REWARDS AND RECOGNITION

Good employees are what will get you through a bad economy and make you stronger than your competitors. With the current economic slowdown, recognizing employee actions, commending their efforts and accomplishments is a very good way to motivate them. When their attempts pay off, there is a feeling of satisfaction and achievement. It's a win-win situation for the employee and the employer.


Following the same line of thought, it was suggested by Mouli sir, in this year’s team leader’s offsite, that the work done by some, in the prevailing circumstances should be appreciated. These people went out of their way and did what was beyond their capacity and proved their mettle.


So, using the platform of this edition of Culture Curry, we take the opportunity to recognize the efforts and accomplishments of Poornima from Blue Diamond, Chennai, and Dayanad, Blue Pearl Hyderabad for their contribution in the form of their unrelenting hard work.
We crown them the true ‘Blue Lotus Queen’ and ‘Blue Lotus King’, respectively.
Let’s have a look at how they earned this honour.

Poornima V from Chennai Blue Diamond

She headed the Chennai branch successfully without any team leader for the last one year. Excellent work was done for Bharatmatrimony and now successfully handling Edserve. Chennai Team has grown remarkably with their efforts.



Dayanand from Hyderabad Blue Pearl


He handled Hyderabad branch very efficiently and did great work for EMRI and Vision Spring. He single-handedly managed all this. Good job indeed.

New Developments at Blue Lotus
We all are aware that Blue lotus as a group has separate business units under its umbrella. A glance at each of their developments.

Blue Bytes
Under Piyush’s dynamic leadership, blue bytes has now become from a no profit no loss unit, to a profit generating unit. Their latest clients tally will now include Singapore Tourism Board, client of Corporate Voice Weber Shandwick and Rediffusion Y&R, client of Rediffusion PR.

Mustard Design
Team Mustard is also geared up with a lot of business pitches in line.

i9 Communications
An independent PR wing for lifestyle and entertainment sector, I9 Communications is headed by Subhash Pais and assisted by Sameer. With the addition of Wayne and Aditee, they together look to become a strong team. The new clients in their kitty are SIL Jam and PagalGuy.com.

Blue Bridge
Rising STAR of Blue Lotus- Sachin Bhosale
Sachin has been associated with BlueLotus since a long time for all Market Research related activities for clients of BlueLotus. Recently Team Blue Bridge has bagged independent clients for themselves like Iwork Technology and L P University. With these clients, Blue Bridge is also on a rise.

Here’s wishing all the team the very best!

LIFE OF A BLUE BYTER

Pournima Surve and Prakash Pujari champion the cause of team blue bytes by simply describing a day in the life of a blue byter.

Blue Lotus believes in going that extra mile to ensure customer satisfaction. Established to compliment the efforts of the PR team, blue bytes offers news tracking and monitoring services for the clients. It is also a stand alone service for clients who require only Industry based relevant news.

Organisations need information on the latest happenings in their industry space. Competitor information is of prime importance as that acts as a sounding board to initiate counter actions to minimize the affect. In short, this service provides key market intelligence that puts clients at a strategically advantageous position.

This is how blue bytes Service helps PR service their clients and make life easy. But now let’s have a look at those who make our lives easy. The first service mail of the day is sent out around 9.00am with Client, Industry and Competition news. Does anybody wonder how it happens? For that, let’s live a day of the blue byters.

Their day starts at a time when most of us are comfortably sleeping. Some of them start their day at 5.00 am from home in order to reach office by 6.00 am or 7.00 am. Once they enter office, they work like robots. They are a team of 20-25 doing the groundwork for 100 odd clients. Everyone has their own set of clients, along with a pre-decided set of newspapers and magazines to keen through. Their job profile includes searching for news, differentiating it into Industry and Competition news and then uploading on the website. The task has to be completed in a given timeline and requires tremendous concentration and hard work. To understand the client and its competitors, they have a prepared manual. For better progress and accuracy, tests are regularly conducted.

The blue bytes Software Team of Laxman, Bhushan and Rahul always come to the rescue of byters while handling new the new software. These new softwares help reduce some amount of pressure from blue byters and even the PR staff. Softwares like bluebytes archives, bluebytes analysis, event finder and media tracking software are used in this service.

The entry of Piyush Jain in Blue Bytes has brought about a big change. Piyush, with his dynamic leadership qualities, not only gave confidence to his team but also changed the views of others about blue bytes. He is the person who likes to grow and help others to as well to grow. His guidance helped team blue bytes to do and perform well. Blue bytes which was earlier a ‘no profit, no loss’ team, is now the highest profit making team with a fairly good numbers of clients to cater to.

Blue lotus is an employee friendly organisation. The HR team always tries and has succeeded in making the working environment healthy. However, nobody questions whether byters get to enjoy and use these facilities. Do they have a social life at the work place? The answer is big NO because their work pressure doesn’t allow them even a small break where they can be the part of any social activity. There are Freaky Fridays, Cake-cutting ceremonies, etc, for everyone. But one team is always missing in action at these events, and that’s blue bytes. Since our day starts at 9.30 am, the suitable time for the fun activities is post lunch. But for those whose day starts at a time when others are still in bed, the post lunch activity becomes a bit tiring affair.

On a positive note, a request for those who make our ‘Life easy’. Let’s try and keep the activities before lunch so that the team who makes our life easy can be a part of the fun like all of us. Let’s make their life cheerful.

Cheers to Blue Bytes!

PHOTO FEATURE

Pictures from our new offices across Pune, Delhi and Amhedabad

Amhedabad

Pune

Delhi

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.