Month: July 2010

Do PR Agencies Need Multiple Offices?

When I was working as the Marketing Head of large format organizations, I always found it amusing that PR agencies would present to us “we have 7 or 14 or 32 (whatever maybe the actual number), offices in India” and then go on to show an India map with the infamous dots on them, for each office. As the marketing head I always wanted to know two things:

1. Who will be the people working on my account? The agency may have 52 offices in India for all I care, but give me 2 sub standard PR executives working on my account and I would have a fire on my hands.

2. How did PR agencies manage so many offices anyways (given that PR agencies are always on the bottom end of the marketing spectrum -:))? Were their rates being increased more by the amounts they would be spending on office rent and housing all the people, rather than good talent?

Continue reading “Do PR Agencies Need Multiple Offices?”

The Awareness of “Lack”

The human mind is a trickster.  It not only takes itself too seriously, it is also in a continous state/awareness of “lack”. ‘Not enough money’, ‘not enough of adulation’, ‘my pictures are not taken’, ‘my play is not reviewed’, ‘my career is frustrating’, ‘my spouse is not responding’ and the mental dialouges are endless. And when the mind takes such a posture, it inevitably blames everyone around it for its stress – ‘you did not publish it’, ‘you are holding back my career’, ‘you do not notice me’ etc.

The constant awareness of “lack” in all aspects of life, becomes a self fulfilling propecy, Continue reading “The Awareness of “Lack””

Mastery and Practice

Most people see success or see people who have achieved mastery in some aspect of their life and make statements like “he is lucky”, “oh he inherited this”, “ah, that’s just a result of circumstance”, “oh whatever he wants just comes his way” or “he has a knack of getting his way”. For me this reflects a very fundamental point – that most people shy away from giving credit where it is due and often people do not even understand what leads to success or mastery (note: I do not define success only in monetary or other socially conditioned terms). While its easy to pin “luck” onto people, most do not see the long hours of discipline, practice and dedication which leads a person into a state where the right things attract themselves to their lives, where either their work, art or service become easeful as a result of their mastery and things happen because they are open to the cues being given by the universe. Continue reading “Mastery and Practice”