Payment for a lost punchline

I was going to Bangalore after about five months and though this was, by no means, the longest that I had been away from the place, I was excited to be finally able to go there from Calicut. In fact, before I had joined IIMK, I had promised my Infy gang that I will keep coming to Bangalore every now and then (what with the place being only 6-7 hours away).

This particular journey to Bangalore, however, was for a specific purpose. A hastily organized and sparsely participated debate on Friday saw me being selected to represent the institute in the two upcoming debates, one at ISB on the 27th of this month and the other in Bangalore on the 19th, that is yesterday. So it was that I, Deepak (as members of the debate team), Sanjeev, and Gaurav (as the quiz team) stood in front of the college gate waiting for the Kallada Travels bus to Bangalore. With an immensely uncomfortable journey under our belts, we reached Bangalore early in the morning, all ready to take on the world. While the other three went on to Gaurav's house (he belongs to Bangalore), I decided to give a visit to Sushant. Richa was also there and was busy filling up the recommendation guidelines for her PL. She has taken GMAT and scored an amazing 740. On top of that, she doesn't want to go abroad and is applying, for the time being, to ISB (which I believe, will lap her up).

Chatting with them, I lost track of time and by the time I was ready and could get an auto, it was already quite late. I reached the venue in Kormangala at about 10 minutes past the scheduled time and was surprised to see no one there, apart from our team and another from the neighboring Christ College Institute of Management. Soon, we came to know that the eliminations were to be held at IIMB campus and they had already kicked off the process there. We managed to hitchhike on the bikes of the Christ College people and somehow reach the new venue in time for the eliminations. Eliminations were a cake walk, I thought. The topic of the debate said, "Opportunity is more on building Indian Brands than building Brand India". Each team was supposed to speak two minutes for the motion (one speaker) and two minutes against it (second speaker). I decided to go against, and after a spirited show by Deepak, managed to give some decent finishing touches to be able to qualify into the final eight from a group of 42 teams.

The quarterfinals had an interesting format and of course, a different venue. The two IIMs in the south zone were (probably intentionally) kept in two different quarter finals and the topic for the first quarters (which saw some lop-sided competition with IIMB and Christ College simply stealing the show) was "Indian Advertising: Imitation or Innovation?". Some bad performance by the other two teams and some decent going by IIMB and Christ College saw them through to the semis. The next quarters, in which we figured, had the topic "Celebrity Endorsements: Does it pay?". An interesting topic with a lot of arguments and counter-arguments, it made the debate lively. Deepak from IIMK opened the debate by setting the context of the discussion, defining what a brand stands for and how it can come to gain from celebrity endorsements, giving the examples of Amitabh Bachchan and Cadbury's and above all, quoting some fake figures from some fake reports, too :-).

The opposition speaker from ICFAI, Hyderabad who opened against Deepak went on to question the match between Amitabh and Cadbury and also talked about the cost factor of involving celebrities in the ad campaigns (played right into our hands as we were prepared for these questions and had anticipated them with precision). My turn was next and I believe that I made a good start (in an unusual way, with the Rapunzael poem). I went on to mention my points about how cost factor can be neutralised if the advertising strategy is chosen correctly and the celebrity endorsements are used during growth phase of the product life cycle. What I did not do was reply to the Amitabh-Cadbury link and finish my speech with the punchline that related my start, body and conclusion (completely forgot both of them).

I had started with saying something that went like, "Rapunzael Rapunzael, let your golden hair down, says the prince. Rapunzael lets her hair down and the prince climbs up the tower and the two lovers meet. Love, anybody? Ladies and Gentlemen, Love is when Romeo meets Juliet, Love is when Laila meets Majnu and not when a rose is shown brushing against a sunflower for minutes on end without any purpose."

I went on to mention how celebrities give a physical form with which the customers can associate the brand, gave the example of Preity Zinta and Pentafresh, and more importantly, talked about the necessary marketing startegy decisions that need to be right for celebrity endorsements to work. The punchline that I forgot and that I wanted to end with went somewhat like this: "A Veer Pratap Singh and a Zaara Hyatt Khan will in deed have the desired effects, provided that they are backed with the typical Yash Chopra style."

So far, so good...but that is when the lightning struck. One of the judges stood up and said that he wanted to bring the discussion into perspective and asked the teams to discuss more about how exactly does the celebrity endorsement pay or not pay. Completely unfair to our team where both of us had spoken, this came as a jolt. BIM Trichy, the second team for the motion, however, got it as a Godsend and capitalized fully on it by starting their argument with the tangibles and intangibles that companies can obtain from the celebrity endorsement ploy. The moment they said this, the judges were seen nodding their heads as if those guys had struck a goldmine all on their own.

The opposition teams, the ICFAIs from Chennai and Hyderabad were both pathetic but as luck would have it, both the pathetic teams were in the opposition. As we came to know later, the policy was not to choose the best two teams from each quarter final for the semis but to choose one Government (that is, team for the motion) and one Opposition (that is, team against the motion) from each quarter final. We had already lost to our partner team in the Government on account of the judge intervention and though we did try to salvage the situation somewhat in the Q&A round, it was too little too late.

The semis were interesting with IIMB, ICFAI Chennai favoring the motion, "M-commerce: Myth or Reality?" and BIM Trichy, Christ College against the motion. More interesting than the opening arguments, the Q&A session saw some tempers flaying and some good use of rhetoric by both Christ College and IIMB. The other two teams were completely outclassed as these two teams (luckily, one in the Government and another in the Opposition) went about murdering each other. The IIMK contingent asked a few questions, too and in my opinion, Gaurav and Deepak could have done better than losing thier tempers. I completely agree to their point that the IIMB guys were acting too smart and that Gaurav was specially irritated because we were made to wait for the quiz prelims results since the morning...but then again, it came across as if IIMK were sore losers. Whatever be the case, as Amitabh said in Sholay, "Partner, ab bol hi diya hai to dekh lenge", and so it was that even I was poised to ask a question of my own but luckily for IIMB, time for Q&A ran out before I could put my own poser to their arguments.

The day ended rather dramatically for us with Gaurav making his displeasure known to one of the ladies in the organising committee. Though she did finally relent and told us that we were through to the quarters of the quiz, Gaurav wanted more (perhaps an apology?). Sanjeev made the peace and that was when we finally left. I stepped out at the Forum, did some window shopping, got me some posters that I wanted to have in my room for long, and then finally went to Richa's house. Having asked Deepak to book tickets for the 9:30 bus, we were waiting for Sushant to come and take us out for a good dinner. It was not to be, however, as Deepak told me, just in the nick of time, that we had got tickets only for the 8:30 bus.

It was all a blur there onwards as Richa literally dragged me along till I reached the bus stop with about ten minutes to spare. Sushant came to the place directly from his office. Thinking back, I felt lucky to have such friends who, if they wanted, could have left me on my own and said their good-byes but who, in reality, made sure that I made it to my bus and escorted me all the way as if I was a kid and would not be able to make it on my own. Thanks guys for all this and much more.