The Hindu Business Line : Written in the words

What lessons does Scrabble the board game hold for businesspeople? As the 2007 World Scrabble Championship, to be hosted in Mumbai, approaches, BrandLine finds out from the enthusiasts.

The game can train one to think on their feet, intuit problems and equip them to deal with sudden developments.

A Scrabble tournament in progress.

Clockwise from left: V. Shantakumar, CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi India; Shripad Nadkarni, founder of business and marketing Consultancy Marketgate; Ramesh Vangal, Chairman of Katra group

Sravanthi Challapalli

From ‘aa’ to ‘aardvark’ it’s an arduous journey, determined as much by fate as by design. As India prepares to host the 2007 World Scrabble Championship next week (November 9-12) in Mumbai, BrandLine spoke to a few corporate honchos with a penchant for the board game to discover if it had synergies with business. For them, it’s the game’s capacity to train one to think on their feet, intuit problems and solutions, equip them to deal with sudden opportunities or the lack of them that finds echoes in business strategy.

Shripad Nadkarni, founder of business and marketing Consultancy Marketgate, calls Scrabble a great learning device. “It requires analysis and synthesis. Analysis involves sizing up a situation and synthesis building something new from it. Many managers are very analytical, but the critical area is synthesis.”

Ramesh Vangal, Chairman of Katra group, says it’s a very interesting game as one is learning all the time. “New ideas, new positions, new formats … It’s not necessarily the vocabulary that’s always important but determining how to use your vocabulary to gain the maximum points. You have to react quickly, draw from memory, but mostly, think on your feet,” he explains. V. Shantakumar, CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi India, says the game teaches one how to see solutions which may not be apparent. “The more you use your mind, the sharper it gets. You begin to see patterns of behaviour before they emerge, and this helps in problem-solving.”

Intuitive Learning

The lessons that Scrabble contains for businesspersons are not always obvious, but more instinctive. The biggest payoff, says Nadkarni, a former head of marketing at Coca-Cola India, is that the situation keeps changing with every move, and thus very congruent to business — “you’re always sizing up the competition”. And it could teach you to build something from zero base (as when the first player has to make a word from the seven tiles, luck of the draw) as well as leverage an established base to capture the market with minor modifications (as in when an opponent’s word is used to, say, make that much coveted eight-letter word that falls into a triple-word score.)

Shantakumar recounts the story of a tycoon in Rome, who, when asked to reveal the secret of his success, swept his glance over the view from his home of the city’s seven hills, then brought his finger very close to his eyes, and said it lay in seeing the big picture, never forgetting the details. A description apt for the challenges of Scrabble as well as business. So does he look for seven-letter words in triple-word scores? “You know, people who look for the seven-letter word rarely win. Most successful businessmen don’t think like that. While you’re looking for the big opportunity, you should be very successful at the everyday small things. Then you will be ready when the big thing comes up,” says Shantakumar.

As with most Scrabble players, all these men have been playing Scrabble “forever”. Typically, it’s a game one starts playing as a child. Net versions abound, allowing one to play solo or against others, but to many Scrabble buffs, it’s not as much fun as playing against opponents who are flesh-and-blood.

How and why was India chosen as the host for this year’s world championship? “We’re definitely a very good contender. We have a huge English-speaking population and Scrabble has a strong presence in India,” says Sanjay Luthra, Mattel Toys India’s Managing Director. The host country has to meet certain criteria: how Scrabble fares as a game there, how popular it is in the country and the capability of the local organisation to hold a mass event of this calibre — and India scores well on all these counts.

For Mattel, which owns the brand in most countries (except the US and Canada, where Hasbro has the rights), Scrabble accounts for a third of its games business in India. “It is one of the countries outside the US and the UK where Scrabble sells well. It’s very important among Scrabble-playing and buying countries,” says Luthra. These are countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore. There are 29 language versions of the game, including a Russian one. A Japanese game is under development.

The market size of word games is estimated at Rs 90 crore. There are no estimates of the original Scrabble’s share of this pie as it’s a largely unorganised market. “I don’t see a household which doesn’t have Scrabble; they may not have the original but may have it in some form or the other,” says Luthra, adding that the potential is huge. While he agrees that the game still needs more marketing, he also points out that Mattel India has been hosting the National Scrabble School Championship since 2005. In 2004, the championship was restricted to Mumbai schools but went national the next year. These contests touch one lakh children across five cities, with a thousand participating. Scrabble contributes 40 per cent to Mattel India’s turnover. It is available in four versions, prices ranging from Rs 59 for the Scrabble Cards to Rs 1,999 for the deluxe. Scrabble Original costs Rs 599. “We’re spending ten times of what we spend on the national tournaments for the world championship,” says Luthra, declining to divulge figures. The World Scrabble Championship has been held every second year since 1991. The total prize money is $30,000, with the champion getting $15,000.

Price no deterrent

Rahul Bhowmik, Head of Marketing at Mattel Toys, says the company has many plans to create a buzz around the game as the championship draws closer. It’s flying down Ganesh Asirvatham, ranked the world’s top Scrabble player, from Malaysia to talk to schoolchildren and is even trying to organise a Guinness book entry by having him break the world record and play 30 opponents simultaneously (the current record-holder played 18). Contests and promos in-store with spot prizes, some print and outdoor advertising are all being planned. Sports channels have expressed interest in running specials centred on the contest.

Bhowmik doesn’t see the price a deterrent to the growth of the game. “The average life of any brand new game in India is not more than two years, but considering growth in Scrabble is in very high double-digits, we’re just scratching the tip of the iceberg,” says Bhowmik, pointing out that Scrabble, marketed by that name for the last 59 years, is a heritage game like Monopoly, Pictionary and Scotland Yard.

This year, there are four contestants from India, two from Chennai and two from Mumbai, from professions as diverse as medicine, administration and law. Whether one of them will be the champion is anybody’s guess, but for sure, Scrabble will have its moment in the Indian sun.