entertainment attempts

It’s funny how I seem to have hit a writer’s block. There seems to be nothing interesting to write about. Sure there is always something happening in my life and office, but does it really warrant a post? Especially on a blog that about my daughter growing up. Like today when we put money on the table and incited a trainee to pull the cheek of her boss. We had to really push her and motivate her. We kept putting one tenner after another till the purse became around 150 odd bucks. The only condition was that she should pull the check till it turns red. No red no money. Since her boss reported into me, I also had to indemnify her against possible back lash, which I promptly did. So finally she did. She pulled his cheek. But alas, no red. But we weren’t complaining. We got the shock and awe we wanted without losing a single penny, her boss was wondering what happened to her and we had a great laugh all around.
So how does this qualify as a blog entry except for the fact that her dad is a complete whacko and can constantly think of funny stuff to liven up the office. Office by definition is a dull drab place needing a shake here and a shake there. But it can’t warrant too many posts.
As regards Jispa latest adventures, she was on the last book of the Harry Potter series and her vacation started. Vacations means less sleep for me, late nights for her and me stuck in a time warp where I can’t make out if I must wake up early or sleep in till late and screw my carefully orchestrated schedule. So as her vacation started she simply has left her Harry Potter and picked up on Asterix comics. She loves them and the wam, boom,crash, poof etc that come along with it. As I did so at her age, she too is too bored to read the names of the characters, which though long winded have clever use of the pun, Getafix and Vitalstatistix as prime examples. I too never really read their names in details. Just passing them over to see the big fights with the Romans. It’s weird how we find the clearly one sided fights so funny. There is never a balance and the magic potion is the answer to almost every problem. Smash everything through a magic potion. The only one time I remember a twist in the tale when at the Olympics, Asterix refuses to take the potion and comes out superior. In fact gives it to his opponents and wins the fight in the end. How did he do that? Sorry I am not giving any spoilers here, but it surely was a fun issue. In front of Asterix, even Tintin looks more human, more vulnerable.
I remember being completely lost in these comics as kid. Full of amazing adventure and imagination. I feel Jispa is really lucky to be in an era of book shops where the child is completely allowed to sit and read, lost in the books around. When I was smaller, in dubai, we used to be near the book section reading comics at the Choitaram stores. These were the big supermarkets run by the mallus from india. While their book collection wasn’t so big, it was enough to give us enough reason to be lost in it. Every 10 minutes a mallu would run around chasing us away. We would disperse only to be back in five minutes. It’s nice to see bookstores like the Crosswords and Landmark having large children book collections and large comic book collections. It is always fun to be lost at a book store. This time around in Pune Landmark, Jispa was lost at the Amar Chitra Katha section. Pic below.



Noting much to note about, except the fact that I have bought the entire collection and it is lying at home at her disposal. Not that she doesn’t touch them; she does read them, but I just found it queer for her to intently read at a section where she has unlimited access to at home. Kids. I think you always love something more if it’s given outside of the house.
But it’s a lovely and heartening thing to see her thus. Completely at ease and completely at bliss at a bookstore. Jasmine and I believe that this largely due to the absence of the TV at the house. This too is going to soon change. Jasmine believes that now the time is right for the TV to make an appearance in the household but still the cable is not welcome. Only TV for movie watching. So the bug debate is plasma vs LCD vs LED and 32 inches vs 42 inches. With three choices on one axis and two on the other, this is causing severe stress. Add to these axis the third dimension of the price trade off, and what have you – complete inertia. Now I don’t care about it and I want to not buy the dam piece. Screw you. No TV. Poor Jispa was telling me that she doesn’t really require a TV, she is happy with the books at home. She probably wants to spare me the expense. What to do? Will let you know the update in a weeks time. as of now one is playing with a 35k 32 inch LED vs a 42K 42 inch plasma or feel rich with a 42 inch 60K LED. While the Sony looks good, the brand choice might be simply dictated by the model that plays MP4 format. And that seems to be the LG. so that is a easy choice. MP4 is critical as all my handycam and digital video shoots are in that format. I am not sitting and converting those into anything else. Especially if I want to play them directly off the TV. But if I am buying the optical media player in any case, I simply buy the drive that plays the format and screw whatever the TV okays as it will simply show whatever the DVD player wants it to. Which brings me to the next question – blue ray versus normal VD or simply buy a movie media box player that plays off the box in HD clarity. Add to that is the 3D versus non 3D technology. ARRRGGGHHHH. I don’t want the dam thing. screw you.
While on the topic I wonder, why would they give only set of 3D goggles with your TV. Shouldn’t you give at least 2?

Wolf

On Sunday we went to meet Jasmine’s Grand ma. She is possibly a nonagenarian. They didn’t really track birthdays that long back. She stays at Jogeshwari. Because it’s far off, we don’t get to go too often. She was unwell recently and Jasmine wanted to go and meet her. I was ok and planned to club it with a visit to the Landmark book store near by at Andheri. While I came I must admit I wasn’t exactly super enthusiastic. After I saw granny I realized my mistake. She clearly was unwell. Ninety years and she was tired. It takes a toll on you I guess. If someone you love is not doing too well, you must go visiting right away. You may well regret it later. My attitude sucked. I learnt a lesson that I hope I don’t forget.
We don’t really understand the significance of the ultimate reality as we are younger. But as we grow older one realizes the irreversibility of time and reality. We form bonds, dependence and support. These are hard to work against once they grow stronger. I feel a lot more than I used to.

On an other note:- I love the line that Jack Nicholson muttered to himself in ‘The Bucket List’. He was suffering from cancer and more so from its treatment ‘some lucky guy is dying of a heart attack’

We did go to Landmark later. It’s got quite a nice collection of books. Merchandising is so dam important in a book store. With a world of possibilities at your doorstep a bookstore makes critical decisions on their stocking and displaying that affect both sales and the type of customers they attract. Crosswords comes a distant second and Oxford brings up the rear. Their graphic novel collection is the best I have seen. Pretty decent.

Right now as I type there is a fire alarm that has gone off. No one knows what to do. We are just sitting and ignoring assuming that irritating thing does not exist. Funny, we don’t really expect the fire alarm to actually tell us about a fire. We just assume its not working. Must be some malfunction somewhere. It’s just the boy who cried wolf. The deviation is that we don’t believe it even if it’s the first time he cried. There is no wolf. There is no cry. Sure enough the alarm is now off. With no one panicking and no one caring too much. Next time when there is a wolf….

It will come to bite you in the bum, mind it!

Sometimes I so hate being a marketing person. Most of the times I hate being a worker in the capitalistic environment but then, that’s another story. Coming back to marketing… We at the company and the agency are equally at fault for the marketing shit that we create. Jasmine and I dropped Jispa off at her gymnastics class on Friday. Having a few hours to kill we made our way towards the Crossword book store at the HP petrol pump at Shivaji Park. The option was either a coffee shop or the bookstore. We entered in to find an inadequately air conditioned store. It was quite warm and so was the store. We browse around and then make our way to the first floor section. There were around 8 – 10 shoppers around. They all seemed like book lovers in the way they sat around with their books. The AC on top was slightly better off. There is very little space to sit and read your books in the store. At around three o clock I think you would only have core readers in. after some time some of them got some corners to sit and made them selves comfortable. This is the true core essence of the crossword customer. They are comfortable and they are at ease. No one is really complaining about the lack of anything else. Give me some books and a place to rest my butt. Everyone who is there at the store is soon seated around. Soon enough the manager (if you can call that boy that) comes in. Please get up. Get up. Get up. No sitting here. No sitting there. No sitting near the shelves. People are really pissed. There is one mother with a child sitting near the children’s section. No sitting there as well. What an idiot, there is no one else at the store. No one is hindering anyone else. I have been to a lot of Crosswords. People don’t sit when there is a crowd. They realize it affects others. And when there is a crowd, you can surely get people to get up. But for now in an empty store, this is what he does. We get up and then soon enough Jasmine and I decide to leave. We only bought the books we could browse in the small time we were comfortable. As we start to go down stairs we saw this large poster at the steps.
A lovely shot of a lost customer. I lose it. I call in the boy who made me get up and show him the poster. If this is what your poster shows then why did you make me get up. Is sleeping allowed and not sitting. He had no answer. He was just doing what he was told to. What is the core of Crosswords? Why would someone pay more at Crosswords when most book buyers know that they get best sellers pirated off the road at 100 bucks or even the latest hot sellers discounted by 30% at Strand Book Stall or the like? In any case it’s the browser who looks around, becomes comfortable and then buys more than he wanted to. But this is one category that even impulsive purchases don’t have cognitive dissonance. But my bigger grouse is not that. My big grouse is the smart Alec advertising. Advertising that is smart but does not take into account the culture of the place is the real pain. Having these larger than life posters and then asking customers to get up is just not on. The in store branding at crosswords is great. They are same guys who did it Big Cinemas and Barista also. When we were in a marketing offsite this guru came in to give us a short presentation on it. He is really good. He is the one who made all these ads was showing us the case studies. I made a point to him then. This smart witty branding is very cool, but the companies do not have the patience to pull off this customer experience. They will hire and expand rapid, they will train less and they will compromise the service delivery. Smart and witty advertising just enhances the customer expectation and poor delivery widens the gap. Nobody sits at Depot or at Strand book stall. They don’t complain about the browsing experience. It is better not to have smart witty advertising that only widens the expectation gap. Simple advertising that is boring might help instead. At least that is line with the store managers and management. If they are boring regimented people who believe in targets and discipline then the advertising must be such. It has a better chance of succeeding. All banks face the same conundrum (they of course don’t see it as such). Good advertising only accentuates bad service. Better don’t advertise… or do the simple silly run of the mill adverts.
But agency will not understand this. They want creative stimulus not effective advertising. Marketing managers want CV’s and companies are lazy to know the difference.
This is more pronounced in growing economies where you can constantly get more bang by expansion than you potentially see as retention. So you just hire like crazy, forget core values and expand. Boom, one day customers don’t like you. You wonder what’s wrong with your formula, you change the ad agency but noting seems to work. There goes your plan.

This article came in today’s newspapers. How is it different from the Crosswords episode.

EK CON
The producers of Ek promise, in an ad, to return the ticket money of disgruntled viewers. Read on to know what transpired when one dissatisfied viewer tried to reclaim his money
My name is Vikky Sukharilal Ujjinwar and this is my story. On Thursday, April 2, night I went to see Ek - The Power of One, at the New Empire cinema at VT which is near my office where I work as an office assistant. I bought an upper stall ticket for Rs 55/- and settled down to watch it. Several things about the film did not appeal to me. For one, there was excessive violence, and then there were only two songs. The story line was totally faltu and the characters unappealing. By the time I left to go home to Mankhurd I was thoroughly disgusted with the film. On my way home in the train I happened to spot a Sakaal newspaper and saw an ad by the makers of the film K Sera Sera, on page no.3 which said that they would reimburse the ticket price if anyone did not like the film. Strangely though there was no telephone number in the ad so I had no idea how I should go about it. The next day (Friday, April 3) I began my enquiries and by evening I had managed to get a number for the office of K Sera Sera from someone who knew someone who knew a spot boy on some film. At 4.30 pm I made my first call to the number (40427600) and was told that the director was in a meeting and I should call back in an hour. At 5.15 pm I called again. This time I was told that the director had not come at all and I should call back the next day. At 5.45 pm I made my third call which was transferred to someone called Sanjay who told me to come to the office, give in writing what I didn’t like about the film and collect my money. At 5.47 pm I called again and was again told to come to the office the next day, he also gave me the office address. On Saturday, April 4, I went to the office at Lokhandwala in Andheri and asked for my money. After being made to wait for 45 mins someone, not Sanjay who wasn’t in the office, spoke with me. He was curt, told me the whole world had liked the film and should they make another film for me? Finally he asked me to leave the office, and come back the next day with my letter. When I went back immediately with my complaint letter he took it and said they would review it to see if they found it valid. I was asked to phone and come back on Wednesday (April 8) or Thursday (April 9) for the cheque of the amount of my ticket Rs 55/-). I cannot go back during the week and anyway what will I do with a cheque when I don’t have a bank account? I cannot understand why it should take them a week to return Rs 55/- to me. I am at a loss to know what to do next.

The ad in question