Legendary Portrait of Life

The Mona Lisa, quoted as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world". To paint this portrait, Leonardo da Vinci required a canvas, an Easel (stand on which canvas is placed), and colours. To paint any painting, painter requires these three things but not every painting becomes a legend.

Our Life is also like a painting, where we are the painters painting on the canvas of time placed on a 3 legged Easel of personal life, work and self-development filling the canvas using the 7 colours of thinking, knowledge, attitude, hard work, perseverance, acceptance of failure, and openness to change.

There are millions of paintings, painted by thousands of painters but only some of them maintain their significance through the course of time. Similarly, there are numerous life paintings but only a few of them are legends.

The question which arises is, what is that factor which makes a painting or life's portrait legendary?

For any painting to become legendary, there are 3 requirements

1. Stable Easel

The first and foremost thing to make a good portrait is that the painter must have a stable easel so that the canvas is stable. The time (canvas) of each individual is divided into his personal life, his work and self-development. Most people try to balance only two legs at a time which result in an unstable easel.

If you maintain a balance between personal life and work but forgot about the 3rd which is self-development, your work will slowly gets affected, which results in disturbance of the work life balance and in turn you have an unstable easel. Similary if you try to maintain a balance between work and self development, personnal life suffers and again easel is destabalized.

2. Canvas Utilization

A good painting is determined by how well you utilise the canvas to bring out the maximum of your creativity on paper. In life, every person on this planet has only 24 hours in a day, its what they do in those 24 hours which makes a life's portrait legend.

If you paint in a small area and leave most of the canvas blank it won't be good picture. A person who wastes his time and not utilize time for his personal life, work or self development will just lead a normal life and cannot paint a memorable lif'e portrait.

3. A meaningful colour combination

The pianting is how a painter uses the combination of colours on the canvas to bring out a meaningful picture. In life's portrait, people uses 7 colours of thinking, knowledge, attitude, hard work, perseverance, acceptance of failure, and openness to change, in their time to bring out the success and happiness in their life.

Every painting brings out some meaning and so if every life. Life is meaningful only if both success and happiness comes together in life. People may or may not posess all the 7 colours of life which determines the quality of their life's potrait.

A legendary portrait of life is painted by a painter who uses possess 7 attributes, uses them in his time while optimum utilizing it and maintaining a balance between his personal life, work and self development and lead a happy life with success.

Anyone can paint a legendary portrait of his life, just he needs to understand what he wants to paint and should be creative enough to bring out his thoughts on canvas because leading a meaningful life is an art more than a science.

A new dawn of advertising

Gone are those days when companies and their advertising agencies rely on tried and testing media for promotion of product or services. It is the age of millenniums and generation Z, which spend 90% of the time on the internet even for the things which are available otherwise.

In my blog titled. "If old is 'Gold', new is 'Platinum'..!!", I had mentioned about changing requirements of advertisement to reach the correct target audience. Companies have started giving a prominent share of marketing budget to these new methods of communication along with the old ones.

No company can just completely rely on TV, print, radio and other old methods of just reaching their customers. They need to provide some ways to customers through which they could engage with the brands. In my blog titled, " Hitting the Bull's-eye..!!, I had mentioned new ways which companies are using to provide a platform to their customers to directly interact with brands.

The other media which proves to make companies and brands omnipresent is "the internet". The advertising industry has been witnessing a paradigm shift in marketing medium through the social media marketing, mobile marketing, viral videos and short films.

Many companies like Ola, Uber, Quikr, Kingfisher, Commonfloor, Snapdeal, TrulyMadly, Flipkart, Lenovo, Hotstar and much more had routed their advertising campaigns through youtube sensations like AIB (All India Bakchod) and TVF (The Viral Fever). 

This type of medium gives direct reach to the target customer in a subtle way whose effect is more prominent and long lasting than that of TV or print or radio or even the social media advertisement.

TVF Pitchers successfully provided a platform for companies to showcase their brands and became the first sitcom to be listed in IMDB top 250 worldwide.

Then TVF Permanent roommates touched the hearts and showcased brands like ola cabs in every episode through a character named Purshottam.

Movie and TV celebrities endorsement has been a constant practice by most of the companies to register their brands in customers' mind, but always presenting the communication just as an advertisement reduces the impact of celebrities.

But the recent work of advertisement from capital foods, the owner of Ching's Secret has flabbergasted both advertising and entertainment fraternity.

The video titled "Ranveer Ching Returns | A Rohit Shetty Film | Ranveer Singh & Tamannaah" is not another bollywood movie featuring the bad ass actor Ranveer Singh and sizzling Tamannaah Bhatia, but it is a wonderful piece of communication for chings brand.

It was released in the format of any other bollywood movie release format by releasing a trailer and own poster.

The video's trailer was released around a week before the full short film of 5 minutes and 33 seconds, got more than 3 million views and the full movie released on 19th August got 2 million views in just 2 days of its release.

How this marks the new dawn of advertising in India?

First of all, this advertisement which is in the form of a short film starts as any bollywood movie.

Secondly, mentioning Rohit Shetty, a known producer, and director of bollywood movies gives more credibility to it of being a movie only.

Thirdly, it casts Ranveer Singh who is currently the youth icon after winning national award for best actor and Tamannaah, who is one of the best actresses of tollywood. Thus creating excitement in both North and South Indian audience.

The first time any viewer will watch this video, he/ she will expect it being another movie directed by Rohit Shetty having Ranveer and Tamannaah as lead actor and actress.

It creates a win-win situation for all the stakeholders, capital foods getting advertisement, Rohit 

Shetty, Ranveer and Tamannaah getting a publicity and buzz in the audience.

Certainly, short films were made before to inject the brand communication in customers' in a subtle way, but chings have come up with the never before concept which will definitely change a lot in this industry.

In this new dawn of advertising, there were advertising rays of viral video advertising, customer engaging advertising and another ray of short film advertising just emerged from the horizon.

The Managerial Syndrome

Crying our lungs out, resting in the hands of a doctor this is how we came into this world. With our birth, we were given a name by our parents and everyone used to call us by that name. As we grew up we started responding to that name and it became our identity for the rest of our lives.

The name is a powerful tool to make us feel who we are and respond accordingly. The same power corporate designation has on us. 

You all must have come across several corporate designations and most of you must be holding a designation which includes the term 'manager' in it. Whether it's any function, be it sales, marketing, human resource, operations or finance, all incorporate the term 'manager' in their designation.

Not only at function but also at every employee grade, manager term is used in the designations

We daily come across several quotes, stories, case studies on managers vs leaders and the best description in a single phrase is "Managing is role but leadership is the attribute."

Every leader is ought to be a good manager but not vice versa. Hence being just a manager is not enough.



The question is why the corporate world loves word 'manager' so much when we all know we want leaders. It is fascinating to witness companies spending millions, on one hand, to develop leaders among their employees while designating them as managers only.

This is same as calling out someone's else name but wants to call someone else. This paradoxical condition is the managerial syndrome which further develops leadership deficiency syndrome by which maximum companies are suffering these days.

Why don't we designate our employees with the term 'leaders' in it?

Be it any function or any grade, remove the term manager and start using leader instead. Area sales leader, marketing leader, national sales leader and so on. Just changing the name changes what is expected from the employees.

People don't work with companies, people work with people. People only create companies and in turn companies create people. A manager can only develop another manager, it's a leader who creates another leader. The problem with today's corporate world is not lack of leadership, but the excess of managerial attitude.

If a company hires a potential leader, the seed of leadership in him is not nourished and crushed under a load of managers and thus leading to the lack of leadership.

The managerial syndrome starts with the designation itself. Small changes can lead to the big difference, change the name and change everything.

The war of 'places'

Mankind has been witnessing innumerable wars with the hefty loss of life and property and most of them were fought for only one reason, "place". The acquisitiveness of rulers was the major reason for the every battle fought and this reason continues till date. In this modern era of self-driven cars, mankind is again standing in the battleground, but this time, it is not being fought with bloodshed but with moneyshed.

 There was a time when people used to search offline and buy offline, then the internet came and helped people to search online and buy offline. Then came the e-commerce which marked the beginning of people searching offline and buying online. It all started with books which developed in stages to apparels to electronics to furniture to the grocery to medicines to food. Nowadays, you can virtually get anything and everything with just a few touches on your smartphone, your virtual wallet and, of course, the internet.

There is a continuous war between the offline space and online space in every area, whether the high investment categories of jewelry, electronics, gadgets and mobile phones to medium investment categories of apparels and footwears to low investment categories of grocery and foods.

Each side is fighting this war with their own weapons and armors. First of these weapons is the mode of payment. While offline has the tried and tested modes of payment of cash or cards, online has the preferred mode of payment as the virtual wallet. Each of these payment options has some advantages over the other and therefore, each side is also utilizing each other's weapons to neutralize the power of each other. While online has always used card payment, offline has started keeping handy the virtual wallet payment option.

The second weapon on which online rely is discounting and offline, on the other hand, has an armor of physicality against the online's weapon. There is a continuous see-saw going on between both spaces, one may win the small battle but the war is still going on. Both the sides realized the state of indecisiveness when each side's strategies and weapons are countered by the other side's counter-attack and armory.
But the course of this war is changing with the commissioning of war spies. The offline is going online and vice versa and in this way, spies are being deployed on each side.

The examples of offline present online are Aditya Birla (trendin.com & abof.com), future group (http://shop.bigbazaardirect.com), on the other hand, online firms like ferns & petals, lenskart, amazon and many more, are entering into the race of omnipresence by establishing offline centers.

It is said, someone is always benefited from anything that happens anywhere in the world and here also, there is someone who is the beneficiary of this ongoing war. You must have read the famous childhood story of the fight between two cats and a monkey. While two cats kept on fighting on a piece of cake, it was the monkey who took advantage and enjoyed to the fullest.

Today, online is although making huge revenues and increased its turnover manifolds but is incurring incomparable losses due to heavy discounting. If we take the case of India, the combined losses of the terrific trio which includes Flipkart, Amazon, and Snapdeal in India is Rs.5052 Crores only in FY 2015-2016.
Due to the fear of losing customers, offline panicked and started giving more discounts than it used to offer and, in turn, reduced its profitability. The only entity which is getting benefit out of this is the customer. You are smart enough to figure out who are the cats here and who is the monkey.

The major question which now arises is, how and when will this war end and who will win this war?

Many experts say that the ability of online to offer alluring discounts will end soon and by that time major offline will be present online but most online will not be present offline and those which will be present, to a minuscule level.

But the deciding factor in this war is the power of followers each side has. The followers are the customers which are loyal to the spaces.

There are two groups of customers, for one group, look and feel of the things which they are buying matters more than their comfort but for the second group, comfort and choice matter more than the ability to look and feel. This has changed the buying habits of the second group of customers and they follow online whereas first follow offline.

The second group of customers is strengthening because the majority of urbanized generation Y and Z and a part of urban generation X are following online. But semi-urbanized and rural generation X, Y and Z which forms the majority of the world population still rely on offline.

In this war of places, online is giving a good fight to the offline, but the latter is firmly holding its grounds on the basis of its large followers and unparalleled armor. Online has deployed deadly weapons, backed by its followers, but it will not be able to sustain for a long period of time in this war unless and until it deploys more spies and increase the return per customer.

Each side should realize that they are being made cat and the monkey is clapping in the state of euphoria because he is getting everything at huge discounts. Moreover, he is not an ally with any cat, just inclined towards the discounts.

The Four faces of FMCG

What is FMCG

FMCG is the another name for the fast moving consumer goods, which provides the basic products for health, hygiene and grooming for the mankind. FMCG is the fourth largest industry in the Indian economy, contributing USD 47.3 billion of revenues to the economy and is expected to contribute USD 49 billion by the year 2016. FMCG is the last industry to be affected by the economic slowdown because people will still brush their teeth, take a bath, have cereals and toast in their breakfast irrespective of the economic conditions,

FMCG industry has three major segments:

1. Food & Beverages contributing 18% to the industry
2. Health Care contributing 32% to the industry
3. Household & Personal Care contributing 50% to the industry

These three major segments are divided into eight sub-categories, whose contributions to the total industry is described in the chart below:

These aforementioned eight sub-categories which make FMCG such an important industry today comes either of the four faces of FMCG.

So what are these four faces?

1: The Evil face:

This is the face of FMCG behind which companies creates products and persuade customers to desire these products.
This is the face which enables companies to force their customers to shell out some extra bucks out of their pockets.
Customers don't actually need these products but companies present them in front of customers as the much better than the previous products. This proposition allures customers and is happy to spend more.

Glassless Deos, Men's face wash, toothbrush with charcoal bristles, are just a few examples of evil face of FMCG.


2: Noble Face:

Just opposite to this face is the noble face of FMCG which does all the corporate social responsibility activities and wears a makeup of the social cause.
This helps FMCG companies to evolve as socially responsible companies and establish a good image in the eyes of their customers. It is because of this face only that companies are able to win soft corners in the hearts of their customers.

HUL's hath muh bum, project sunlight, Dettol's association with Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, P&G Shiksha and many more projects are examples of the noble face of FMCG.


3: Healthy face:

The face of FMCG which is established by providing a healthy proposition to the customers derived from herbal or ayurvedic or organic base.
It is always said, "Health is the real wealth", that holds true for the companies operating behind the healthy face of FMCG.
Companies under this face play the USP card as health advantage with no harmful effects of using their products, and customers willingly pay whatever amount is asked from companies.

These companies operate under the model of low volumes and high revenues and some of the examples of companies which represent healthy face are Kama Ayurvedics, Forest Essentials, Organic India, Keya Seth, Arish Ayurvedic, Parampara.


4 Religious face:

The Indian FMCG industry was operating cheerfully behind its three faces Evil, Noble and Healthy, but then came the religious face, which became the vexation for the other three faces.
This face of FMCG is still in a nascent phase and since its inception, it has become the centre of attraction for customers, channel partners and companies of other faces.
Indians are listed under most religious people alive on the planet, who don't follow religions but blindly go after the people who claims to be the messengers of religions.

The first company which utilised this opportunity of prodigious followers base was "Patanjali Ayurved", founded under the name of Baba Ramdev AKA The yoga guru.
This company operates by providing products under all the three major segments of FMCG, with lesser maximum retail price than the products of companies of the evil face.

While all the major FMCG companies, including the largest FMCG company of India HUL, operates only in one or maximum two segments of FMCG and that too with the limited products, but Patanjali Ayurved is operating in all the three segments with all possible products in every segment.

P&G: Household & Personal Care
Coca-Cola: Beverages only
Kellogg's: Foods only (Cereals)
Nestle: Foods & Beverages
L'oreal: Personal Care

Patanjali Ayurved: Foods & Beverages, Household & Personal Care and Health Care
It is now being said, if all the products of all the companies are combined together, product catalogue of Patanjali will contrive. Patanjali has products in over 75 categories and over 800 SKUs.
After the success of Patanjali Ayurved, every "baba" and "Sadhvi" in India, who have their own base of followers are now jumping in FMCG industry with the support of religious sentiments of Indians.

A company known as "Shri Shri Ayurveda" which was founded by H.H. Shri Shri Ravishankar, has now launched several products under foods & beverages and personal care categories although it started merely as a health care product manufacturing company in 2003.

In the recent past, a company known as "MSG all trading international" was founded by the "Dera Sacha Sauda" chief Saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan, under which 151 products were launched.

While the religious face will evolve with time, other faces will dwindle and it will be fascinating to see the revamped four faces of FMCG, till then fasten your seat belts and be ready for a roller coaster ride because a lot has to happen in this crazy industry.