Author: silverpensieve

Monday 21st August, 2023. I have landed in New York for a work trip. It’s 6.30pm, and I’m at the Hotel Chelsea on W 23rd Street. I had stayed there on my previous work trip here, on the recommendation of a colleague, and had loved it.

“Is this your first time here Sir?” says the young man, perhaps in his early 20s, as he’s looking me up on the system.

“No, I stayed here in March and loved it so much that I’m going to stay here every time.”

“Oh that’s wonderful to hear Sir!”

“Haha, thank you, unless you give me a terrible room today of course!” I say, in jest.

Pause.

He looks at me. His expression has changed. “You do realise Sir that they have booked you a smaller room than the one you stayed in the last time?”

My turn. The expression changes. “Oh! Well, okay, I guess, nothing I can do about it.”

Once again, pause. “Sir… could you give me five minutes, I just need to go talk with my manager?”

These five minutes leave me thinking – they’ve probably booked me in a very different room from last time, he’s going to bring his manager to apologise….. let’s see.

…and he’s back. He says, “Sir, we can offer you the same room as last time for 20 dollars more … the only problem is that since this room is disability friendly, the door is wider, and there is no bath, only a walk-in shower.”

I’m confused – both these things are fine, I much prefer showers anyway. I ask, “um, what’s the catch?”

“There is no catch Sir, would you like the room?”

The increased price is WELL within the allowed limit, so I say yes, of course!

He disappears for a second time. Wait, he’s back. “Sir, I’ve spoken with my manager again, we’re getting you the room at no extra cost, plus we’ve got you a room with a balcony.”

!!

And so starts a happy week at my favourite New York hotel. That little joke, I now realise, made the difference between me loving this hotel even more, versus being grumpy the whole week about how they let me down with a small room.

That evening I’m having dinner with a dear friend, Chester Lau, and tell him this story. His reaction? “Well, closed mouths don’t get fed.”

What a beautiful line. Closed mouths don’t get fed.

While this is true, of course, it’s also true that customer service, or customer orientation, whatever you call it – matters more in the USA than anywhere else I’ve seen. There is simply no place like the USA to be treated wonderfully as a customer. Just a smile and a silly joke, and even a very young executive has the mindset to turn a potentially bad situation into a memorable one.

Wait, I haven’t finished.

The week is nearly over. My return flight is at 10pm. I have two hours to kill. As per the plan, I visit the Apple Store at the Grand Central Station, to buy my mother-in-law a new iPhone (surprise for her birthday, shhh!)

Buying an iPhone is as magical as the iPhone itself. You just tap your phone on the sales person’s iPhone, and voila, the payment has gone through. Enter, the silly joke.

“I know our companies don’t really get on much, but boy is this fantastic, how easy was that!”

“Sorry, what do you mean Sir, which company do you work for?”

“Why don’t you guess”, I say cheekily.

“Samsung? Google?”

“Close but not quite, Meta!”

“Ah! Ha, I’m sure the business relationship is strong Sir. But now that you mention it, could you give me one minute?”

(I wait for a minute.)

“Sir I’ve applied a Meta discount, some companies get a discount so I’ve given you this much off.”

Now – the discount isn’t much, probably good enough for a couple of coffees at Starbucks, but still – a pleasant surprise.

This was the last thing I was doing in New York, before heading off to the airport. The bookends of my trip were both wonderful consequences of chatting with strangers, when there was no real need for it.

What a week. Long hours on work, but super productive offsites, walks and meals with colleagues and friends, meeting one of my favourite batchmates, Prabhat Awasthi, after 25 odd years, and learning such a valuable thing.

Closed mouths don’t get fed.

Thank you Chester.

On the 11th and 12th of July, 2023, Sarah Newman, Lexi Campbell, Kate Waters, Claire Sadler, Martin Beverley, Michael Lee, Tom Roach and I spent two full days judging the shortlisted papers at the APG Creative Strategy Awards. Our so called ‘duty’ was to determine the Bronzes, Silvers and Golds (and one Grand Prix) among 26 excellent strategy papers that had been shortlisted by another fabulous committee of judges.

Boy was that an energizing and enriching experience. Energising because we experienced how brilliant and articulate the presenters were, despite the strict 5 minute deadline. Enriching because I saw (and heard) how sharp and astute the judges were, in their understanding and critique of the papers, and the questions they asked the authors.

I came away reinforcing my belief that strategists/ planners (I’ll use the terms interchangeably) are a unique community.

There are two reasons why I believe this. First and foremost, that they play a critical role in pretty much every stage of the process: discovering, creating, and helping execute a project. Start with digging through complexity, find rich nuggets of insight, articulate the problem, brief and guide the creators to find the right solution, persuade stakeholders with conviction, generate a sense of belief in the entire team, and carefully nurture the execution, till the very end. The strategists/ planners never seem to pass the baton – they run alongside, helping to hold it firmly, the whole time.

Secondly, strategists have a role that is tremendously transferrable to other professions and businesses, but we self effacing folks rarely see it that way. Having been fortunate enough to have met and made friends with hundreds of amazing strategists, I’ve seen how some of them have moved to very, very different worlds. One strategist I know has moved on to helping architects and builders pick what’s really interesting and insightful in what they do. That said strategist (you know who you are) articulates the story of the entire project/ campus/ living space in a way that appeals to customers and investors. Speaking of investors, another ex-planner is now a global CMO in one of the world’s foremost Private Equity firms, helping their companies articulate their own story. The list goes on, but one thing is clear – our role is critical, and it should have a central place in many, many more industries, way beyond communication.

These two amazing discoveries aside, what really persuaded me to write this was this article by Tom Roach. Tom, as always, brilliantly captured how the two days went. Furthermore, he went on to articulate each and every strategy within every one of the 26 papers, in just one sentence. I was blown away by this. As I was reading through this list, something struck me. Tom hadn’t just articulated the strategies for those 26 papers. He had, in fact, articulated 26 wholesome strategies by themselves, irrespective of the brand(s) they represented. What if you did a simple exercise and made them generic? You’d end up with 26 bullet points that every strategist could keep in their drawer, for reference, as and when relevant. When they were interested, they would, of course, look for details of the story in the APG Awards book. 🙂

Well, this is what would happen if you did – see below. I have shamelessly stolen Tom’s work, and essentially, tried to make their relevance broader than the brands or categories they represented. If you’re a planner/ strategist, you’ll know what I mean.

Have a look.

(How to read these: I will first write Tom’s version, and then the ‘broad’ version of the strategy in the following sentence, which is italicised.)

• A football game went deep, not broad, to help British South Asian representation.
• Go deep, not broad, and you could create fresh appeal within a community.

• A Taiwanese drink sponsored a pilgrimage to take it on a journey from sports to sweat brand.
• Even the most specialist of brands, meant for a niche audience, may have something everyone can relate to. Find that, and you expand your market.

• A retailer transformed how menopause is perceived by normalising it not sensationalising it.
• Even if we see someone as ‘special’, they may just want to be normal. Recognizing that and acting on it is valuable.

• A small car brand got bigger by narrowing its focus to dog owners.
• Being super specific in who you’re for may unlock powerful signalling that appeals to everyone.

• A charity showed that suicide doesn’t look suicidal.
• Don’t just look at the moment, also look before and after it. Furthermore, ask everyone about a behaviour or symptom, not just the afflicted.

• A holiday camp transformed itself into an entertainment brand.
• What business are you in? Always ask the question, the answer may lie here!

• A mobile network became a customer champion against rising prices.
• Understand what makes people angry. Stick it to the big guys. (Thank you Jack Black/ School of Rock.)

• A healthcare brand broke the taboo that sex is just for the young.
• Investigate things that are being taken for granted.

• A yoghurt brand heightened anticipation by saying nothing at all.
• Sometimes a strategy lies buried in how people see a product – or a pack – and what emotions it triggers.

• A counselling service used humour to get older people to take STIs seriously.
• If you want something to be taken seriously, try making it funny.

• A biscuit brand drove salience by teaching people British Sign Language.
• No matter the category, always try and find ways of adding value to your consumers’ lives – and watch the magic unfold.

• A software brand invented a new C-Suite role to reinvent the future of the workplace.
• A communications strategist should think about how EVERYTHING communicates, not just communication. Furthermore, try and solve the business problem, not just the comms problem.

• A cancer support charity stuck out by showing its nurses are angels with sharp elbows.
• Sometimes, positivity works against you, and being perceived as kind isn’t enough, or helpful.

• A dog treat brand drove new sales with good old-fashioned advertising. 
• If something is genuinely working, do you need to break it?

• A city enlisted men to help tackle violence against women by showing it can start with words.
• The root to a serious problem may lie several layers away – even in layers that are perceived as harmless.

• A life insurance brand reframed itself as a death insurance brand.
• Question deep-rooted assumptions about the category, even its name. Sometimes, everyone may just be avoiding the real issue.

• A sanitary brand helped reduce period poverty by making people angry.
• People may buy something else, and do something positive, with a negative emotion.

• A plant-based spread depositioned butter by making it seem weird.
• Maybe what everyone thinks is normal IS actually the weird thing?

• A ‘f*** it’ moment made us all fancy a burger.
• Dig into the emotions that lead to product consumption, not just the emotions related to consumption itself.

• A sports event started the largest ever human rights movement for people with disabilities.
• Nothing is too big to imagine and execute. What if you could start a global movement?

• An army embraced strategic rigidity but tactical flexibility to drive recruitment.
• As General Mike Jackson said, at an APG event, strategy is what you invest your resources in, over the long term. How you execute that strategy should always be flexible.

• A confectionery brand dropped its most distinctive asset for Pride.
• Be willing to experiment – even your most distinctive asset can be used radically differently.

• A fast food brand discovered a big role at Christmas with its smallest product.
• Really dig deep into your brand, and its products. Little details often hold the key.

• A tea brand climbed to no.1 with a proper long-term brand platform.
• Find something you can genuinely own, believe in it, and nurture it – over the long term.

• Another fast food brand redefined its brand world and rediscovered its voice.
• If you are clear about the brand and its world, you don’t always need a big central idea.

• A serious haemorrhoids remedy found its tone of voice in humorous Amazon reviews.
• Discover away, o planner! Go broad, go deep, go sideways, go to Amazon reviews even. You never know where you may find that award winning strategy!

Thank you again, APG, for inviting me, and thank you Tom for this brilliant piece of writing. Shine on, you crazy community of planners and strategists.

STUPID! IDIOT! SHEEEESH! HIT NA BABA, HIT!! SHEE! USELESS MEN, USELESS!

AHHH… PARADISE, PARADISE! SO BEAUTIFUL RE, SO BEAUTIFUL! THIS IS HEAVEN, JUST HEAVEN BABA!

These were just a small sample of words that you would hear often, from my one of a kind father in law, who sadly passed away on the 24th of March, 2023, after nearly two months of illness.

In the last week alone, we have heard, as a family, so many tributes to him, from dozens of people. People have described him as kind, simple, humble, loving, devoted, religious, pious, affectionate, selfless, and more.

To me, he was a man with a full heart.

These two words probably describe a lot of what he did, how he conducted himself, and how he thought.

Firstly, everything about him was ‘full’. There were no half measures. He watched a game of cricket or football (his passions, other than hockey) with gusto. He poured all of himself into every game, and gave us his own live telecast from that perspective. He screamed his guts out when batters played too slowly, bowlers bowled too wide, or when strikers missed. Unless his side was winning, you were guaranteed a different type of entertainment – he never swore, but boy were his words sharp.

Another side of the full heart was how he felt gratitude. Even when someone barely opened a door for him, he would thank them with genuineness that was a sight to behold. It was so genuine that you felt a spiritual energy had transferred over from him to the other person. The ‘thank you baba, thank you’ was seldom profuse, but I have never seen or felt that much warmth.

That gratitude came alive even when he enjoyed the most wonderful sights the world had to offer. He was well travelled – Japan, South East Asia, the Middle-East, USA, and of course Europe. I was with him on several of those trips. Whether it was admiring a beautiful blue sky, the most wonderful gardens, a mountainous landscape, it was the same – a full sense of enjoyment, and at the same time, a full sense of gratitude. You could be sure of the words that were coming that evening – I feel like I was in Paradise, and this is purely and only because of my wife and my daughters. Had it not been for them, I would not have had a chance to experience any of this.

For context, he had a tough life. He lost sight in one eye, several decades ago, and nearly lost the other, had it not been for an amazing doctor in Chennai. That, perhaps, made him a person who would take nothing for granted, but also a person who could enjoy what life had to offer, fully. It also made him deeply conscious of the role his wife and daughters had played in his life, and how much of her life his wife had dedicated to him.

Not everything about him was good though. Many things about him were impossibly frustrating. The first among them was his love for a Mexican artist called Pepe Jaramillo. Call it a generational gap, but despite being a musician I could never relate to him, and my father-in-law would never stop trying to convince me to listen to him. It became a family joke – my wife went to great lengths to search for vinyl records or CDs of Pepe, and presented it to him. Could that stop this saga? Nope, that was nowhere near enough. I’ve lost count of the number of times I said ‘No daddy, Not Pepe Jaramillo!!’ and he would patiently say ‘No baba, listen to him, it’s so beautiful, so lovely re!’ Ooof.

Even worse, what I particularly hated about him was his impossible ability to consume copious amounts of chocolate, but not having a milimetre of fat to show for it. How did he do it? His love for chocolate was supernormal, but somehow, no matter how much he devoured them, he always stayed the slim and trim dapper gentleman. Could he not have shared his secret with us , or at least with me? Nope. That he kept to himself.

From the consumption of chocolates, to saying thanks, living a life of someone with a full heart is perhaps the legacy he leaves behind. He taught us much. Be grateful with a full heart. Love God with a full heart. (He particularly felt devoted to Mother Mary.) Pray with a full heart. (He named family, friends, acquaintances individually, and prayed for them on a daily basis.) Enjoy life’s wonders with a full heart (and be grateful at the same time.) But most of all, love with a full heart. The love we felt, in the tightness of his hug, was something I have never experienced with any other person. Thankfully, his daughters have inherited some of this. I hope that after nearly 2.5 years of living with him, spread across nearly 3 decades, I have imbibed some of it too.

We have been incredibly lucky to have had his presence. For that matter, everyone whose lives were touched by his were incredibly lucky too. Everyone, except those poor cricketers or footballers who batted slowly or missed a shot.

Colin Adrian Cardozo: 1938 – 2023

My father passed away in August 2019, at the age of 76.

Like any other Dad, he always gave me advice and said many things, that have had an indelible impact on my life. However, as is often the case, I realised the value of a lot of things he said only much later – and not at the time he gave me these pearls of wisdom. I guess it’s the exact same thing with our son too. I wonder how much of what I say makes sense, and how much of it he will remember.

That said, there were some things he said which made sense straightaway. I didn’t have to develop grey hair for the advice to land. I also find these to be helpful things to pass on, but don’t expect that everybody would agree with them. Off the top of my head, here are three of the things I remember.

1. Always carry more cash with you than necessary.

In the modern credit-card led, contactless world, is there any relevance for this, you may wonder. For a fair few decades, though, I found this advice incredibly valuable. Of course there used to be the odd scenario when you DO realise you need more cash at hand. Sometimes, for instance, the credit card doesn’t work, and so on and so forth. It’s quite likely that I would have managed, on those few occasions, without having the cash at hand. However, the real value of it for me was the mental peace it brought along. I remember thanking my Dad mentally when a restaurant apologised for the credit card machine not working. In the ‘cash only’ scenario that presented itself, I could bail a couple of friends out, thanks to his advice. I find that carrying cash is still useful when you find someone who is homeless or in need of help, or even when you want to leave a tip at the restaurant once the bill has been settled. However, the bigger and broader interpretation, which came to me only later, is to always be more prepared than necessary. I try. I’m comfortable being over-prepared, and terribly uneasy when it’s the opposite.

2. If you’re doing something 7-8 times out of 10, call yourself a regular.

Over the last 25 odd years, I must’ve started plenty of new habits. Some have stuck, some haven’t. However, one of the reasons that they have stuck is what my Dad told me about them. Often, we expect that we will attend every single yoga session, make the run or the walk every single time, and so on. However, my father used to have a more relaxed attitude about it. He felt that having stricter expectations of oneself, on any desirable habit, actually makes things worse, not better. I had once said to him, ‘I only went swimming 6 times in the last 10 days’. His reply was – ‘you could say you missed 4 and that you’re not regular. Or you could say that you’ve done 6, isn’t that better than zero?’ If you’re able to call yourself a ‘regular’ at something, even at a 70% hit rate, it stays with you, and you do behave as if you ARE a regular at it. This sage and simple piece of advice has helped me stay on course multiple times – whether it includes walking, badminton, or even eating better. I also love that he seems to have used the tried and tested technique of labelling – by labelling ourselves as a ‘regular’, we’re cementing the behaviours. Clever man.

3 .Never have a problem with people with a high opinion of themselves – only if they have a low opinion of others.

I didn’t really chat much with Dad about people. However, once in my late teens, I was having an argument with my elder sister about a common friend. I felt that this guy was way too arrogant, and that’s why I didn’t want to spend time with him. She felt I was avoiding him because I was jealous of him, which I didn’t want to admit to. The argument turned into a fight, and I stormed off to the terrace, just to sit by myself.

About 15 minutes later, my Dad showed up. Both my parents were short tempered, so I expected him to yell at me for how I had behaved. Instead, he was very calm, and said that walking away from an argument was indeed one way of dealing with it. It helped us get some space, and prevented things from getting even worse. However, that’s not what he came to talk to me about, he said. He asked me, ‘how do you know that ‘XXX’ is an arrogant guy?’ I couldn’t really come up with a convincing answer. That’s when he said these words to me. It made me think. There was nothing wrong with his behaviour. I was just jealous because he was better at cricket.

I can’t describe in words how much this has helped me. I’ve made dozens of friends since, who I would have ignored, had it not been for my Dad’s intervention. One of them is a particularly close friend – a musician I admire and respect more than any other I personally know. He has this swagger that could easily be mistaken for arrogance. But my Dad’s words prevented me from judging too soon, and boy have I benefitted from it. (You know who you are, if you’re reading this.) I’ve also benefitted from learning that people who accept their own strengths, and are comfortable with themselves, can actually be inspiring.

There are, of course, many more things he said, but realise I chose these three because I have also passed them on to our son. Much like me, he tended to agree with them straightaway. He may never need to carry cash with him, but he will benefit from being overprepared. He certainly benefits from the ‘regular’ label as a pianist, among other things. Even at the young age of 10, he benefits from not judging people too soon. I wonder if it’s because the advice is so universal, or because he will always listen to everything that is preceded with ‘my Dad used to say’? Given how dearly he loved his Grandpa, and how sad he feels about his passing, I doubt he’ll ever disagree with anything he said.

What are the three things that your Dad says, or said, that you still remember and implement?

“Don’t you enjoy the buzz?”

This is the response I get from 90% of the advertising colleagues, when I tell them I detest new business pitches.

Mind you, I have had my share of the ‘buzz’ we experience while working on, and winning, a new business pitch.

One fine day in 2005, in our J Walter Thompson offices in Bangalore, I was working in my room. Suddenly I heard a massive commotion. My boss, Dhunji Wadia, was calling out my name, from the other end of the corridor, and rushing towards me. My strategy partner-in-crime, Navonil Chatterjee, was running towards me too. It looked like they were all running towards me. When I came out of my room, they screamed ‘we won, Shekhar, we won!’

We had just won the Nike business, after a hard fought, competitive, and long new business pitching process. It was probably the most prestigious new business to win in India that year. Navonil was so overwhelmed he literally jumped on me. I was now carrying a near-sized, fully grown man on me, for a minute or more, screaming in my ear. Everyone in the building was screaming with joy.

I hate new business pitches.

Indulge me for a moment. Consider a scenario where, let’s say, you want to decide which fancy restaurant to go to. You email 10 restaurants and say that you’d like to take your family to dinner there. Every one of those 10 invites you over for a ‘trial meal’ before the actual event, so you may pick them. You then proceed to eat 10 different meals, free of cost, at these places. They do their absolute best to win you over. The owner and the chef present their best selves to you. At the end of this process, you pick your favourite one, and just say ‘sorry, you guys made a great effort’ to the other 9.

If you want to be even more hardcore, use that same process for, maybe, hiring an architect. Scary, isn’t it? However, the reality is that this is how the advertising business (at least on the creative side) has worked, for the 25+ years I’ve spent in it. I have never come across any other industry in which companies speculatively invest vast sums of money with a minimal chance of winning.

Just how vast, you may ask. Consider this. I know of an agency in London that was pitching for a large beverage client. For the final meeting, they refurbished and redecorated one section of the office, and converted it into a full-fledged bar, obviously stocked with the products of the client. The idea was to have a ‘brand immersion’ in the agency offices, a bit of relaxation, that kind of thing. You can imagine the kind of money that would have gone into it. On the day itself, as the meeting finished, the clients informed the agency that they couldn’t stay as they had a back to back meeting, and just left after the presentation.

In another instance, an agency redecorated the entire lobby of the agency to make it look like the hotel brand they were pitching for. The walls were repainted, kiosks were purchased, the logos were added. This was for a pitch within the advertising group, so ultimately the business was going to be retained within the group anyway.

On the day itself, the clients asked to do the presentation in their offices instead.

I haven’t even mentioned the amount of money spent in extensive research, hiring experts, going out to interview people, hiring studios, flying to several places…. it’s mind boggling what agencies do. How much do you think this all add up to? Let’s take a wild (but not so wild) guess. Every significant agency in a country would have at least 5-6 pitches a year where they go all out. The typical spend on each one would be 100k USD, or more. So we’re looking at a speculative investment of 500-600k a year. This would apply at least to the top 10 agencies in the countries, if not more. That comes to about 5-6 million USD A YEAR that agencies spend, in each country, with about a 5-10% success rate. That is, essentially, money that comes straight out of the bottom line of the agencies. Imagine how much more talent (or anything else) that money can be used for.

Let’s now look at how this works out financially, even if you win. Let’s say you spent 100k on the new business pitch. The account could be worth a million dollars or so in revenue. Creative agencies (in this part of the world at least) now work with wafer thin margins, of around 10%, give or take a few. So you’ll need a year or two just to break even with this client. As this business is really fickle, there is no guarantee that you’ll retain the client for a third year. What’s worse, not all agencies have the same money, so the whole thing is disproportionate and unfair anyway, to agencies who don’t have that kind of cash.

Now consider the people angle to it. All of us ad folks do this over and above our day jobs on our client’s businesses. This, therefore, means that while you’re working on new business pitch, you’d be working 100 hour weeks, seven days, flat out. Your clients will complain that you’re not responding as quickly as usual. Your family and friends… well, forgot about them for the duration of the pitch (8 weeks on average). It takes burnout to a whole new level, known only in a few industries. The fun bit often comes when, with 3 days to go, you present all your work to the top management of the agency, who come in for a ‘review’. Let’s just say they’ll have their own opinions, specially preserved for the last minute. The whole team has to start all over again, a mad scramble ensues, just to make it in time for the final day.

All this work, agony and ecstasy, for what? Sometimes (a lot of times actually) the decision has already been made, in favour of, or against, an agency. You just don’t know it at the time. Inevitably, we find out that it was always not going to be you….. because you’re not the incumbent, or the client’s old agency from the previous job that they trust a lot was always going to get it… or because of this account management leader that they really trust from another agency… or something else. Sometimes it’s because you were amazing, but the art direction of the winning agency was better. (For creative work that’ll never be used.) The worst thing of all to hear is ‘you were very close’. Teams put their hearts, minds, blood, sweat and tears into it, purely speculatively, in this ‘all or nothing’ battle. Winner takes all, loser’s standing small. There is no such thing as a silver medal.

A lot of people are energised by it, because this is our chance of doing the work they want, where the client isn’t dictating terms, telling us what to do. I do get that, having had my share of it. But overall, it just doesn’t add up. As I grew more senior in my career, I started saying no to most pitches. Luckily I was already stretched with my existing clients, which was the perfect reason to say no on most occasions. I just couldn’t stand burning myself out for an entirely speculative, free piece of turnkey project work, when I could just spend my energy on improving a business that we already had. Never mind the Nike win and the iconic work that followed, I resented the whole idea of it. I couldn’t understand why the leaders of the big agency groups never got together and said, ok folks, this is a massive drain on our profitability, why don’t we adapt and implement some rules and principles here.

That would help, I think, create a scenario where you get the best of both worlds – you do get to experience some of the ‘buzz’ that comes from working on a fresh new piece of business, while not draining the resources and the coffers of an agency. What would that world look like? Here are few scenarios. What if:

• All new business pitches are just day-long workshops. The agency picks the talent. We organise a workshop with clients. They brief us in the morning, first thing, and then we actually work with them to come up with possible solutions. No money is spent, clients get to experience the talent and work with them, and walk away with some brilliant ideas.
• Alternatively, agencies agree on a maximum limit of spend. Let’s say it’s 5,000 USD, maximum, or 10k if you include people costs. The industry adopts a policy to invest in no primary research whatsoever, other than desk research. These spends must be recorded and shared with an industry body, or a new business management company. Every agency is held to account.
• Agencies offer up a portfolio of people that would be working on the client business, should they win it. Clients can review their CVs, meet these people, and engage in chats about how they would work on their business. It’s like an interview, or a group discussion. A decision is made on the basis of that .
• Finally, if the old way absolutely has to be followed, cut the time short. Brief on a Monday, and ask for a presentation by Friday. That itself will probably limit the amount of time, effort and money that agencies will invest in.

Could any/ some of this work? I certainly hope so. What I do think for sure, though, is that the current method doesn’t work. This is financial suicide, that drains people and devalues a precious product that agencies create – ideas. Because these are offered up so easily and for free, they just become commodities, rather than the exceptionally important intangibles that build and sustain brands. How agency leaders live with this current situation is beyond me. At the very least, maybe call for a new business pitch on designing a better process for new business pitches?

I will, in the meanwhile, continue going to a restaurant with the expectation of paying for the meal.

I had good grades in school. There were some ups and downs, but mostly I was either at the top of the class, or in the top 5%. In other words, I looked set for an engineering or medical career – those were the only sensible choices for the ‘good’ students back in the 80s and 90s. However, I was petrified of chemistry, and as a vegetarian frog dissection grossed me out. So I chose the world of economics, commerce and business instead. Several friends and their parents were aghast at my choice. They called it a stupid move. I somehow stayed put, as I was clearer about what I was running from, rather than what I was running towards.  

Fast forward to the second year of University. I was equally lost. A few of my dad’s friends, when they had come over, told me about this trending MBA thing – you should do an ivy league MBA after your degree, they said. I vaguely registered this.

A few months later, I had a chance encounter with a family friend who was visiting from Mumbai. He was a few years older, and asked me what I was going to do after graduation. I mumbled something about an MBA. So how are you preparing for the test, he asked.

What test? I responded. Here, he said, and gave me a slip of paper on which he had scribbled – IMS, 1/45 Tardeo AC Market Building, Mumbai.  He said, write to them, buy a correspondence course, because without preparation, there is no way you’re getting into any ivy-league business school.

That little piece of paper spliced my life into two parts – before I received it, and after.

For context, I was in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh. No one from this mid-sized city had ever made it into an IIM (Indian Institute of Management) – India’s premier business schools. Most people thought it was foolhardy to even attempt to get into one of these. They thought I was stupid to even try. They tried talking to my parents to drill some sense into me. Luckily, I had school friends who had made it to the ivy league engineering colleges – the IITs. One of them had even ranked an All-India no.1 – a superhuman feat, if you know how tough the JEE exam for IITs is. They all encouraged me to simply ignore the naysayers. I clung on to that reassurance and set my sights high.

I worked harder than I had ever worked before. I even gave up the love of my life, cricket, for a whole year. Twelve months of consistent, hard effort later, I took the exam, on the 8^th of December 1991.

I knew, as I got up from my seat, that I had done well.

Come the 1^st of February, 1992 – a miracle. It was as if I had climbed Mount Everest. I had cleared the written exams, and was invited for interviews at not one, but ALL FOUR of the ivy league ‘IIMs’. I had made it through to the written exam of another ivy league B-school called XLRI as well. To say I was on cloud nine is to put it mildly. I was the talk of the town. The first person to have made it this far, in the history of the city!

I then travelled to Mumbai for some interview training, with the same training institute, IMS. That, however, didn’t go so well. The volunteering trainers, who were alumni of the same business schools I was applying to, were far from impressed. Even though I was the University topper, my academic answers were poor. I wasn’t convincing enough in any of the key interview areas. They made it quite clear that unless I pulled up my socks, there wasn’t much hope. I didn’t really take that warning to heart. After all, I was a star. I had been invited to interviews at all 4 IIMs!

The interviews took place in February 92. My head was filled with all that adulation from having smashed the written test. What could go wrong? I didn’t do much to prepare, and as a result, my performance was abysmal. Along the way, I had this sick feeling in my stomach that the interviews weren’t going well. Two of the four were particularly bad. But hey, the written score was given 50-60% weightage, what the heck, it couldn’t matter all that much. I couldn’t have been all that bad? My engineering friends reassured me again. Don’t worry, nobody works as hard as you did. But this time they were wrong. I wasn’t working hard at all.

The results were announced in April. I hadn’t made it anywhere.

In the 10 weeks that followed, my weight went up from 68 to 82 kilos. My spirit went down to the Mariana Trench. I mostly stayed at home and sulked. Friends came to visit me and offered condolences. My closest friends told me I should sit out a year and then apply again. I looked for jobs in the meanwhile, but even there, some of my ‘lesser’ batchmates got placed, while I was rejected. To add insult to injury, I had been rejected by a so-called ‘mid range’ business school too. I knew I had been too cocky and overconfident in that interview, almost deliberately, as that business school was too ‘insignificant’ for me. I had just laughed it off. I wasn’t laughing now.

It’s fair to say that this was probably the worst period of my life. I was alone, dejected, my spirit broken, my reputation shattered. I had nowhere to go, as I had made no plan B. I cried. My mother cried with me. She felt devastated for me. I wasn’t a bad human being, she said. I did not deserve this.

Then, one afternoon, on the 1^st of July, as I was doing another mock test, going through the motions, the doorbell rang.

A Sikh gentleman from Blue Dart had a courier for me.

It was a letter from IIM Lucknow, one of the ivy league schools I had applied to. This year, they had decided to add 10 more seats, and I was one of the people they had extended an offer to. If I was still interested in joining the business school, please could I ensure that I was on campus at 9am on Saturday the 4^th of of July?

And so, just like that, all the doors of opportunity had opened up. I was back on Mt. Everest. Life had changed forever.

Even to this day, I’m not quite sure what to make of the whole experience. Should I remember this as a triumph? The story of how a nondescript boy in a low profile city dreamt big, ignored all the naysayers, and made it? While I’m proud of being an alumnus of my business school, I’m not proud of the fact that I almost didn’t make it. I tremble when I think of that period. I never want to be caught out for being so cocky again. I never want to be in the ‘if only..’ position again.

Looking back, I guess the whole experience has profoundly shaped my personality. I don’t take success for granted. I seldom underprepare for anything – a meeting, a presentation, an interview, or even a visa appointment. I never count my chickens before they hatch.

More importantly, though, I have spent a significant portion of my professional life looking for these bright but slightly lost souls. In 1995 I joined the IMS community of alumni trainer volunteers. I taught classes and conducted hundreds of mock interviews over the next 11 years. My journey as a teacher, Mentor and trainer continues to this day, in other aspects of life. I try to do my bit to ensure that they don’t make the mistakes I made. In essence, I try to be that person who gave me that address.

I have bittersweet memories of the whole experience, even thought it changed my life and made me who I am. If what I learnt from it has prevented someone else from going through it, I guess it was worth it in the end. But would I want to go through it again? Never.

My wife and I are at a stage now where we have known each other for more than half our lives. When you’ve been together for this long, you sometimes become convinced that some things will never change. For instance, there are certain foods that Monica desperately hopes that I will like, and eat. I, too, have such a list on her. But that just doesn’t change, and we remain steadfastly loyal to some of these choices. For instance, no matter how many times she begs me, I cannot bring myself to eat an omelette. She never stops trying though.

It’s equally true of personality traits, and habits, and things that we never ever seem to do, or start doing. For instance I could never possibly go to a gym for weight training, no matter how good it is for me. I will simply not listen to jazz music, no matter how hard she tries to convince me otherwise.

But is it really true that some things never change, and that there are some things we will never start doing? Two books come to mind. Monica’s a voracious reader, and early on in our relationship, she told me about Kunta Kintei, and why ‘Roots’ by Alex Haley is a transformational book. Over time, we got engaged, married, moved to a different country, and became parents. But that one question remained a constant companion – ‘when are you going to read Roots’? She never gave up, and I never said no. One day, I thought, one day.

Cut to the lockdown in 2020, and my walking increased significantly. I also became more regular on Audible. And so it was, two decades or so later, that I finally acquiesced, and ‘read’ Roots. Half way through the book I was so gripped by it that I used both the Audio and the ‘Visual’ versions of the book – reading it was so much faster than listening to it, even at 1.2x.

Life is not the same after ‘Roots’.

I realise that this isn’t the only instance where I’ve picked up things this late. For instance, I always said to myself, ‘I can sing and play rudimentary guitar, I can never write my own songs’. I was convinced of this narrative about myself. One simple incident changed all that. One night, in Autumn 2008, my closest friends and I were jamming in London. One chap said, ‘why do we always sing songs written by other people? Shame we don’t write our own.‘ That comment, made in passing, was forgotten in a few minutes. Or was it? Turns out that three of us, separately, started writing our own songs, in a few months. I was 36 at that point, quite set in my ways, convinced of musical abilities and my musical inabilities. It’s not like I took any training. It was just a switch in the mind. I’ve written and composed over 30 songs since then.

My journey on writing a blog has been the same. Monica’s been telling me to write a blog for at least a decade. I thought I’d never do it. But here we are. After Lata Mangeshkar passed away, I started writing mini posts, one for each day, for 92 days. During that period in 2022, I realized that now was as good a time as any to start writing, finally.

These experiences fill me with a lot of hope. They convince me that the feeling of ‘it hasn’t happened all these years, it’ll never happen now’ is simply wrong. Plain and simple wrong. No matter how many months or years have passed, you are never too late. There is always today. There is always tomorrow. Once you start, no matter how late, you do it more often, and it becomes a part of your identity. All these years later, ‘singer songwriter’ is part of my identity. It is a part of me that I never thought existed.

And that is why, my friends, even if you have stalled on something for decades, or you convince yourself that you simple cannot do x, or y, do please reconsider. You may surprise yourself.

I did mention two books, didn’t I. As it turns out, I confess to have read ‘Fountainhead’ only in 2022, at the age of 50. For what it’s worth, Howard Roarke has transformed my outlook of what and who we should live for.

As a parent of a 10 and a half year old (as of May 2022), I realise that our faith in our children is not something that comes by default. You have to work at it sometimes. There are areas where our kids can be so off-target on learning something, for instance. You start to worry. A couple of months pass, and the situation doesn’t change. Then you start to worry a lot. Soon enough, it shows in your behaviour, in your language, and before long, you’re being a horrible parent – giving off vibes of having little faith in your child, shaking your head, making them feel worse about themselves, and so on. If you’re a parent maybe you’ve been through that, at some point. You forget that this ability, too, shall come.

The good news is that in spite of all of this, there comes a day when, all of a sudden, your child has got it! Whether it’s the swimming stroke, or the right way to bat, or to catch a ball… there it is, they’re now doing it like pros. You wonder what all the fuss was about. You reflect on it, solemnly swear to yourself you’ll be more patient the next time…. ha ha.

With all the modern parenting articles, pearls of wisdom, books et al, we constantly make these well intentioned mistakes. Yet, as I reflect on my own late father, an incident comes to mind, when he could have made different choices.

Back in the late 70s, my dad was transferred from Hyderabad, in Southern India, to Jaipur, which is in the North-West. Much as there are quite a few differences, one of the main differences is in the local language. The local language in Andhra Pradesh is Telugu, and the local language in Jaipur is Hindi. As a young kid of 6, I could speak Telugu well, but was barely a beginner in Hindi. The school we were meant to join in Jaipur held an assessment test for me and my older sister. She passed with flying colours. I was okay in the other subjects, but got a royal zero in Hindi. I remember asking my sister for help during the assessment, but I was so far behind in Hindi that it was no good.

Cut to the Principal of BrightLands Public school having a chat with my Dad. She was happy to give admission to my sister, but not to me. She said she can’t have a child who is so far behind in Hindi, he just won’t fit with the school.

Here is where I think about my Dad’s reaction a lot. He had a choice to make here. He could accept the decision and look for another school that didn’t emphasise Hindi. Mind you, that would have left me relatively ostracized as a child, because this is a Hindi speaking state. Instead, he said to the Principal, ‘Madam, please could you give this boy six months. There is a half-yearly exam in six months time. If he fails in Hindi, I will gladly take him out myself. But please could you have faith in him. I believe he’s a quick learner, and he will not disappoint you. Several minutes later, the lady relented, and gave me a ‘provisional’ admission to the lovely school, for six months.

The rest may be history as far as I’m concerned, but this is more about my Dad and not so much about my ‘quick learning’. How did my father have so much faith in me, a little thing barely 6 years old? How was he so sure that I would do it? Would I have done the same thing for my son? I just feel so grateful and blessed, beyond what words can explain, for what my Dad did. There is no doubt, whatsoever, that my life would not have been the same, had it not been for that choice that he made. Hindi is my favourite language. I write much better songs in Hindi than in English. Hindi movies and music have given me some of the most joyous moments of my life. All because my Dad knew, somewhere, that this too shall come. It just needed time.

The next time my son drops a catch, or hits a bad shot, I’d do well to remember that.