Royal way to earn!

It will not be long before cricket fans will forget the adage...answer your critics on the cricket field! IPL has become the new rocking star on the horizon and how!!! Those who get to play even a small part keep flaunting IPL on their resumes(remember Kalyan Krishna from AP who played in Deccan Chargers?? forget it...I guess he must have lost count of that as well!) And those who are shunned quickly do the forgiving act! (Kamran Akmal has forgiven IPL for the snub and is ready to play IPL IV...aah, so many thanks Mr. Akmal for 'dropping' this hint)

But look at it from behind the scenes. Right from the drum rolls till now, Rajasthan Royals have went about their PR in the best way possible! Answer your critics with the moolah. Give them 100 rupees to spend on players, they will spend 10 rupees and give the rest as credit to SRK. Then they spend the interest on their PR.

Look at their marketing strategy! Who would have thought about the global consortium. What are you achieving by this? Nothing but money! I mean, who cares if Cobras would be Royals tomorrow or Hampshire would be Royals the day after. All that matters for the administrators is money. And how to get it? Just make sure you get an innovative way of marketing!

Not to say that they are doing badly on the field (in fact far away from that...they are doing real good. Consider my poor friend SRK; he just keeps beaten everywhere - on the posters, on the ground, off the ground....) but kudos to them now everyone is looking at marketing their global team consortia and eating into our pockets...after all Answer your critics with marketing!

Economotion

Okay...I just got out of my extra-long hibernation flexing my muscles to write something. And what better than my usual favorite SRK!

Why on earth would you want to tickle the tiger when you can't tame it? Well...the perennial question that has no answer but what fascinates me more is why people keep asking What is all this fuss about? Excuse me....you don't understand what this fuss is about???

There are two types of decisions that we take in our life:

1. Decisions related to money (Which job to take, Which restaurant to take your date to, etc). These are what I call Economic decisions
2. Decisions related to your emotions (Whom to marry, Which team to support, etc) These are what I call Emotional decisions

There, however, is a considerable overlap of some of these decisions. If you ask Preity which team she would support in IPL III, you wouldn't hear Deccan Chargers! More than the emotion it is the economics that determine her decision in this.

As I see it, this overlap is growing by the day. There are more decisions that are being determined by a combination of factors...which movie to go (am a fan of Aamir but SRK movie comes cheap), which team to support (my heart is with India but I bet on South Africa!)... These are what I call the new trend decisions.

I label them Economotion decisions...welcome to the world of Economics and Emotion in no particular order. Most of the new-world decisions are, if you ask me, economotive decisions. SRK wouldn't mind an extra dose of publicity for his movie, even if it comes from the Thackerays. And Thackerays know where to pinch SRK to get their message through.

Don't mix politics and arts....don't mix politics and sports....we keep hearing them often, ain't it? Conventional wisdom says that we should not mix these. But Economotion wisdom says that we should! After all, if IPL doesn't snub Pakistan players, will they get the emotional message? If his movies are not blocked, will SRK get the Thackerays' message?

Sorry Mr. Gandhi (now don't ask if it is Rahul...am talking about our dear old Mahatma) but this is not the age of Satyagraha. These are the days of Econograha...show your anger on the economics...hail the new order!

Politics and Marketing

This is the season for it...ain't it? I came back home to be greeted by the campaigns. Nothing new? Right...this is nothing new. Every time we are supposed to make an educated decision on who should be our representatives, the decibel levels just shoot up. I guess the PR managers and the marketing managers of the candidates would be at their best in this season.

Look at Advani. The way he has brought up his own site and tried to endear him to the youth of the country isn't a decision taken in a jiffy or an idea out of the blue. A well-thought and a well planned initiative that is being well served by an MBA (oh yeah! there we go again...the Management grads!!!) behind the scenes is nothing short of a sensation this season.

Then there are various candidates who are utilizing the blogs, websites, placement advertisements etc etc. The bottom line is simple - Do anything to market you! Then there's this candidate in a constituency in Visakhapatnam who has endeared himself to the voters with a laptop. He went around toed with his laptop and goes door-to-door trying to engage the voters explaining them the need to vote and the status of their voter-id cards. In case of any help, he engages activists of his party to help them. At the end of it all, he asks them to look at his candidature. He knows that his election is a distant dream but he at least understood the essence of marketing in high-tech age!!!