So the advt. begins with this dame using a pillow under her dress to see how she would look when she’s pregnant.. and then some random moron shows up at the door and asks her to “coffee”.

She makes Bru coffee [duh] and they both have some and seem to be in Bru heaven. Cut to the next scene where she is pouring Bru into a tiny cup [reminded me about the cup given to Hulk Hogan in Suburban Commando]. She then puts it next to their cups!

Then it dawns on me that the darned bloke is the husband, and the “coffee” was no pickup line, and she really is pregnant! Crappy advt. *mutters under breath*.

Was randomly surfing through Rediff online and came across an amusing article by Rohan Siddhu on his life of an investment banker.

So I was seeing this hoarding on my way to work, which ‘symbolises’ the Indian teen girl and celebrates her youth by offering to her the Bajaj Sunny (a moped). The teen in the picture was so unlike any girl I had seen in all my stay in India (barring a few). She wore a miniskirt, had glossy lipstick and was sitting on the vehicle posing for the picture.

The average indian girl I know does wear trendy clothes and use lipstick. But at the same time a good number of them also wear salwar khamees, not so much lipstick, and are still hep. So I find myself wondering why is it that the advertisements always seem to focus on the so called ‘modern’ woman, and not on the ones that more often are seen buying and using such vehicles? Why can we not have a salwar clad woman/teen girl in a similar ad hoarding? We would only be recognising another section of our customers, or wouldn’t we?

I don’t know why is it that advertisements have to idealise not only their own product, but the environment as well as the people involved. After all, the buyers are never ideal are they? Nor the environment in which they use the product. Heck, sometimes the products are shown in environments where they would never be used!

Could it get worse? Yes it could! Nothing beats having foreigners advertising products for a local market. I mean who does that? I really couldn’t care if an non-desi was using a particular product. I might relate to it if someone in the target category was shown using it.

Just doesn’t make sense.

Before you go any further, I would urge you to read an article on BPOs in India gearing up for a new entry level recruitment policy (opens in a new window) [jpeg, 112KB].

The part (or lack thereof) that really troubles me is that no where in the article I see a concern expressed about the future of children who will be recruited under the new policy. The BPOs (call centers) are expressing a strong concern about the high attrition rate prevalent among the current crop of youngsters joining them. And the solution according to them is to reach out to youngsters lower in the chain by going to high schools to recruit! I mean what the fuck are they thinking?

Any idiot who has an iota of intelligence would have done exit interviews or at least asked around within his/her organization to see why is it that there is attrition in the first place. At this point you may wonder how I may even be worth of making a comment on the situation, considering that I’m neither in the industry nor do I intend to be. The reason is that I have a sister who is working in the industry since the last couple of years and I have had extensive conversations with her on this topic. So I’m not exactly an outsider.

So from what I hear, one of the biggest reasons for attrition (as opposed to the one stated in the article) is getting into a relationship with someone. So the typical scenario goes something like this: Boy likes girl, either of which leave because of better pay to another call center, and then refer the other person and that person shifts too. Simple.

And I just don’t see how going to high schools is going to help, considering that hormones are on a high anyways. And even if training really was the issue, why not train someone who is already in there, as opposed to getting kids fresh out?

I am really worried about the future of children who get pulled into the BPO rut this way, right out of school. What happens when they decide/realise a few a years later that there is not much of a future in the industry, or that this future is not for them? They won’t have a graduate degree to fall back upon. They would have to start afresh, in the true sense of the word. And it won’t be a cake walk, of any length. BPOs could actually lead to a ruined future not only for the individual, but ultimately for the country.

Is short term gain, or gain for any one industry, worth our nation’s loss? We could be losing potential scientists, engineers, poets, artists, linguists, economists, and countless others in return for childish greed of money. I may be wrong, and I only hope I am. But I sorely wish that this doesn’t work out in the favour of the BPOs.

My next post will be a letter I am drafting to Sam Chopra.

So the other day I was reading the paper, and there was this article on ‘Customer Relationship Management’ and how it would change the way customers and vendors/service providers interact.

It spoke about how all information sources would be connected to provide the vendor with maximum information about the customer so as to be able to serve him/her better. What really caught my attention was that there seemed to be no level of privacy envisioned.

They explained the whole idea through a made up conversation portraying how business would be conducted in the future. Unfortunately I couldn’t find it online, so will just provide a gist here:

So a customer (C) calls up to with the intent of ordering pizza. The customer service representative (CSR) takes the call and starts by asking his name and phone number. The rest of the conversation follows.

C: Hi, I would like to order a pan pizza with the works.
CSR: Sure sir, though may I suggest the low fat alternative seeing how you have high cholesterol? Our special is just Rs. 299 and can comfortably feed a family of 4.

C: Uh? Okay. I’ll take that, and could you please tell me the total after taxes as I’ll have to go withdraw the amount from the ATM as I’m out of cash.
CSR: Definitely. May I suggest you use your American Express credit card, as your ATM card has reached it’s daily withdrawal limit? Might save you a trip to the bank.

C: What? How did you know? Okay.. I’ll just use my American Express card. Here are the details… How long do you think it will take for you to deliver?
CSR: It should take round about 40 minutes to deliver the pizzas to your house. If you are in a hurry, you could pick it up in 15 minutes on your Kinetic Honda.

C: What’s going on? You seem to know everything there si to know about me. I’ll be there in 15 minutes.
CSR: Thank you sir. You have a nice day.

Though this might seem impressive to many people out there, to me it means taking the invasion of my privacy to the level that is simply unacceptable! How does it give anyone the right to know if I have withdrawn today’s maximum amount from the ATM, or what is my vehicle of choice, or that I have certain health conditions. I can see the importance of the latter when it comes to a medical emergency.

I don’t mind suggestions based on my buying preferences, but someone suggesting I take a certain pizza because of any condition I may have is unacceptable. I reserve the right to choose intelligently. And then again, incase we do let them have their way, where does it all stop?

Money Money Money:

So I have decided to take a better control of my finances and am thus currently reading the Economic Times on an everyday basis in order to track the stock market as well as the mutual funds arena. I hope to take the next few months to understand both and invest sometime in March next.

Media

So I was reading Brand Equity and came across this article about advertisement gurus still sticking to the 30 second advt. piece as their favourite way to get the message across. The article was well written, but I did have one complaint. For any abbreviation used, there was no expansion available. While this might suit the everyday reader who may/may not be more aware/concerned, to me it signaled the indifference of the writers towards their audience. And according to me, it’s not the best way to reach your audience.

On another front, while reading the same paper I came across accolades for a particular advertisement making the rounds on Television. The advt. itself is amazing. The gist of it is that when some guests come over, the mother (hostess) asks her little boy to show the guests how papa (father) works. The kid acts like the boss of the office, and does a good job conveying the message. Next he is asked to show how the father is at parties, and he does the bhangra (punjabi dance.. and for you Jaro, the Daler Mehndi dance) with an amazing background score! Finally when asked how the father is at home, he rips off his shirt (and this is where my eyes popped the hell out.. I was like wtf are they trying to show.. please let him not take off any more clothes *cheeky grin*), and throws it onto the floor and starts acting like a laundry man cleaning clothes. *ROTFL*. This obviously symbolises that the father is the boss at work, the life of the party, but at home is is a slave.

Okay after writing this out I realised they had featured some other advt. Note to self: more coffee in the morning, and a long hot shower before touching the papers. I sure hope I haven’t been getting the wrong idea with every article I’ve been reading.

Anyways the point I wanted to personally make about this advt. is that it is brilliant on many grounds. For each action that the kid enacts, the background score is simply fantastic. To add to that the fact that the media house behind the advt. chose to draw a parallel right out of an average Indian home (it being very common to have kids enact funny things) is simply fantastic. You end up really touching home base with the viewers.

This is what my college produces: Prejudice (read before coming to any conclusions).

It’s a feeling of brotherhood like no other.

I would love it if this could be done in India: Bid to save nearly-lost language.

There are so many dialects which might be going out of use simply because no one uses/speaks it anymore or knows how to use/speak it anymore.

Started reading Popular Science today, and I have to say I’m hooked for life. Read some really interesting articles about racing old walkmen (visit www.recorderrace.org for details) and the hacking Superbowl (visit www.defcon.org for details).

Apart from that had an average day, with me whiling away time doing nothing much. Chatted with a couple of folks, read some PopSci, and played America’s Army.