Decision making FAIL!

What caused the “today” to suck!

What you are not!

Spoiler: Moral Science-ish!

1. You are not your twitter handle
2. You are not your Gtalk status message
3. You are not who you are “in relationship with”
4. You are not your professional summary
5. You are not who you follow on Twitter
6. You are not who follows you on Twitter
7. You are not your blog
8. You are not the blogs you read
9. You are not your “5 things”
10. You are not your feed
11. You are not your shared items on Google Reader
12. You are not your job

13. You are not always a team leader even if the company calls you a team leader
14. You are not performance appraisal
15. You are not the college you attended
16. You are not the school you attended
17. You are not the number of your facebook friends
18. You are not your Orkut fans
19. You are not your email sent items
20. You are not your email received items
21. You are not your phone
22. You are not your laptop / computer
23. You are not your motorcycle
24. You are not your car
25. You are not the city you live in
26. You are not Tom Cruise (unless you really are Tom Cruise)
27. You are not your boss (unless of course – he he)

Then WTF are you?

The good word

We see a lot of quizzes and pick my five stuff at Facebook these days

A voice in my head tells me, however advanced our technology gets, people still like someone (something) to tell them good things (which may not always be true) all the time.

The voice also says that these people want the good words to spread also. This formula has survived the test of millenniums.

Thank “God” for all the religions!

Oh, I am a strategic level guy. Please talk to my junior

I started my career at quite a prestigious place indeed. Had a perpetual hard on for securing that job for one complete year back at college.

“There goes that brilliant kid. He is cool too”

However a lot of prestigious places comes with an old management team and huge hierarchies. At the sales department where I spent some time, we had something which looked like this

CEO
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Operating division head
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Business unit head
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Sales head . . . . . . . Manufacturing head
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Regional Sales head . . . . . Regional Manufacturing head. . . . . . .Design Manager
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Senior Sales Manager
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Sales Manager. . . . . . Manufacturing Manager
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Sales Executive. . . . . . Designer
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Other forms of life

So being the new guy I came just above the other forms of life with a lot of old people above me, at times trying to motivate me with their 5 minute talks. It is a big deal as 5 minutes in their lives is a huge thing and you are supposed to be thankful for those 5 minutes.

However the catch is when except for the low forms of life every one else thinks they are doing something at a “strategic level”. Anything that has to be done will be strategically pushed down the ladder. Fault finding and “in my n number of years of experience” talks happen at the strategic area.

Off late, there is a general observation that the organizations are becoming top heavy and the average age is climbing up. even 10 minute motivation talks does not really seem to control this trend. Can’t get where the trouble is

Got an iPod? Suck on it!

Junta keeps going crazy on their iPod and the amount of crappy music they carry on it with pride. Just an appreciation for all of them! This V – Day could have quite a lot of this gadget being gifted all across the globe. Spread the music all around!

Sharing the love of comics

I have been tripping on quite a few comics for the last six to seven months and my love for them have been on the rise. Sharing the love

My pitch: I have a short attention span. Can’t sit through a movie, Can’t sit through a book – Love music though and can sit through it for a long time. Comics gets you, takes 10 – 15 seconds, tell a story, laugh, frown, cry etc. and moves on the next. Saves time, saves energy and stimulates grey cells. FULL ON!

1. Ctrl + Alt + Delete

This is the ultimate Gamer Geek comic with a great touch of humour to it. A must read for gamers and people who enjoy games “over shoulders”. This comic used to be kick ass some days back since the lead character got married, started looking at finance and stuff.

Do watch out for stuff called “sillies” in CAD. This can bowl you over on a daily basis.

2. Gaping Void: Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards

Web 2.0, marketing, culture, silicon valley – all on the back of business cards. Run by a dude called Hugh McLeod at Texas. Highly thought provoking and heavily borrowed by bloggers, tweeters and so. Good cool quotient.

3. Overcompensating

Jesus Christ on beer, Office guy on weed, Osama on cocaine and your pet cat on a full bottle of vodka plus the latest news presented in true urban fashion. Do check out for the footnotes on the comics too.

4. Softer World

Comic runs entirely on real life photographs and small captions around it. Has the capacity of going extremely dark especially with romance (gone bad), work (gone bad) etc. The creator should be going through a bad patch and this is helping his creativity in a major way.

5. Unofficial Calvin and Hobbes

calvin, hobbes, dad, mom, baby sitter, susie, teacher, captain, t-rexes, whales, snow – Calvin and Hobbes!

6. Dinosaur Comics

One set of pictures (panels), thousands of cool ideas. Told through a T-Rex wrecking some cars and speaking on everything under the sun. Sells well with techies, engineers, computer enthusiates – hell, that could be you, me or our friends.

7. Cyanide and Happiness

Adult rated comics – got sex, lots of drugs, lots of violence and hell lots of humour. Safe for work too. Pictures are not that “usafe” – what can you do with stick figures with a t-shirt on anyways?

8. Garfield minus Garfield

Remove the cat. The comic seizes to be funny. It becomes DARK! A must read.

9. Indexed

Ideas through Set Theory and Venn Diagrams. Truly awesome. Any idea across the planet and outside could be represented mathematically. You could have flunked math in school and still enjoy this one!

10. Wulffmorgenthaler

Remember the danish cartoonist who got bashed in the middle east??? Do you?? Well, these guys are KINGS man! Go with an unbiased mind though. Don’t get hurt unnecessarily. World unfurls in a different way.

11. XKCD

If you have ever enjoyed Physics or Math this is a sure kill!

12. Wondermark Lite

19th century pictures, 21st century ideas. Imagine a guy sitting in a steam engine and talking about Google!

A lot lot more actually. Do leave your comment if you come across some.

Bondsurance – viral video – Bond, Hema Malini, bad ass bike and unshaven villains

A new viral has come out for IDBI Bonds. This one comes from Contests2win.

The idea is pretty cool. The execution is neat and very Bombay.

Yet, is viral the real way?
Could bonds be sold though humour?

1. Bonds are known for their less return and serious target audience. One may laugh at the ad, think about the hawaldar joke and then move on. Good from an awareness perspective. (We have the coconut dealer with the thick Tamil accent talking about the returns and riches at the end).

2. Ideal solution for selling products which require more thought and research from the audience should be some other form of advertising rather than a viral. Makemytrip virals by Webchutney have clicked as buying air tickets involves opening a few tabs and then booking it. FTW! FTW!

3. Looking at the viral from the contests2win perspective, this is a complete win. They get the eyeballs, they get the creative appreciation and maybe a few awards to put up as testimonials for their competence. However, as an ad agency, they should really look for other means of selling the bonds. Get down to the basics – get more people to buy their client’s stuff.

Awesome effort though. Guess its time to move on from Tamil accent bashing. It ceases to be funny after 25 years!

Chutney with the new viral – Ghajini, Aamir Khan and BTL jokes

Webchutney viral Ghajini

I like it. Yes. Sure why not. Seriously.

The idea is well told though. www.Oktatabyebye.com

You can slap that bald guy on MTV

Have you noticed a bald guy sitting with Nikhil Chinnappa at times? That guy is called Raghu Ram and he is a producer. That show called Roadies is this guy! Hell man! that was good. You are not ‘this guy’ with Nikhil Chinnappa.

So, the deal is following the shoe incident of Bush, MTV makes a show called “Slap Raghu”. Viral Marketing of Roadies. Games in Orkut and Facebook. Facebook connect and all that jazz.

I like Social Media. I would not like to be slapped by arbit people. Damn!

Metallica and Client Relations

Client requirements go from reasonable to unreasonable with confidence in vendor capabilities and come down crashing soon. I have seen this phenomenon during my manufacturing sales and online advertising servicing days. It sure calls for clients to have a check on themselves too – just like how the marketing gurus propose for small, medium and huge businesses.

1. Have a clear idea of what you need.
2. Have a better idea of what you may want and stick to your needs.
3. Complete the needs.
4. Think about wants – depending on circumstances (of which again have a “good” idea – “clear” not necessary )
5. Go to step 1