The art of escaping gravity

AGKSPEAK

Fantasy advertising at its best, and escape advice all successes need.

What I've liked
My choice of TVC this fortnight is the one for Sunfeast Sweet 'n Salt biscuits. The brand has taken a set of disparate elements "" Shah Rukh Khan, a "grown-up" flavour and the biscuit, all client-ordained must-haves "" and woven them into a nice little story of a day-dreaming housewife. Simple, funny, yet so true-to-life, though I must confess I'm not too conversant with the inner workings of the mind of your average housewife.

But judging by Shah Rukh Khan's popularity with females, it is not too hard to imagine housewives fantasising their husbands morphing into Shah Rukh "" sweeping them off their feet and whispering sweet-nothings while twirling them around.

Pure fantasy of course, but that is what is endearing about it. I like the sign-off too: "Kuchh meethe-meethe sapne, kuch namkeen sach". It brings you back to earth with a quasi-ironical/philosophical summation "" which describes the biscuit too. An excellent mix of fantasy, celebrity, comedy, reality, philosophy... all in a 30-something seconder.

What I've learned
Friction-proof your success trajectory
Oddly enough, one of the surest measures of success is the intensity of the viciousness directed at you. Again, my best real-life teacher on this issue was Dhirubhai Ambani. There used to be a time when the more successful he promised to become, the more vitriolic his detractors became."My success is my greatest enemy," he once said.

All of us face this at some time or the other, but we forget that friction is a consequence of our attempts to break out of one orbit and move into the next. Again, I have a brilliant Dhirubhai quote: "Our critics do not feel happy when we perform well.... When you pass through an orbit, it creates friction. And that is natural."

I remember my business ethics being the target of mendacious rumours in the late 1980s when Mudra shot up from nowhere into the top three in just nine years. We were accused of offering deep discounts to clients. I replied saying that I was willing to throw open our books to an audit recommended by the Advertising Association of India, provided all other agencies did the same. The baying stopped.

And that is when I learned one of the most significant lessons of my career: focus on the road ahead, always. Once you've arrived, your harshest critics will fall silent. Just as a spacecraft is engineered to break out of earth's gravity, you too should be mentally strong to break away from forces that pull you back. You must develop a heat shield to protect you from vaporising into thin air.

Worrying about friction, be it in the form of rumours, lies, isolation or ridiculous assumptions about you, will only burn you up.

agkbrandconsult@yahoo.com