FREAKY FRIDAY WITH A TWIST!

A delightful experience describing April’s much enjoyed Freaky Friday contributed by Pournima Surve, also scoring on ‘why should the winners have all the fun’.

The most awaited activity of the month and in Blue Lotus parlance fondly called, ‘Freaky Friday’, for the month of April, was organized by team Bluetterflies. Their idea was pretty unique and was based on judging the acting and creative skills of Blue Lotus employees. Each team was assigned a popular fairy tale they were to enact. The fairy tales they had to enact were the lovable ‘The Princess and the Peas‘, ‘Sleeping Beauty‘, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs‘, ‘Cinderella‘, ‘Beauty and Beast’ etc. But that’s not all. The challenging as well as the fun task was to find and create a twist in the tale and then enact it. The teams could modify or distort their assigned original tale, accordingly. The 10 minute script not only had to be duly submitted to the Bluetterflies but also enacted in front of a live audience!

Though the idea required some time, the experience of scriptwriting and then enacting it was quite refreshing. Each team was given one tale. A few like me who are not part of any team had to get our act together literally, for the given task. Thus, we had our own office production with Shweta from Blue Print as our main actress, Bhushan from Blue Insight main actor, Subhash from Blue Bridge as our anchor, Shefali from Blue Point as ‘hero ki amma’ – Nirupa Roy, and finally me, as a supporting actress from Blue Network.

While scripting, we realized the amount of effort put in scriptwriting. It is an art form and creating art is never easy. For a meagre 10 minute play, we went through plenty of iterations in writing, thinking and then rewriting and rethinking again. After a series of brain-storming, our final script took shape with several rounds of rehearsals. We ultimately titled ours as ‘Peenewali Princess’! We are in the 21st century and it was about time for a modern version of ‘Princess and the Peas’!

However, the unfortunate thing was that only two teams, our team and Blue Planet could take part in this activity. The job done by Blue Planet was excellent. They made a 21st century version of Sleeping Beauty. With Prathamesh, the actor in lead role, Shikha, anchor as well as actress in supporting role, Umesh K, actor in second lead and Vrushali and Anil in supporting roles, the whole team participated and did a fabulous job at it. Every sentence of theirs with their punch lines between songs had us all in splits and made for a wonderful 10 minute act. They won the first place with their superb acting and detailed script and we stood the worthy second.

Also have to make a mention of our Ahmedabad team which was tough competition with Nitin mailing us an amazing script. Kudos to him!

All thanks to Bluetterflies team and Freaky Friday, we had a really great time. Primarily, Freaky Friday phenomenon helps us all to come closer, not just as team members in a city, but as colleagues from different branches, getting a chance to share joys with one another.

CLIMBING ACTIVITIES MAKE A GAME OF TEACHING

This one comes from a well experienced Chitra, bringing forth the benefits of physical activity, in the form of rock or wall climbing. Who would have thought there was so much to learn from the silent wall present on the 4th Floor Open Space at Mumbai office!

This sport is for those who dare to accept challenges. And this one's a little different from trekking, Scuba diving or Rafting. We're talking about wall climbing. Wall Climbing is a one on one sport. A person is challenged only by himself and the obstacle before them. Success is measured and controlled by setting and overcoming attainable goals.
We have an artificial wall specially built at Blue Lotus. The use of an artificial climbing wall is a major step in a person’s evolution and the consequences of such a decision are numerous.
Outlined below, are some benefits of Wall Climbing.

Health benefits: The sport of climbing has the benefits of promoting both a strong mind and body.

Physical benefits: A superb way of building strength and endurance. Climbing can aid in a complete and total body workout, also helps promote co-ordination.

Mental benefits: The sport requires that you need total concentration and awareness at all times. Rock climbing can help relieve stress. It takes patience, dedication and intelligence and also promotes self confidence.

All in all, it helps to teach outdoor survival skills, improve problem solving skills, enhance teamwork and increase one’s ability to work in harmony with peers. It also helps develop leadership skills, understand natural environments and enhance ability to identify multiple alternatives or solutions for challenging situations. Mental focus and concentration levels improve significantly after engaging in structured physical activity.
To improve your own climbing performances learn and practice good climbing technique. These rock- climbing tips will help you accelerate your climbing performance.

Ø Always Warm Up and Stretch before you start climbing. Tight muscles and ligaments don’t perform as well.
Get in the habit of previewing and learning to read the route before you climb it. Developing this skill will help you get in the right position to make moves at the crux.
Ø Use only the degree of strength on you grip as necessary to steady your balance. Your grip is often the first to go, save forearm strength as much as possible.
Ø A finely developed sense of balance will help you make difficult static and dynamic moves.
Ø By keeping your body close to the wall you keep your center of balance over your center of mass and relieve pressure on your grip.
Ø Use your legs to hold your weight, not your arms. Your legs are much stronger and will carry you further.
Ø Use arms for balance and shifting weight, not holding weight. When doing moves and sequences that require a great deal of upper body strength, move quickly through the sequence.
Ø Developing the technique of dynamic movement is done by using momentum to peak at the dead point, which is the point at which you grip the hold.
Ø Combining both static and dynamic elements of climbing technique will determine your speed of climbing. Climbers who have mastered this seem to move smoothly and effortlessly.
Ø The right rock climbing techniques combined with building the right muscles give a climber a huge advantage.
Ø Muscles will perform longer with short rests. Develop a skill at finding rest opportunities while climbing to greatly extend your endurance.
Ø Push yourself and your ability with difficult routes. This means you will fall. Taking a fall correctly is one of the most important techniques to learn how to do safely, and will give you confidence to push yourself to your limit.

Finally, watch and learn from other good climbers. Practice good rock climbing technique every time you climb and your climbing performance will measurably improve.

BLC AWARDS BEST STUDENT AWARD

BLC awards the best student award and has signed a contract with XIC for 3 yrs

Bhushan presenting the best student award

WORK AND PLAY, AND THE SUN ALWAYS SHINES

‘Get your fundamentals strong and you won’t go wrong’- this is the mantra for our interns. A collective effort of the three, this is a delightful piece on how they landed up with PR and how now they are finding their bearings.

What could the public relations industry look like to an outsider?

To Pallavi, it looked like being “the face of GAP, Chanel, Ralph Lauren etc”, or “a hot shot corp comm amidst all the media frenzy” to Megha and “the voice for Louis Vuitton and a pretty powerful job” to Gayatri. Unfortunately they were not entirely incorrect.

From a class of 54, three students were short listed to be part of the Blue Lotus Family, just less than a month ago. These three had never really interacted and were not in each others groups of friends in college, but all because of destiny and placement cell, later found comfort in each others company.

All through the course at XIC, they were warned by faculty “learn what you like now but be prepared to unlearn all that and be a professional”. At this point they were more than confused, “what is the point of studying so much when it’s not even useful?” This would be often the thought in their head when deadlines loomed on them like guillotines. However, college is over now and what the trio realized as the truth is the age old saying- ‘Get your fundamentals strong and you won’t go wrong!’

Two out of the three have worked before and yet they were so enthralled by Blue Lotus’ office and its cute wood–cabin like features that they quickly dismissed the approach way and made peace with the fact that Theobroma’s a stone throw away. Blue Lotus was nothing like they had imagined. Coming from a serious atmosphere in head hunting, Pallavi was very happy to finally be able to laugh at work, be disciplined but not regimented; Gayatri was happy to have found a homely place, not intimidated at all; and Megha, liked the spirit of the office that keeps a perpetual smile on her pretty face. They also realize it’s not all fun and games- At Blue Lotus people party hard but Work Harder!!

Thadeus, from Chennai office is also on the same boat it seems. Blue Lotus is his first job and is loving it. In just three months, his perception of PR has changed drastically. From being clueless about the industry, he now feels that this is a challenging task where he can utilize his talent and this is where he can have great career growth.

So far it has been an ideal learning ground. The theory has been replaced with practicals and there is a flurry of excitement to get on with the real job of a PR Executive.
It is honestly too soon to tell if Blue Lotus has made a mistake or the other way around, but looking at the faces that surround them they are confident and assured that it is the right decision, Blue Lotus is the right place.

NET PRofit

That hit is all it takes. Through this article Karthik is trying to communicate how embracing the online medium is becoming increasingly imperative in today’s world, though it did backfire on him in a tongue-and-cheek way!

Caller: Hello, Am I talking to Karthikeyan?
I: Yes.
Caller: Sir, this is xyz and I am looking for I-pill in Chennai. I found your contact while browsing the net. Could you please help me out to find I-pill in Chennai?
I: Sir, sorry we are not connected to the marketing of I-pill. We were just hired for launching this product and I have no clue about its availability in Chennai. Probably you could check their microsite.

This is the reply I had given to atleast 20+ enquiries received for the past one year for I-pill. These calls are because of just posting the press release in a site with my contact number mentioned. Nothing was done for I-pill in internet except a microsite but these enquires resembles the mortality of a single page that easily gets noticed in a google search.

Any campaign will come into the umbrella of PR that makes its audiences think, react, create and exchange views. Internet has made these participations so simple which the traditional media couldn’t offer. People were able to shout out their experiences / grievances on a product/service thereby creating a collective opinion of it. I-pill too revolved around the internet and became hot topic for many bloggers. (http://youthcurry.blogspot.com/2007/10/i-pill-lets-talk-about-family-planning.html)

The very classical example for creating an online community is sunsilk’s gangofgirls.com. This site was launched on 17th June 2006 and crossed 100,000 members within 36 days. The site not only provided contents on hair care and styling but went beyond by tying up with http://www.monster.com/ for job postings. Recently a startup company Inkfruit which is into designing T-shirts used twitter to reach to its teen audience. It designed a T-shirt on twitter and spread it among the twitters.

While majority of the companies still communicate in the traditional way, they should look into the online audience seriously. Online is no more a playful medium. People voice out their opinions both favourable / non-favourable and trust the messages as it is transferred through their trusted acquaintances. Since the forthcoming election campaign sees unprecedented usage of online forums with Advani, Jyotibasu being the forerunners of connecting through online, the poll results would bring a radical change in the minds of marketers to embrace online forums coming up successful models.

THE QUARTER THAT WAS

Chitra and Ishani take us through the last quarter of the year.

Blue Lotus ushered 2009 in high spirits with BLUES around the corner. Everybody voted for their favourites and the celebration‘s continued with remarkable performance from Piyush and Prathamesh . BINDASS AWARDS this was held for the first time and we all enjoyed it. Jan 09 started with a bang in Blue Lotus with BLUE’s celebration everyone enjoyed the ceremony.

Let’s take a look back at the history of BLUES.
After heavy brainstorming and endless discussions with many members of Bluelotus, BLUES was initiated in December '06. The jury members had decided five categories for the Award.

Let’s have a look and let’s see who were the winners of prestigious Blue’s Awards.

Best Debut - Harish Chomal

Turnaround of the year - Chitra
Best Creativity - Debaditya

Entrepreneurof the year - Debaditya

Best Team - Blue Bytes

Blues Trivia

In the years '06 and '07 the awards were mainly bagged by Mumbai office teams.
(Mustard Design, Bluetterflies, Blue Point, Blue Bytes, Blue Print)
(Excluding bytes as a team, they have strong network in every branch)
Each year one outstation took the trophy home
Ø Dec 06 Chennai Narren
Ø Dec 07 Hyderabad Prabalika
But the interesting trend in 09 was, for the first time
Ø This year outstation branches swept the majority of Awards at Blues. ( TWO awards in Kolkata ONE in Pune)
Ø Deba won TWO awards at Blues this year ( Best Entrepreneur and Creative )
Ø Blue Bytes won second time in the row the award for Best Team.
Will Team Blue Bytes go for a hat trick .Will outstations continue to win more awards or will the Head office take over.
We all are eagerly awaiting for the next season of BLUES. So all of you who missed it should now give that extra edge and win the BLUES.


Moving over, in the month of february, BlueBytes took over the Freaky Friday. It was entirely their initiative right from selecting the right games to participation of every outstation and the best part was the MAKEOVER . I am sure the winners SEEMA, PRAKASH and SAMPADA loved the new look which they got from Tanveer. Special thanks to Tanveer and his team for giving the new look to the winners.

BOOK REVIEW : THE FALL OF ADVERTISING AND THE RISE OF PR

Prateek Shah brings to us a learned review of a book which created the most controversy for its author. The article discusses how the book deals with its premise that great brands are built with PR, not advertising.

It’s been ages since both the arms of communication have existed, mutually promoting people, societies, organizations, companies and brands, but never has somebody ripped them apart like this book. The authors, Al Ries and Laura Ries, pioneer consultants in the field of branding, communication and positioning, don’t set out to tell readers that the era of advertising is over, and PR is all that is here to stay, but they very bluntly point out the areas where there is scope for advertising, and others where it’ll primarily be PR which will drive things around.

As the title suggests, the book is biased towards enunciating the benefits of PR over the goodwill that advertising has brought over the years. The argument is based on the fact that Advertising has slowly become just an art form and ‘creative ads’ end up winning awards for the agencies more than anything else. Instances like Budweiser’s ‘Wassup’ commercials winning accolades year on year coupled with plummeting sales go on to prove that not all that is creative will get the cash register running. The writers feel that it is PR where the creativity is required, that the ideas need to be first formed by the publicity handlers before being carried forward by a brand’s advertising, which should ideally be on the same lines. Advertising cannot make perceptions and build brands, but PR can, is the argument reiterated through the book. Author starkly points out that there is no tangible comparision between Ads and PR, even through means such as ‘Ad Value Equivalence’.

The authors seem to go wrong when they say that all brands and companies should launch campaigns with just PR and Advertising should be used only as a support function. While a slow launch might work for some brands, a fast moving good like a seasonal drink can’t rely solely on PR to grab a market share. By the time PR will find its way into the minds of people, a brand might lose out on the time it needed to make a place for itself. What is essentially required is a heady mix of in-sync PR and Advertising which can enhance the standing of the brand and also convert all the promotion into sales and more business for the company. But through various examples described in the book, it becomes evident that it is also not just advertising which is enough to create credibility and drive sales. Where Advertising is directed to everybody, PR at time reaches that somebody who will help drive sales.

Amateurs or experts, the book is a must read for all PR professionals. It doesn’t just give an insight into the world of PR, but also touches upon some stark examples from history which segregate the two arms of communication.

BLUE LOTUS GOES MULTI COLOUR!

On the occassion of Holi, employees across offices paint the town multi colour! A look at the revelry that ensued..

Hum Saath Saath Hain!

Lady in Red!

Kolourkota!

Pune ka ek Chitra - Rangon ki N-Ishani !

Neeli Peeli Dilli!

Khushi ka raaz? Surf Excel hai na!

AND WE ALL STAND TOGETHER...

It's been almost 10 days since Mumbai witnessed the terror strike. The shadows of which are still visible. Nevertheless, efforts are being taken by people voluntarily to cope with what has happened and to try to avert the untoward in the future. The Protest rally on the 3rd of December was one such effort. It was a platform where people could express themselves through painting, elegy, poster, lighting a candle or by being there. People from not only Mumbai, but even Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, stood together in the face of terror.

Blue Lotus too did it's share by contributing in its own way. Here are updates from various Blue Lotus branches across India. Blue Lotus coordinated the drive at 3 places namely, Chennai, Kolkata & Bangalore. Chennai had their drive on 7th Dec 2008.

Mumbai Update:

Being really close to the terror sites, coming to office on Monday, 1st Dec. was not an easy task. Incredibly everyone was in office and were sharing similar unanswerable feelings of sorrow, anguish, anger, etc. An 'Express Yourself' board was put up in the office for all to express and give a vent to what was in their hearts. On 3rd of Dec, 6 pm, Blue Lotus as a whole, participated in the Protest rally. Many people from all over Mumbai had gathered. After the national anthem was sung, Blue Lotus employees led the peace walk.

Bangalore Update:
The vigil planned to be held at Cubbon Park eventually took place at the Mahatma Gandhi Park.

Approximately 100 people would have turned up including office-goers, children, students and few elderly people. People wrote their feelings and thoughts on the vinyl message board put up by the India Today Group as well as on forms distributed. Vigil had banners, placards, candles, flags, human chain, slogans, anger…..

Prominent participant was Capt.Gopinath.
There was no true feeling for a cause that could be seen. People had opinions and were getting angry. There was some apprehension on media also.

I guess people should not respond only emotionally but be practical and intelligent in whatever they do. There was also an interesting thought which cropped up suggesting people to start with the fundamentals – paying taxes, following rules, being helpful, involving in neighbourhood watch committees, participating in civil defence programs, etc. I guess that’s a good way to respond and take this initiative forward.



Kolkata Update:
Around 45-50 people had gathered at Maidan to participate in the rally.

We went there and lit candles and eventually people came and joined us. The people around were of the view that it was shameful for the country that after so many warnings from the IB the government still failed to take necessary actions and prevent the attack.

Everybody is willing to stand by each other and fight against terrorism. It was a pleasant sight at Maidan to see the people of Kolkata coming forward to express their solidarity for the innocent lives lost in the Mumbai attacks and to express their anger towards the system.


Chennai Update:
We have forwarded and informed as many people, including friends in the media, as possible. Everyone from the organising team has contributed by arranging for the banners, candles, forwarding the mail, messaging others, etc. We have requested Chennai Live fm to announce the same, and they will be doing it on their afternoon show.

Chennai's Peace rally was held on 7th of December.