Brand Me — Adcenter Screening Profile
Resume
Objective
I wish to pursue a creatively challenging career in advertising in general and serve as a Creative Brand Manager in particular.
Professional Skills
• Writing for marketing collaterals including brochures, PR articles and film scripts
• Intermediate proficiency in software programs like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere and AfterEffects
Work Experience
May – Dec 2006 – Content Developer, Branding, Tata Interactive Systems, Mumbai
• Developed brochures, direct mailers, press releases, posters, web content
• Involved in the technical aspects of redevelopment of the corporate website.
July - September 2005 – Interned as Assistant Director, TV Quiz Show “Dial One Aur Jeeto”, Cogito Media, Mumbai
• Researched for and scripted quiz questions suitable to a pan India audience for the show.
• Assisted in shoot floor activities
• Coordinated telephony and online editing teams during live telecast
April - June 2005 – Assistant in Advertising, Advertising & Marketing, Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri, Mumbai
• Contributed in strategising marketing communications
• Contributed in designing media plan
• Redesigned customer feedback questionnaire
Key projects in Undergraduate College (2002-2005)
• Served as Joint Head of organising committee of students’ media festival “When Media Attacks” at my alma mater S.I.E.S. College of Arts Science & Commerce
• As part of a team, made two short fiction films, titled, “Three” and “Day before Tomorrow”. I was involved in scripting, storyboarding, direction, filming and editing.
• As part of a team, carried out a Media Planning and an Advertising Research project on ICICI bank and HSBC bank
• As part of a team, developed marketing strategy and collateral for eco-tourism in Marathwada region of Maharashtra, India
• As part of a team, designed a research model to understand consumer behaviour with respect to movie viewership
• As part of a team, presented strategies to raise media awareness among the public
Education
• Currently pursuing Master of Arts degree in English Literature from University of Mumbai, Mumbai
• Acquired the Bachelor of Mass Media degree, with distinction, from the S.I.E.S College of Arts, Science and Commerce of the University of Mumbai, Mumbai, in April 2005
• Acquired a Diploma in Multimedia from Arena Multimedia, Mumbai, in 2002
Places I've lived
Mumbai is my home. I live in a suburb of Mumbai, an hour north by the local train from the Gateway of India and Leopold’s café. We’re similar in many ways—ambitious, cosmopolitan, at extremes and always on the move. I have also lived in Chennai for a year. Lured by a bigger school with a vast playground, I went to school in Chennai on my aunt’s invitation. I loved the longer school days there with three snack breaks, but Chennai couldn’t keep me for long. Homesick, I returned to Mumbai after completing eighth standard.
First job
I started work a week after my undergraduate examinations at Tribhovandas Bimji Zaveri (TBZ), a 140 year old jewellery retail chain, as Assistant in Advertising. My responsibilities included communicating and coordinating with the advertising agency, planning advertising strategy with the Brand Manager, and filing clippings of competitor print ads. In addition, I redesigned the customer feedback questionnaire and personally administered them on the shop floor for direct feedback.
How did I find out about the Adcenter?
I learnt about VCU Adcenter from Manoj Damodaran, currently a Communications Strategy student. I was looking for a specialised advertising course, up-to-date, meaty with the business knowledge and in the same vein juicy in approach. Manoj, my senior in undergraduate college, suggested I have a look at Adcenter courses. My search ended with the Creative Brand Management Course.
Do I personally know anyone who is connected with the Adcenter? I do.
I know two Adcenter students, Manoj Damodaran and Mansi Trivedi who were one year my senior in undergraduate college in Mumbai.
Why I want to be a Creative Brand Manager and my understanding of the field.
I want to be a Creative Brand Manager because sincerely I don’t wish to be merely a Brand Manager (I fear I am not the only one to have started with that). As per my understanding, the Brand Manager (BM), as the custodian of the brand, directs its expression so as to leverage it for profit in the market.In the early stages of a brand’s life cycle the BM is interested in establishing space for the brand in the market and raising the brand’s recognition. Before introducing the brand, the BM carries out thorough investigation of the market to discover need gaps and suit the offering to fill the gap. The discovery of need gaps arise from the insights on consumer behaviour. On the basis of the investigations, the BM would settle on a certain segment of target audience, and sketch a profile incorporating demographic and psychographic features of the target audience.
The BM draws communication strategies to make the brand relevant and relatable to the target audience and exploits different media to get the message across. The BM operates in the support of a limited budget and must be strategic in its consumption.
When made responsible for a long established brand, the BM looks to maintain the freshness of the brand. This may be achieved by reinforcing the values of the brand from time to time. On occasions when a brand is found to have fallen behind in time with the people, the BM channels efforts to reinvent the brand’s promise.
All efforts of the BM are motivated by two key interests: to maintain a healthy growth rate in sales and strengthen the brand equity—an indication of the brand’s potential.
A brand is a cumulative effect of physical features (such as the taste of a drink or the speed of delivery of a package)—which is at its core and the philosophical features that augment the core. While the physical features are controlled within an organisation, much of the philosophical features are brought to result in close collaboration with an advertising agency. The BM communicates the marketing intention and a broad strategy to the advertising agency. The BM on the client-side, the account planner, creative director, copy writer and art director on the agency-side, work together as a team to find a creative expression for the strategy.
The BM works on the understanding that by nature brands resemble people. Brands inspire people, make them laugh, help them explore their hidden potential, lighten up their mood, boost their self esteem, or even become their devil’s advocate—things that friends, family and other people do for us.
A Creative Brand Manager (CBM) is probably one who is always interested in finding new ways to connect with customers amidst the din of the market place. The CBM understands that the effect of advertising comes not from what is being said but how it is being understood in a consumer’s mind. The CBM understands the creative process of arriving at advertising messages and respects creativity for its benefits. The CBM is also eager to channel consumer insights to tailor products so as to make them more relevant to customers.
I find the lives of brands intriguing. So I want to be a Creative Brand Manager. To me, a brand is a crystallisation of the personalities of all the people involved with it—a window frame where like minds from either side meet. So, I think Creative Brand Management is much like sculpting, to find and define something that’s hidden.
All of those are my presumptions. I am willing to wash them off and make new ones at Adcenter.
I wish to be a Creative Brand Manager on the dint of my confidence to bring together business acumen, strategic thought and a creative approach to formulating marketing communication.
Three of my favourite Books, Movies and Ads and why they make it to the list.
a. Books
i. Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead
The book has influenced my personality immensely and the ideals it proposes stand guard in the back of my mind while I apply myself to work of any kind. Ayn Rand exceptionally carves out distinct personalities one finds especially in avenues where art and business confluence—the sell-out, the opportunist, the cynic, the idealist who breaks new ground and the admirers who come in small numbers. Lately, I even find myself questioning the ideals. If on one hand The Fountainhead is about protesting dogma, doesn’t that imply questioning the dogma laid by The Fountainhead itself—of a single, ideal solution to a problem derived through objectivity? Can one arrive at Sony Bravia “Balls” ad or Happydent White “Chandelier” ad through objectivity?
ii. J D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye
It killed me. It really did. While the book doesn’t inspire me the same way as it might have influenced Mark Chapman and Jack Hinckley Jr, I simply love the uninhibited, original style of narration of Holden Caulfield, the protagonist. The book has been my most enjoyable and fastest read and made a bus trip between Mumbai and Pune feel much shorter. Having alighted from the bus, I remember sitting on a goddam stone by the highway to finish reading the last few pages. The Catcher in the Rye is one book I wished would never end. I could relate with Holden’s adolescent cynicism and fell in love with the character—a sensitive, caring and harmless kid too critical of his surroundings. I am afraid I don’t wish to provide any critical analysis of The Catcher in the Rye for fear of desecrating the innocence of the book. Holden wouldn’t like it.
iii. Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat
For the benefit of being a more recent read, The World is Flat displaces Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet for third spot. When I saw ships falling off the edge of a flat earth on the cover of the first edition I assumed the book to be a cynical rant about the maladies of globalisation. In stark contrast, the book was a neutral account on the forces that have virtually flattened and integrated the world’s economies—averaging opportunities and risks across the board.
Friedman’s in-depth research made for a revelatory read. The book helped me put together the pieces of the global economy I see and read about. Friedman attributes the flattening to the fall of the Berlin wall; the advent of the World Wide Web and Netscape browser; optic fibre sea links; work flow management software that enabled apportioning of work to global locations and their integration; outsourcing and off-shoring as a natural outcome of the advancement in work flow management software; the progress in supply chaining due to the influx of technology in logistics; and the growing share of individual voice seen in examples like Napster, Wikipedia, YouTube, and blogging.
I respect the book as Friedman completes the book by bringing notice to the “unflat world”, the threats to the growth of world economy and sharing his ideas on the way forward. The book converted me into a globalization optimist.
Conspicuous with their absence on the rack are my favourite three titles. Some of these are in the wait list.
b. Movies
i. Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya
As a 14 year old, I had no special interest in films when I walked along with my father to watch Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya amid the din of *Anantachaturdashi processions. Inside the theatre, the mood was equally cacophonic as underworld gangs clashed in the gullies of Mumbai and exchanged bullets. The film traces the metamorphosis of a simple man, Satya (meaning Truth in Hindi), into a sharp shooter and a shrewd strategist who dares to down even the Commissioner of Mumbai Police. He is accomplice to Bhiku Mhatre, who considers himself the don of Mumbai but is really a pawn in the hands of a local politician. “Satya”, the film, was different from both the glossy romances and over-the-top action films with “dhishoom-bhishoom” sound effects that ruled the Bollywood box office then—in its plot, dialect, sound, and style. For the first time the voice of bullets was simply “tho” instead of “tishkyonw”. The contrast attracted me and I was made a fan of Ram Gopal Varma’s films. My interest in films was sparked by “Satya”. After “Satya” I had a reason to visit theatres alone.
ii. Zack Braff’s Garden State
“Garden State” followed “Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure” in a movie marathon at my friend’s place. I was taken by the psychedelic progress of its plot. Each scene surprises, invokes humour, without being out of place—probably because the film is a complete world in itself. Along with an enchanting soundtrack the film sets a fantastical setting of unrest that I wished to be transported to. Garden State is poignant and hilarious in the same scene. The experience of the film is similar to the cumulative experience of reading “The Catcher in the Rye” and listening to Coldplay or Idlewild. “Garden State” is special also for its timing—it was a blast of fresh air amidst the heavy air left by intense films I was then watching like “The Godfather” trilogy, “Fight Club”, “Oldboy”, “Sarkar”, “Requiem for a Dream”, “Pi”, and “Amores Perros”.
iii. Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Joel: “I can’t see anything I don’t like about you.”
Clementine: “But you will… you will. You know, you will think of things and I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped because that’s what happens with me.”
Joel: “Okay.”
Clementine: “Okay? Okay.”(and they laugh)
The lesson I take from the film is that the solutions to life’s greater problems come as simply as the “Okay” Joel says at the end of the film. Two lovers break-up and decide to erase their memories until they realize it is the memories that they would rather live for. Having gone through the turmoil, the couple is ready to accept the imperfections of life for life’s rewards. I love the “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” written by Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry for the mature romantic film it is. Thanks to Michel Gondry’s visual expertise, the science fiction aids, never is a hindrance, to a real and human introspection of the new-age, sophisticated romance. I love films when personalities are expressed in depth while being unique and refreshing—Joel and especially Clementine are that. Again, like Garden State, the film fleshes out the Coldplay mood for me. I am confident “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” would stay one of my favourites ten years hence.
c. Ads
i. ICICI Lombard — Do Not Park In Front of This Gate
Almost all apartment building societies in Indian towns and cities spend a few hundred rupees to put up a small board on their gates that announces to the world:
“Do Not Park in Front of This Gate”, or
“Outside Vehicles Not Allowed”, or
“No Entry for Hawkers and Salesmen”
ICICI Lombard saw a win-win opportunity. Overnight I found small boards with the ICICI Lombard logo with the message “Do Not Park in Front of This Gate” hung on the gates of all buildings on my road. I thought it was brilliant—housing societies didn’t mind it since it was an expenditure they didn’t have to make and ICICI Lombard didn’t have to pay for the medium, an extremely penetrative and intimate medium. There wasn’t any smart copy or eye catchy art work, nor was it like the non-traditional with noses printed on coffee cups but it was a free, hidden medium no one had exploited before.
ii. Pidilite — Lakh Dukhon ki ek Dawa (A single cure for a lakh worries) [R1]
The campaign promoted four brands of utility products from the stable of Pidilitie Industries—Terminator (anti-termite pesticide), Fevikwik (instant glue), M-Seal (sealant) and Steelgrip (electric tapes)—through two minute long infomercials. The challenge must have been promoting, cost effectively, the use of these products in daily life. Obviously individual ad campaigns for each of the sub-brands would have meant an expansive budget. Infomercials in the Indian scene are restricted to thirty minute programs in non-primetime slots on television. It would have been easy to ignore or even be condescending towards the format. However, in my opinion, it was an example of lateral thinking and courage in creating short infomercials for a high profile brand like Pidilite. The ads not only educated the audience about the methods of using the products but being so uncommon to mainstream advertising cut through the clutter of general FMCG ads.
iii. Chlor-Mint — Pappi [R2]
With the granny and mummy already in the car, daddy calls out to Pappi. Pappi is busy admiring herself in the mirror while perfecting her makeup. The world couldn’t bother her as she sings in her praise,
“Roop ki dhani hoon main”
(Blessed with the wealth of beauty, I am)
“Prem ke liye bani hoon main”
(Made for love, I am)…
Haughtily, she announces
“Dekhna, ghar ghar mere poster lagenge”
(My posters will be pinned in every home, you just wait!)
She moves into the elevator and continues her song,
“Saiyan more Gappi”
(Gappi, my sweetheart)
“Dede na re jhappi”
(Come on, give me a hug)
As she rolls her eyes, she notices a Chlor-Mint wrapper littered on the floor and continues condescendingly in her tune,
“Log Chlor-Mint kyun khaate hain?”
(Why do people eat Chlor-Mint?)
The wrath of Chlor-Mint falls upon her as she questions what one shan’t question. The elevator is arrested by mysterious powers as the walls close in. Pappi is flattened, and she pops out as a poster as if from a printer. The ad then warns,
“Dubara mat poochna.”
(Don’t ever ask again.)
As the film ends the poster is seen pinned to the lobby of the apartment building. Pappi’s daddy walks past remarking, “Naak katwadi”, literally, snipped the nose, an idiom that means being put to shame.
I love this ad for its creativity and the simple strategy. Chlor-Mint is a mouth-freshener that costs 50-paise (less than 1 cent). To help the cause of impulse purchase from road-side stalls that Chlor-Mint is, the ad only needs to boost brand recall. Further, the product benefits are obvious and do not need much convincing—and hence, perhaps, it would be pointless to ask why one eats Chlor-Mint.
The ad is deftly crafted by Prasoon Joshi who is credited to bringing back Hindi to mainstream Indian advertising in a big way in the new millennium. It is every bit Indian in its storytelling, song, drama, with a moral at the end. The film is enjoyable as it slowly builds and leaves the ones with good humour in a blast of laughter.
The ad stands strongly in a series of creative, humorous ads for Chlor-Mint in the past.
I followed links from website to website five times. Here is the travelogue.
I use stumbleupon to set me going. Stumbleupon is a browser plug-in from www.stumbleupon.com that sends one to a random webpage of interest, on a click.
- Stumbleupon sends me to www.popurls.com. This looks like an aggregator of aggregator websites. Aggregator websites are ones that index the new web pages that readers find of their interest and rank them by popularity. It has the top links from other aggregator websites like digg.com, del.icio.us , reddit.com ; videos from youtube.com, ifilm.com, videosift.com; news from news.google.com and news.yahoo.com and many more. It even has daily cartoons at the end of the page.
Amongst the hundreds of links on www.popurls.com my vote goes to “’Dump your children here’ boxes to stop mothers from killing their babies” http://digg.com/world_news/Dump_your_children_here_box_to_stop_mothers_ killing_their_babies
The other top contenders were:- “Coffin made from recycled paper”
http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Coffin_made_ from_recycled_paper - “Don’t delete your Nigerian scam emails”.
http://digg.com/videos_comedy/Don_t_delete_your_Nigerian_scam_emails - Steve Jobs: No amount of technology in the classroom will improve public schools until principals can fire bad teachers
http://reddit.com/goto?rss=true&id=1d7di
- “Coffin made from recycled paper”
- The link takes me to the post that expands on the headline. Apparently mothers in Germany are being urged to drop their unwanted children in special boxes in hospitals to battle the rising numbers of infanticide by their mothers who don’t wish to keep them. I head straight to the original article to learn more.
- The detailed article is at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1572569.ece
Roger Boyes in Berlin writes,“At least 23 babies have been killed so far this year, many of them beaten to death or strangled by their mothers before being dumped on wasteland and in dustbins.
Police investigating the murders are at a loss to explain the sudden surge in such cases, which have involved mothers of all ages all over the country.”
Roger Boyes has more gruesome details like, “Another woman was arrested in Kiel a week ago after police found two dead babies in her freezer. One was stillborn a year ago; the other was a recent live birth.”
From the article I also learn that an advertising campaign is currently being run in Germany to encourage expectant mothers to use the Baby-Klappe, bins to dump the children in, than take extreme measures. Not surprisingly, there has been both criticism and appreciation for the initiative. The worst piece of information is at the end,“Initial scepticism started to melt after a woman in eastern German was arrested for letting nine of her babies die. Some were buried in plant pots in her garden. “
The story gets me thinking about female infanticide which is a problem that refuses to budge in India. We’ve banned sex determination to help solve the problem to some extent. I’m an expectant uncle, perhaps that’s what drew me to the article. The story disturbed me. Having read the article and a couple reader comments, my eyes wander and are stopped by a link titled “Cook India”. I go there. - Cook India” is at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/related_ features/cook_india/
The page seems to be a feature on authentic Indian cooking for the benefit of British readers. I’m still within the webs of times.co.uk . The page introduces itself in these words“It is arguably India’s greatest export, with the flavours and taste of curry appreciated around the world. However, many of the recipes have been adapted for the taste buds of their host nation, including the UK. In this section, we explore the authentic food of India, from holidays to the subcontinent where one can learn to create dishes to the regionally different spices and dishes.”
It is that time of the day when I should have had my lunch, but haven’t. Pictures of the Indian thali don’t help my cause. There are four feature articles about Indian food, one even on Indian street food. I find a box with the heading “Bollywood Special” but the name Loyd Grossman catches my eye. In the right hand column is a list of links to Lyod Grossman’s web site. If I’m not wrong it must be the same Lyod I’ve seen cooking up Indian dishes on the show Lyod’s India telecast on Discovery Travel & Living channel on TV. That happens to be my favourite TV channel. While I think to myself, “Well, India seems to be a major sub culture topic for marketers in the UK” I click to go to Loyd’s website. - Loyd’s website, http://www.loydgrossman.co.uk/, proclaims “Taste is everything”. How true! Loyd Grossman’s picture on his website tells me he’s not the one on the Travel & Living Channel show. I realize that man is Floyd, Keith Floyd and the show is Floyd’s India.
I am forced to think, is it a significant sign that I set out on a short voyage of the internet and I’m returned to Indian food? I’m reminded of the tagline of the film, The Namesake, “The greatest journeys are the ones that bring you back home”. Considering that, I have had a great little journey of five web links.
My mind counters my two-second-old thoughts, “I’m thinking too much, forcing meanings; this is too cheesy. I need to logoff and have some lunch.”
The top three songs in my life’s soundtrack. (In reverse order)
c. Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here
For every time dilemmas of the moral kind cloud the mind, I hope Wish You Were Here plays in the background so I get my priorities right. For every time I am about to make a compromise I would regret in hindsight, I hope it plays in the back of my mind. For every time I think I know, when I don’t, I hope it plays. For every time I am found wanting courage to make a change for the better, I hope it plays. And in these moments of longing I know it will play.
Although among my favourites it stands second to “Stairway to Heaven”, I feel “Wish You Were Here” is more appropriate as a soundtrack. The genius of Roger Waters addresses some deep fears. It is probably about going blind in the bright lights of prosperity and making the wrong choices. If allowed, the lines from “Stairway to Heaven”, “Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on” would segue with this song.
b. Junoon’s Khudi
72 rupees was a considerable amount for me to personally spend on anything in ninth standard, let alone on a cassette of the latest music album from across the border of three men with long hair, one of whom howled. My first taste of rock music—where the words meant something, and people didn’t have to be polite to make a point—was Junoon’s album Azadi that was taking India by storm in 1998. I bought it for Sayonee, the music video song, but having slaved the tape, Khudi is the one that inspired me the most, and gave me wings.
Junoon does justice with their music to the anthem by poet Allama Iqbal:
Khudi ko kar buland itna ke har taqder se pehle
Khuda bande se ye poche, bata teri raza kya hai
Sitaron se age jahan aur bhi hai
Abhi ishq ke imtehan aur bhi hai
Tu shaheen hai, Parvaz hai kam tera
Tere samne Aasman aur bhi hai
Tu shaheen hai Basera kar Paharon ki chatano par
Loosely translated as follows:
Raise yourself to such heights
That even before destiny is issued, the Lord himself asks, “Tell me, what is it you order”
Beyond the stars, there lies more universe
On the road to love there are more trials & tribulations
You are a falcon, you ought to fly
There is more sky ahead of you
You are a falcon, make mountain peaks your home
a. Led Zeppelin’s Ramble on
I have a tendency to find myself in moments when, on account of a visceral urge to move on, I steer myself in unexpected directions to do something new. Ramble on, by my favourite band Led Zeppelin, relates strikingly to that emotion of a traveller, a dream chaser.
“Leaves are falling all around, it’s time I was on my way.
Thanks to you, I’m much obliged for such a pleasant stay.
But now it’s time for me to go. The autumn moon lights my way.
For now I smell the rain, and with it pain, and it’s headed my way.
Sometimes I grow so tired, but I know I’ve got one thing I got to do... ramble on”
Adding to the madness of the mood is the spooky, eccentric voice of Robert Plant and the otherworldly music of Jimmy Page, John Bonham and John Paul Jones.
“Ramble on” makes for a great parting note. It expresses both the pain of goodbye and the promise of the future. I followed a formal resignation letter with the song lyrics in an email to my “rocker” senior when I left my last job as a content writer at Tata Interactive Systems.
“Got no time for spreadin’ roots, the time has come to be gone.
And to’ our health we drank a thousand times, it’s time to ramble on”
As a soundtrack Ramble on would fade in as my life fades to black and the credits roll on. I wonder if I’ll be able to afford the royalty. (I hope to be able to afford the royalty.)
