Skip the hype

Be as wary of blockbusters as you would be of sycophants.

What I've liked
I guess every brand custodian goes through this phase at some time or the other. I remember going through this myself with Vimal. It's the lure of doing the "Big Ad". The temptation creeps in invariably after your work has been acknowledged and rewarded by the markets, your peers and your audience. That's when you think, now is the time to really go way out there and do a magnificent one. And to compound your confidence, your magnum opus looks great on paper.

We undertook a massive exercise for Vimal once, with the country's top models, the best director at the time for fashion, working with the country's best creative team. We shot from Shimla to Kerala. Blew up an impressive amount of money as well.

It had to work. It had the best people working on it and it had looked fantastic on paper. But when the film arrived...it was a dismally lacklustre product. In fact, I don't think we aired it at all.

Every time the Bajaj Pulsar "Freebiking" 90-seconder comes up on screen, I am reminded of our Vimal "blockbuster". If you examine the Pulsar ad, all the ingredients for a successful bike ad are there "" gritty foreign locale, bikes falling off the top of buildings and landing on two wheels, even the hard to attain 90 second duration... But oddly enough, the magic, the spark, is missing. Can't put your finger on it, but it just isn't there.

That's the toughest part of creativity. You can never predict success or failure. Unlike manufacturing where you are sure that if the process is accurate, the product is flawless and hence successful, creativity on the other hand truly requires magic for that hard to pin down "hit".

What I've learned
Putting praise in its place
It's one of the whimsicalities of our tradition. Our tendency to praise and flatter. Oh, we can be so generous with doling it out, especially when we have an agenda. But little do we care about the harmful impact of our ever-so-mindless words of praise. Because more often than not, the victims tend to succumb to this ultimate poison pill quite simply by believing it.

If you have a keen eye, you can see it happening all around you, to people you know. A little bit of success, a few words of praise, a stray column of acknowledgement in the press and suddenly your colleague morphs into someone you don't recognise anymore.

That's when you can be sure that he suffers from an acute case of "praise-poisoning" with the proverbial fall waiting around the corner!

A long time ago, an old colleague and a very good friend of mine asked to meet me. Old friends know you the best, so I was curious when he remarked how much he admired my achievements and continued to praise me quite a bit. And then came the agenda "" he was looking for a job! In an instant all the wonderful things that he said about me that I would have so dearly wished were true, vapourised in the harsh light of reality.

Even though I do not wish to turn my readers into jaded cynics, this is a cautionary tale. Never believe the hype. We have a saying that believing praise is like sitting on the branch of a drumstick tree, which though quite a sturdy-looking tree, has one of the most fragile branches belying its deceptively sturdy look. Try resting on any of the branches and you will soon come crashing down to reality. So I recommend that you put a mirror to your soul and take an honest look at yourself and examine the truth behind the praise. Very often you will discover that you were merely a tool in helping someone grasp for something he wanted. True acknowledgment of your capabilities chooses other means to let you know your worth.

agkbrandconsult@yahoo.com
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