MarkeTHING

From the early days of history, when people used to exchange stuff; people tried to emphasize and highlight their own offerings with describing the features and benefits in various ways. Being involved into marketing for so many years now made me think sometimes how marketing has been evolving from time to time. Imagine the early days of marketing when a guy standing on the muddy banks of a river trying to exchange a fish he had caught with a piece of animal skin with another guy. Or even a person trying to show how his rocks being struck with the slightest effort can generate flames. Well done and precisely manufactured mindset.

Marketing is everywhere. A person entering school tries to be the good boy and be the teacher’s pet also does his marketing by portraying him/herself so gentle, polite and obedient. The backbenchers are on the other hand trying to exercise the oddest activities to prove that they have the guts to do the impossible and breaking the rules of all kinds. Self-marketing indeed. The corporate guy showing off his new car or elaborating his achievements to others is trying to impress to get into the “zone” for being a clans man. Even for a body builder who is spending (wasting!) his day and night to grow muscles to show is doing it for some sort of benefit. To me, marketing stands for some acts/tasks done to impress a potential person/entity to avail that act/task’s owner. (Now don’t try to search for this definition in any marketing reference as this is entirely my own opinion). Now imagine if there was no marketing at all. What would that be like?

There wouldn’t be any interviews at all. ‘Coz that is the very basic marketing showcasing that we all faced in some occasion of life. Now-a-days kids even face that entering the pre-school level as well. Although at pre-school it’s more like showcasing the parent’s power/ability of wallet and social stands. There would have been no ad firms. The people behind the art of making your product/service look like end of world decision not to avail. The people day and night banging their brains out to find a proper decent way to make you go for the product/service you don’t even bother to try for the next hundred years.

Imagine some gimmicks. It’s said widely in the TVC for Horlicks, it’s proved that this makes your kid ‘Taller”, “stronger” and “sharper”!!! Has it ever crossed your mind, which laboratory has proved this in which experiment and who have been taken as sample group? Try the internet and the result you will find is something you will never forget. Tang’s TVC says it has 100% vitamin C in it and during winter you should take it in hot water. If Tang is 100% vitamin C why are there so many other ingredient’s name written in the label? It should be written simply “100% vitamin C”. It is seen that the excess amount of heat can destroy Vitamin C completely. It should be preserved under the temperature of 70 degree Celsius to avoid the damage caused by the heat. High heat kills the enzyme ascorbic acid oxidase which is mostly found in fruits and vegetables. It happens due to the oxygen present in air. At high temperature, in the presence of sun light and oxygen present in air, vitamin C reacts and it is oxidized. Cooking in high temperature is also a cause for the destruction of vitamin C therefore food containing vitamin C should be cooked on low temperature. According to the laboratory tests, at 70 degree Celsius vitamin C is denatured. Vitamin C is the most unstable vitamin which can be easily denatured. Yet, the TVC says: “Gorom paani te Tang”. Then comes the obvious Fair and Lovely TVCs. If they were true, I would have been looking like Tom Cruise by now and no girl in the entire planet would have been brown skinned. (For me the case is different! Normally when you use a cream or body lotion the characteristics of that lotion transfers to your skin. For example: if you have oily skin you can use oil control lotion and you will not have an oily skin for a certain time. But for me it’s the other way round. The more I use whitening cream/lotions they take my skin’s characteristics in them and being adopted by my super black skin, I now use my lotions as my shoe shiner!!!)

Let me share a story with you. A farmer went to the market to buy a cow and when he reached the market he got caught by a very shrewd marketing specialist (!). The marketing guy was trying to sell a bicycle and pursued the farmer in many techniques. The more the farmer tried to stay on his goal the more the marketing guy was getting stronger on his point. At one stage, the marketing guy was saying: “listen my good fellow, if you buy this bicycle you can easily roam around with ease and think how smooth this cycle runs, not like the cow bouncing you off and on while you struggle to be on top.” The farmer was at the edge of his patience and replied: “Listen my friend, it would look uglier if I try to milk this bicycle instead of a cow…”

I being in marketing am very weak at self-marketing. I have been called dumb, fool and not-creative many times. I prefer to stay silent at times to understand things which many people think is me not understanding the whole thing all together (which is not entirely un-true as well….) I have been neither a notorious back bencher nor a front line goody boy tagged smart kid. Being a mediocre wasn’t a smooth journey for me – trust me on this and those who had similar experiences know for sure.

During my kid years, it was like after all the best guys getting their scores and flying colors it was my turn to try… In school I was like a follower and listener. I followed the guys who were intelligent and had the leader attitude. I listened to the teachers and parents scolding for the misdeeds the smart leader kids did. While other kids had fun with their peers I was like a jack of thousand peers yet master of none. I was in all circles of all levels of kids yet I did not belonged to any of them. Neither the kids thought I was a member of that circle as well.

When I entered my career life I realized people like me can work tough hours, day and night, without questioning against things and still get laughed at. It’s like a special breed of worker ants who suddenly by misfortunate events got a chair to sit that makes him a manager. Being less spoken when it comes to personal matters made me a “non-personal” person. A non-personal person is he who has no family life and could be easily cornered at any stage of work to get exploited. “If you have no time to finish your work, dump it on Scion, he will do it. If he says anything go and tell him I said him to do it-now let’s go have some fun!” Been there, did that and faced it with biting my teeth. Yet when it came to praise or show some credits, it wasn’t Scion. ‘Coz, Scion is the worker ant genre. The dumbest fool among fools who is there, will be there and if he is not there, call him over his cell phone and make sure he stays there even if he has nothing to do. My superiors have been making semi frowning faces and elaborated in details how I just screwed up a massive mess up but as a rule they were trying to do me a pity favor by promoting me with a small peanut raise! No matter how the company culture is, when it comes to “Boss” it’s more or less equal to the prophet. Irrelevant to whether the company is a multinational or a local one, people matters. I won’t say all the people I worked with or worked for are cruel monsters, yet the shadows they had around them or under them sometimes grew bigger than them even without them knowing.

My life’s story in a nutshell has been pretty much like that. Pushed aside, sidelined, neglected or overlooked- whatever can be done is there. Then one day I overheard an aunt (neighbor) who came at our house to invite my mom for her son’s wedding. She was over the moon and was saying: “You know, my son is such a good boy. During his school years I took him to school and he never missed a class. He was such a brilliant boy. The time when I returned with him from school he never even wanted to have an ice cream. Then when he went to college I was bound to buy a car for his transport. You know how dangerous the streets are and a good boy like him can easily become a victim of anything if being in the open-so my driver was always with him taking care of him. After grad years his father took ownership and my son entered a renowned company headed by his dad’s friend. He became such a man!!!”

Listening to this it suddenly struck me like a thunder from paradise! If that poor fellow being “babysitted” his entire life and still be the “MAN” then where do I stand? I really had more than enough what this “MAN” hasn’t even thought of in his darkest nightmares. I am still the same Scion but I do not take anything for granted now. It’s enough trying to be the good guy and it’s time to be myself. Ask for myself and justify myself until being served with justice.

And I really am proud and lucky that at last I feel that I have found my right path to ascend now, where I do not need to think about self-marketing rather my created product/service’s marketing to reach the light that is at the wildest distance. So who cares about marketing rather let the market come to you!!!

-Scion

23 Oct, 2015