The Eternal Divide

This stint, has been such a refreshing change from Sales, I can’t stop marveling. I am in Mumbai and therein lies the biggest difference. I actually have a life. I meet people over weekends and engage in other pleasurable activities. Who would have thought?

Another whopper is the way people at office are.

A little bit of background first - I am working with the global team for Rin - Radiant to be precise, as it is called the world over. The first few days entailed going over material to understand the laundry habits of consumers in India and Thailand. I am now in a position to state, to the second decimal, ki junta apne kapdon ki dhulai hafte mein kitnein baar karti hai.

Moreover, my office is in Andheri and I live in Andheri. I must be the first human in the history of this great city to take less than 1.05 hours to reach work everyday.

So cut to the present. People at office - they are the complete anti-thesis of your threat-toting-invective-spitting Sales guy. They are chilled-out. They need to be. It’s a thinker’s game. Not much time to think in Sales. You can’t be creating great propositions when your team has to do 15 crores in 7 days, with a couple of bandhs coming up, a Big Bazaar Maha-bachat sale happening, topped with some random Mela - selling jaali Sunsilk and Fair n Lovely, that too - Ek lo toh Ek free. To add to that - the product that contributes 20 percent to your turnover has escalated steeply in price and the brand that literally pays your salary, by virtue of having the highest gross margins has lost its earlier consumer-acceptance. Aag lagi rehti hai bhai Sales mein.

I know I am getting abstruse.

So anyway - these Brand guys - they are the ones responsible for developing the brand. They sit and have serious discussions about whether the next communication should have a sasur-bahu angle or a bachha-and-his-dog angle and the psychological impact of each on the average consumer. They talk about fragrances and mixes and consumer blind tests, they talk about launches in Pakistan, Bangladesh and South Africa and telecons with people from five countries joining in; but at the end of the day, they keep their sanity.

Case-in-point -
Sales - He-who-must-not-be-named told me - You must work on weekends. And there is no need for sleep beyond 6 hours for a trainee.
Brands - A guy, of a similar designation as the aforementioned HWMNBN, exclaimed - Work on weekends? No way. Enjoy, party, get sloshed and if you want to know the names of some good places, just give me a ring.

They don’t want to grill us. They don’t want to kill us. It feels strange.