Day 425 - 13th March 2012

Woke up in time for breakfast today. The craze to download research papers from the library resources was reignited today, continued to get material on sports marketing and alcohol marketing. We also had the batch picture at the OAT for the yearbook. It was good fun with the photo being taken again and again as more and more latecomers arrived :D Had to go to Gulmohar Greens after that to book a room for Amma Appa for the convocation. Got the bike cleaned on the way back. Had an hour long siesta before going for a jog in the evening. Took a different route today which is slightly long as compared to the Bopal route but equally scenic, if not more.

In the evening had to prepare a bit for the first session of the Sports Marketing Club @ MICA. This is an initiative started by Ganesh and me wherein we want to build a knowledge centre for sports marketing in India. There are some short term and long term plans that we have in mind and I really hope things materialise. We had our first meeting today which also had a Skype session with Kunal (my boss from FIF1) on the business of motorsport in India. After the session caught up with CD Mitra at Chota. This was the last time I was meeting him at MICA, though I hope there will be able to meet a lot in the future as well. Got back to the room by around 2, continued downloading research papers for around half an hour before calling it a day.

Day 394 - 1st Februrary 2012

Woke up with great difficulty in the morning to play tennis. Post breakfast shifted base to the library. Its become a kind of routine now - tennis, breakfast, library, post lunch siesta, back to library, dinner, post dinner in Kachar North West. Today was no different. Also met my dissertation guide during the day to discuss the research methodology. She had suggested some modifications which I made and sent back for her approval. The discussion then veered towards placements, the direction in which the institute is headed. The debate is never ending and from a student's perspective there are many changes which we feel are necessary. Some of these changes will be recommended by the MCSA and we hope to see some action taken.

Spent most of the evening working on a presentation which I have to send to CD Mitra. The presentation is based on a case study I have prepared for my dissertation on Sahara Force India Speed Nights - the race screenings conducted at pubs across the country. It deals with how a non cricketing sport is promoted in India. Prepared the presentation and mailed it to the FIF1 marketing team for their approval before sending it across to CD Mitra, who plans to present it at sports marketing courses he will be conducting in other institutes. Post dinner Kore, Buds, Sania and I saw an episode of Roadies in Kalkar's room. This is something we used to last year as well, sit and have a good laugh at people's stupidity! Dinner at the mess wasn't that great which meant a midnight snack was on the cards at Chota. So chicken parathas it was, the parathas at Chota never seem to disappoint. Got back to the room by 130, read a bit of Ambani and Sons before calling it a day.

Day 389 - 27th January 2012

Didn't have any classes today. Woke up at 930 and decided to shift base to the library with the hope of starting work on the dissertation. Got a call from my guide to meet her regarding the questionnaires that I had sent to her. Had to make some modifications to them. Have resent them and am awaiting for her approval. Continued reading The Elusive Fan, I find it very similar to our marketing textbook, the theory sounds very obvious or pfaffy but the examples and case studies are very useful in understanding how marketing actually functions. Some MCSA work kept me busy post lunch. Played tennis in the evening for almost 2 hours. Had to leave the game half way for about half an hour because of a meeting with the chairman of the dissertation committee. The date of submission has now been pushed to 23rd February, giving us some breathing space. Continued my day long stint in the library pre and post dinner. Have plans to call it a day soon, want to watch movie before sleeping though, dont know if that will materialise.

Day 388 - 26th January 2012

Didn't have any classes today on account of Republic Day. As is the norm, Republic Day celebrations were held on campus by inviting schoolchildren from the nearby villages. Had a meeting with the Executive Registrar which went on for almost an hour. Had a nice 2 hour long siesta. Have started reading Kotler's book on sports marketing called The Elusive Fan (under the pretence of doing literature review for my dissertation). Spent most of the evening reading the book. Dinner was at KFC with Kalkar. This is the first KFC that has opened up in Ahmedabad and it was my first visit to the place. It did take some effort to reach the place though since the bike ran out of petrol along the way. It was worth all the effort though. Got back to campus by 11. Continued reading and along the way saw some videos on youtube. Will read for a bit before calling it a day. Have no classes till the 30th, hopefully can get some work started on the dissertation!

Day 300 - 26th August 2011

Woke up at 11 in the morning, the AFM end term was 5 in the evening which gave me about 6 hours to go through the slides and whatever little notes I had made during the classes. It was an open book test, but one should also know where to look for an answer in the book! Practiced a few numericals with Sir and got a few doubts cleared from the commerce grads for whom this is a piece of cake.

The exam was pretty decent - a good mix of objectives, short answers and numericals. Again every paper in this field is compared with FA from term 1 which makes even a mediocre paper look like a very easy one. Post the paper,met up with a few juniors who wanted to know about internship opportunities in the sports marketing industry. Told them whatever I knew and shared my internship experience with them. Came back to the room and read a few articles on the net before heading to Chota for dinner (there was egg curry in the mess). Done have classes for the next 9 days but the FIF1 speed nights at MICA and IIM-A will keep me busy for the next couple of days at least. Started reading the book on sports marketing in India which I had bought sometime back before calling it a day.

Day 299 - 25th August 2011

Today was again one of those days when I considered myself extremely lucky to be a part of this institute. Had 3 sessions on sports marketing in the morning, the topic discussed was sponsorship - what drives it and what are the kind of options available for potential sponsors. There was also a case study that was discussed in class which dealt with ethical issues when it came to the sponsorship of a sports tournament. But that wasn't exactly the high point of the day. As a part of the sports marketing course one of the guest lecturers who agreed to come on campus was Sundar Raman, CEO of the IPL! The prof had anticipated that a lot of people would be interested in hearing him speak so this was positioned as an MLS so that everyone had an opportunity to attend it. I had spoken to the prof the previous day and asked him if it would be ok if I went to receive Mr. Raman at the airport and he had no problems with it. It was a great opportunity to interact with him during the drive from the airport to campus. Picked his brains on the business of sport, he wanted to know more about the course and he even suggested names of people from the industry who could come as guest faculty. Once we reached campus, he said that he hadn't had his lunch, so we decided to head to Chota. If a year back somebody told me that I would be discussing cricket with the CEO of the IPL over Aloo Parathas at Chota, I would have taken offence for playing with my emotions! The topics of discussion ranged from whether he really expected bid values for the 9th and 10th franchises to exceed those of the first 8 put together to how the IPL has changed the experience for fans who for once can actually watch a game comfortably in a stadium. He also went on to speak about how they put up the 2009 edition in 15 days in South Africa, they couldnt have done it without the all out support of the local authorities. In his words, "On 24th March when it was decided that the IPL wouldn't happen in India, I boarded flight to South Africa with one pair of jeans and a t-shirt and then I returned to India after 3 months!" He's not just about the business, the amazing part is how he remembers the result of every game that has been played in the IPL so far with the key performers in those games.

The MLS was scheduled at 630 in the evening and the audi was packed by 615, something that is unheard at this place! His talk was about the evolution of the IPL and the various marketing activities undertaken by them. He showed ads from each of the seasons and what they tried to communicate every season. The obvious question about the IPL having a negative effect on players while playing for India was also asked to which he drew a comparison between English football, the EPL and other leagues. There are 383 matches played between August and May every year and on an average every player runs close to about 15 km every game, nobody complains bout fatigue out there was his reply! He gave a couple of cricketing insights which were truly amazing through which he tried to explain why the IPL has actually improved the way players approach the game. The first one was from the final of the 2010 edition of the IPL, MI were cruising against CSK when there was a sudden batting collapse. Everybody expected Sachin to send in Pollard to finish it off, but for some strange reason he was pushed down the order. This was actually a battle of who blinked first going on between Sachin and Dhoni. Both of them knew that Pollard wouldn't be able to play Muralitharan who at that point of time still had 2 overs left, Sachin wanted to play out Murali and let Pollard loose on the fast bowlers and Dhoni kept holding him back. Eventually Pollard came to bat in the 17th over, with 50 odd runs to be scored in 18 deliveries, people thought that it was bad captaincy on the part of Tendulkar to have sent him in so late, but very few people know about the mind games being played between the captains on the field. Pollard went on to smash 20 odd runs of one over of Bollinger who until then was unplayable and then there seemed to be a match on our hands. In the next over when Albie Morkel came on to bowl, Dhoni had a brief discussion with him following which Morkel decided to bowl from around the wicket with Mathew Hayden standing literally in line withe stumps inside the circle at a fine long on position if ever there was a fielding position like that. The very next ball Pollard hit the ball straight to Hayden and MI's dream of an IPL were brought to an abrupt end. They had realised that when Pollard hits, he hits it dead straight. Such strategies were never used before and it was an exhilarating experience to watch such tactical prowess on display. It truly went on to show that captains and bowlers have cracked the format. The second instance was from the final of 2011 cricket world cup. People think Dhoni just decided to promote himself ahead of Yuvraj in a moment of inspiration and for no particular reason. However there was a very sound reason behind this move -at that point of time India were 130 odd for 3 around the 25 over mark and Muralitharan had 5 overs left. Dhoni and Murali have played a lot of cricket together for CSK and whenever Yuvraj came out to bat Murali would tell Dhoni to give him the ball, all he needed were 5 deliveries to get Yuvraj out. Dhoni knew that and had Yuvraj gotten out early that would have put extra pressure on the rest of the batsmen. Dhoni promoted himself up the order to play out Murali, so that by the time Yuvraj came out to bat he had to face only the quick bowlers, bread and butter for him. The rest of his talk left the audience spell bound and before we knew it, two and a half hours had passed by!

Post the MLS, dinner was in the mess during which a couple of committees on campus wanted to interact with him. Post dinner went to Chota for a cuppa of Chai where the cricket related discussions continued, this time it was about how the franchises dealt with the ownership of teams. A company like Reliance for example, is never used to losing and how the sport has taught them to cope up with it. I could go on ranting more out here, but I am pretty sure blogspot has a word limit per post. Ended the day on that note, a truly memorable experience. The fact that there is an AFM end term tomorrow evening is yet to sink in, will deal with it tomorrow morning, dont want to ruin this high by calculating net present value and reading about the financial implications of M&As!

Day 298 - 24th August 2011

The sports marketing sessions started at 1045 today. Today’s sessions were mainly about consumer behavior in sports marketing wherein we studied the different types of fans. Did get a little too heavy in the middle, but the prof had warned us well in advance that the first half of the day was going to deal with theory. Post lunch we had the first guest lecturer for the subject – Joy Bhattacharya, Team Director of the Kolkata Knight Riders. It was a brilliant 2 hour session with the first half on the business model of the IPL and the second on brand KKR. Invariably the discussion had to veer towards Sourav Ganguly and his exclusion from the team in the last season, it was a tough decision to take, he did admit that but it was taken from a long term perspective. Though he did acknowledge the fact that Ganguly is West Bengal or should I say Paschim Bongo’s favourite son. “Tagore, Satyajit Ray and now Ganguly, us bongs don’t have too much of a choice when it comes to our heroes” :D The best part about the discussion was that he patiently answered all sorts of questions ranging from the Fake IPL player to match fixing in the IPL. In a reply to one of the questions of player fatigue and the debacle in England he brought to our notice that India’s rise to the number one position began in 2008 and culminated in 2011 and the IPL was present in that very period, so it would be unfair to pin all the blame on the league. The best line of the lecture though had to be his opening line “Let’s make a deal, you don’t ask me about Shah Rukh’s sexual preferences and I wont bore you” :D

Played cricket in the evening in the Kachnar courtyard. Its always fun to play with a hard tennis ball on tiles, its akin to playing on Perth :P Played for a good hour at least. Post that there was a session on handwriting analysis conducted in the audi by a batchmate, which was pretty interesting. Have 3 birthday celebrations lined up tonight. Posting this one before they begin!

Day 297 - 23rd August 2011

Back to a full day of classes after a long time! Had two SBM lectures in the morning. They were the last set of lectures for the course. We mainly discussed brand extensions and under what circumstances do they happen. A lot of examples were also given by the prof. and I have to admit I wasn’t aware of a majority of them! Had a 2 hour break after that during which I managed to get some clothes washed, the sun came out after a long time today, ideal time to get clothes dried :P

Had our first set of lectures on sports marketing today. The context was set by the course today by the prof, the same person who helped me out with my summer internship at FIF1. The topic of discussion mainly revolved around what makes sports marketing so different from marketing of other products. We also have some good visiting faculty lined up for the course which is something to look forward to. FIF1 work kept me busy post lectures. We will be conducting speed nights at MICA and IIM-A, had to set up the branding for that on campus and had to also go to IIM-A to hand over their branding, Rajat also came along to help with that. Came back to campus by 945, mess food didn’t look too inviting, so Chota it was! MQC had the India Quiz in the night, not a topic that I am too comfortable with, not that I am a champion quizzer :P Got done with that at by 130, too tired to do anything after that, will crash in a bit.

Day 296 - 22nd August 2011

Had a rest day on account of Janmashtmi today. Spent the first half of the day in slumberland. Had the annual MICA Matki Phod Competition (MMPC). Hostels form teams and compete against each other in a dahi handi competition. Yours truly was in the base 'support' team of Kachnar ;-) We made it upto the semi finals courtesy our own Krishna oops I mean Nullu at the top of the human pyramid :-D Was good fun overall.

Dinner at the mess wasn't exactly a feast with the an attempt at Sabudana Khichdi gone horribly wrong. So Kalkar and I found an excuse to go to McDonalds for dinner. The one near ISCON mall is open till 1 in the night, the perfect place for a midnight snack! Got back to campus by 11 after which have been doing random tp. Regular classes start from tomorrow with the first set of Sports Marketing lectures. Have some good guest lecturers lined up so should be good fun! :-)

Day 134 - 20th November 2010

It was the last guest lecture on sports marketing for pgp2 today, so as has been the case I attended this one as well. The brand manager for Force India, the formula 1 team owned by Vijay Mallya came down to give a talk today. It was pretty interesting, he spoke about the F1 team as well as the Bangalore IPL team and how UB group takes up unique marketing initiatives to get maximum reach with minimum investments. He also spoke about their plans for the upcoming Grand Prix in India. That got done by around noon after which I was free for the rest of the day. Went to the library and found a book on how brans Arsenal was built,seemed to be interesting so issued it, hope I get to read it sometime soon. Played tennis in the evening for about an hour or so.

Started watching Scrubs today. I was addicted to it at one point of time where I finished watching six seasons within a week or two :D Started season 7 today. Mess food was extremely boring today so went to McDonalds to pack a burger, so had a TV dinner of sorts :-) That is also a major advantage of having a bike, can go out whenever you want to. Worked a bit on the IMT competition on co-branding. Have the next two days off which I am looking forward to, will spend most of it sleeping and pay justice to the incredible weather out here which reminds me of Bangalore :-)

Day 130 -16th November 2010

Today's post is from a senior who at one point time was my junior. Didn't get it? Let me explain - Kaushik was 2 years my junior at engineering college and got into MICA immediately after graduation, I on the other hand worked for nearly 3 years before coming here, so that makes him my senior. Anyways here's how the life of a pgp-2 student feels like -

Er.

I am honoured and privileged to be a part of this social media initiative. I feel that this is an efficient tool that reaches out to the right audience, and also believe that this media channel needs to be leveraged in order to drive saliency, awareness and engage the consumer. Paradigm shifts in media behaviour suggest that social media is the future for most brands.

Sorry, I have been working on a debate, a case study, and my dissertation – this has led to the thoughts in my brain being all messed up, resulting in the above. Speaking of dissertation, I fail to understand how my report on “Effect of country of origin on alcohol branding” is going to be of any relevance to the industry, academia, or other Latin-inspired words that our “global” professors and “dissertation committee” come up with. It is a mindless exercise comprising of half hearted research, zero relevance, and absolutely no industry potential. Oh well, that is true for most projects in any B-School J

Oh, I’m supposed to write about my day. When Siddharth asked me to write, I was quite clueless, considering I am awake all night and sleep (soundly) during the day, so I’m going to write about my night. I woke up around 3 (in the afternoon), only to realise that I had dropped a subject, and the last general elective was on. Oh wait, that doesn’t make sense, I’ll explain. See, I had taken a subject, it got dropped, and there was this subject called Sports Marketing that was supposed to commence. I realised that I HAD to take that subject if I had to complete my GE credits. Talking about sports marketing, it is probably the only area of marketing that I have no interest in. Make me sell/market anything – soap, biscuits, condoms, shampoo, lipstick, underwear, soap, laptops, soap (did I mention soap?), I’ll do it. But sports marketing? No no. Its probably because I don’t understand why people would run around a ball and waste their time, and then again, why some other people would bother spending money on it. Just doesn’t interest me (Micalal don’t edit this)

So I attended those sessions, and they were mostly about the IPL (surprise!). Post that, I did some MICANVAS work = running around with a box from my hostel to another. Damn, MICANVAS, that thing is addictive. I still have a hangover. I then (finally) met my dissertation guide – my only motivation for this is the word “alcohol” in the topic. This (as every discussion in MICA does) disintegrated into whether MICA is going down the drain or up the pyramid. After two hours of discussing whether “MICAn’s lack depth” and “Without CAT, these batches are just not up to the mark (or are they?)”, I got back to my room.

I thought I’ll work on my dissertation, but oh well, didn’t work. I ended up watching Californication. I am now officially addicted to this series. Its brilliant, and based in LA. Oh wait, there’s an insight – the only other series I’m addicted to is Entourage, also based in LA. Maybe I should look for a job there.

Anyway, post that, I worked on the DraftFCB+Ulka case study competition that seems to be the flavour of the week. Yes, its fest season, and every week, there is a new festival/competition that everyone seems to be participating.

Anyway, I have written quite a bit, and this isn’t exactly my forte, so I’ll sign off!