Account-ability, Negotiations & hard-nosed Media Folks

Term 5 has been very good for the Media Management batch at MICA. Far better than Term 4, where Atul Phadnis was the only bright spot. We've had some interesting media sessions in the last 2 weeks. First there was Shripad Kulkarni from Carat, who took us through setting campaign objectives & marketing objectives and then translating them into media objectives & making media plans. It was good to have hands on experience. The sleepless 48 hours were well-spent.

Last week we had Himanshu Shekhar from Mindshare Fulcrum, who facilitated 8 exciting sessions on media buying & negotiations. We had live simulations in class where groups took on roles of agencies, clients & media owners. Apparently, he enjoyed our debates too :-)

Media is one of the most dynamic industries. Non-TV media spends are on the rise, even by advertisers like Levers who were heavily dependant on TV. The battle for the credit card swipe continues.

***********

Meenakshi Madhvani from Spatial Access was at MICA today, to talk about Media Auditing practices in India. The lecture was alrite - and some of the stuff that she shared was quite alarming.

It was quite cool to talk to her one-on-one. I've heard the media agencies' take on auditing often enough (even at my MICA interview), and yes, the views range from unfavorable to vitriolic. So it was really interesting to hear her side of the story.

I wonder if the big financial auditing firms like E&Y (who have a media & entertainment vertical) will enter media auditing in a big way soon. It is a matter of time until they have enough people with domain knowledge at the decision making level. Then the media agencies & owners will be pushed to follow more transparent processes. And of course, the advertisers will try and think beyond 40% at 4+ and invest in quality spends.

It's disturbing to hear that big media agencies undercut the industry norm of 2.5%, just to win newer clients. And it's even more disturbing to hear that a lot of agencies that flaunt fancy proprietary software, hardly ever use them, apart from making pitch presentations. And it is also interesting to note that though media agencies pay a lot for syndicated research, they hardly ever use them for planning.

Is it lack of talent at the starting level, or the lack of time? The planners & buyers work for 15 hours a day, simply because most agencies have employed only to about 60% capacity.

Understaffed, overworked and underpaid - scary words for a sector that I could be in 5 months from now!!

The MICA aspirant's Guide to the Galaxy - II

Today we take a look into what MICA is about - its Positioning, Strengths & Weaknesses, and the million-rupee question: Placements.

MICA is NOT an Advertising school (we never get tired of saying this).
If you wanted to study marketing, MICA would be an interesting case study. It started off as a advetising & media school in the early 90s. By the late 90s MICA was supplying the industry with Account Planners, Media Planners & Market Research Managers. Over the last four years, MICA has made an attempt to reposition itself more than once. A stream called "Brand Management" was started in 2001. This was created to help MICA break into the big league of B-Schools. Some time back, another repositioning exercise took place, and now MICA is supposed to be a C-School. MICA produces managers of communication for any industry. It might appear as if we're contendors for a responsibility that doesn't exist in most companies. If you look closer, you'll see that it's an emerging area.

The course combines both communications and management subjects and produces managers for the business of communications. Here are some of the subjects that I learnt in the two years.

Management (pfaff:sense ratio in brackets)
Brand Management (70:30)
Marketing Management (20:80)
Corporate Venturing and Entrepreneurship (30:70)
Business Ethics (99:1)
Indian Business Environment - Macroeconomics (1:99)
Principles of Management (80:20)
Organizational Dynamics (90:10)
Introduction to Accounting (0:100)
Basic Business Finance (0:100)
Managerial Economics (10:90)
Strategic Management (60:40)
Consumer behaviour (40:60)
Strategic Marketing (20:80)
Sales Promotion (30:70)
Research Methodology (40:60)

Communications
Introduction to Communication (30:70)
Culture and Communication (25:75)
Advertising Management (70:30)
Mass Media in India (0:100)
Introduction to Media Planning (0:100)
Integrated Marketing (100:0)
Public Relations (90:10)
Event Management (90: 10)
Semiotics (debatable)
Film Studies (NA)

The concentrations (in brackets are the main subjects) in year two:

• Brand Management (Product Management, Return on Marketing Investment, International Marketing, Brand Management Seminar, Communication management of financial management)
• Media Management (Ad sales, Strategic Media Planning, Media Research, Media Software, Media Buying/Auditing/Negotiations)
• Account Planning (Agency Management, Live projects from agencies on real-time account planning & research - JWT, McCann, Euro RSCG)
• Marketing Research (Data Analytics & Modeling, Advanced Qual & Quant Research, Applied areas in MR)

Most MICAns from the PGPCM rank high on soft-skills, professionalism & detailing - and yes, we do think out-of-the-box (argh). The course has very little Quant focus (good math skills are restricted to folks who have an inclination towards it.

There's a fair mix of engineers and grads of BCom, BBA, BMS, BMM & BSc. Around 70% of the batch are fresh grads.

The Placement Scene: As Prof. Panda would say... Coming Soon.

Piercings, Ponytails, Pretence & Psychotropic Substances: The 4 Ps of Pseudo-Creativity

Creativity is confusing. Quite harmless on its own. When paired with halfwits or pseudo-intellects, it becomes a pain. It loses its simplicity & transforms into an ego slugfest that is devoid of logic.

The marketing communications industry runs rife with "creatives". The exceptionally brilliant, talented & logical creatives make about 1% of the pool. The rest can be combination of on one or more of:

• Wannabes
• Egotists
• Drunks

You get a preview of the MarkComm industry at MICA. There's a mixture of intelligent go-getters, smart pfaff experts, dedicated professionals, pompous i'm-the-next-big-CEO types, the rare logically creative person & an ocean of the "creative" people who belong to the 99% mentioned above.

It irritates me terribly to even converse with the airheaded creatives & here are the many reasons why:

1. They think that a good creative is the solution to any business problem.
2. They don't know what a good creative is.
3. They're fussy, demanding and have an ego-centric universe.
4. They're impossible to reason with. (And easier to ignore.)
5. They talk a lot more than necessary, spend hours on discussion & are grossly unproductive.
6. A lot of them are fake, and obviously so. Do you really need a pierced eyebrow to come up with ideas?
7. They're unwilling to take up responsibility.
8. They can never successfully lead a project.

Creatives are a small part of the entire process of marketing. They might be indispensable to some campaigns, but it doesn't give the copywriters, art-directors and designers of the world the right to be the asses that they are. Ideas can be thought of & executed by anyone who's smart & sensible. Just because someone chooses to do it for a living, doesn't mean that you're God's gift to the world at large.

Vehemently yours...

Theatre Upstaged

Sankalp - MICA's annual theatre event is slated for December 4-6. Every winter MICA stages a play for 3 days at Darpan Academy's open-air theatre - Natrani. It is one of the most picturesque settings for a play. The Sabarmati river in the background appears almost still. And watching a play under the stars is a surreal experience.

This year Sankalp goes Hindi (!) with Suraj ka Saatwan Ghoda.

It's very different from last year though. The spirit of the whole thing seems to be dead. I haven't seen such petty politics over an event before. Okay, things don't have to stick to tradition all the time - but the very things that made Sankalp so endearing have been done away with.

The MICA aspirant's Guide to the Galaxy

The top keywords leading to my blog seem to be MICA or Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad. Despite the fact that it stands at a pathetic 570 hits, I shall be nice and blog about the institute... for all the thousands of information-starved, post-CAT, MICA aspirants. Here's an account - no holds barred.

Disclaimer: These views have nothing to do with MICA, its management, authorities etc. They're purely my own.

--------------------

There are three kinds of people at MICA:

1. The ones who really wanted to get in. They've always been focussed on communications as a prospective career, are interested in ad campaigns, writing and have worked part-time/full-time/interned in communications/media for at least a month. Some of them think they're "creative". And a lot of them think MICA is a place where they can use this "creativity". Their application basket includes SIMC, SIBM, NMIMS, IIMC, ACJ...
2. The ones who wanted to get into the IIMs/XLRI/FMS etc, but messed up CAT, applied everywhere they could, converted any one or more of IMT/TAPMI/XIMB/IMI/IMT and landed up at MICA thanks to good word of mouth. A lot of them think "brand management" is a high-flying career, where recruiters will pick up a fresher & say "You're in charge of the branding activities of Cadbury Dairy Milk, starting today."
3. People with 5 years or more of arbit work-ex who wanted to get into IIMs/XLRI/FMS, messed up CAT, applied everywhere they could, and came to MICA because it was their only call. A lot of them spend the next two years scouting for restaurants in Ahmedabad or sleeping in their rooms

There are some more, but they're too small in number to be categorized "I came to MICA b'coz my dad told me to", "I came to MICA b'coz my girlfriend is at IIM-A"... and the rest.

Well, at least they all write CAT and compete against 8000 others to get in here. There's another breed which haunts MICA, that we like to call "sachets". If I start writing about them, my post will have tinges of racism, Nazism and bias against less intelligent forms of life. So I will not venture into that territory.

Okay moving on to how to get into MICA.

1. Get a CAT score of about 90 %ile. (I got a 99.38, but that doesn't matter - I was still waitlisted).
2. Buy the MICA application form.
3. Keep fingers crossed for MICA call.
4. Log in to the MICA website on the day of your results. Look out for your name.
5. If you've got a call, pay the test fees. Write MICAT (The MICA Admission Test). Psychometrics, GD/PI. Very general stuff. No stress. You'll need to be presentable, smart and have a fair idea about what's happening in the Indian marketing & communications industry. You'll also need a slice of luck. (Please do not flirt with fellow candidates of the opposite/same sex and post about it on pagalguy)
6. Wait for the final call.
7. If called, be prepared to pay around Rs 6 lakhs for the two years here.
8. Get ready for the most amazing two years of your life.

MICA is an exciting experience... well, depending on who you are.

I've loved my 18 months here, and I can't believe I have only 128 days to go. Ouch.

Coming soon: What you'll learn in your two years at MICA.

Pottered!

Saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last night. For me, the book was the best of the six. It was the growing up book... which broke away from the kiddie magic. Apart from two jarring elements - the dragon fight & the elves, the book superbly dealt with how Harry & his friends ease into their teens. As real as a book about magic could get.

Seven best bits from the book:
1) Priori Incantatem
2) The Yule Ball
3) The Pensieve
4) The Curse Lesson
5) The Second Task
6) Harry's nightmare
7) The growing up & jealousy

The movie was amazing. It shed a lot of elements from the book, but still managed to induce goose-pimples.

Seven best bits from the movie:
1) The Pensieve
2) Priori Incantatem
3) Moaning Myrtle
4) The Second Task
5) The Yule Ball & the build up to it
6) Cedric Diggory - yum
7) Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort

**********

The evening was fun.

We had dinner at US Pizza. They have the worst pizzas in the world - even Chota makes better pizzas. But the salad bar, the soup & the brownie (& the Rs 115 deal) make up for it. Plus, the proximity to Wide Angle & FR.

Before that, we shopped for a couple of things at Big Bazaar - which is Pantaloon's most pathetically executed store concept. The shelves are stuffed with unrelated products (moisturizer with tissues, candles with detergent). There are mile-long queues at any given time of the day. But where Big Bazaar fails is customer service. There's no concept of customer service at all... the Ahmedabad store has terribly incompetent staff, who look grumpy all the time - pointedly ignoring customers. It's an uncomfortable shopping experience. Compare poorly with a Giant Hypermarket or a Shoprite. The Pantaloon group recruits at MICA. We could teach them a thing or two about managing a universally successful retail concept.

**********

131 days to graduation.

Quizzes and stuff...

Why do girls like taking arbit quizzes (emode, tickle, blogthings etc)?

a) Because they are not arbit.

b) They can accurately predict what my kissing style is, who is my perfect zodiac match, how much of an exotic goddess I am, which of the 'Friends' I am like the most, what color I am, what my ideal room color, what color my dog should be and even more. How would we survive without them?

c) The Holy Grail of arbit quizzes - Cosmopolitan (and its wannabe spinoff Femina) delves into further details... who calls the shots in my relationship, how aggressive I am in bed, what my wedding date will be, what color nail-polish I should wear on my first date! The quizzes are a support system for womankind.

:) :)

******

Holy Grail reminds me... I (finally) read The Da Vinci Code last weekend. Can't really explain why I hadn't read it for so long. It was an awesome experience reading it coz I was Wikipedia-ing everything along the way. Don't care too much about Christian symbology, but all references to cryptology was intriguing. Don't expect the movie to live up to the book.

******

Book-movie reminds me... 3 days to go until Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire. The reviews sound good. I read the whole series only a couple of months ago... and post Da Vinci Code, I realize HP is also full of Christian symbology.

******

Symbology reminds me... there's a course in Term V called "Introduction to Semiotics" - it's an AP student's delight. I can't grapple with it at all. Argh.

******

Course reminds me... am in class right now. Neural networks or something. Lemme try and listen.

Ah

A perfect night for blogging - I'm jobless & alone.

Feels nice in a way. My room - soft lighting - favourite sweater - warm blanket. Soon I'll fall asleep, watching South Park or some movie. Really needed this.

A bullet-point update of my life in the past couple of weeks.

• Started power-walking (thanks to Div). My actual plans to work out & shed the flabbies are only lined up for April 2006. But hopefully power-walking should ensure that I don't get bigger than size 'M' during winter (argh - that sinful season).
• Partied - the first ever all-femme party at MICA. Was damn fun without the boys... raunchy, yet girlie. We did up Champa with table lamps from all our rooms. The hostel looked very chic.
• Applied for a job to my dream company. If I get placed there, it'd be like Rachel Greene working at Ralph Lauren.
• Submitted my thesis proposal & successfully defended it :-) Working on "Behavioral Targeting in Online Media"
• Chalked out 3 career paths I might want to follow after MICA.
• Discovered Chota makes yummy French Toast. (This is to negate bullet point #1)
• Placed 36th in XLRI's online quiz - Xhume. Found the Qs kinda arbit.
• Watched Garam Masala... friends said it was *VERY bad*. I thought it was only *bad*. Maybe I have less sophisticated tastes.

High points in life:

• My thesis topic is damn exciting... am in love with online media. Maybe because it's been so much a part of everyday life for the last 5 years. More so, since I came to MICA.
• A Prof. said that our project on Lingerie Retail in India is worthy of being published... damn kicked (yay us, Devika & Anj). Had a lot of (cheap) thrills doing this project. It was basically an observational study.
• Another company project got us a small cash prize (yay us again Devika, Anj & Dev)
• And to make me sound less geeky & academic - mm... er.. argh! Can't think of anything!