So after guest writer's week it now back to tolerating me on this blog :-) I would like to thank each and every guest writer who agreed to write without any hesitation and actually stuck to the deadline, something very unMICAn :D
Anyways back to today. There are certain days over here when I couldn't thank my stars enough for getting making the cut and today was one such day. PGP2 has been having their general elective on sports marketing for the past week or so and I have been sitting for their classes (out of interest and yes I have been missing a few of my classes for that, but its a worthy investment nonetheless). Half the course is taken by the prof. who is a guest faculty member from IIM-C and the other half is taken by industry experts. Two days back we had the managing partner of GroupM talking to us, he managed the IPL bids (team and players) for the Deccan Chargers, gave some really good insights into the entire process. But the lecture I was looking forward to was the one that happened today, it was conducted by the brand manager of Sachin Tendulkar :D:D:D Yes it couldn't get any better than this! The brand manager of by far the biggest brand in the country talking to you and sharing his experiences with God. He is the VP of World Sport Group(WSG), who were also recently in the news for the IPL mess. The session was divided into two sets of one hour each. The first hour focussed on the IPL, from its conceptualization to execution how it exceeded everyone's expectations! He also shared with us his views on what went wrong in the third season and why WSG is fighting a couple of cases in court. Was pretty impressed with that, would generally expect people to avoid these topics, but the very fact that he spoke about it and that too with conviction is an indication of no wrongdoing from his side at least. The second part was about celebrity endorsing brands and brand SRT in particular. One takeway from the session was how the celebrity and brand personalities need to be as similar as possible. He also spoke about how they are building a legacy for brand SRT with the adidas sporting gear and Sachin range of soaps and shampoos. These brands will last even after he retires. And when SRT endorses a brand he doesn't do it just for the heck of it, he means business, for instance he used the adidas pads and told them that the pads were too hard because of which the ball would fly off easily to any close in-fielder. So adidas went back and modified the pads! That is the level of involvement. The very fact that I have been ranting so much about the session shows how excited I am and that too 12 hours after the session concluded!
In the afternoon had an MLS which was actually a movie screening. The movie called India untouched was on untouchability still being prevalent in India. It brought to light some pretty harsh truths - one of them was the fact that untouchability is practised at a village just 5 kms. away from MICA! The person who made the movie was available for q&a after the screening. Got done with that by around 7 after which I went to the gym. Dinner was pretty boring at the mess so had Paratha and Burji at Chota.
Kaushik mentioned it being the season of competitions and today even I joined the bandwagon. Apu and I worked on a causal marketing competition the deadline for which was midnight and we started working at 10 pm :P Nonetheless finished on time! Have a couple of competitions more lined up over the next 2-3 days. Nothing much to do now, no pre reads after quite a long time so will make the most of it and hit the sack early!
