I've decided that i'll have quality control on my blog ... so I'll self rate them Good, Bad,Ugly right upfront so if ur looking for good articles u wont waste time.. but since ive put the effort in writing them, ill publish them anyway...
Todays article is in the Ugly section (yeah Spunky/Nayak - bring on the puns on me being ugly..)
Anyways... here goes!
Its an old joke.. told by everyone in P&G as if it happened to them... and considering its not very funny - wonder why..
Q: What is your proffession?
A: I work for P&G in marketing (no guys.. this is not the joke!)
Q: Oh that s0unds cool! So what exactly do you do?
A: Well, umm.. thats a little tough - i do brand management..
Q: Ohh - so u make advertising?
A: Not really - the agency does that..
Q: So you must be selling the product to traders?
A: Umm no.. but i have a team of people who do that - and I lead the team..
Q: ohh - that is awesome.. so u have ppl working under you..
A: Nope..not for another 4 years!
And by this time, the P&G persons considered quitting the job...
Fine, I know the joke was lame, but makes the point..thats exactly what the work is about :)
Its always a crazy see-saw between you believing that selling Shampoo is just better than saving lives to absolute disillusionment at selling 'liquid soap' in a bottle.. and the best part is, the entire cycle happens at least once a day...
There are times when you cant help but look around and marvel at amount of passion and energy that an entire floor of people put into selling Shampoo, each believing to the core of his heart that his brand and product was what can improve a consumers life.. Its like they own the brand, and every buck they make goes into thier product.. And at the most disillusioned times it is bound to hit you - a) U dont own the business and b) U are selling liquid soap to some unseen face in some country that u dont really care about...
To be fair to the other side.. u need to go to a country like thailand where a woman spends 30% of her family income on her looks and then suddenly you start believing in the power of the liquid soap .. how a good hair day can improve productivity and confidence significantly.. and how people know beautycare products that make this difference vs. thers othats dont.. For e.g. in haircare.. the biggest driver to purchase is 'Makes me feel confident'.. and so once in a while one has to admit, the business of selling 'hope' to people isnt that bad (and sounds better than shampoo) - and if you stretch it a little bit one could say that I truly make a difference to their lives... 'Improving lives' ;)
But thats just one discussion angle on the futility of my job.. there are others.. like the fact that Im a strategiser.. not an executer.. at the most executional level, I send visuals of how things look to counterparts and they execute things instore, and while this 'macro strategic thinking' makes me feel like a mini-ceo in the making, it unfortunately means that there is absolutely no understanding of how things work on the ground when u arent looking at XL sheets and PDF documents (note how ive upgraded to pdfs and not Word docs ;)
Anyway - the stream of futility continues with this blog.. he he .. hope u dont regret reading this already ;)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
am so disillusioned. being half a Proctoid, i thought i was contributing atleast a bit to 'improving lives'. maybe i should get back to being just a banker
So after 20 months of being with P&G my dad asked me yday, so what exactly do you do! I got into this loop again trying more to explain to myself rather than him.. and i realised i was the namesake for this blog, ConfusedRambler!!
proctoids???? thts what they're called - ewwwwwwwwww!!!!!
and mr. blogger, profession is spelt with a single 'f' :P
and btw, its not whether you sell hope or soap, its about how much you give it of yourself that makes the difference, to your life, and to others' - exhibit A: Shankar who you are inspired to wonder and write about mebbe?
p.s: pre-emptimg the ugly joke, such a sad tactic :P
abbey oye! philosophical fundae mat maaro :p
For starters, you can credit me for convincing you that selling shampoo is pointless!
And by "strategizing" you mean, ‘taking a call’ on whether the shampoo should smell like jasmine which the tam bram woman would prefer or taste like chrysanthemum which the brain dead bong would prefer with a cup of ill cooked bhaja?
hehehe - bleddy icy - making fun of me eh?
Post a Comment