Plan To Not Plan…

The late & great Sir Winston Churchill had once quoted, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail”. Quite an impressive quote, especially when it’s quoted by one of the greatest wartime leaders. But even uncle Winston would agree that he never intended the Second World War to take place, it just happened and all the planning came into play. Moral of the story, we can plan all we want but don’t bank on things to run according to plan. This philosophy majorly finds its application in the field of communication where plans can go for a toss with every little change in the influencing environment…the so called “variable factor”

The variable factor is that inconsistent element surrounding us which can act as major catalyst for big disasters. For Example, a particular brand invests lakhs for a nationwide AD campaign with a big Bollywood celebrity but a day before the Ads hit your TV screens, the celebrity gets involved in a murky scandal making himself & the brand untouchable (in a bad way). In short, the variable factor is the one thing on which we have limited or zero control. Also a point worth getting aware is the fact that, though we may have no control over the elements, we shall be invariably held responsible for the associated disasters. In a true Mumbaiya style it would result in a situation best described as, “Khaya Piya Kuch Nahi, Glass Toda Baarana”. So what can be done in such situations where the variable factor screws up your all plans?

Now being a bit experienced in such situations and escaping its dangerous outcomes in more than a couple of occasions, my first suggestion would be RUN!!! The second suggestion to follow the first one is, GRAB ALL THE PLANS THAT SHOW YOUR INVLOVLMENT & THEN…RUN!!!!! But a much practical solution to these issues especially for those in the communication field is to try & expect the variable factor in advance. This means, be prepared for such things to happen & keep your plans a bit flexible so that you can adapt accordingly. Also an important point to remember is to be in tune with the environment, because if you are smart enough you will get the signals much earlier than the event itself. For example, tracking a celebrity’s history, his filmography & his publicity stunts would help you realize how unpredictable he can be. But in case you have ignored the signals and are now in midst of a major crisis, it better to come up with an immediate PR attempt, for both yourself & for your brand. It has to be unplanned and spontaneous because planning in such tight situations may lead to a recap of what happened before. Though my last advice may seem extremely impractical, it will help you in dealing with the issue if you can say “It’s all good” and try to move on.

In the Oscar winning movie, Forrest Gump, Forrest’s mother tells him that, “Life Is like a Box of Chocolates… You Never Know What You’re Gonna Get”. Well let’s hope that we don’t end up getting a bitter chocolate & even if we do there is nothing more we can do other than swallowing it with a smile on our face. So plan well, but don’t waste all your time planning because even the great John Lennon believed that, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”…

The Media Watchdog… A toothless tragedy !!!

My journalism professors used always say with a lot of pride that “media acts as the watchdog of the society, an impartial and unbiased tool which is fair and just, in short a medium that believes in the portrayal of truth at whatever cost necessary”.

Obviously he didn’t stop there, but went on to quote examples and case studies from the pre independence era to the day before, till his stipulated time ran out. Back then sitting in the last row, I used to sneer, laugh & at times doze off during these speeches. But today I think if I were to give the same speech, my so called students would have much stronger reactions than what I had. A rotten egg, a paper plane or a class boycott is some thing that I expect the least.

According to many of us, the responsible media that people talk about in classes has long been buried to make way for the commercial media. Few of us today believe that a news channel or newspaper upholds its original status among the common man. Most of us though, do believe that these channels are a much better advertising medium than anything close to the truth.

Here is my dilemma, “On which side am I?” Sincerely speaking, I do believe news publications and media network still hold a lot of credibility among the masses but a part of me also feels that if it gets too hard for these guys to get credible & interesting news, the launch of a new lingerie wear may soon make their headlines. All in all it’s a game of trying to outsmart the other by being fast, saying more & acting superior at times.

All this said, a fresh batch of students keep flowing out of communication institutes to join the media bandwagon. Directly or indirectly, 90% of the students will get in touch with the news and broadcasting part of the media at some point of time. So there is hope, hope that maybe not all but a selected few of the new lot have what it takes to keep the sanctity of the journalism industry alive. For many it is the beacon of truth, for many a time pass, for many a source of income but for the common man it is a right…right to know the truth…unbiased & unadulterated. Maybe if a small part working for this medium keeps the common man and not the commercial man in mind, we could see the era of journalism where breaking news won’t talk about “the cat fight between two TV vamps in real life”.

In defense of the news mediums, it is true that they have brought about a huge amount of change & are still highlighting things that are to be told. But do they need to add their own twist to the tale & pre determine the news is the big question.  Like me, many others would feel the same and we do our bit of scanning & searching for our bits of serious & related news. But in the long run, the question that will haunt us is, “who will watch the watchdog when is turn rabid?”

The Right Time, Anytime…

They say that “time and tide wait for no man” and an Indian version of the same quote is “Waqt ke saath chalo, nahi toh peeche reh jaoge”…Both these version are true in their own right but inapplicable in some counts. A lot of teenagers moving into their post teen years feel that their time to study or educate themselves is up and they ending doing jobs under the pretext of not wanting to be left behind. The quote and the philosophy do apply to a lot of fields but in case of a career in the communication field it doesn’t hold water. A field with innumerable choices and unbelievable opportunities, communication studies has always been a trend breaker majorly because it’s the main source for trends to arise & evolve.

Age is a definitely a worrying factor for all of us but in the field of communication it acts as a benchmark to what you have achieved and your need to achieve more. Though it is advisable to stick to the basics and finish your studies when the time is right, a delay in getting onboard won’t be a hiccup for your glorious future. The courses and the syllabus offered by communication institutes cater to both the experienced and the inexperienced lot so that both are due for a fresh start in their own way. A lot of us believe to study and then get practical experience and a sizeable number of us wants a bit of experience and then enhance it by getting theoretical knowledge. Both these approaches do have their own pros and cons, but in no way are they wrong or undoable. What matters is, your situations and your decisions which will ultimate form your truth, and that is the only truth. Also what a degree in communication or for that matter in any field does is, it gives you a decent standing and an appreciative value considering that you have degree from a reputed institute claiming your mastery over certain topics.

We Indians have always had a soft corner and huge regards or the intellectual types and the fascination will last forever. It is also necessary to understand that while studies are a part of our life if used on field they can make our life much better. After all there is a reason why our degrees and academic laureates occupy an important position in our job resumes. So ideally it is never too late to learn and evolve and if the education doesn’t help you much, the initial of the degree will, to some extent. A lot of us take specializations and educations for granted but in the communication field, a lot can be learned in a class and then expertly applied on the field. So the question of, “Whether to study or not?” can be answered with another question, “Will studies ever harm you?” We are all intelligent enough to know the answer and for those who think that their age to learn has passed them by, all the need to remember is, “It’s not the age but the mileage”…

The Kommunication Karma…

It is believed that what we end up doing in life is a part of a greater game plan rigged together by the forces of fate and destiny. These forces gives us choices and help us take those decisions which may seem irrelevant to many around but ultimately end up becoming the turning point of life for a better or a doomed future. Well if the same is true, then it should be mandatory that, these forces give us a statutory warning of what lies ahead, but sadly that never the case. The world is littered with examples of people who have swapped their existing careers to areas of interest and are quite well placed in life today.

Observing this phenomenon closely you will realize that in comparison to other professions, the field of communication sees a massive switch of careers or job-jumps than any other field. The basic reason behind this is the deep seated connection between the vast field of communication and its allied areas. Every communication field is in constant touch with other associated professions which gives the communication candidates get a clear and closer look at the range of choices he can experiment with. A case example would be an individual working in an Ad agency, is in a constant range of job profiles like with PR, Event Management, Filmmaking and Television production etc. In short any of these job profiles may entice him to switch to these fields as per his interests. Though it is actually not switching fields because all these professions fall under the communication wing but in such a vast field the job profiles we discussed above are as different from each other as chalk and cheese.

To a large extent the new breed of communication institutes and the syllabus they offer to their students is the actual reason why candidates feel confident to experiment with various genres in the communication field. A course in journalism gives a student an overall idea of television production and multi-camera setup opening a dimension in his mind towards the print & TV industry. Courses in Advertising and Pr offer a healthy glimpse of creative writing and film making which are coincidentally also essential tools to understanding the art of script writing and film making respectively. Communication institutes and communication courses act as central nerve of the entire media network connecting each field of communication with another and bridging gaps of ignorance.

All this speculation over swapping jobs and changing the line of work is not a mandatory procedure for everyone but usually a whim and fancy of an individual mind. A lot of us are happy doing what we do and a few of us are always in the quest of finding to do that which is destined for us. Ultimately what we do will be our fate and what we achieve will be the thing we are destined for, so the idea is to do our best and with full interest. After all, “our fates we can’t decide and from our destiny we can never hide”

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense….learn the power of persuasion with communication courses at JICM bhopal.

Keep up with the time, or be left behind !!

It has been drilled in our heads from the very start of our academic journey that “man is a social animal” and by the word “man” we mean human beings in general. One of the main attributes of being social is our ability to communicate with others of our kind for personal and commercial purposes. Peeking back into time, it has to be accepted that communication has existed since the advent of mankind, from the stone ages, even if the then popular communication technique was to make garbled noises and throw a pebble at the other individual to grab his/her attention. Since the concept of trade also existed back then maybe in form of barter system, communication must have played a pivotal role in making the transfer. Hence the question, with such a long history of communication do we assume that in today’s age most of us are experts at it?

We won’t require a super computer to deduce the answer for this question which is a quite clean and clear “no”. As the ages moved in their classification of stone, bronze, ice to the refrigerator age, the techniques of communication have also evolved. Though the evolution of these techniques haven’t changed the basic philosophy of “getting the message across”, they definitely have innovated the means of doing so. The best part of the whole process is that, the techniques invented for our advancement, if not studied properly can spell our inevitable doom. Hence in the age of technology and business, communication has been given its own standing for better living and profitable business. The business of communication with the inside and outside pubic whether creative or corporate has to be necessarily learnt and mastered to some extent as a social and commercial needs.

This explains the advent of communication institutions that pride in training, honing and developing communication skills of their candidates. In addition to these, they also try to get their students familiar with the various communication techniques and its development bridging the gap of the basics and the innovations of the field. Institutions also focus on bringing out the creative and competitive best from its students to enhance their skills and their ability to face the corporate world with confidence. For a candidate to enroll & successfully complete a communication course it is necessary for them to understand that these institutions do their best to update, innovate and educate but the zest of learning and wanting to excel in the communication technique cannot be duplicated or created.

It is said that “man is a social animal” but the society has grown leaps and bounds since this saying was created and with every new leap the art of communication becomes more unique and fascinating than before. Today’s world works on the philosophy, ‘keep up with the time, or be left behind’ and it is an aspiring communication candidate’s choice to either be with the time and adapt to communicate or stick with the basics and be left behind.

Bhopal Gas Tragedy !!… a new article on our blog http://ping.fm/SORjj

Bhopal Gas Tragedy

A small town with picturesque settings…a land of joy, a land of beauty & a land full of happy lives. Then one day tragedy strikes, a disaster where thousands perish, the beauty & the lives all disappear into the abyss of greed, deceit and power!!! A tragedy forever embedded in the sands of time as the disastrous Bhopal Gas Tragedy that not only took the lives of thousands but also took the belief of thousands from the Indian judicial system for good. How I wish this was a script of a Bollywood blockbuster, but to my grief and that of the entire nation’s this isn’t. At least if it would have been a movie script, after all the carnage and the loss we would have got a fitting retribution when the evil meets its disastrous and deserving end.

Our entire lives we learn, teach or preach the importance of responsibility but it is bizarre that the while so many people lost their lives due to negligence by a few, we are unable to bring to justice those few who were responsible. In a country boasting to be the largest democracy of the world and a government proudly tagged as “for the people, of the people and by the people”, the people are neglected by choice or by chance. What occurred in Bhopal on the fatefull December night of 1984 is merely a prelude to what the city has faced till date. If after 16 years after the incident, our comfortable living rooms do not comfort us while we follow the trial of justice for the Bhopal victims on news channels, imagine the life of a survivor who didn’t even have the chance to see it coming but has endured it till date to know that his torture and misery has been negotiated for a paltry reimbursement.

The idea is not to raise fingers or take sides because in a nation where innumerable factions thriving on controversies we would become an inconsequential addition to the bandwagon. In case of what happened in Bhopal, the who’s, the why’s and the how’s are quite evident to us but they have been for the last 16 years being immaculately shielded by the if’s and the but’s. By nature, past history and by experience the powers deciding the fates of those who suffered have understood that they are dealing with a mass of people who will shout, protest and will soon compromise with the rest. The truth is that, we are tied down by our personal quests to find time to fight such battles and tend to leave it saying life moves on.

As said, life does move on and the Bhopal of today is the best example of  that saying. A city struck with a disaster of biblical proportions has slowly but steadily gotten back into its groove and made itself noticed to the entire nation. From scenic landscapes to formidable infrastructure, Bhopal has carved itself a spot in the India’s books of culture tradition and innovation. The city boasts not only about being a platform for traditional arts and culture but also about the numerous prestigious educational institutes it sports. This justifies its will to grow but does it justify its will to let go?

No true Indian how occupied or busy he is, can ever let go of what happened in Bhopal in the winters of 1984 and all that the city and its people demand, is closure. My grandmother always said that “an innocent person’s curse has to be feared the most” and for once I hope she is right, because where the justice has failed, lets hope that the curses prevail!!!

The art of interaction is parallel to the art of communication.

Keep it Real to get the feel

They say “Don’t judge a book by its cover” and I am on an eternal mission to find out who this elusive “they” were and ensure that these “they” get a standing ovation. When this mission is accomplished, my second mission would be to ensure that all my teachers, professors and few elite members of my family get to read and understand this quote! Well this second mission of mine goes way back in time which is filled with sarcastic comments, punishments and consistent reprimands for my rebellious dressing sense. And it is not like I didn’t protest; I was like Gandhiji who fought against the British rule with a loin cloth against the khaki tyranny. But then I had very little success in this fight because unlike the “Father of the Nation” who had the support of the whole nation, I lacked support from my own father!!!

The above paragraph proves my non affability towards the conventional mediums of dressing, much popularly tagged as formals. But my line of studies demanded such attire and I could be rebellious for just a certain period. I mean, being rebellious is cool, but a red one fit cap on my formals doesn’t say rebellious as much as it says lack of dressing sense! So I began the hunt, the hunt to find that line of work that lets you be and then I landed on a goldmine called creative communication. Popularly tagged as the media line, it offers a perfect dress code for people like me, which in short means that they have no dress code! From casuals to the Indiana Jones attire, everything is passed of as normal without those life changing stares and glares. And for someone like me for whom what I wear reflects what I feel, it’s a boon granted by the lords above.

Now due to my incessant rambling, the few people reading this blog shouldn’t misinterpret the agenda of this article. The idea is not to convey that since the creative communication field has a liberal dress code it’s an ultimate choice for anyone or everyone. The agenda is to convey that creativity can be derived more successfully by allowing a certain amount of freedom helping to unleash the creative minds. After all many bosses in the creative communication line believe that the right mood and the right feel will provide the right content. But again this fact shouldn’t be misconstrued as a feeling that the right attire gives the right thoughts. I mean, camouflage shorts don’t enhance your thinking power they just enhance your ability to beat the heat and give you one less point to worry about. In short, no amount of cool, rebellious or hip dressing sense can provide you with creative thoughts. Also even in this field with all its freedom and liberty, some unsaid guidelines are to be followed. While meeting clients or people whom you are interacting for the first time a decent dress code is in demand. This means that cargo shorts and “Che Guevara” t-shirts might not tell the client about your free and liberal state of mind but will most probably tell them that you are not the right person to talk to and you shall get skipped.

Now speaking about myself, I have always loved the liberty of having a dressing sense which says “I don’t care”. There are enough pros and cons of it with which I have made my peace, but that might not hold true for everyone. The belief is that if your college or work allows you to wear what you like then please wear what you like and not what others would like. At the end of the day what holds true is the fact that “Keep it real to get the feel”…