Shave it if you can’t comb it!

After spending over a decade of my professional life in brand management, and coming across 100s and 1000s of people from various walks of life or with thoughts from other planets, one thing I have surely concluded, every individual who  reaches the age of 60, ends up with thinning hair and reaching a limit where the person ends up saving all his money which he ones upon a time used to spend on hair care products.

Even though majority of individuals go through this phenomenon, but the degree of baldness varies from individual to individual.

With up gradation of technologies and newer innovations happening in the field of dermatology, more and more of these TOO-BE-BALD soon types are making beeline outside these mushrooming shops where they put new hair back on their shining head piece!

From nylon threads, to animal hairs to original human being hair, wigs have come along way and so have the newer technologies like hair weaving. Which makes the new hair as natural as they can be?

Now the question which comes to my mind is, what is the right time when a person should decide whether he needs a wig or weaving or clean shave.

If an individual who is extremely successful, renowned, famous, celebrity kinda!. He may just stay normal and not even think about adopting such dramatics.

At the same time, few not-so-confident ones, who believe that this world is made only to give them sufferings, and having low hair density is a curse on them from God. They may actually feel  low on confidence and at times out-of-place when the peer group starts chit chatting about the new shampoo brand in the market!.

Be it a celebrity or an ordinary man, my gut feeling is that both tend to get into this dilemma, as to when is the right time to revive their hair style.

And this is the cause of my disturbed state of mind, where I foresee a connect between the above mentioned phenomenon and story arising in the life cycle of many brands. As brand custodians, many times we do come across a situation when nothing seems to be working for the brand. The same set of best practices, media plans, consumer engagement initiatives, that were writing success stories in the past, prove no more than just some scribbled words on excel sheets, slides or word doc.

That’s the time when we get into dilemma thinking, when is the right time to revive the brand or bury it to death. In other words what’s the good time to get hair weaving or just shave it clean?!!

We have seen biggest of the brands going downhill, simply because they were not refreshed in the correct spirit at the correct time.  Lehman brothers, Schlitz Beer, Kodak are few American iconic brands who couldn’t make out when to refresh their brand, and ultimately let them to near death or about to die.

Hence for any brand, it is extremely important to keep it fresh, keep it lively, keep it growing. We must keep in mind that a carefully strategized positioning for the brand always means that it is targeted towards a specific age group. And AGE is the most dynamic phenomenon of life, which keeps changing every moment.

While there could be a large TG to whom one has targeted with a brand, there would be many who would be moving out of this age band in future. At the same time, there will be many who will be entering this group too!

Thus we must keep a dialogue of the brand alive with the consumers. The brand may talk various things to the consumer which can keep it alive and young. New flavours, new packaging, new distribution channel, new product benefits, new pricing, new usage of the product. The opportunities are umpteen, the scope of communication is un ending.  One just needs to keep an eye on pulse of the consumer, especially the ones who are entering the category to understand their lifestyle, needs, wants and desires and accordingly compare your own brand, whether it fits into the life of the consumer of or not.

And if one realizes that the brand has completed its life, it cannot be revived and its better to shave it off…THEN DO IT!

A Dream - One of my oldest creations

A Dream - shad Zaman

I have a dream

a dream not for name

a dream, not for fame

But a dream to be a loner.

a loner who wants to get away from the crowd.

Not the crowd of living beings

But the crowd of cruelty, hatred, sadism, selfishness.

I want to feel, to express, to say

I don’t want to feel for others

but I want to feel with others

I want to be a sentient.

Why this earth is getting phlegmatic

Why people are getting eccentric

Is it that difficult to be normal?

If a man can live with animal for million years

Why can’t he live with more of himself.

Why people have become caustic

Why so much of vandalism

Could you tell me?

I have a dream

a dream not for name

a dream not for fame

But a dream to see this earth be lucid

But a dream to see people with mirth.

People who can feel, who can trust, who can love

Can you find them?

I have a dream

a dream not for name

a dream not for fame

But a dream to share peace, to share happiness

To be able to wipe off tears of others

To be able to bring smile on their faces.

I am not a savant, neither a priest

Nor I want to be

I want to be a loner;

A loner who can feel, can express, who can say.

A Coin has two sides and so does Technology

A Coin has two sides and so does Technology.

– Shad Zaman

While we are talking about how technology, latest gadgets, gizmos, smart phones, tablets, social networking, chatting, blogging etc is creating a borderless world, at the same time sectarian, religious, ethical, economic, nationalistic, secularist divides are increasing day by day across the globe.

Time and again, question comes to mind, has this advancement in technologies of communication actually led to development of society or erosion of our culture, feelings, sentiments, relations and attitude with which we look upon others?

When we look at the past, 50 or 100 years back, there were lesser riots, sectarian divides and ethical wars. But the question is “were the numbers of such incidents were still same, and it’s just that source of information was less so we didn’t get to know about them or actually such incidents were less?”

We now have so many types of disease, epidemics, mental disorders and medical science has discovered umpteen number of reasons also for the same. Again the same question. Were the numbers of such incidents were still same, and it’s just that source of information was less so we didn’t get to know about them or actually such incidents were less?

Reasons can be both, incident of such nature was less and also the awareness levels were low.

Like everyone says that youth is the backbone for growth and prosperity of any country. And they need to be nurtured and groomed carefully. However we see that most of today’s youth is getting extremely impatient, arrogant and egoistic. Being patient is considered a passé. Its not an IN-THING.

The increased incidence of violence amongst the youth, victimization of females be it in office, college on the street at hostel, is on the rise. The feeling of vengeance is continuously increasing.

Why is all this happening? These habits were still prominent in the west. It was supposed to be part of their culture and upbringing. However our own social structure did not had such impatience and egoistic fervor.  We never taught our kids to be arrogant; yes we taught them to be disciplined. We often hear girls n boys committing suicide because they didn’t get good marks in their examinations or because their parents did not accepted their love or they are unable to get job or start any profession. Why such extremes taken by these kids? Why the sense of failure dominates the determination to fight back?

It’s difficult to understand this kind of behavior some extent.

While its good that technology is creating a borderless world and bringing countries and people closer, but it is also leading to creating bigger and wider emotional gaps.

We need to be extremely careful while grooming our next generation. We need to clearly explain and make the kids understand technology. What are its benefits, how and how much and when it should be used and equally important is to educate them about its pitfalls.

The kids are becoming more demanding, seeking more answers to every question hence we need to be clear in our own direction and mannerism in which we explain such things.

We need to make sure technology helps our generations to grow better, more learned more disciplined rather than becoming a reason for de-evolution of the society.

I am a proud marathi...But an Indian First!

Ones again Shiv Sena showed its extremely myopic, restricted and selfish philosophy. Even the most insane person on earthshall never be able to express this senseless, ludicrous and disgusting remark of calling a man, who dedicated more thanhalf his life for the love of his country and made his heart to dedicate his every beat to the cause of his nation.

It further proves that Shiv Sena Supremo has really gone old and probably he himself doesnt know, what language is he using and for whom.

Probably Shiv Sena is loosing its own focus and is getting doubtful about its own existence in the wake ofMNS's one point agenda of dividing the country by hook or crook.

All said and done, MNS is surely creating a dent and breaking the vote bank of Shiv Sena, and Sena is almost getting clueless and directionless under the leadership of a directionless, old tiger..

Stay in the Game

Almost after a fortnight I was back on the tennis court. All my joints were cracking and muscles had just lost their elasticity. But no issues, I had been familiar with this body condition of my mine so many times earlier, that it really didn’t mattered.
I reached my tennis club pretty late in the morning so couldn’t meet my usual doubles partners for a good 3 setter game like we usually play.
But caught hold of one kid who has played in few under-16 state level tournaments and is on circuit for past many years. She is one of the better kids at the club and hence I thought its going to be a good practice to hit few shots with her.
After an hour of practice, I felt my body moving more rhythmically and shots were falling where I wanted to.
Finally we thought of playing a 2-3 setter match, depending upon how much our body can support, since the weather was quite hot, but thankfully not very humid.
The girl’s temperament totally changed when I named our practice session as a MATCH.
She started hitting really hard, playing serve and volley game and made me run all over the court. I was hitting too many unforced errors, every time I tried to hit a winner shot on her service or even during the volleys. I started trying harder but no luck. I was down 2-0 in the first set, as she won her serve and broke mine too. I was feeling a bit dejected, but thought I don’t have anything to loose so lets try to just hit the volleys, make her play more shots and try to hang around as much as I can.
I was not trying to put too much power in my shots, since i planned to play longer rallies, by placing the ball all over the ocourt with low height volleys, long lob shots, drop shots, slicing on the backhand. Somehow the tactic paid off. She started loosing her patience since I was not hitting very hard but just returning her shots most of the time. Finally I won my first point of the day.
In the next game. She started hitting harder than before, which lead to committing more and more errors. Finally I won the first set 6-4. Trust me; it was a quite brave attempt on my part!. She had gone pretty exhausted and so was I, the weather had taken a little toll on our bodies, but we decided to play a decider set.. We started our next set and I applied the same tactics. By the time i was leading the set 3-0, she had really lost her patience, shouting at her own self, every time she missed a shot, and once even threw her racket on the ground when she hit 2 double faults back to back. I finally ended the set 6-3 and won the match 6-4, 6-3.
Well it was not such a big occasion to write it down on my blog, to win a match against a kid, half of my age :-). But keeping in mind that, the kid is playing tennis for past 4 years, have been participating in state-level tournaments quite often and aspiring to play in grand slams oneday and I have been playing for less than 4 months only as a part of my fitness routine, I think it was quite a commendable job.
then why did I shared this small, stupid and funny incident? Not to get any applauds or appreciation from you guys, but the thought which struck to me later sitting at home while recalling the morning the game. The corporate life, business, competition, and strategy for survival!

Let me represent myself as one of those old organisations, which have been running successfully for many years in the market. With various ups n downs, booking profits as well as losses at times, but still successfully managing to run and fight against all odds and market conditions.
Suddenly a new competitor arrives (the kid), with lot of fire power, enthusiasm, new techniques, strategies, technologies, and starts giving me big competition in the market place. My established roots get a little shaken. The company is not performing as it should. So we also try to adopt the same strategies, work for longer hours, stretch my manpower for higher targets, and pushing every thing and everyone in the organisation to reach the next level.
Then the management realises, that, by putting more investment, pushing employees to work extra hours, giving stiffer targets to sales team, there strategies have brought just a marked difference compared to what they were doing earlier. The cost-benefit analysis shows that the extra efforts put in have not yielded any desired results. In this scenario the management can adopt a new technique, which i experienced today in my game. To simply follow the competition, give to the market what the competition is also giving, adopt similar kind of communication strategies and overall, just stay at a nagging distance to the competition that it can see you from the corner. In a marketing jargon, I can say behave like a ‘follower brand’ (me the old brand) to a challenger brand (kid the new competition).
In this kind of scenario, there is a high possibility that the challenger brand will explore harder, for new strategies, new products, may be new distribution and logistics mechanism, reduce costs etc, to displace me; but my management has decided to simply hang around and put in enough efforts to maintain the current market position.

Generally the tendency of these extremely passionate, ambitious and determined guys, who have been winning all the time, is there vulnerability to loss. They get extremely scared of loosing the battle, they always want to stay number one. And when they see a competition consistently follow them for quite sometime, they are likely to commit mistakes, as they keep trying harder and harder and likely to go overboard at times, in gaining that EXTRA mileage over the competition.

So that’s how, a small tennis game with a kid, taught me a business strategy which might be helpful to evade competition and survive in the market.

“Sometimes it’s advisable to just try and stay in the game and let the competition try harder. In doing so, you are making the competition more vulnerable to commit mistakes, and eventually you can be winner!”

Is Being simple, too complicated?

This question keeps floating in my mind quite often. Is being simple, too complicated, or presenting a complex and complicated personality considered to be an IN-THING these days.

In today’s society when networking, communication, socialising have become the biggest tools and parameters which define the success rate of an individual, simplicity or an ordinary behaviour is loosing its sheen.
Often people misunderstand a person, who doesn’t speak a slanged language with Queen’s English and cosmetic expressions, as a person who is socially inactive or who is too plain Jane and ‘not there type’.
But to some extent, the society can’t be blamed for making such an opinion about someone. The world is moving too fast, and one need to be little manipulative, little street smart and have to have a sharp presence of mind to stay tall; be at the work place or at a social gathering.
However one can remain street smart as well as simple at the sametime, but they need to be very clear how do they want the society to look up to them. In marketing jargon, I can say, what kind of positioning the person wants to create for himself in the society and how he want others to perceive him.
There is a place for pseudo-intellectuals as well as plan Jane Gandhians in this society; it’s just a matter of how someone wants to be remembered as.

Debate or NO Debate: Should Jaswant Singh’s book be banned in India

I have been following so many blogs as well as magazines, newspapers, television etc, and just fail to understand why this issue has become a bone of contention.

At the same time it was quite overwhelming to see that almost 80% of the young Indians believe that the book should be published on the grounds that India is a democratic country and everybody has a right to speech and expressions. The other school of thought is that, the book carries personal opinions of Mr.Jaswant Singh and it has nothing to do with BJP party agenda or its philosophy, so who is BJP to decide weather the book should be published or not!!!

One thing I have observed, is that since the exit of Mr. Vajpayee from BJP, it has completely gone into shambles. Every party worker voices his own opinions and dictates’. Be it Modi, who was once a self proclaimed Prime ministerial candidate and later it became party agenda to fight 2009 Lok Sabha elections, or the differences arised between Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley, then difference of opinion on the Varun Gandhi speech issue, and suddenly issue of black money parked in swiss accounts became an election agenda. The motto of MAZBOOT NETA NIRNAYAK SARKAR was a good advertising punchline but the fact of the matter is it was never accepted by the people of India, which was evident from the results. Even today we are yet to hear BJP in a single voice. The party is just running without any agenda or motto like a headless chicken. I have deliberately not mentioned the Vijayraje Scindia issue.

The way Jaswant Singh has been dishonoured and expelled from the party, shows the complete absence of spirit of solidarity, respect and camaraderie even towards the senior party members.

Jaswant Singh has remained one of the most non-controversial BJP leaders for decades. We have hardly seen him coming up with non-secular views or religion biased opinions ever in his speeches, this could itself be one of the reasons that in someway the questions cudve have been raised on his loyalty by many party workers in the past also. And this latest issue gave them a chance to show him the exit door.

It’s a very sorry state of affairs and shows how brittle the unity and internal party politics is within BJP.

Coming back to this book and his opinion on Jinnah, I think it will be extremely disappointing and heart breaking to see such a book not coming on to stands. Such things are actually very common across the borders. Let us behave like citizens of a civilised society where respect is given to everyone’s personal opinions. Having difference in opinion and observations will always exist, but that’s how the good and bad philosophies of any social, religious or political issues are segregated.
More over such acts hurt the image of the country globally. These party actions taken in haste not only dent the image of the party, at the same time, it sets bad examples about the Indian political system to the outside world.
At the time when we are already trying to improve our tarnished global image due security issues being raised by so many countries (the latest being pull out of Australian and British teams from the World Cup badminton championship tournament organised in Hyderabad). More so at the time when commonwealth games are round the corner, the exit of Britain surely has not left a good taste in the mind of many other commonwealth member countries.

We cannot get judgemental and create an opinion without understanding the root cause for any issue or a problem merely on baseless speeches of handful of politically motivated individuals who themselves are not clear about there own reason for existence!.

People have hardly read the book, it’s not even on stands, but everyone has started making their own pre conceived notions. Let us get the book in the stores. All of us have read the history million times, some of us know the past, some have vague idea of the past and some are clueless about it. I think this book will bring out more ideas, more opinions, more observations and more views on the subject.

We cannot sit back and keep discussing weather creation of Pakistan was right or wrong. It’s been more than 50 years since Pakistan was created; it is now a recognised country by United Nations and every other global and political agency. Let us accept this fact and stay focused on our own agenda, rather than keep scratching the past wounds and keep debating that who created this wound, why it happened, weather this injury is justified or not, or was this injury a blessing in disguise for the people of India as well as Pakistan!
Jaswant Singh has put forward his opinion on the subject, lets look at them, understand his views also and that’s it. Lot of people said, it’s a way to grab a share of Muslim vote bank! Very very myopic view I must say! If name of Jinnah can pull vote bank, then only God can help this country. His book is not going to change the history; his book is not going to create any further divide between people of India and Pakistan. His book is just a collection of his own ideologies, believes and opinion on the subject. Those who want to understand buy it, others move on.

After all AUR BHI GHAM HAIN HINDUSTAN MEIN, JINKO BHARNEY KE LIYE MARHAM CHAHIYE AUR EK DOOSREY KA SAATH CHAHIYE!