ore o parevda

Somebody gave me a collection of songs which included a lot of unplugged from MTV. These were some awesome songs sang unplugged by these great singers. Jispa has a musical ear. This was confirmed to me by her music teacher in school. She also listens to a lot of music thanks to jasmine who keeps the radio on whenever she is in the car. Music is something that has in many ways missed me by. I can hear some amount of music but not too much of. I find it distracting or I think worse – pointless  - after a point of time. It is amazing but not my passion. I am weird I guess in this respect.

With my analytical brain I possibly try to over analyse the music and in the process I possibly don’t enjoy it at all. Amongst the music I enjoy – I love good fusion music. I remember once dad listening to fusion music on the radio. I think was the government AM channel. I was asleep and I remember waking up slowly to the music which was in its last fast tempo.  Dad also I think liked his music. We had a big stereo in the house in Dubai. It was big sexy looking Sanyo with a recorder and all. I remember listening to some classics – especially the songs and dialogues of Sholay!

Jispa and I have had some interactions on music. I have tried to get her to listen to some of the music I like. I remember especially eth sound track of Bunty and Babli which we ejoyed listening to. The other was of course – my all-time fav – With or without you by U2. But nothing consistent. So this time I suddenly have started listening to the unplugged Indian songs.  On the menu of the car – the song name was flashing with the Unplugged suffix. Jispa asked me what unplugged was. While explaining the same – I had an interesting discussion on the Unplugged genre. Here the singer sings with no electronic instruments and has only acoustic to back him up. The focus is on eth singer and we agreed that the singer in many ways is infusing his soul, his version, his life into the song. He changes the temp a bit, he adds a bit of his variations while singing and overall it creates a different experience. Jispa even felt that singer is changing the lyrics. I guess – he reorders them basis his liking. But clearly the singer is in focus and that I what makes the experience interesting.

Another thing I learnt from the kids in office is the amazing breath of coke studio. They too take music and allow the artistes to reinterpret it and reimagine and to have conversations with it. With multiple artistes coming together in a melting pot of sorts. What I found most interesting is that cool young people showed me these songs. I was young and cool (hopefully cool) cool was definitely not hindi and definitely not this kind of melting pots of classical, folk and fusion. It’s interesting that not only is MTV doing this but it’s something that is resonating with the people that are cool. I would love to know how this works across India. This kind of studio set up mish mash was the exclusive domain of Doordarshan in my time with only oldies watching it.

Wow. Here listen to this episode. I love the explanations and the discussion of the artistes on what they want to achieve in the songs and how they bring them all together. The first song in many ways in as ode to Jispa – my daughter - ore o parevda tu kale udi jay re. Dear birdie – you can fly away tomorrow, today stay over once with us. Hah!

But all there are three songs in this and all of them are interesting with cute back stories on the arrangements…

I sure wish that we as aq family were able to let Jispa learn the guitar. In her swimming and studies – Guitar got the boot. I don’t forgive myself for this. Dam shit!

training your sights on....

Training programs are like books. Even the worst ones will teach you something. I just came back from one marketing modelling one. The prof was an ex Unilevers guy with a strong theoretical base in research. His research bit was good but his marketing bit was a quite a let down. Anyone who gives examples from a Kotler marketing text book that is at least 15 years old is an issue. I wonder why people refuse to acknowledge that the world has moved on and upgrade themselves accordingly. It would have also helped to have stuck to core subjects in which you have obvious expertise. You are not teaching kids. Some of us are practioners with ten years of hard core experience.
But not all hope was lost. We had some really funny guys coming from MTV. That was some redemption. We had a character called Shantanu who is much smarter than he would like to admit. While it would kill him to admit as much he did get some of the stuff faster than others in the room. Add to that an outstandingly irreverent sense of humour, the three days went off far better than most training I have been to.
Of course it did help that he and me were in the same team trying to blast the others in the marketing game.
One realisation that has dawned upon me in recent years is that one need not be ready to win at all times. Relax and have fun while you are at it. Our team was the funniest of all. We were also the simplest of all. We did not do too much excel analysis, we had no issues with dissension and we had no arguments on way forward. I think the fact that we allowed for every one to have an opinion and the freedom to implement it was what worked. Whenever someone had a strong view we ensured that we did not go ahead till he was convinced on the decision we took or we took his word forward. We had some teams voting and some teams fighting and some teams pointing fingers, while we laughed like crazy with no such pointing contests. We had inherited in the game a bloated sales force which we did not trim as we had a parsi in the team who thought its not nice to fire. We agreed on a pricing strategy and closed conversation because the lights flickered. What’s that got to do with pricing? Nothing by itself and everything if you believe it was the message of god. When numbers came for every period, the only real thing I saw was sales and most importantly closing stock. If that’s good then you are doing a fine job. We quickly realised that there are four distinct segments and that there should be four distinct positions. Once we got that going, we didn’t change a dam thing.
The thing to learn in real life is that it’s really not so complicated. Look at a few figures you can understand and those that are fundamentally important. Rest will follow. It pains me to see so many people paralysed by analysis.
We were open about our serendipity at the post games presentations and I hope the others figured out that it’s not really that complicated. Like I was telling a younger contestant - most of the time you probably know the answer when you first have a look at the data, but when you anlayse it too much, think of creative methods, etc etc… you probably miss the wood for the trees.
Marketing or even strategic decisions are often common sense. A simple analysis should show you the broad direction, and a thumb rule might be that if it takes too much to understand then it is just that – too much to understand.
Another thing that comes with age is that you get to go for more and more places where you are the average spoiler. It is great fun to see what makes them tick and what works and does not for them. Meeting young minds is as important as meeting older ones. One tells you what was, the other, what will.
A case of opposites reconciling?

like I was telling the HR - the training was good, but for the wrong objectives.

and ya... did i tell you. we outsold everyone and got some huge brand shares and remained highly profitable. Trainers dont like to declare winners, but I reckon we won.