Control Engineering

Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters.

After three months into my first stint, I realize that meeting sales targets traveling all day in KSRTC buses, in tiny villages, in this ceaseless rainfall, in places where all you get in the name of vegetarian food is a Kerala porotha and pazhampuri,,,, ain’t easy :(

Esp. if you’re in a country where you don’t know the language. Esp. if you are a girl. Esp. if you’ve screwed up habits!
Lore says, Control is the key to success. I don’t disagree.

• I love drinking water. I used to drink lots and lots and lots of it before I realized, I was searching for a clean loo every two hours while doing the market. The thought of using a public toilet killed me. Once I made my salesman sit in a coffee shop, while I used the washroom. My (water) drinking habits were getting too much to handle. Mornings would be spent answering the million dollar question, "where would I get a clean place to pee in this little town if I need to??" Thus, I decided to control my water intake. Now my early mornings and late evenings are spent savoring the liquid :) I hate to admit, but I envy indian men when it comes to this. They pee anywhere, everywhere. Shamelessly. They don't even need a clean place (I've never met any guy searching for one!!).
  

• Another place where I quickly need to get my control mechanisms working, is my back slapping habit. I somewhere am of the contention, that if people are really relishing their work, they’d do a lot of real hard back slapping to each other. I realized how culturally insensitive I was the first time I hit my mallu salesman on the back. He instantly moved away several meters and till date refuses to work with me coz he is a brahmachari!!

• Thirdly and most importantly, it’s the parlance. They don’t understand when I ask them for directions in hindi or english but they’d give me a dirty look when I use the F word. I’ve learnt that there are some not-to-be-uttered-words (even when you know the other person doesn’t know your language) like sex, daroo, love, kiss to name a few. Hindi Gaalis like BC, MC, C*****, G***** should never-never-never be used. They eat drink sleep in Malayalam but abuse in hindi. And I..., gotta control baby!

I listen to Janet chechi’s song, for inspiration nowadays:

This is a story about control, my control
Control of what I say, control of what I do
And this time Im gonna do it my way
I hope you enjoy this as much as I do
Are we ready? I am? cause its all about control
And Ive got lots of it

- Janet Jackson, Control

Oft repeated words of wisdom

"fat rahi hai..."

"mara raha hoon..."

"kat gaya hai..."

"baja di..."

Golden Rule : Don't ask 'kya' after anyone says any of the above

Thanks to sales.

All for the eye-pie!

If you walk in your regular grocery shop, chances are that you’d be picking up your pack of chips from a spacecraft like Bingo stand or your toothpaste from a rocket sized Pepsodent gondola. If you plan to open a retail store, I suggest don’t buy the furniture as the stands, racks etc will soon follow, don’t waste money on painting the walls, the wallpapers and vinyls will be there soon.

Older home-grown brands like AVT are leaving their diffidence behind to fight with international majors like Nestle in display and shelf space. Innovation is at its oomphy best. A brand like Appy, which desperately wants to be called a cool drink in its TV ads,throws a sex appeal when it comes to its champagne like stylish display.

The kind of dough companies were spending five years back on display was nothing compared to what they are doing today. The amount of merchandising done inside a normal kirana store shouts for the ‘buy moi’ pull brands are creating for themselves. A few years back one could see (in a few high- throughput shops) max-to-max a Cadbury dispenser and a Coke refrigerator as ‘company ka maal’. These days you have Boost vinyls, Lays stands, Hutch sign boards, Kissan Jam racks, Airtel counters, Sunfeast gates, Bytes hangars, Maggie bags, Munch cut outs, Vicks dispensers, Red bull refrigerators, Cadbury visi-coolers, Red Label swinging insignias, Surf washing-machine-resembling boxes, Mentos trays and what not. Everyone wants to rule the category nobody is ready to be a anybody!

Fight for shelf-space is far worse when it comes to organized retail. Companies want branding on walls, flooring, ceiling, staff uniforms, bla blah….and then there are nitty gritties like extra margin, display charges etc.

Nowadays when I walk in a shop, more than the product, I appreciate the efforts put in by brand managers to catch my attention as a customer!

Adsense ??

Since childhood, Outlook has been one of my favorite weekly news magazine. I laud them for their articles and reports, style of writing, consideration to detail, gripping headlines, attention-grabbing graphics and most importantly their technique of making bland news interesting.

What goes missing sometimes is the synchrony between the marketing and the editorial teams. I admire Vinod Mehta (Editor –In-Chief, Outlook) for his quality of journalism and principled writing but the latest issue of Outlook magazine demonstrated low business sense on his part. Not knowing whom to hold responsible, I blame him for silly placement of ads.

Take for instance page 27 of the 16th July issue:

West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya looks rather uncomfortable sharing the same page with a Jockey model in her undergarments!

Dear Vinod,

My first suggestion: Recruit more MBAs like me who have learnt nothing else but 4Ps in their 2 years of B-schooling. (‘Placement’ happens to be one of the 4Ps) It might just help!

My second suggestion: If you have too many MBAs in your team, sack a few. It might help even more!!

For The Irony of Adsense read Nikhil's blog - http://nikmuse.blogspot.com/