There are some thoughts that can mean doom for any business venture. 'Ho jaayega yaar' is one such thought which should be kept at bay, whilst engaging in any business activity. That is for one simple fact: Kuchh nahin hota. Sab saala karna padta hai. This post is about our debut event 'The Grand Brand Carnival' which we had conceptualized almost, if not more, atleast a decade back. So the details...
What we thought was a small intimate event, turned out to be a monster that was getting way beyond our imagination. All we wanted to do was rope in a few brands, get a few 'yo' junta to fill out some forms, then do a lucky draw & let the winner be taken to all participating brands, where they could be awarded by the owner of the respective establishment. That simple was the game plan, while we had discussed initially.
Then as we went out in the market, talking to prospective clients, they were interested & we at teamXtreme have always been suckers for 70mm. So we let it grow. The biggest fillip to the event came in the form of our handshake with Opel, who had just launched the 'Opel Corsa Swing' and the deal we had with them was that the winner will be taken around to the participating brands in the newly launched car with the grand finale being a candle-light dinner at a hill-top restaurant in the outskirts of the city. Ovation!!!
We also managed to rope in a few fashion stores, a multi-brand electronic supermart and somehow the list of brand partners touched 10. Man we were elated like hell! The damn event worked like a magik trick. The winner of the first round had multiple orgasms and our event plus our name was there in the newspapers the next morning. We had never before seen our parents as proud as they were that morning. Sigh.
In our enthusiasm, what we forgot was that The Grand Brand Carnival was a month-long saga where winners would be announced on every weekend. So when we went back to the brand partners for the round 2, they backed out. We blacked out. Mundu. Finito. What the hell are we going to do for the coming three weeks? We didn't have a clue. Thank God for the fact that the guys at Opel were kind enough to extend their support for the coming three weeks as well. Actually, it was only them who got the maximum mileage out of this event, but anyways.
So what did we do about the other partner brands that backed out at the last moment? Yes, you guessed it, we paid for the bloody 'prizes' that they gave on their behalf to the winners. It was the biggest WTF moment for us. And the biggest lesson as well. The paper-work. Get the damn paper work right, every single time, irrespective of how big or small the deal is. While we were thinking 'ho jaayega yaar' apni to full on waat lag gayi mamoo!
But yes, it was worth the buck, despite the wtf. The winners were happy, the kind Opel guy was also happy & the other bastard-partners who backed out, hell they were all rolling in gold, laughing their ugly asses off. Anyways, some lessons are better learnt the hard way.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Ae Eff You Haan!
We heard this for the first time, from someone who looked like a guy. We were shocked to say the least, as during those days such queer behaviour hadn't struck our small town. It was at a Cafe' that we were branding & promoting, a quaint place called Sam'z. The same building also housed a popular radio station and 'Ae Eff You Haan!' was a RJ there.
Sam'z was soon becoming a happening joint of the city as it not only offered the best eats & beverages, but also gave a new definition to coffee shops. It was a warm & cozy place where the young & yuppie crowd met, spoke, jammed & generally had a gala time. It was like an alternate universe in a City where even today the day begins with Poha-Jalebi, served on a newspaper.
That was where we met this guy, very jovial, well-read, marketing exec. who was employed with the radio station. The only thing that set him apart from us was the fact that he was an IIM.A pass-out & we were strays of a local college. But when we met at Sam'z almost everyday, we realized that there is not much of a difference between the IIM protege and us loafers.
The IIM fella & us, were after all trying to find a foothold in a city where nobody gave a damn. His job was still easier as the blokes would open their wallets wider than Jayalalitha's waist, once the trickster exec got them to the swanky office. And we? Damn we didn't even have an office to call our own. So our base-camp those days was Sam'z. We would sit there all day long forming strategies, executing events and randomly shooting shit with the guests, thereby building a good crowd who would drop in sometimes, just to probably meet us & have some Cappuccino.
Though closed now, Sam'z remains a success story of ours that will always remain the closest to our hearts. Especially because we were instrumental in sowing the seeds of a cafe' like it exists in first-world countries. That was way before Barista & CCD had struck. Sam'z was our baby that was nipped in the bud for very personal reasons, otherwise, teamXtreme would have been today helming the Sam'z chain of cafe's. Magar ye ho na saka aur ab ye aalam hai ki blah blah blah...
Do come back for more... there's more brewing here than you expect.
Sam'z was soon becoming a happening joint of the city as it not only offered the best eats & beverages, but also gave a new definition to coffee shops. It was a warm & cozy place where the young & yuppie crowd met, spoke, jammed & generally had a gala time. It was like an alternate universe in a City where even today the day begins with Poha-Jalebi, served on a newspaper.
That was where we met this guy, very jovial, well-read, marketing exec. who was employed with the radio station. The only thing that set him apart from us was the fact that he was an IIM.A pass-out & we were strays of a local college. But when we met at Sam'z almost everyday, we realized that there is not much of a difference between the IIM protege and us loafers.
The IIM fella & us, were after all trying to find a foothold in a city where nobody gave a damn. His job was still easier as the blokes would open their wallets wider than Jayalalitha's waist, once the trickster exec got them to the swanky office. And we? Damn we didn't even have an office to call our own. So our base-camp those days was Sam'z. We would sit there all day long forming strategies, executing events and randomly shooting shit with the guests, thereby building a good crowd who would drop in sometimes, just to probably meet us & have some Cappuccino.
Though closed now, Sam'z remains a success story of ours that will always remain the closest to our hearts. Especially because we were instrumental in sowing the seeds of a cafe' like it exists in first-world countries. That was way before Barista & CCD had struck. Sam'z was our baby that was nipped in the bud for very personal reasons, otherwise, teamXtreme would have been today helming the Sam'z chain of cafe's. Magar ye ho na saka aur ab ye aalam hai ki blah blah blah...
Do come back for more... there's more brewing here than you expect.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Dus Hazaar Theek Hai?
That innocent question was put forward to one of us at TeamXtreme, by an employer (back then), wanting to know if that amount was enough for him to get a job done. Since then, it has been an inside joke at TeamXtreme & it works like laughter therapy in bad times. Our biggest weakness, has been money, sometimes excess of it & at times nill. We never knew how the hell to quote a price, how to ensure we got paid and the biggest glitch is what to do with the money that we got. Our meta-goals (money per se) have been larger than 70mm, so the neat little sums always went for noble causes like parties, parties & more parties.
Thank God for some saner additions to TeamXtreme, the 'neat little sums' are now taken care of with fantastic efficiency. As a bunch of creative campers, the idea of money always was "money is what it can buy for you" & it still is a way of life for many in the team. We hate to bargain on creative products. To us it has always been our holy cow. You can't afford it? Too bad. Try again when you are richer.
Gradually we realized that it is an exercise in futility to expect that creativity holds any value, especially in the small town that we operated from. So that led us to Xtreme frustration, but at least we had found out other avenues to make up for the loss . So 'CONSULTANCY' became the magic word. The only thing that worked against us was the lack of facial hair and our torn jeans. It took us some time to correct that, but once we did, we ensured that we wore the best ties in town and that almost intimidated the 'Gutkha' chewing money-bags whom we were dealing with.
But thanks to our skills at 'bol bachan' we undid the damage that was caused by the designer ties. So now we were at a place where we could intimidate the client and make him feel at home, all at once. As goes the famous dialogue in RGV's Company "khaas aadmi ko ye maloom hona chahiye ke wo kabhi bhi aam ho sakta hai" or something like that. So that was taken care of.
Along the way we picked up our lessons and that enriched us more than any MBA degree could ever have. Money management, people management, corprate communications, making power-point presentations & making a pitch etc. were all learnt by doing. Some mistakes were made along the way but those mistakes have ensured that we never repeat them thanks to the fools we had then made out of ourselves in front of the then-messiahs-but-now-insignificant clients. How's that you B-School white collars?
When in doubt, set back or generally down, we just look at the mirror and ask ourselves the life-changing question: Dus Hazaar Theek Hai? Not that it solves the problem, but it does facilitate a good hearty guffaw.
Thank God for some saner additions to TeamXtreme, the 'neat little sums' are now taken care of with fantastic efficiency. As a bunch of creative campers, the idea of money always was "money is what it can buy for you" & it still is a way of life for many in the team. We hate to bargain on creative products. To us it has always been our holy cow. You can't afford it? Too bad. Try again when you are richer.
Gradually we realized that it is an exercise in futility to expect that creativity holds any value, especially in the small town that we operated from. So that led us to Xtreme frustration, but at least we had found out other avenues to make up for the loss . So 'CONSULTANCY' became the magic word. The only thing that worked against us was the lack of facial hair and our torn jeans. It took us some time to correct that, but once we did, we ensured that we wore the best ties in town and that almost intimidated the 'Gutkha' chewing money-bags whom we were dealing with.
But thanks to our skills at 'bol bachan' we undid the damage that was caused by the designer ties. So now we were at a place where we could intimidate the client and make him feel at home, all at once. As goes the famous dialogue in RGV's Company "khaas aadmi ko ye maloom hona chahiye ke wo kabhi bhi aam ho sakta hai" or something like that. So that was taken care of.
Along the way we picked up our lessons and that enriched us more than any MBA degree could ever have. Money management, people management, corprate communications, making power-point presentations & making a pitch etc. were all learnt by doing. Some mistakes were made along the way but those mistakes have ensured that we never repeat them thanks to the fools we had then made out of ourselves in front of the then-messiahs-but-now-insignificant clients. How's that you B-School white collars?
When in doubt, set back or generally down, we just look at the mirror and ask ourselves the life-changing question: Dus Hazaar Theek Hai? Not that it solves the problem, but it does facilitate a good hearty guffaw.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Cutting Chai, Classic Milds & Creativity
What's the source of creativity? This has been a question that has
caused us to wonder so many times, especially when we had neither work, nor money, sometimes nothing at all. This question inadvertantly led us to a place far away from the city [we just had about enough money i.e. Rs. 50, out of which Rs. 30 for fuel & Rs. 20 for Chai & Sutta] and we used to ponder about this & other non-issues like saving the world from Backstreet Boys & other fungi of their ilk.
So there, we used to find solace among people who were devoid of their faux Tommy Hilfiger tees & had absolutely no intention to earn beyond their daily bread & quarter. The sense of detachment from the City gave us a fantastic perspective of things that mattered and those that didn't, actually more of the latter.
Just out of college & trying to come to terms with the fact that life's no more a picnic, it's actually a fuck-fest where everyone wants to exlpoit. Exploit us? No, we were way to insignificant to be exploited, but we used to feel sorry about the way things worked at that time in what we thought was 'Corporate Small Town' [Not sure if it exists even till date]. So ideas big & small were exchanged as if it would change the very face of human existance. Such a naive bunch.
But we used to battle it out over cutting chai, sometimes it was 'expresso' & on better days it was lager. B.Com grads from small towns, atleast in those pre-internet-revolution days, didn't have much clue about their options. So we did what we thought was the second best. We created our options and are thankful for that till date. In one such setting we arrived upon the name of our first venture, our entrepreneurial debut, our calling card in life & the biggest mistake which taught us so much about business that isn't even whispered in the IIM corridoors.
Till date we give utmost credit or blame to the 'cutting chai' that has been one constant in our journey till date, where we now stand as 'TeamXtreme'. Classic Milds & Kingfisher has been discounted here to keep it a politically correct blog. Not that we give a duck, but anyways. The next blog will be about an idea that we thought was the 'Matrix' among events. Complex, layered, difficult, ambitious and all that jazz. So what if we didn't make a penny out of it, it still is very dear to us at TeamXtreme.
Have a great weekend folks & keep coming back :)
Friday, February 19, 2010
Prima Facie Let's Face it...
When we, TeamXtreme started off, when we weren't even Team Anything, we realized that either we were way ahead of the times or there was something terrible wrong about our approach towards creative solutions and business in general. Later we found that we were ahead of the times, actually so ahead that people [our clients] still have trouble catching up with us.
With this blog, dear reader we will share with you our journey that has spanned over a decade, that started in a small-town, spread to The City to be & is now gaining momentum to take on the world. So one of our first clients was a quirky money bag who's last name was Chaudhry. The moron would start all conversations with 'Prima Facie'. It made us throw up, but we had learnt way back that irrespective of how big a dolt that the client may be, it was we who needed them & not the other way round.
This much for an introductory gesture about us, TeamXtreme, that takes immense pride in going the whole hog to give the client a creative solution that adds to the bottomline [his, not ours]. Prima Facie Advertising, followed by all and else that may come under the umbrella of creative collaboration, arts, crafts etc. Hope you find this place interesting & you keep coming back for an encore.
With this blog, dear reader we will share with you our journey that has spanned over a decade, that started in a small-town, spread to The City to be & is now gaining momentum to take on the world. So one of our first clients was a quirky money bag who's last name was Chaudhry. The moron would start all conversations with 'Prima Facie'. It made us throw up, but we had learnt way back that irrespective of how big a dolt that the client may be, it was we who needed them & not the other way round.
This much for an introductory gesture about us, TeamXtreme, that takes immense pride in going the whole hog to give the client a creative solution that adds to the bottomline [his, not ours]. Prima Facie Advertising, followed by all and else that may come under the umbrella of creative collaboration, arts, crafts etc. Hope you find this place interesting & you keep coming back for an encore.
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