannes rule of discarding patriotic votes was introduced - ie a juror cannot vote for work submitted by his unit or group company unit. So we had a good time all through the day while deciding on what was patriotic and what wasn't as we journeyed through over 100 entries. It was great fun. Ten media heads from competing agencies finding a common voice in praising or despairing of the country's best media work.

One of the entries featured the national anthem. CD stood up first, I quickly followed, and then the whole group. To me, it was the most impactful moment of the entire day. Ten vociferous jocular judges found three minutes to stand silently at attention in unison and respect for their national song. We didn't approve the entry, but no guesses for who won the patriotic vote at that moment.

I love being an Indian in India, I truly do.

My visual DNA

Svety, this one is for you.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

By public demand

Here is the link to my personal DNA, Svety and Shaswati. Don't say you weren't warned.

My Personal Dna Report

Being cruel to be kind

A doctor knows this well. Vets know it better. Bosses and parents know it best.

It isn't easy being cruel in order to be kind, to mete out a bitter medicine today in order to enable a better mind or body or value system tomorrow.

But....it's got to be done. As I look back on my own life, the people who made me what I am often did the most unpleasant things to me, things I appreciated and got a chance to thank them for only much later. Some of them died before I could show them how much healthier their medicine made me, but they know - every day they show me that they know. Sometimes, they still send down a bitter pill or two. Which I swallow most gratefully.

Rashmi, this post is for you. Read it again in 20 year's time.

Hello again!

Starting today, I have decided to use this address for my blog, and will no longer be posting at blogsource. Eighteen months and 106 posts later, I find that I need a site that is better connected, and can provide me with statistics, something blogsource has stopped for over a month. Lynnisms.in, my blog URL, will now point here. All my earlier posts are still at lynnisms.blogsource.com for posterity.

And this is not an April Fool joke.

Drop in here occasionally and leave a comment if you like.