The handset lightness test

AGK SPEAK

Watch out, product promise gets engraved on consumer mind.

What I've liked
I admit this TV commercial does begin like your cliched love-song-turned-music-video. Boy spots girl of his dreams and misses her as she steps into a boat and literally sails away smiling, promisingly, as she does so.

Just as I was thinking 'Oh no not another one!', the boy whips out a mobile phone, places it in a paper boat and sets it afloat with a text message.

Camera closes in on this near-impossible feat, as I watched astonished "" the sight of a mobile phone upright in a paper boat bobbing away to its destination!

I really don't think I cared too much about what happened afterwards. I am sure everybody lived happily ever after. But LG CDMA's ad for its Ultra Lite phone couldn't have had a more effective visual.

You could use a million words 'light as air, feather-light' etc. etc and back it with a tonnes of facts but nothing says 'light' as effectively as this.

Product demo is a favourite creative route with most manufacturers use especially when they have a strong, credible claim to make. All of advertising's greats, from Bernbach to Ogilvy have built enduring reputations on their ability to communicate the truth about their product effectively.

It's simply because once a product's promise is tattooed in your brain, nothing can replace it. It remains there forever and whenever the consumer or every one the consumer knows needs an ultra-light phone, you can be sure which one will be the first recommendation! It's an enviable slot in the consumer's brain and with this ad the LG CDMA Ultra Lite has earned itself pride of place.

What I've learned
Gods and pujaris

After years of trying to find my way through the maze of many-layered organisations, I have learned one very simple fact. Power does not always rest at the top.

Every deal and every contract has its own 'pujari' so to speak "" who is the key. We might not always like this 'middleman' between our Gods and us, but this endemic reality is what governs even our official life.

Just like how we need a pujari for every darshan and every puja, strangely, we need to go through the same 'routes' if we want to get things moving smoothly and hassle-free even in management circles.

Let me explain. A chairman and managing director, oddly enough, is not the lord of all he surveys. I myself have been in this situation many times.

For example, an associate or a colleague on behalf of a studio artist or a junior visualiser would ask me if I could place him and honestly I wouldn't be able to do that because the person in charge of the creative department was the Creative Director and it is not fair to foist a team member onto him without his consent.

The right 'power point' for this position would have been the CD. And not the CMD.

The protest that I used to hear quite often was, "C'mon! You are the boss man, don't tell me you can't get something as simple as this done in your own organisation!"

My only explanation was that once you've handed over powers to a manager to run his department and consequently you hold him responsible for its performance, you can't then step in and run it for him.

It would be a self-defeating exercise. Well, that is my side of the story and one that I have encountered in all my many years of knocking on various doors to get things done.

You invariably don't require access to the boss man at all. All you need to do is to find the right 'power point' or 'pujari' and a trouble-free deal is yours!