DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

When brands fight it out amongst themselves, the fight is all about capturing market share and toppling competition. And when they do it on TV, it is all about grabbing eyeballs by making the cheekiest of ads and taking potshots at the competitor.

The sub-continent has had ads that have unleashed witty and funny, and at other times drab, commercials to hit back at each other. During the 1996-97 Wills Cricket World Cup there was the memorable Pepsi versus Coca-Cola campaign, when Pepsi hit back at Coke, the official sponsors of the tournament, by sporting the tagline, Pepsi: Nothing official about it. Suggestive yet not blatant or at least not legally improper. Since then there have been detergents, shampoos, chocolate based milk drinks, bikes, DTH and even the airline industry! (Kingfisher versus Jet Airways) Even recently the chocolates category too adopted this strategy as Nestle's Munch made a poor imitation of Cadbury's Dairy Milk.

However, a shocker of a campaign was unleashed a week back (February 25, 2010) by Hindustan Unilever' (HUL) Rin locking horns with Procter & Gamble's (P&G) Tide Naturals. Forget pixelating the competitor's brand name or pack shot or using beeps, Rin took on Tide Naturals by not only clearly showing it but also poking fun at it's competitor' tagline and ending the commercial with a super that says, 'Issued in the interest of Rin users.'

In a matter of few days it sparked off debates amongst industry experts as well as consumers themselves who are often accused of not noticing ads on TV. Not only did the brand get instant visibility and created a buzz, but also got the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) knocking at it's door, seeking answers for violating norms. Said that, the Kolkata High Court has now passed an interim order, restraining HUL from airing the  Rin commercial, terming it "disparaging." 

However, what the brand has surely gained out of this debacle and repeated bombarding of its commercial, is a lot of publicity and awareness (even if it's out of shock and awe) out of a stubborn lot of consumers. Some may remember Rin for its parody, while some may find the brand's attempt rude, while others might end up recalling Tide heavily out of the ad too! After all everything is fair in love and war and it surely is a breath of fresh air to chance upon some disruptive advertising on the idiot box...

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Last weekend I got myself tickets for a movie called Up in the Air. A typical American drama film directed by Jason Reitman and co-written by Reitman and Sheldon Turner, the film is an adaptation of the 2001 novel of the same name, written by Walter Kirn. Apart from the fact that the film stars the ever charming George Clooney, what all the more interested me was a brief review that I read which mentioned that the story is about a corporate downsizer and his travels.

Corporate downsizing? For those who thought laying off or firing employees is a HR executive's prerogative, here's food for thought. While introducing his character Ryan Bingham, Clooney says that for every boss who finds the whole act of firing people and that too in bulk quite ghastly and thinks he isn't that professionally equipped to do so, there's people like him - the corporate downsizer. And so the smooth talking Bingham goes about with his business, traveling across the length and breadth of the USA and firing hundreds and sometimes multiples of hundreds in a matter of few days. Interestingly, he prefers an isolated life and spends 90 per cent of the days in a year traveling by air. He is a loyalty program addict and one of his long term and most cherished goals is to collect 10 million air miles!

Coming back to downsizing, before the economic reforms stepped into India, Indian companies and their employees mostly believed in lifetime employment. Taking up my father's example who has spent all his life in the private sector, his last 30 years of employment were spent in one single company! However, with the Indian economy making its presence felt in the global scenario and with competition between companies heating up, top bosses were forced to take notice and go for some amount of pruning. What came of this were schemes like voluntary retirement schemes (VRS), deferred recruitments and benching of people. However, there still exists limited knowledge and expertise in mass downsizing in the sub-continent.

Said that and given a situation which now isn't as lucrative as the recent slowdown but yet is laden with whiffs of caution - how about considering a job or starting off a firm that offers expert services of corporate downsizing?



 

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There have been beggars, rich landowners, retailers, wholesalers and industrialists who have been pocketing their fair shares by engaging in various businesses. Also, there are the typical politicians, civil servants and men with power who pocket their unfair share by engaging in dubious acts. But of late a new way to rake in millions or may be billions of dollars seem to be the order of some people and their 'prestigious' organisations. This is the business of global calamities and hazards.  The single biggest issue panning across the globe drawing ire of one and many is that of climate change and the man behind the erroneous reports, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is now making news for all the wrong reasons. Claims of the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 as well as issues of global warming leading to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods have received a lot of criticism around the world. The fact that these claims are ill-researched and over-hyped, not only have political reasons to put pressure on policy-makers to take action, but also are laced with murky financial opportunities. For example, it has been claimed that natural catastrophes linked to climate change have left the world's insurers with a claims bill totaling $22 billion in 2009. The source of this information has been linked to Munich Re, the German re-insurer whose concern is to exploit the financial opportunities created by climate change. For some time, the lucrative re-insurance industry has been seeing several business opportunities in climate change.

Another leading research institute on climate change, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), which is under the guidance of Shonali Pachauri, daughter of Dr Pachauri – has also taken a special interest in climate change and insurance, alongside Oxfam and the WWF.

Not so long ago, an yet another global health hazard that had millions in a tizzy was H1N1. Recently, certain sections of the media reported that a campaign of panic was put into place by big drug companies which convinced the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare a pandemic in order to increase profits. Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe conceded to a leading daily that H1N1 is just a normal kind of flu which does not cause a tenth of deaths caused by the classic seasonal flu. However, governments and heath bodies are already rubbishing such claims while some other are busy digging deep.

While the magnitude of such “global hazards” as claimed by their promoters/propagators/researchers is  being questioned relentlessly, its critiques are busy upping the ante by flushing out leaked confidential information, revealing names of unheard of organisations and their real motives. However, as both parties lock horns churning out questions never asked and yet to be debated, the common mass seems to be pushed into a quagmire of confusion, trouble, false alarms, rumours and anxiety. Add to that the billions of dollars of hard earned tax payer money that is at risk if the truth behind all such dubious funds is not dug out properly. It's high time we choose our leaders and men of knowledge carefully and responsibly and ask questions before giving them a pedestal to stand up on and profess.

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