Sometimes marketing managers make some very obvious mistakes - like this StanChart advert below (Click the image/ here to see complete ad). Using a pack of cards to depict one's savings is really a cruel cruel joke on people - especially in the current financial circumstances.  Probably a more appropriate image to use here would have been a kid playing lego blocks and a parent adding on top of the structure. 

It is quite common to find an author releasing an excerpt of his/her book on the web to create an initial buzz. Notable example include Purple Cow  , Getting Real (released complete), and Chetan Bhagat's 3 Mistakes . But the trend was started in the 19th century by French Novelist  Honoré de Balzac  with his novel  La Peau de chagrin  .  Before the book was completed, Balzac created excitement about it by publishing a series of articles and story fragments in several Parisian journals. Although he was five months late in delivering the manuscript, he succeeded in generating sufficient interest that the novel sold out instantly upon its publication.  Set in early 19th-century Paris, La Peau de chagrin tells the story of a young man who finds a magic piece of  shagreen  that fulfills his every desire. For each wish granted, however, the skin shrinks and consumes a portion of his physical energy. Even I am thinking of releasing an e-Book, just gotta find some time off to compose i...

As a part of promotions for the latest flick title 99, some theatres were offering 2 tickets for Rs 99.  Call it a marketing gimmick for the movie's popularization or a taste of market reality for the strike-stricken movie-theatre-multiplex market, but its an awsome offer ... almost 1/4th the(old) prices; multiplexes showing desperate reflexes still their muscle flexes (PJ credit: Arijit). And I thought someone was giving away branded wrist watches for Rs.99

The aftermath of the election is that Congress is back in power and national governance will be back in inaction as it has been. [With exception of the NREGA the previous UPA govt has started no new schemes and even existing visionary projects like the Golden Quadrilateral have slowed down].  The lesson for the BJP has come not from where it has lost but from where it has won - Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand; and from its ally in Bihar. And the lesson is governance works, ideology doesn't, religion alienates electorate and hate politics takes you two steps backward. When the BJP came to power in MP in 2005 under Uma Bharti, the state of affairs was dismal - there was more emphasis on where the next Sadhu congregation is going to be than which districts need roads. It was by a stroke of luck that Uma exited and entered Shivraj Chauhan who started concentrating on development from Day 0. In Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje however repeated the same mistakes as Uma Bharti, but a...

Is this the resurgence of the (Nehru-Gandhi) dynasty? With Rahul Gandhi being credited for engineering the Congress's performance in UP, do we see the Gandhi family rising again. Senior Journlist Inder Malhotra felt otherwise on CNN-IBN. And his quite astute analysis of the rise dynasty politics makes one believe that he is correct.  Mr. Malhotra (who is also a biographer of Indira Gandhi) noted that Nehru was known as a vocal opponent of nepotism, and Indira Gandhi did not even contest a seat in the 1962 elections [ 1 ]. And while Sardar Patel's son contested [which then was not seen as nepotism anyway], Indira did not until the death of Panditji. It was actually Indira who brought in the dynasty politics by projecting Sanjay (and later Rajiv) as her heir. What was worse is that in order to ensure the family upperhand in politics, she destroyed careers of any cadre-risers in the party, in effect also weakening the party organization and hence leaving critical issues on the ta...

I have been gleaning/ watching a lot of election analysis since yesterday - and have some interesting bits to report. To start with the blogging world, GreatBong is bang on target when he says:  ...but the Mandir issue is just too 90s, like the Spice Girls, to have any further resonance A lot of people I know ... dislike the Congress for their pandering and for their neglect of the urban middle class. They are aware of the Congress’s dismal record on urban violence. They are attracted to the BJP’s more solid commitment to policies (as opposed to handouts) of relevance to urban India, at least in comparison to the Congress. The only thing that prevents them from putting their stamp on the lotus has been the radical hard Right section of the party. Vajpayee, with his demeanor as a statesman and a moderate, was a master at bringing this section over to the BJP. L K Advani in contrast totally dropped the ball and pushed these “undecided but Right leaning” right into the Congress lap.  Tru...

Check out http://www.hindustantimes.com/election09/Map.aspx# Presenting information well is an art - and HT has done a good job here. For more on effective communication of complex information, check this out: http://extremepresentation.typepad.com/blog/2006/10/36_slides_that_.html

Forenote : Apologies for sounding so crass in this post - its a rant, so guess its ok. But if it bothers you to read - don't! 1. Changing one's name on a social network to some cryptic text/phrase In the days of yore (read:2005-7) when social networks like Orkut did not have the facility of setting your status, many people changed their display names to reflect their status such as "got married", "now in Pune" etc. Now that all social networks provide a "status" field, I don't think people need to continue to change their display names - yet, so many of them do!  Again, while most are sensible to append these messages after their names, some people completely replace their names with the message. Coupled with the fact that such people often use a cartoon or random image as their profile photo, it becomes impossible to determine the person's identify even when you visit their profile. And with some who have peculiar email IDs such as arbit-d...

I saw two movies today- Pride and Glory Road - coincidentally both of them focus on how the sportsmen overcame racial challenges.  While Pride focuses on a black swimming team from Philadelphia rising above competition and winning under guidance of a black coach; Glory Road is about a underdog basketball team from Texas (comprising of both blacks and whites) beating the champions Kentucky in national championship in spite of all hardships. While the coach in Glory Road ,  Don Haskins is not black himself - the story revolves round the racial undercurrents that he has to struggle against to retain the proportion of blacks in his team (7:5) and the repeated sabotage attempts that the team members have to face. Pride is more about how coach Jim Ellis must fight not only racism, but also protect his swimmers - most of them from poor background - from social evils which surround them. Both movies go a long way to tell the tale of how America as a nation has had to fight a long battle wi...