Kapil’s Korner

From the Sunday edition of DNA.

 
Click on cartoon to enlarge image.

My office has 3 printers on which we print our daily documents. One of them is right next to my table and every morning I see a bucketful of trash which has been printed and ignored without bothering to either dump the waste or even bother to use the other side of the paper. And I hate paper wastage.

In an effort to become a more environmental friendly organisation I suggested the following to my admin team. The office has 3 printers of which 2 should be dedicated to printing for all internal purposes (prints which don’t need to go out of the office and can be printed on used paper; both side printing). Everyone in the office should be asked to dump their single-side printed paper into this printer. The third printer should be loaded with fresh paper to be used only for documents which are official communication and cannot be printed on already used paper.

Maybe small but I am sure we can make this effort to save a lot of paper our offices use even in these days of digitization.

Pratap Bose, Mudra’s recently appointed CEO wished his wife in the most unique and loud way you could imagine. He selected to use his domain - the outdoor medium to wish his wife Seema a very happy birthday.

Read the full article at agencyfaqs.

He further goes to add that this could be done by anybody who is willing to pay about Rs.20,000 - 30,000 for the outdoor display. I just spoke to my media team and checked if I could do a ticker on one of the TV channels wishing my wife? Sounds interesting but VERY expensive so I’ll just make do with a greeting card.

A little innovative piece of marketing. Baggage tag kind of thing attached to executive lunch boxes delivered to office areas.

This is my office colleague’s dabba (lunch box) which gets delivered by the Mumbai Tiffin Service.  The tag promotes “Jai Shri Krishna” serial from the new TV channel colors (viacom18) which launches today.

On Tuesday I went partying with cousins to Poison. It was a pre-wedding celebration for my cousin and her fiance. It was a great bonding time before sister leaves for her new world. I wish them both lots of luck and God bless them.

Poison is one of the posh discotheques in Bandra supposedly run by DJ Aqeel. Big enough to park a mini-plane inside this is one of the most spacious night spots I have been to in our cramped up Mumbai city. The music was pretty ok with Tuesday being a Bollyfunk night special. All in all a good evening but certain aspects of the place disappointed me.

• No double entry, which means if you walk in once they don’t let you get out and re-enter the place again. Sounded strange for a social night spot.
• They don’t serve plain drinking water. Should it not be mandatory for any eat/drink establishment to serve free potable drinking water.
• No photography - and this really matter a lot to me.  I respect the fact that they like to protect the identity of their guests from mischievous souls who may take the “wrong shots”, but that results in a loss to capture some lovely moments you spend their with your loved ones.

Maybe it was these standards which made the club a “have to be seen location” for some souls but for me I thought the rules made the place absolutely unfriendly.

It’s not been a very good day today. Lots of rain, water-logging in Mumbai and the city has been crawling. Very little work resulted in a slow day which is something I don’t like in office at the start of the week.

An email forward from a friend helped end the day on a better note. Thanks Jai!

Arthur Ashe, the legendary Wimbledon player was dying of AIDS which he Got due to infected blood he received during a heart surgery in 1983.  From world over, he received letters from his fans, one of which conveyed: “Why does GOD have to select you for such a bad disease”?

To this Arthur Ashe replied:
“The world over — 50 million children start playing tennis, 5 million Learn to play tennis, 500,000 learn professional tennis, 50,000 come to the circuit, 5000 ,Reach the grand slam, 50 reach Wimbledon, 4 to semi final, 2 to the finals, When I was holding a cup I never asked GOD ‘Why me?’ And today in pain I should not be asking GOD ‘Why me?’ ”

“Happiness keeps you Sweet,
Trials keep you Strong,
Sorrow keeps you Human,
Failure keeps you humble and Success keeps you glowing, but only Faith &
Attitude keeps you going… ” - Arthur Ashe

Remember that “Attitude is always part Gratitude”.

Image by: Digital Neophyte

What happens when you use a camera to get a few friends together and offer them free booze and food?

(Image copyright is Craig Giffen) 

Craig Giffen just managed to do that and made himself the Human Calendar - the story of which he explains in detail here. It’s nice but I wish they could have given some more interesting facial expressions.

Rickshaws in Nagpur don’t have meters. You negotiate with the driver for your location and then you can make the ride. Last week I spent some time in Nagpur. For two days I paid Rs.60 every morning to reach my destination from the hotel. On the third day I checked out and with my luggage approached the first rickshaw outside the hotel. He said 80 bucks! take it or leave it. (I thought he was over-charging because the previous two days I had taken the rick a little away from the hotel entrance). I told him 60 was fair but then we agreed on 70  and got moving.

I reach my destination and handed him Rs.70 as promised. A gentleman indeed, he actually returned Rs.10 back and said, “I quoted Rs.70 because I thought you wanted to go ahead of the big junction, so here is Rs.10 back.” Got me thinking. I was a tourist and the driver could have easily avoided the 10 bucks refund and kept that little extra for himself.

Gives you an assurance that a few good honest men yet survive around here and it’s a matter of chance that you get to meet one. Have you met one lately? Share your story with me in the comments area.

Just read Dell’s Hearing Test at ADWEEK. It’s a good article which describes Dell’s efforts to manage their online reputation. I thought there were a couple of learning’s to understand how social media will be a challenge for the complete organisation and NOT JUST the branding team.

1. Running a company blog is more than just yet another marketing and PR activity. Everybody has to be responsible for what’s being put online and to respond to consumer reactions.
2. Internet is the most easily accessible Customer Complaint box, so be sure you have a “active” team to take care of those disappointments popping up there.
3. Customer complaints often lead to better product development. So is that team listening to the what’s being talked online?
4. It’s amazing what can come out of customer suggestions - Dell customers said they preferred more environmental friendly packaging material. Such things rarely come out in customer satisfaction surveys.

And let’s remember just because you have a blog which talks to people it doesn’t mean it’s going to be all good. You gotta “listen” to the negative reactions and quickly solve customer problems before they become top listings on websites like digg and StumbleUpon.