Entertainment

Masters of Scale

Few things.

A.
Each month, I send an email to all contacts at C4E. This month I wanted to send out work from award winners at Cannes (here’s the newsletter that I finally sent, featured 3). And rather than sending anything at random, I wanted to curate a list of 5 (or 10) pieces that I have loved from all those that are on showcase. While I was going through the list of winners and seeing their work, I realised that the quality of work, the scale at which things happen and where we I stand in comparison.

B.
I was unwell ~~yesterday~~ the day I started to write this and since I dont take medicines, I was uneasy. And I was irritable. To the point that I was alone. And when I was at my wits ends, I succumbed to the temptation and subscribed to Netflix to kill time.

And once I got it, I put on House of Cards. I started with S3E1 and in there, Doug succumbs to alcohol. Thats not the point (the similarity between Doug and I). The point is that in that episode I realised that work could be so important for people that they’d lay their lives for it. I mean Doug gets a sliver of window to meet the President and even though he cant walk and he breaks his arm while showering, he goes through excruciating pain and makes it to the meeting. People and their work means so much to them. And here I am. Rather than doing things that scale, I am blogging about it.

Then I saw an episode of Elementary. I was reminded of my love for the series because of the way Sherlock and Watson go under the skin of people and decode them. I wish I was as brilliant. I wish I could read things. I wish I could solve individual problems that were unsolvable. What I currently do can be done by anyone in the world. Where is my individuality? What makes me unique? Am I making sense?

. . .

What defines me? What boils my blood? Why am I alive? What is my raison d’etre? This one I know – to entertain and enable others. But thats not the point. Point is, what am I doing about it? Why am I content with being a paper-pusher? I mean my work is great and I know why I do what I do. But where is scale? Or Impact? How many people have I entertained? Impacted? Enabled?

I feel I am stuck at where most other people are. I have an ok career. Ok life. Ok things. Everything is ok about what I do and where I am. Mediocre. Nothing is great. Nothing is extraordinary. I dont make any difference to anyone’s life. Maybe I do, once in a while. But where is the perpetual excitement of having moved a ball?

I think, the other thing is lack of impact at scale. Most of what I do remains at the individual level (when I spend time with some great people with whom I work). Or at a few hundreds at best (when I put together an event and that too for the duration of the event). There is no perpetual change. I dont tilt the Earth. I dont make a ding in the universe. Worse, I dont create. The largest thing that I’ve ever created is the book. And that too has sold less than 2500 copies. That means I have not entertained even 2500 people!

And you know what sucks the most? I dont have anything in my hand that allows me to do that even in the future. And I dont know how to go about it. And I dont know who to talk to about this.

P.S.: So, I agree that House of Cards and Elementary are fictional pieces. I agree that no one starts working at scale from day zero. I know that you have to work towards it. I know there is a time and place and all that. The question is, where is mine? When would I do things that would make me exhausted with happiness?

P.P.S.: Title inspired by RH’s podcast – Masters of Scale. You HAVE to listen to this if you want a better life for yourself.

In 5 years

Someone I was interviewing ~~today~~ yesterday for C4E asked where I see it in 5 years.

I was bamboozled. I hadn’t thought of it. I am in my fools world and I am probably enjoying the ride (juggling three four balls in the air) so much that I hadn’t focused on the future with any one thing at all! This is probably why I need a board.

So when this guy asked me, I cooked up something on the spot. I rambled out whatever shit came into my head and if he had a bull-shit detector installed in his head, he would’ve seen right through me.

I said something like…

I want to be in the business of entertainment and I want to entertain EVERY person on the planet. That means 7+ billion people. And I want to be able to reach there in less than 10 years. In 5, I want to reach the whole of India, if not Asia.

We will not be just an events management / live entertainment company, but will have multiple divisions catering to multiple facets of entertainment. This means we could be a movie production company, a TV channel, a content business or something like that. In terms of drawing parallels, we would be like a Marvel or a Disney of today.

And while we do it, we will remain small. Tiny actually. May be we model ourselves on Berkshire Hathaway? May be we dont. That is not clear to me. But the thing that is clear is, that we would be a key player in the business of entertainment in the next 5 years.

And how will I do it?

Now that I am thinking about it, I will establish C4E as an events business. Because despite the limited reach that a corporate events company has, the company will throw the much needed cash back at the business.

We will use that cash to seed other businesses that will reach larger audience. These could be startups, old wine in new bottles, fancy business models and what not. And I will also seed people and partnerships along the way. And with time work hard to make sure that these partnerships blossom as we go along.

Pretty simple! And of course we will make mistakes. Of course we will be wrong as we try. But then what is the point if we dont make mistakes and dont try?

And here’s the thing. Why dont you help us create an awesome business? I am on sg@c4e.in.

The Roadies Generation

This year, the famous MTV series Roadies is in its 9th edition. And it has been bigger, better and more keenly followed than the previous ones. It’s a brilliant concept that I would have loved to work on. If TRPs are to be believed, the producers must have made a killing on their bonuses and the channel must be basking in the amazing ad rates that the show must be commanding. I wouldn’t be surprised if the recent decision by the arch rival Channel V to turn into a GEC was encouraged by its inability to come up with shows as captivating as Roadies.

So the idea of Roadies is that about 10 -12 young men and women are asked to finish a road trip (on a bike) from point A to point B. Along the way, they are supposed to undertake various “tasks” and failure to finish those tasks could result in elimination from the show. The ones that complete the road trip are guaranteed of their shot to fame (contestants from previous editions of roadies have gone on to become successful VJs, anchors, singers, actors etc). If nothing, almost every youth in the country would start recognizing them and the face would become as common as Salman Khan’s. No I dont have the empirical data to support this assertion, just my opinion.

If you live under the rock and haven’t heard about it, you may ask what makes the road trip of 12 kids so interesting. This is where the wizardry of the producers and writers comes on. The show is spiced up by adding lot of glamour, politics, manipulations, surprises, impromptu tasks etc. So to do well on the show, apart from being a good biker, you need to be able to stab your friends in the back, look for your interests over the groups’, excel in the subtle art of bitching and whining, indulge in petty politics, ready to pounce over every tiny opportunity to bend the rules and most importantly, be rude while you are conducting yourself in public or in private.

And since the majority of youth in the country consume this content, the next generation of India is being groomed to accept these as the traits required for success. Gone are the days when hard work, perseverance, resilience, brains and respect were the values that youngsters wanted to imbibe. Now its about overnight success and stardom. And if Roadies is to be believed, the kids on the show are the epitome of someone on the fat road to success. Funny is that Roadies doesn’t really market itself aggressively at all. For some reason, it just attracts youngsters like a magnet. For example, the Roadies page on FB, has 4+ million likes? Do we even have that many Indian users on FB? I really feel sorry for all these 4 million people. They are in for a rude rude shock, as and when they grow up.

I am scared that some day, these kids would actually grow up and yet they would not know an iota about the world around them. It would be a scary day. In fact a few years back when I was a brand planner, I conducted a survey amongst college kids in Mumbai where I was trying to understand who they idolized. As part of the survey I asked them about their favourite young politician. Of the answers I got, a large number said, they loved Rajiv Gandhi. And not because of what he said or what he stood for or the reforms he initiated but because he was cute. Cute. And while analysing I realized, that they meant Rahul Gandhi! Imagine, the person who could very well be one of the future prime ministers of the country, kids in affluent colleges in Mumbai dint even know his name!

I dont blame the kids for not knowing these things. I blame it squarely on content like the Roadies. Ask any kid about the show’s host and anchor and not one would get it incorrect. But ask them about the reason for recent row in the Indian Tennis and I would be surprised if more than 10% know about it. Do a small dipstick. Ask any teenager around you, who is the president of India? And ask them about the Vice President. If more than 20% get the VP correct, I would send in an application to the next edition of the Roadies.

As a stakeholder in the society, I am very wary of the generation that is growing up watching content like this. And the sad part is that Roadies is not the only one. There are countless such television shows that paddle exactly these things, just that they are wrapped into a different garb. Gone are the good old days of Small Wonder, Jungle Book, Dekh Bhai Dekh where each episode, apart from the great entertainment value, taught something really important to the audience.

All said and done, Roadies is a brilliant television property. Ofcourse TV is serious business. About 30000 crores if some numbers are to be believed. But more than just that, the media has some responsibility as well. The fact that TV is almost universal in reach, the platform could be used beautifully to talk and educate the youth about issues where their input could be critical. TV could create abundant resources that our country would eventually need. Only if we could find an alternative to the Roadies generation!