simple thinking

What we learn from everyday life is enough to teach us a thing or two about business. We probably don’t need any great management book to really tell us the secret. The Times of India seems to have sold its soul in the movie review section. They seem to be writing only glossy reviews with a view not to antagonise any parties. I have seen this rubbish before and the latest being the one on the movie ‘jane kahan se aayi hai’. Compromising the integrity, or if I were to give them some credit, compromising the quality of a simple movie review casts aspersions on general edit quality of the paper as a whole. Every small action adds up in the consumers mind. If he can’t trust your review, slowly he starts asking questions on other topics as well. Kids grow up listening to their parents rubbishing the paper. What happens to a brand that took 150 plus years to build?
Rarely we are corporates understand the huge repercussions of our immediate actions. We pay bonus and increments year on year. We focus on March end numbers. I haven’t heard any boss appraise anyone on the culture that they have helped build and hence reward them for the same. We just won’t understand. The web is teaching us today the value of public relations. On the web every opinion will be made and possibly stored for posterity. Someone will sooner or later come out with software that aggregates data and opinion and beliefs over a larger period of time. Then companies will rue that they gave customers the short end of the stick. They still don’t understand the value of the peer on the web. I see ads in new papers saying “we are now on facebook”. Well if you had an interesting idea and a reason then the community itself will adopt you without waiting for an advert proclaiming so. What a rubbish idea. The brand managers need to show that they have an online strategy and hence any rubbish – one FB page, one stupid twitter account and some other rubbish. Missing in the equation is the consumer. Err…Who’s that girl?
Forget that. Let’s focus on the movie which got a decent review. Jasmine and I were happy to go for the show at it was a morning show at the theatre next door. At 80 bucks a head no movie can be really that bad. Ritesh Deshmukh couldn’t have been all that bad. He does do a good job as a side kick. Well…. I think that’s that. He is good side kick but as a stand alone actor he has some distance to go. Add to it an actress who can’t act and a hackneyed script. But we had fun. Some stupid slapstick and we had Jispa rolling in the aisles. I guess it’s a fun movie for kids. I assumed that Jispa did not get any of x rates jokes in it (pretty corny). With Jispa as the laugh track almost anything is funny.
At home we have been seeing this really old movie ‘seeta aur geeta’. Standard twins separated at birth fare. We are enjoying that as well.
-------------
While coming in today I heard a radio ad for Digene, the chewable anti acidity tablet. The strawberry flavour is now in sugar free version. Huh? I know everything is now sugar free and contains aspartame or some other agent which some of us suspect is carcinogenic over the long run. I try and avoid the stuff, now I will have to even check Digene for it. My first reaction was ‘incredulous’. Come on. One small tablet with sugar can’t really kill your diet and make you put on kilos. But then on second thoughts it’s a perfect brand fit. Those who eat a lot or don’t control their diet are the ones who are large consumers of anti acids and these guys are the top target for sugar free stuff. One large burger with extra cheese, one large fires and a diet coke please.