The Hindu Business Line : To win in the market, add winners to your side

STORY so far: A visit to the new immunology facility widens my perception to areas beyond book-keeping, auditing and law. More than that, I am inspired by President Kalam's speech. For a change, here is somebody who means what he says, I think. Back at work, I am able to imagine what pain he should be undergoing when seeing corruption, crime and carelessness around.

Episode 50

A place that I go at least twice a week is my neighbourhood gym. After about an hour there, when I return, the world usually seems as fresh as from a shower.

Well, that's the same thing I feel after I return from the Saturday jog on the beach, or the Sunday meditation on top of the overhead tank in the open terrace at 5 a.m.

"How silly," one may say, "the world is just as usual." Wrong or right, I think we are far happier if we enjoy nuggets of life in little things that abound — such as wafting breeze, fresh flowers, dewdrops, artistic designs, natural expressions and even the stillness of silence. There are of course those dramatic happenings — such as what my boss told me over the phone that morning when I was doing that one more push-up just for the heck of it.

"Hey, Swati," his voice came through my mobile. "Hello, sir," I replied, moving over to the portico, not wishing to disturb the other gym-users.

"There is a surprise for you," he said. "Today is not my birthday," I said, puzzled. "Birthday for a new product," he replied. "Guess what?" I thought for a moment, and said: "A new vaccine, perhaps. Or... " He seemed to be having fun putting me through a quiz: "Let it be a suspense for now. But don't miss the presentation for the Board at 11 a.m. In a couple of days, we may have to go to the press."

*********

I rushed to the office and by 9 a.m., even before the conservancy staff had finished with their morning cleaning up, I was at my desk, more out of curiosity than anything.

I went up to the R&D wing and ran into Dr Razak who was poring over designs and diagrams that appeared like the plan of the White House or the structural arrangement of the DNA, I couldn't say with my accounting knowledge.

"What's the new product?" I blurted out, almost shocking him. "Sit, Swati," said the doc, softly. "It's a self-help health kit." I was thrilled, because I had only known about self-help sewing kits and carpentry sets. "What will it do?" I asked.

"It is one composite instrument which can provide all the essential statistics that anybody would want. Such as, pulse rate, blood pressure, temperature, and even detecting for sugar and a whole lot of bacteria. It can function as a breathalyser, massager, and so forth."

*********

The board meeting went through like a song, and by noon, I was sitting with Praveen, the company's marketing chief, and Gupta, discussing the ad plan with our agency guys.

They are the creative ones, agreed, but we needed to press their buttons, by first telling them about our product, what our target audience is and so forth. "This is a health product," said one of them. "No, a fitness product," said another. More such back and forth till ideas got clear in everybody's head, and that is what brainstorming is all about.

If one thing was clear at the end of our discussion, it was this: We are going to look at big guns for endorsing our product. "It should be a cricketer," ruled one of the agency chaps and my heart missed a beat.

It was not long ago that I had read about the endorsement value of our top cricketers: Sachin Tendulkar Rs 20 crore (Visa Cards, Pepsi, Palio, Boost, TVS Victor, Today's Pens); Sourav Ganguly Rs 4.5 crore (Pepsi, Himani Sona Chandi, Sahara, Britannia, Tiger, Hero Honda, Samsung); Virender Sehwag Rs 2 crore (Samsung, Coke, Britannia, Hero Honda); Rahul Dravid Rs 4.2 crore (Kissan, Castrol, Palmolive, Reebok); Dinesh Mongia Rs 75 lakh (Reebok); Zaheer Khan Rs 50 lakh (Pepsi) and so forth.

"What's our budget?" I asked Gupta, in a hush. "Two," he said. "That much?" he asked. "Take it easy, Swati," he said. "This is a winning product and we need the winners on our side."

*********

At the mailbox: There is a mail with the `subject' line that reads "Good one" and I am eager to read what it is. "Dear Ms Swati, the article/piece that I happened to read on your `Kal ka newspaper boy and aaj ka kalam' was a real good one and made interesting reading," writes in V. T. Rajan, Assistant Manager, Commercial Bank of Dubai, working in the ISO certified Training and Development Centre.

"You should be writing more such articles. This is the first of the episodes that I have read. Am now eager to read all of `em. Trust more people spoke sense and understood sense and did sensible things like our APJ thinks and does. God bless." Thanks, Rajan.

(To be continued)

Swati_CA@hotmail.com

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