Social Marketing is a drain!

I need to be foolish to make such a statement and hope that I become a social media marketer. But that is the truth, facebook notwithstanding!

Its both unnecessary & convoluted to be inventing marketing once over, because we've this new destination called a social network.

For those marketers and brands which spend a lot of $$ on tracking user behavior on these networks, I have a few questions:

1. Are you sure these profile owners tell who they really are - by age, by sex, by location?

2. Do they behave like how they do in the real world?

3. If the premise of social network is that you can shed inhibitions, lose some rationality & perhaps moral code of conduct freely and feel less guilty about it, then what grain of success are the brands chasing, while trying to sell themselves to people who are not what they seem to be?

4. If building imagery is a way of bringing quasi-rationality to otherwise irrational decisions, should one not, by design, move away from media that promotes irrational and infact false behaviors?

I understand that I am taking an extreme view of the reality of the users of the social media. However it makes sense to note that, social networks don't really deserve the attention that the brands and marketers give them!

Think about it..How many facebook user groups are there in each city and how many times they meet offline vis-a-vis the facebook application developer groups in each city, that meet once a month. Who bonds the most? The users or the benefactors?

Isn't it getting obvious?

Sarwam - Movie Review

Its been a while I wrote and I am ashamed that I write about a movie like Sarwan to break the limbo.

In anycase, having decided that I would do a great dis-service, its only logical that I write about another!

Sarwam is a story of a lovelorn man trying to save his deceased lover's transplanted heart from the villian. No that sounds like a story. It could not be. I saw it.

So, Sarwam is probably a story of a father trying to save his son from a psycopath. Something's wrong. The father was relegated to a hospital bed. He didnt particulary save anything, including our time.

So probably Sarwam is a story of a(nother) father, trying to revenge for the death of his son (and actually wife, who was not worth revenging for, as his actions suggest).

The movie, as you realize, is a a confused concoction of lackluster story lines much like what you woulg get by mixing tomato sauce, idly and chappathi and eat it along with vinegar. Eww...

Arya's back to being a human being after his role as an opium smoking sanyasi. The earlier role suited him the best. He could hid behind his soiled beard when acting dint give much helping hand. In this movie, he loves trisha in the first half, doing what actors like Karthik did well, 30 years ago. The delivery and packaging of love scenes had a simple formula:

2 funny dialogues + 1 sentiment scene with a kid + 1 convictionless anger from heroine + some needless animation of butterflies = formation of love.

Add to it dialogues like 'I wish I die like this", "What will be our future house like", "I will flush the toilet after defeacating", "I will not sneeze while trying to kiss", you will get epic love.

With such epic love, we are in the edge of the seat to know what happens when Trisha dies in an accident. The director should have hurried into those scenes right in the 10th minute of the movie, without giving us glimmers of hope through nice song sequences and cinematorgraphy. It would have been easier for us to plant a bomb in a body part which he probably used to think this story out.

3 months after Trisha dies, her heart is taken out of the samsung refigerator and sent to a hospital. There was a kid there whose "heartila periya hottai" as Jeyaram says in pancha thantiram. The poli (bogus) doctor who was in fact a bajji master till the previous day, uses the same forceps from his "sundari bajji stall" to take the well roasted bajji like heart and keep in the hottai of the kid. As a passing reference, Trisha's father says arya that all this was possible because, the boy had an enlarged heart and hence thrisha's heart fitted his hottai.

The operation was over, much like putting the bajji in a plantain leaf and rolling it a few times with "azhagigal kaidhu" news laden Dinamalar news paper. Only thing the doctor dint ask us audience is 'Saar, thenga sattiniya ile vengaya sattiniya?'

Even if he had asked we wouldnt have been shocked. Yenna engalukku andha vali puriyala.

Coming to that, the previous sentence is the epic dialogue of the movie. The villan, his dhaadi and dog are all trained to be repeat the same thing through out the movie - to say "onaku vali puriyala', 'to never be trimmed' and 'to keep doing 'he he he he' respectively.

Andha vidiya moonji's son and wife were killed in a freak accident by an appam & kadala curry eating mama. The villian wants to kill the mallu aapam mama's son for revenge. Idhan ba istory.

Since the trisha bajji is now the kid's bajji, Arya wants to save the kid. Along with the heart bajji, the director also thought its good if he continues with some heroine type romance even after trisha dies..so you have sequences where the kid and arya have oh-sweet arguments about ilayaraja- ar rehman music, kid getting angry and trying to make faces, kid feeling insecure in the bed (oh god) and all that. WTH??

Finally after mouthing "onaku yen vali puriala" a thousand times, villan and arya meet and villain dies.

The movie comes to an end.

Only when we got up we all realized that the entire theatre had muscular dystropy due to the curses from the villian.

Enakku ipo nalla vali puriyudhu!

Morale of the story: Dont watch tamil movies till a few directors die.

My life came free - Part 1

I hope I am a product of carefully nurtured love & the noble aim to pass on the baton of Ramasamy family DNA down to generations which would probably be known as Ashley Ramasamy or Hariharren Ramasamy, few decades from now and not a freebie for anjaal aluppu marandhu sachet, bought in vaagai adi mukku sumaar (super) market in Tiruneveli.

Evidence is to the contrary though! My father, His father and siblings are well known for their eye for details such as "Bru 150 gm paacketudan skipping kayiru free" and I proudly belong to that lineage which has never bought a single pet jar in its households (be it in Chennai or the US or Singapore). We always have a way with freebies and sniff them better than all namesakes of Tamilnadu put together!

"Onnu vaangina onnu free" has resonated more within our family and held it together for decades than the untruely affection-laden demonstrations such as "Anna, onaku pidikkume nu Delhi lerndhu pori urandai panni eduthindu vandhein". Its considered to be coming of age and "Sundaram iyer parivaar kaa naam roshan karna" type activity, to come home with a freebie! Sworn enemies in brothers and sisters, keep their animosity in their respective VIP-wont-lock-suitcases and appreciate such fetes with generous outpouring of love (read: They get you roadside sweater the next time they come home, which they dont generally spend on).

Today I take immense pride in unveilng some of our proud possessions which would make James Otis' collection of Gandhi belongings look like the relative width of clothes on namitha when compared to her waist size.

Here are those proud conquests:

-- You may walk into any of our first, second, thid cousin fraternity's houses anywhere in the world and we will amaze you with our hospitality. You will get bru coffee in china clay cup and saucer. Thats a promise, if you dont mind the cups and saucers being un-identical. We cannot blame hindustan lever for their inconsistent design of freebies. After all they are free!

-- You may never hesitate to ask us for a plastic cover to carry your kid's milk bottle. We have covers of every size and make. You can choose from RMKv, Walmart, Carrefour or Saravana stores. We demand covers from these organizations even if we are there only for window shopping

-- If you are not the type that uses GPS for navigation, dont hesitate to ask us for a piece of paper and pen to note down the route. The paper would be from eagle diary (depending on your luck, you may even land on an antiquated 1970 diary paper) and the pencil would be from IKEA furniture (which BTW is given to note the furniture specs. Of course, we visit IKEA once a month to collect pencils)

-- While we cook in abundance for our guests and ensure they visit our loo before they leave, excuse us for the tiny dessert bowls, for Gooday biscuit promos dint promise beyond that. Its a strange coincidence that my wife (who is not from our lineage) and my father bought gooday biscuits the same day just to lap up that offer!

-- Ah yeah! While you are at the loo, never forget to use the Swagath hotel sample soap that my dad benevolently donated us (in 100's)

-- For those less observent guests, my heart swells in pride to say that, the spoons for the soup, main course and the desserts were sponsered by my employer's client whose canteen gives a spoon or more a day, for my lunch. We reuse because its free!

The strategically positioned Bvlgari perfume and Nike shaving foam, in our loo are proud displays of, not our affluence, but our persistence in making our air hostess share such freebies meant for business class. After all where there is will, there is a freebie!

I hope we pass on the baton to the future generations and I only wish, they move up the food chain and collect freebies of eclectic nature that will make us all proud and rich!

Aamen!

(PS: Placing a lot of hope on our ability to collect freebies, I have named this blog as Part 1. It should take a week to add another long list of conquests. Thinking of it, we are attending a wedding this week. That means a blouse bit, coconut (why do they give perishables) and a sambadam)

Indhi Theryiadhu Baba

From the day my mother decided that its essential to learn hindi to survive in this country, I took a vow to
1. Hate Hindi, that intruded into my play time (Thanks to Sriram for introducing the word "Indhi" to me, which aptly defines what we Tams feel for that language)
2. Never work in the lands of amits and aroras
Well, I grew up to realize that the language is different and the people are different and since then have given up on vow 1.

Vow 2 still seems relevant. Though I dont work in Amit Pradesh, an ample dose of Hindi movies (thanks to my imported wife from wheat land make me believe that Amit Pradesh is indeed unliveable for Ashwin "proudly surnamed" ramasamy.

For one I cannot imagine sharing my space in an apartment with "Indhi Appa" like this.

In a country where wearing anything more than a thin piece of aerated lingerie feels suffocatingly humid, wearing multi-layered silk jippa would mean that "Indhi Appa" is a perpetual sweat machine!
Amit Pradesh also hasnt graduated to more human 2.0 chewing habits like Orbit, happy dent, Center Fresh and still prefer this .
Also in question is the sheer affordability of a south indian to buy attrociously expensive and insanely outdated suites that are norm in any social gathering in A.Pradesh ( A social gathering is where clean shaven and red dyed men stand in a circle, while couples wearing locally stitched suites and embroided sarees dance with the desi ballroom moves, in the center of a massive dance hall with two curved unnecessarily oranated staircases with lion faced side rails)
What beats the theory of probability, is how the ghutka chewing amit123 never spills even a nano-litre of the ghutka-saliva concoction on his multi-layered silk suite. Amazing indeed, but not for me ever!
If I can still survive such a social gathering, I will die by the torture of "laximkant-Pyarelal" type "tududuuun taaak tududuuun taak" melodies where the heroines and heros kasamusamatically drool over each other, till the director fears an "A" certificate and cuts the song in favor of a sentimental sob scene. In some cases, the movie does get an "A", if th heroine says
"Mai tumharay bachhe ki maa ban-nay waali hoon! " after the song.
So coming back, its this kind of music and its modern version (read: jab we met) that I loathe and cannot not take migrane head ache, in favor of such musical evenings.
While I can keep going on and on to write an anthology of anti-amit pradesh poems, let me stop with one last grip.
Why the heck they call everyone "baba"?
The other day a Ms. eighteen something amita in NDTV is standing next to a man who mysteriously doesnt get electrocuted when touching a live wire..She goes "Aayiye (chee), hum milte hien "Electric Baba" sae"
Aree Baba...Enaala mudiyala baba!

Of wives and occupational hazards

The occupational hazards of being married are not as open and shut as this:

“You may be required to lift 30 pounds of weight very regularly. You may be required to crawl, creep, roll or sometimes bend, occasionally bend while at work. You may also be expected to stare for a prolonged period of time and at times speak and listen for more than 2-3 hours at a stretch”
Well, I chose not to apply for this job of Director of Sales, as it was too amusing for me to sound rational to read such an expectation from an employer of a “sales guy”. It sounded cornier than the name of a truth-strapped IT company, I say!

And then came marriage and a year or more into it. And How!

I never thought I would have to put up, live with, swallow, digest, live through (or sometimes all of them) the demands of this job, while staying married.

If you plan to get married (and I am sure you wont, after reading this), in spite of being amply educated/fore-warned, this is what you could, should and must expect as “physical and mental conditions and demands of the job”:

1. While at this job, you may be expected to “request” for food and you may always get it half past your peak hunger period, with a self serve option and the dish would almost never be what you ordered (requested) in the first place. You will get no explanation. However you will be spoilt for choice (if you offer to cook on your own, out of sheer anger and dissatisfaction)

2. You cannot keep the loo open, to have a view of the main hall to watch your favorite vadivelu comedy. You would get a nasty reaction like the flip to Karan “hairy chested” johar’s coffee with K-HC-J and a nastier remark like “You cant have the cake and eat it too”. Opportune exhibition of oneup-woman-ship at an opportune time! Is this what they call as “Shit happens when you least expect it?”

3. You might have to get used to disclaimers like
a. I will go and buy tickets for the trip (provided I keep the change, even if it means Rs.1000-Rs.400 is the change). In other words, be prepared to be “shortchanged”
b. I will go to the landfill/dumpyard to throw the household waste (provided you clean the vessels in the sink before I come back)
c. I will prepare the bed (provided you fold the bed in the morning)
d. I will follow up with the bank (on the never ending <> issue, provided you buy me an icecream this weekend when we go for grocery shopping (make it two. Sorry three. The counts increases till you recover from the relapse to make an affirmative action)
e. I will take bath before we go out (provided you tend the washer by then)

4. You may want to be in the know of everything, like
a. The difference between technical recession and depression
b. Who will replace Timothy Geithner if and when and why?
c. How to file 1099 NR?

And when you prepare yourself to these questions, expect to be responded with “Uh, so what. Who cares? Just tell me when they are going to show Filmfare awards” In other words, opportunities for intellectual conversations may end up being two distinct monologues “intellectual” on your part and “conversation” from the other.

5. You may not comment about your partner’s merits beyond the permissible limits. My research says that there are just two ways to maintain peace at this job. One – Praise so much that your conscience bleeds. Two – Praise enough that your conscience pricks

a. Looks
i. You are the best (admirable)
ii. You are good looking (appreciable)
iii. You look okay (damageable)
iv. Your friends looks hot (irreparable)

b. Intelligence
i. You think exactly like my boss’ boss (admirable)
ii. You think like my boss (appreciable)
iii. You think like my friend’s wife (damageable)
iv. You cant even think like my friend’s wife (irreparable)

c. Temper
i. You are cool as a cucumber. People need to learn from you (admirable)
ii. You are like your sister and that’s great (appreciable)
iii. Learn from your sister(damageable)
iv. Lets join a yoga class to see if it works (irreparable)

d. Humor
i. Why don’t you join a humor club or write a column in some magazine (admirable)
ii. Oh man, stop that. My ribs are paining (appreciable)
iii. Its okay. My sense of humor and yours don’t match. Lets work on it (damageable)
iv. I never knew humor could be spelt as s..u..c..k..s, till I married you (irreparable)

6. You should give your wife the space she needs, if it means
a. she would wake up for brushing while you are in the middle of your shave
b. she sleeps next to the air conditioner with the most fluffy pillow in the house
c. the ease of removal of shoes from the rack are inversely proportional to your ownership
d. your ability to control anger should be directly proportional to the number of long hairs flying around the living room’s floor

7. You should know to appreciate and often at that, if it means
a. Telling her how nice she was, the previous day, when she agreed to book tickets without demanding for the retention of the change ( and not ask “heck, isn’t that expected?”)
b. Ravishing her new look (even if it came at a cost of 1/10 of your monthly salary)
c. Appreciating her fashion sense in calling Kareena Kapoor as the woman to be
d. Encouraging her to partake in SMS competitions for MTV Roadies

<>

Note to Editor : (To be proof read by wife before posting and this line is to be deleted before posting)

News Reel

There are a few spell binding PJs that nag me to be let free on the day when I had nothing to do than watch Karan (hairy chested) Johar on TV..

I take refuge to blogging to escape the Karan hariy chested, chipped teeth Johar show..

So here are the assaults (Read like the NDTV News):

International News:

1. Why would JKLF's (separtist outfit) chief (at his age of 45) marry a 28 year old brit? Just to err..separate later?

Domestic News:

2. Lets leave such issues of international importance to and move to more domestic problems (not related to wives)

-- If keeping an empty mortein liquidator on, gives us the psychological comfort of protection, why doesnt the same apply to the mosquitos (who should feel threatened by the glowing light and the imminent death by suffocation

-- If Manmohan singh is "fighting fit" as they claim in TV, does that mean his fitness was tested at home, while he was recuperating? (Domestic violence, they say!)

Business News:

3. If there is a recession and hence no one spends, then there should be more money left unused. Does more money equate to recession? Should it not be "possession"?

4. Raju brothers ask "If assets can't be inflated and liabilities can't be left out, then why at all it "balance" sheet"? Will CLB come up with a balancing act by instructing the Rajus to stop the creativity at the "trial" balance sheets?

Sports news:

5. Vijay Mallya pays 111 Mn US Dollars for Bangalore team. Call it team spirit?

Been a while!

I've been wanting to write for long and as I sift through my blog posts, I realize I have written 5 posts that are in draft mode..only because they are quite serious and heavy that they dont fit into this blog..

Anyway, here are a few things that I learnt in the past 2 months that have helped me redeem my prized irreverance that I lost in the last 2 years

--> I had always wondered how some leaders are neither charismatic nor visionery and still attain a place that they dont deserve. I have never made bones about hiding my displeasure to work for these leaders and now they fail spectacularly and how! Lesson: If they are too bad to be great, THEY ARE BAD!

--> I always loathe Indian IT services business model which is built on commoditized value propositions driven by not so scalable resource quality. Its like selling Eu De Toilette while the rest of the tech world is about selling cologne..And now, with one depression and a tainted company, look at how the industry is collapsing..customers and deals have evaporated. There is NO LOYALTY OR CHINA WALL. Observation: Till we create our google or sun microsystems, lets call ourselves SWEAT SHOPS because we are that!

--> The grunt workers at various levels in these organizations are just that..grunt workers and it comes more evident now than ever..They dont know what IT is beyond the 5 names. Many of them think if its not for these 5 companies, there are no jobs. Truely, there arent , because the redundant roles they occupied are not needed in the non-services landscape. I see senior delivery heads willing to go as project managers..which I see as a much expected correction in the right direction.

--> Contacts are another hyped concept- I know him, I s.. up to him and so I feel safe. With a commoditized skillset and lack of awareness about the industry, contacts are the only hope..But one cannot be more bankcrupt for ideas after decades of work...Thats what the services industry does to 90% of the workforce...