Part 3 of the Goa Mini Series

Now now now where was I? That’s right, in I was in Goa, and you weren’t, unless you are Jhayu, kurtnirvana, Deepali or Bunny Singh. Isn’t that why you are reading this? So as of last update I was out of my soaked clothes and in bed at 4:30. And as expected, at 6:30 am suddenly I once again found myself as a part of a circle formed by P******mers, performing weird contortions of my body in the name of warm up exercises wondering, Yes you guessed it right, WTF as usual. Twisting, turning, hopping, jumping I felt I was back in school doing PT exercises. This is not what I had signed up for!

Post the PT, we did something remotely useful. We learnt how to use a compass! No not the one you draw circles with, you idiot! Even KurtNirvana can use that one. This was the compass that makes sure you aren’t drawing circles with your footprints. Then we had a quick test on out knotting skills. Of course I passed with flying colors, you couldn’t expect anything lesser from me.

At 8’o’clock the doors were opened for breakfast. Lots of cornflakes and some baked beans with mashed potatoes later, I was seated at a table with rest my, ahem, crew. Our CEO went ahead to take a session on “Advertising and Positioning” which I can genuinely say, without a hint of sarcasm or ass-licking, was damn good. This man has some serious presentation skills. If I were a CEO I would hire him to give all the presentations for my company. He explained the idea of brands, branding and brand positioning to us quite well. The exercise for this module was to do research on brands present in Indian denim market and then develop our own brand and position it in the market.

As a copywriter once again all eyes were upon me to deliver the creatives. The team decided to go ahead with my concept of a high end brand that allows you to get a pair of jeans stitched to your fit. We decided on the name ‘Skin’ and the tag line was to be decided between ‘Look good in your Skin’ and ‘Be comfortable in your Skin’. The presentation went quite well.

We broke off for lunch only to be prodded back in to the room half asleep and fully satiated. Next session was conducted by a certain Mr. Khare, but I don’t remember who he was or WTF did he do. Anyway he proceeded to teach us how to market a brand effectively through ads or something like that. For the project we were supposed to come up with a print ad for the hotel we were staying at, to showcase it as an ideal destination for business conferences, targeting top bosses of business houses. And we had to *DRAW* it on a chart paper. $#$^##^#$@@@##. WTF.

Thankfully my terrible drawing skills were not called upon so my team mates hastily drew a picture of a group on people wearing business suits on the top and then waist down they were in swimming shorts inside water. OR something retarded like that. All I had to do was to think of a suitable title. I, being the king of puns and clichés, didn’t disappoint and came up with the cringe inducing title, “Confunrence”. It surprisingly was received well.

Post tea they tried to shove all kind of financial gobbledygook down our throats in the name of a session in finance. It was basically a futile exercise to explain to us why we are paid so less. Since we didn’t understand jack shit, I don’t think it actually did any good. Post this we were given assignment to draw a financial plan for the product we had launched on day one. In our cases, unfortunately, that was Viday24x7.

Karma came back to bite us in the butt as usual. It turned out Vidya24x7 was not a good idea to have and making plan for it was a major pain in the ass. By the time my team threw some numbers together, I was sitting twiddling my thumbs on this one, we were late by 1 minute and thereby not only not allowed to present but also docked 5 points. Gah! Following next were “Business Roman” and “Team Entertainment” but that’s for next part.