The Gravity-Defying Economies of Bollywood!

The Gravity-Defying Economies of Bollywood!

The Eurozone may be passing through its worst crisis ever. The US may be on a double-dip (or is it triple-dip already?) recession.

Coke and Pepsi are on a continuous de-growth (at least the cola part of the equation). The new car launches are meeting tepid response.

Rupee is cheap. And stock markets are on a perennial stagnant mode.

Unemployment is high. Salary hikes are difficult to come by.

The Global economy may be out in the Woods.

However, there is one-industry that defies downturn of any kind – the good ‘ol Bollywood!

Its half-time 2012 and Bollywood has already registered 4 mammoth 100-Crore Blockbusters! Add a couple of ‘Almost there’ 100-crore sleeper-hits (Kahaani and Cocktail) and what we have is a money-spinner in virtually every month of 2012!!

The masses and the classes, the single-screen mango people and the Multiplex elites, all are consuming movies like never before. The Sold-out and Housefull indicators are now once again a frequent phenomenon. 

Don’t believe me? Well here are a few statistics –

·         The total Bollywood collections at the domestic box office in H1 2011 were around Rs. 610 crore. Same period this year i.e. H1 2012 has yielded upwards of Rs. 850 crore!!

·         July 2012 has been phenomenal so far.  Two huge successes – Bol Bachchan and Cocktail – that are going very strong!

·         The 100-Crore club that opened in 2008 with Ghajini was joined by 3 Idiots in 2009. In 2010 we had 2 more in the form of Dabangg and Golmaal 3. 

·         2011 was huge with 5 more such 100-crore extravaganzas.

·         However, 2012 promises to be the Biggest Bollywood year EVER! We’re just half-way through and we already have 4 Gorilla blockbusters in the kitty!

·         In typical Bollywood flamboyance, it’s easy to say that “We’re just warming up mate!” The best is yet to come. The Khans haven’t yet played a ball!  

·         And fortunately, all the 3 Khans have some red-hot blockbusters lined up for Eid, Diwaali and Christmas this year!

·         Throw in a couple of Akki and Ajay biggies, and what we have is a giddy concoction.

·         If you’ve already started feeling the hole in your pocket; if you think you’ve already splurged a bit too much on the movies this year, well you’re in for some real trouble.

·         Here’s a quick run through the Bollywood line-up for the rest of this year. Get ready to be spoilt for choices, virtually every week till the end of 2012.

·         Please start planning your finances right away! The Bollywood juggernaut has giant plans to rip apart your wallet this year.

·         In all probability, it’s gonna be a case of Bollywood gluttony this festive season…what with 4 sure-shot 100-Crore bonanzas lined up. Watch your Bollywood calories folks! How do you plan to handle -

o   Ek Tha Tiger

o   SRK-Kat-Anushka-Yash Raj untitled movie

o   Talaash

o   Dabangg 2

·         And well, if your wallet permits, there is a fair enough chance of 3 more biggies making it in this coveted 100-crore club –

o   Joker

o   Barfi

o   Son of Sardar

Ready to loosen up your purse strings buddy? If ever, there was a Bollywood Mutual Fund, it could’ve been our best investment option in these uncertain times!! At the same time, just like Financial Planners, we soon gonna witness another class of experts to guide us on our ruthless spending on the movies - The Movie Planners!!

“Sir, the market will peak up during Diwaali – with Son of Sardar and Yash Raj-SRK movie. Would advise you to not invest in Shirin Farhad, there is Joker coming just the next week. Also, it’s advisable to hold on to some disposable cash for Dabangg 2 at the fag end of 2012!”

For quick reference, pasted below is a ready reckoner of the movies lined-up for the rest of this year. Take your pick with care....as there is actually a lot to choose from! Spend wisely guys!

Your Movie Planner for H2 2012

*The Buzz and Expected Business have no mathematical backing, but influenced simply by my gut feel, the first look and on-air promos, the attractiveness index of the star-production house-director combination, the freshness and curiosity raised by the subject, the media and trade mentions of the said movie and well....my love and fascination for this fantastic industry called Bollywood! 

Release Date	Film-Title	Star-Cast	Director	Genre	Buzz	Expected Business (in Crores)
Jul-27	Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum	Tusshar Kapoor, Riteish Deshmukh, Bipasha Basu, Angela Jonsson	Sachin Yardi	Comedy	Good	30
Aug-03	Jism 2	Sunny Leone, Arunoday Singh, Randeep Hooda	Pooja Bhatt	Adult, Thriller	Fair	30
Aug-08	Gangs Of Wasseypur 2	Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Huma Qureshi	Anurag Kashyap	Thriller	Cold	20
Aug-15	Ek Tha Tiger	Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif	Kabir Khan	Thriller, Romance	Red Hot	150
Aug-24	Chasme Baddoor	Ali Zafar, Tapsee Pannu, Sonu Nigam, Rishi Kapoor	David Dhawan	Comedy	Cold	20
Aug-24	Shirin Farhad Ki Nikal Padi	Farah Khan, Boman Irani	Bela Segal	Comedy	Good	30
Aug-31	Joker	Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Shreyas Talpade, Minissha Lamba	Shirish Kunder	Sci-Fi	Hot	80
Aug-31	Zila Ghaziabad	Vivek Oberoi, Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, Minissha Lamba	Anand Kumar	Action, Thriller	Cold	40
Sep-07	Raaz 3	Emraan Hashmi, Esha Gupta	Vikram Bhatt	Thriller, Suspense	Cold	40
Sep-14	Barfi	Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Ileana D'Cruz	Anurag Basu	Comedy	Hot	70
Sep-21	English Vinglish	Sridevi, Priya Anand, Mehdi Nebbou	Gauri Shinde	Drama	Cold	20
Sep-21	Heroine	Kareena Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Arunoday Singh	Madhur Bhandarkar	Drama	Good	40
Sep-21	Ishkq In Paris	Preity Zinta, Isabelle Adjani	Prem R Soni	Romance	Cold	20
Sep-28	Kamaal Dhamaal Malamaal	Nana Patekar, Shreyas Talpade, Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav	Priyadarshan	Comedy	Cold	20
Sep-28	OMG Oh My God	Paresh Rawal, Mithun Chakraborty, Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha	Umesh Shukla	Comedy	Good	70
Oct-05	1920 - Evil Returns	Aftab Shivdasani, Tia Bajpai, Vidya Malvade	Bhushan Patel	Horror	Cold	30
Oct-19	Student Of The Year	Siddharth Malhotra, Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt	Karan Johar	Drama	Good	60
Nov-13	Son Of Sardar	Ajay Devgn, Sonakshi Sinha, Sanjay Dutt, Juhi Chawla	Ashwani Dhir	Action	Hot	90
Nov-30	Talaash	Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Rani Mukerji	Reema Kagti	Suspense, Drama	Red Hot	100
Nov-30	Yash Chopra's Next	Shahrukh Khan, Katrina Kaif, Anushka Sharma	Yash Chopra	Romance	Red Hot	100
Dec-07	Aashiqui 2	Aditya Roy Kapur, Shraddha Kapoor	Mohit Suri	Romance	Good	30
Dec-07	Khiladi 786	Akshay Kumar, Himesh Reshammiya, Paresh Rawal, Ileana D'Cruz	Ashish R Mohan	Action, Comedy	Cold	60
Dec-21	Dabangg 2	Salman Khan, Sonakshi Sinha	Arbaaz Khan	Action, Romance	Red Hot	130

COP-y Cats bringing in the Moolah!

12 Habits of Highly Effective Leaders

12 Habits of Highly Effective Leaders
+ 12 Vices they should necessarily stay away from

A Foreword 

It’s simple to scan through some popular management books or do a quick search on the Internet to come up with some of the most prevalent habits of effective leaders. 

However, the real question – Do you actually believe in those habits? Do you actually practice what you preach? or in this case what others have preached?

I have consciously tried to a avoid sourcing material from any book or any other existing information to keep these 12 effective rules and 12 worst vices as close to my real behavior as possible.

The following takeouts are based on my personal managerial traits practiced over the past few years. Ofcourse, these are not some breakthrough practices or revolutionary-never-done-before concepts. But simple, common sense leadership beliefs.

They’ve more or less worked for me (you need to ask my team as well)….and I am sure they will work for OR are actually (consciously/sub-consciously) working for most of us.



Business Analysis Tools for SMBs

Benefits of business analysis tools to SMBs

Here’s re-publishing one of my interviews published on www.techtarget.in

http://searchbusinessintelligence.techtarget.in/tip/Benefits-of-business-analysis-tools-to-SMBs

If business intelligence (BI) is an analogy of eyesight, then business analysis tools are binoculars that enhance the vision. However, these business analysis tools are no more a privilege of large business houses with complex BI systems alone. The analytics game is changing with many new business analysis tools surging to fit various business needs.

Significantly, the misconception that small businesses cannot undertake analytics has been cleared now. Any company with a lot of customer touch-point data will need business analysis tools. Essentially, if data is abundant and a company wants to know what to do with it, it perhaps needs analytics irrespective of its size.

Differences in approach

Generally, the main difference between SMBs and large companies is that the basic concept setting is already achieved in large organizations. Moreover, small companies usually have to get the concept of analytics into place and know what they plan to achieve from it. SMBs view business analysis tools as predictive analytics; as tools and techniques to determine the next step of a campaign. Their focus is usually on employing analytics for transactional purposes and getting insights into customer data. On the other hand, the large organizations play the field and try different methods to apply analytics to their businesses. As a thumb rule, SMBs can probably make small investments in analytics as they may not view it as crucial or operational. Also, resource spending to get people on board to work with the tool would be a factor.

 Pitching business analysis tools

Picture this: if you are a CIO of a mid-market firm who wants to use business analysis tools, the first question that stumps you would be as to how to convince the management and get adequate funds for the project. In this regard, here are a few things that you adopt to clear the issue:

1. Near-term returns: Display benefits to the business in the near future. SMBs cannot make large investments and wait for 3-4 years to attain a RoI.

2. Demonstrate the concept at work: Undertaking a proof of concept to have tangible results to show the management that this is what the product can do for us.

3. Address pain points: Start by identifying crucial problems that the business analysis tool will be applied to and how this will resolve them.

4. Start with ad hoc analytics projects: These will speak for themselves. For example, customer satisfaction, which would involve gauging customer satisfaction and analytics would be applied to find out what specific reasons are leading to reduced satisfaction and then take measures to rectify this accordingly.

Getting started

First, any BI initiative, including business analysis tools, starts with organizing and evaluating the data. Second, for the analytics to be successful, a dedicated data warehouse project is needed. This will, ideally, lay the foundation for information management in the company. While using this transactional data, SMBs will also have to start building best practices. They can use business analysis tools to view information in a quick and specific manner that will drive decisions and guide action plans. Once the data is managed and what the data looks like is known, then SMBs can dabble in BI and use specific BI products that suit their particular need.

Similarly, BI can help SMBs to realize what the past and present looks like while the business analysis tools will help them define the future. Most organizations, including the SMBs, will consider BI a necessity very soon. Analysis tools will evolve to address the vertical-specific needs of businesses. Also, small businesses will get to use tried-and-tested methods as tools evolve. Besides, big companies will make large investments in the field, constantly pushing the envelope.

Ideally, the first option for SMBs could be to use an open source tool. The SMBs need not undertake products from large vendors such as IBM or Microsoft. Many players have cost-effective business analysis tools offerings. However, when using open source, the SMBs may need to work closely with some implementation partner(s) if they lack strong IT teams to run large reports. Tools like Piwik, which deal with a lot of open source analytics, would be a good bet.

The analysis tools project, essentially, has to start with the way a small business looks at its data. There has to be executive buy-in. A key stake holder needs to be a senior business executive who understands how data can affect business. This will help the IT team to be constantly aware of what the business wants and work accordingly.

Potential issues

Perhaps, an important challenge that a small business may face here would be to find a dedicated project manager. While SMBs cannot outsource the project to the vendor and expect to have perfect data for their analytics program in place, the vendor can only guide in terms of the technicalities. The company needs to demarcate areas of responsibilities and define project ownership.

In a scenario where a company’s IT team is small, it’s usually the case that the team gets overwhelmed by the amount of data to be tackled for analytics. Moreover, large vendors create a hype about analytics that makes the SMBs weary even before the projects start. Ideally, the best approach can be to start small and have specific KRAs for the project.

In industries such as retail and BFSI, the SMBs are fairly mature to use business analysis tools. It is so because the large companies in these industries have taken to analytics as an extension of their BI systems. Consequently, modern large format retailers use business analysis tools for loyalty programs and BFSI companies to curtail frauds and defaults.

Furthermore, a must for SMBs while they embark on their analytics journey is to research case studies and success stories. Moreover, small companies can learn from the mistakes committed by the large ones; the case of business analysis tools is no different!

No Promotions for Aamir Khan's Talaash!

Aamir Decides to take the No Promotion route for Talaash!

Reliable sources reveal that Aamir Khan has done the unthinkable once again. His most awaited Talaash will be one of the first-ever ‘Blind’ mainstream release in the Indian cinema.

And by Blind, it means completely blind. Barring the first few posters of the film, the film will simply release on a given date without any fanfare. No promos, no teasers, trailers – be it on TV channels or theatrical trailers. No music release prior to the movie, no songs on radio, no media bytes about the subject, no on-road promotions, no tie-ups with any events, no hard-selling on reality shows. No Nothing!

The maverick that Aamir has always been, strongly believes that a film of this stature and sensitivity doesn’t need to ‘sell’ itself to get the target audience in theatres. He opines that off-late movie promotions have taken bizarre proportions akin to an event of national importance. Of course, he confesses, that he himself needs to be blamed for starting this mad trend of innovative marketing gimmicks during movie promotions. And the crusader that he is, he has himself decided to clean the muck by simply releasing Talaash on the release date with zero promotions. Read that again, it will be Zero Promotions!

And now, just stop here and think about it once again. By going the Zero Promotion route, has Aamir, yet again, played a wonderful counter move in promoting his movie? For those with an understanding of consumer behaviour, it’s a typical case of ‘Curiosity campaign’. The best that one could get with ‘Reverse Psychology’.  Aamir, who has often been accused of manipulating the media before all his releases, has decided to make a strong statement to rebuke this accusation. “I am not telling you anything about Talaash. I am not providing you with any sound byte. I challenge you to go and find for yourself. I challenge you to go on this ‘Talaash’ and dig up anything that you can. For anyone who is interested, you’ll have to come to the theatres to find out what Talaash is all about. Beyond that we’ve decided to go completely off your radar.”

Now, if we’re thinking that this could be another of those new-age viral marketing strategies that’ll keep plugging content on Youtube, we’ve got it wrong once again. Zero promotions out here actually mean ZILCH Promotions! The Talaash sets (in fact we don’t even know where they are) will be guarded like forts. The entire cast and crew has been made to sign contractual NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements). No one is telling anyone, anything about Talaash. It’s as Blind as it could be!

Moving ahead, can we even think of the repercussions? This one particular stand has sent shock waves across the industry. It has caused ripples across the media circles. It’ll be interesting to see the collective stand taken by the Media. In fact, is there any possibility of a collective stand? Will the Media Moghuls give it back to the superstar and start snubbing his Talaash. Or will they go on the counter attack, and go completely aggressive in their spy/sting missions to unravel Talaash? Hidden cams, Scoops, chasing Aamir and other stars for bytes, the works?

Can we even imagine a landmark mainstream film like Talaash having the guts to attempt a ‘Curiosity’ campaign! Is this gonna be huge? Is this yet another stroke of genius from Aamir? Is this the most daring media strategy EVER? And with an Aamir at the center of it, does it ensure an unbelievable, impossible, roof-shattering opening?  

Imagine, the black market would come alive. There would be serpentine queues all-night long (just like Harry Potter books) for the first-first show advance. The fans and media would go berserk! I can already imagine a riot-like situation across the country. Imagine hearing an ‘All is well’ kind of chartbuster for the first-time in the theatre. And so privileged and dazed the first show watchers would actually be, that I am sure they will completely miss the content! (amidst soaking in the atmosphere). They’ll actually come back to watch and understand the movie the 2nd time. The social media would go mad, with posts like ‘I was there!’ doing the routine!

If one is confident about the product, the content, the ability to keep the hawks away (like Aamir is), then in fact this could be the most kick-ass marketing strategy ever. Remember, the Rajshris more or less attempting this during Hum Aapke Hain Kaun in 1994. And the results, we all know, were historic! Wasn’t it the first time we heard figures like 100 crores?

Before we take this further, allow me to reveal, that this is nothing but a fiction of my imagination. Inspired by a very similar post from the thought leader, Shailesh Kapoor, the CEO of Ormax Media –

http://shaileshkapoor.com/2012/06/06/does-ek-tha-tiger-need-marketing-at-all/

I couldn’t stop salivating at this sizzling possibility. The possibility of a mainstream Bollywood movie releasing completing blind and sending the media, the fans and the industry in a state of tizzy! I just stopped short of saying how this would impact the entire nation as a whole (perhaps too much of an exaggeration). But, think again, doesn’t this have the possibility of being a national event?

For now, it was my imagination (fuelled by Shailesh Kapoor) playing havoc and thinking of this mad marketing strategy for Talaash. But I sincerely hope that somehow this blog post goes viral and Aamir actually picks this up!  Imagine!