Sports: All about angles; and the b-school unwinding period

While playing online tennis today, I remembered a statement I had once made while playing actually: almost all sports are about skillful geometry. I mean think about it: tennis, billiards, soccer (especially scoring), golf (putting), cricket batting. It’s not a great insight or something, but I do wonder how natural athletes, those who adapt easily to any sport, have a great mental geometry mind!

As b-school unwinds, it really is a lazy period, especially in this gorgeous London weather!! Only lasts for a few months, but man its worth it. Now I understand why 1-year MBAs came into vogue, the second year at LBS has been as different from the 1st year as black is from white.

 

Current and Future Cricket

West Indies lost again (to England), and quite meekly at that. The match only lasted 3 1/2 days (I know, I know, those who don’t follow cricket will say – only!!) and the Windies just never got into the game. One of my English classmates just remarked right now “Bring on the Indians”. I think when India visits soon, we will be much better competition, for sure. However, I do doubt that we will be able to win. Don’t get me wrong, I will be very very happy if we did. Just that any seaming/bouncy track and we have every chance of getting out twice. While our bowling is good,  I don’t know if it’s that good.

I really wanna play cricket myself, but doesn’t look like I am in the organizer’s good books these days. So decided to go to Belfast to see India vs South Africa on 1st July; that’s gonna be great fun day.

 

Friends Watching spree, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher Novels, Ocean’s Thirteen Review

I am on it again; watching Friends episode-by-episode. It has been more than a couple of years since I last did that and man is it fun. The only thing is I have been staying at home during this (mostly) awesome London summer. Remember Joey looking at the deck of cards in the episode where their apartments get robbed, saying “Oh man, they took the 5 of spades too!!”

I also read two of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher thrillers in the last week. Jack Reacher is an anti-James Bond character, the rough-and-tough detective/investigator who always prefers being away from the limelight and is very ungadgety. But in some ways he is Bond-like: as the tag line says “Jack Reacher. Men want to be like him. Women want to be with him” (Cheesy I know) I shy away from standard fiction these days, but I like Jack Reacher novels somehow. “The Hardway”, one of those I read this week is really good; its twists and turns keep it enthralling. The other one, Tripwire , however is not quite up to the mark. I have read quite a few Reacher mysteries now and The Hardway is easily the best and The Tripwire easily the worst.

I went into Ocean’s 13 expecting the worst. But it turned out to be quite a good movie. A lot of reviews are saying how they have got the crispness and pace of the first one back after a miserable sequel, and that’s true. In fact, this one is great fun just for the scale of the heist they pull off (impossible as it may be in the real world). It has a great example of backward vertical integration!!   In fact, some of the tricks they pulled were not that easy to understand straight away and the three of us who saw had to discuss with each other!

 

Rafa vs. Rog: an era-setting game

I was very excited about today’s final and had predicted a 4-set win to Rafa. (No, I am not a betting person except BlackJack)

Asier and Ashutosh/Ruth, classmates from LBS, came over to watch the match and we had a ball.  Asier was incredibly vocal in his support for his countryman but also for his dislike of the French crowd going with Rafa! The rest of us were pro-Fed.

I think the game today was era-setting in many ways. One, both were nervous at the start; and these guys are hardly ever nervous. Showed that they knew the guy on the other side of the net had a very real chance of defeating them, unlike many others they played before in the 2 weeks at the French Open.

Two, the standard of tennis was, overall, very high. I think the semis of Federer-Daveydenko was great quality as well. This one was sometimes magical.

Three, and this one is key: the world number 1 and a guy whom everyone else on the circuit is scared of playing, (a) had to change his game (b) did so quite well and (c) realised he was not going to come out on top before the match had ended. I have to agree with Asier that Rafa put him under significant psychological pressure.

Oh well, let Wimbledon come in 3 weeks and the tables will be turned

 

Promoting benefits vs. features

All marketing books/profs/theory talk about how one should market benefits to customers, not the product features.  For example,  customers care that their shoulders wont hurt while carrying a heavy bag; they don’t care that the carry straps are made by a new material and adjusted through a revolutionary patent-pending process. (easier example: fresh breath toothpaste and not contains this new molecule etc)

I have been thinking on this recently and I feel a significant proportion of promotion is still feature-driven. (Try to note this during the next hour of TV you watch) And a lot of this comes from mature agencies.

There’s obviously some more factors linked to this aspect of customer behavior that I should be aware of I guess.

 

Gaurav’s commandments for a good b-school professor

In my 2 years at London Business School, I have seen a fair share of professors. I thought it would be interesting to put forward my views for what makes a good professor, and also what makes for a bad one:

1. Thou shalt spend time to select an appropriate title of the course. (I had this one course where many could argue (and did argue) that the title of the course had nothing to do with the actual contents.  We did read the course description, but for strategy courses, all course descriptions sound the same anyway!)

2. Thou shalt not have an assignment due on the first class of the term unless you have reminded the students at 2 different times before the start of term. (I had this one course which had an assignment due first class, and for most of us, the only way to know was to read the syllabus document of the course. No points for guessing how I turned up in class)

3 Thou shalt make the 2-3 learnings of each class clear at the start of the class, and follow them strictly. (Many professors don’t realise that it’s better to stick to 2-3 insights/learnings than give a 100 examples with no putting these together)

4. Thou shalt practice and perfect voice delivery (a 3-hour monotone just doesn’t cut it, with anyone in this one class from what I can gather)

5. Thou shalt use humor as you feel fit, but the class should have a lot more than just humor (self-explanatory)

6. Thou shalt ask for feedback mid-way as well, not only at the end (I had a prof who did this and tried to improve for the second half. This did two things: he did improve quite a bit, but also this endeared us to him)

7. Thou shalt understand that class discussion for the sake of discussion is useless (self-explanatory)

Notice that I am not asking them to take into consideration things like b-school students are busy networking, partying etc.  All that is not important.

I am sure I can think of 3 more in the coming days and make it Gaurav’s 10 commandments!

 

An advertiser’s views on China

A group of us are doing a project for Profero, one of the world’s foremost digital agencies. We met with the UK management today, and afterwards went out for a drink with the MD Nick Blunden (who blogs here). Profero has a significant Chinese presence, and we all got discussing China (du-uh)!

Nick’s comments about the single grandchild of 4 grandparents got me thinking about the Fortune article from 2-3 years ago (Sorry can’t find the link after a lot of attempts). This social aspect of revolutionary change is sometimes forgotten amidst the 1-billion hype. First, it clearly shows how delays can be loooooong. The policy of 1-child was encouraged/implemented in 1960s!  Second, relative disposable income per child is huuuuge, especially in the dual-income families. Thirdly, and most importantly, this is leading to children growing up in a certain way: behaviorally (get what they want, thus stubborn) and their macro-view (China can only grow fast). Social implications of what I would call this waiting to explode volcano are anyone’s guess. I am not underestimating the strength of the Chinese to re-align; however, economic growth pangs always come with social ones – but these are real unique.

How does this lead to advertising – well such children and youth of China are much more digital than in developed nations (as a percentage); they get all the gadgets from their families and have a lot of spare time to spend on it. All of this started from the discussion of a Internet-dance game (adapted from the arcade step-to-dance game) in China that has 36 million registered users and almost 34-million of those are active!! Talk about an available market for advertising baby and move over Second Life!

I must go to China soon, my dad also keeps insisting

 

Steve Jobs & Bill Gates together and an update on London’s Carbon footprints

Steve and Bill came together after a long time at the D5 conference – text and video all available here.

100’s of bloggers have probably already analysed this for content: let me analyze it for style and personality.

- Steve Jobs was so much more confident of what he was saying. This is not to say Bill Gates wasn’t confident; just a relative measure.   His concise answers were not at all beating around the bush

-  However, imho Bill Gates took to humor/wit/light-heartedness more easily; though in some bits of the video it might seem otherwise.

- It was quite incredible that they never spoke on top of each other! Good prep or what

- The interviewers, oh my god Walt was so speaking on top of Kara that it was making her seem like a child

Here’s another quick update on the Carbon footprint posting from a few weeks ago. Conrad, now an alumni of the school and a well-known figure in the business for social change scene in UK, had a chat with me about this. Conrad suggested that taking a city as the basis of carbon footprint is misleading and messy for various reasons (1) There are too many interdependencies between areas within a country’s legislation, way more than pointed out in the FT article (2) Cities are not accountable for their carbon footprint, countries are under Kyoto (3)  Understanding data on the basis of city can be manipulated easily and (4) Mr. Mayor of London is putting probably too much emphasis on London’s footprint at the expense of a bigger goal perhaps.

Finally, a lot of close family and friends have seen Chini Kum on my review & endorsement, and loved it as well; so go out there and enjoy it!

 

Contacting Alumni in business schools and refurbished computers

A lot of my classmates find it very surprising when I tell them that I regularly try to contact relevant alumni for discussion career opportunities in their companies. The first question is always “so what do you tell them”. I have found the school alumni very helpful; I tell them I like their company and would like to have a 5 minute phone discussion about exploring opportunities. And most of these people will get back within 2 days and give me a status check. I have initiated many discussions through these, and quite a few have gone somewhere.

Why are refurbished computers a much bigger business in US while they are only now becoming big in Europe? Can’t think of any relevant reasons, but I know from a reliable source that it is true.

 

The best advertisement… probably ever

This 1-minute TV advertisement has got to be up there in the best ads ever (ya the title of this post is a bit gimmicky). Have a look, believe me, you will love it. There are two huge things about this ad: 1. it’s extremely creative; makes you laugh, makes you remember it (so recall of presentation is high) and 2. it actually serves the business branding purpose superbly; you actually think of the message being given by the company and wonder if it’s true by relating back to their own memories; most people realise it is true (so recall of the message/content is also high)

On the sidelines of this topic: I obviously went to YouTube to search for this ad first. It’s almost a reflex. But within a few seconds spent there, I knew it would be difficult to find it there (too many Toyota ads, too dependent on user tags, lost concentration in checking other videos) . On the Visit4Info site above (a dedicated advertisement search service), I entered the brand name, the product category, keywords in the ad, ad medium and the ad was the only search result I got. Once again,  if you are searching for a specific thing, it’s better going to a specialist search engine.

(Note: This ad kick-started our Toyota case discussion today for Adv. Marketing Strategy)