Day 336 - 20th November 2011

Had our make or break MCL game in the morning, which we ended up losing by 14 runs. So that marks the end of the MCL for the Chatur Chachas. Had a full day of classes line up after that. BA continued with behavioural sciences and how the brain functions and its application in retail marketing. It was also the last session of the course. Caught up on some sleep in the lunch break between BA and the course on FMCG branding. Had missed the first half of the FMCG branding course since I was travelling on FIF1 work. The course was conducted by a brand manager from HUL who took us through the brand management framework used by them. The thing I liked about the course was that apart from showing what worked in the market, he also took us through campaigns that bombed in the market. Learning from mistakes is a highly effective method. Got done with classes by 6 post which was doing general tp and reading some stuff off the net. Have a lot of books in the pipeline which I want to read, should start sometime soon. MCSA work took over after dinner, which incidentally was quite good today with Hot and Sour soup being the highlight. Saw a couple of episodes of Futurama before calling it a day. 

Day 315 - 12th October 2011

Made it a hatrick of having breakfast in the mess today! Had a lecture at 12, spent some time working on the dissertation proposal before that in the library. Had our first class of Consumer Insight Mining (CIM) today, its one of the more popular courses on campus and is taken by the same prof who taught us consumer behavior. It deals more with qualitative research and looks at finding consumer insights which are derived from research findings.  A brief introduction to the course was given after which the prof discussed a couple of cases in which consumer insights were generated. The brands discussed were Moov and Anacin. For Moov, the insight on which it was launched in the market was discussed and for Anacin the case revolved on how it needed an insight to realize why its competitors were performing better. Post lunch headed back to the library to work on the dissertation proposal. Had a meeting with my dissertation guide in the evening to freeze the topic and discuss the next steps. During the course of the meeting realized that there is a lot of work that needs to be done wrt the literature review. Got back to the library and started working on it though could do that only for half an hour so, was just able to search for research papers through our online database. MCSA duties required us to be present in the audi for a talent hunt organized by Ahmedabad Times. That went on for about an hour and a half post which there was a meeting with the Junior MCSA. Post dinner came back to the library and continued working on the dissertation proposal. Also had the MCL auctions tonight, wasn’t as much fun as last time though. The theme for team names this year is Indian superheroes – Naughty Nagraj, Shikari Shambus, Chatur Chacha’s etc. you get the drift. Yours truly is a Chatur Chacha, if only by brain actually worked faster than a computer I wouldn’t be up until 4 in the library working on the dissertation proposal. As another non Indian superhero would say “That’s all I can stands cos I can stands no more!”