Expect the Unexpected

After a day filled with assignments and classes we were all prepared for a guest lecture by Mr. Vijayakumar Rangaraju, Deputy General Manager - HR at HCL Technologies Limited. He began by saying that it was a refreshing change to meet young and vibrant people like us. We immediately knew that the next one hour was going to be intellectually stimulating as well as amazing fun!

Mr.Vijayakumar is truly the synonym for multi-tasking. We were listening in awe to the list of activities that he was currently pursuing and incredibly they were in different fields including Hypnosis, Handwriting analysis, Skit and play writing, Carbon Trading and finally Politics. The “Hot Seat” challenge he conducted is just an example of the various creative ways he used to deliver the message - “Expect the Unexpected”. The story about three rats was another innovative way to help us understand that we should all be prepared to face varied situations in life.

He went on to discuss the policies followed by HCL - “5 Principles” that represents the core values of the company, the first one being the Mirror – Mirror philosophy. This is about seeing things as they are and not attaching any fringes to them. This will help truly assess and accept ourselves to achieve set goals. The second principle laid stress on trust that employees have on the management and how this trust is created and maintained through Transparency. The third principle was “Destroy the CEO’s Office” which told us that HCL had an open mind regarding feedback about company policies and employees were encouraged to walk to their superiors with any issues they had. This also helped us understand the next concept which was “Inverting the Pyramid”. This once again showed that HCL was an open organization that appreciated communication across all levels.

The last principle was the best one of them all that said “Learn from the child”. He told us in the end that we should all listen to the child in us and think of creative and innovative ways to tackle a problem. These 5 principles gave us an idea about HCL as a company and the environment that exists there. Mr. Vijayakumar concluded the lecture by narrating another insightful story. The moral of this story was that if we stay in our comfort zone, the possibility of us learning or experiencing the many wonders of life is limited.

The one hour we spent with him made us think about the real world and we were extremely honored that he took time off to educate young minds and inspire us to expect the unexpected and move out of our comfort zones. It was a truly exciting and thought – provoking experience!

Contributed by Pavithra Chandrasekaran, Retail Varsity, CBS Batch 4, 2009-10

Quizzing Unlimited at CBS

“Orkut Buyukkoten” (Founder of Orkut); “Skype” developed by two programmers from Estonia, Niklas Zennström & Janus Friis – these are just some of the simple answers that were part of an exciting quiz event- Inquizzition’09- CBS’s own version of an intra quiz competition that got kicked off with a wide range of questions. 6 teams formed based on the prelims conducted within the class, participated in this event.

Amar Vishwanath, the Quiz master for the first edition of Inquizzition ‘09 pumped up adrenalin with his interesting set of questions. A Senior Systems Engineer working at SETLabs- the Research arm of Infosys Technologies, Bangalore, he conducts quizzes across Infosys DC’S and is passionate about quizzing. He is a member of the Quiz Foundation of India and conducts quizzes in colleges under the Karnataka Quiz Foundation.

The Quiz had interesting rounds. The first round was: “Common place things”, and the opening question was an interesting one about CBS itself! This was followed by “Who, Where, What…”, “Masala Mix” and “Bring on the Visuals” (Theme - Indian Advertisements in the 80's and early 90's).

The rounds involved interesting questions that kept us quizzing for more than an hour. The participation from the teams as well as the audience was great. Finally it was Team 2 comprising Ebinezar, Devipriya and Benoy who won. Team 3 represented by Haritha, Sarathy and Gaurav Jain was the runner up. We thoroughly enjoyed the quiz and were already planning the next event! Inquizzition’09 is only the beginning of a great time of quizzing ahead at CBS. A special word of thanks to Sarathy for helping us get Amar to conduct the Quiz and Pranesh for those excellent posters!

Contributed by M. Dhivya, Marcom Varsity, CBS Batch 4, 2009-10

Changing “Times”

It was show time on a Thursday afternoon at CBS! Ms. Anita Gupta, Senior Vice President and Managing Partner, JWT Chennai shared her experience, interesting “behind- the- scene” information and challenges that she and her team faced while handling the recently acquired account “The Times of India” (TOI).

It was all about the launch of TOI in Chennai. The TOI, usually recognized as a typical Mumbai newspaper, was trying to enter Chennai, the stronghold of the Hindu. This was no simple task and came with its set of challenges. Chennai is a very different city from Mumbai. Although Chennai was constantly changing and trying to keep up with time, it always had the legacy of its deep rooted culture, which was imbibed in every citizen of this city…and the newspaper was an important ingredient of this culture. According to her, the main challenge was to make people relate to the TOI- they needed to see it as a part of Chennai and as a newspaper that understood what Chennai was all about.

Drawing from market research surveys and studies, Anita and her team realised that what Chennai needed was a catalyst for change. JWT saw the ever changing and evolving nature of Chennai and decided to use this aspect to launch TOI in Chennai. TOI would be portrayed as the “Symbol of Change”. Once this idea was on the table and approved, there was no looking back for the JWT team.

Starting-off with a teaser campaign carrying the slogan “Next change?”, buildings, taxis, auto rickshaws and buses were covered with newspaper-like design. The campaign included models wrapped in newspaper sari/dresses strutting the streets of Chennai. The point of this teaser campaign was to let Chennai know that TOI was a local newspaper that ushered-in a welcome change. Anita pointed to the success of this powerful visual campaign and soon enough, after the launch of TOI, its competitors were forced to take notice.

To capture the soul of Chennai- the familiar scenes and sights- the team created a film, “A day in the life of Chennai”. The film featured the hit song ‘Nakka Mukka’ and the video portrayed typical scenes of Chennai - crowded buses, temples and, of course, Mount Road. The film electrified the class room and I was no exception to this! We could relate to every scene that the film depicted. The brilliance of this film was not only noticed by the people of Chennai, the world took notice and it struck gold at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival by winning India's first ever Gold Film Lions.

At the end of the session I was indeed awestruck at the creative and advertising brilliance of the campaign. I walked away with a valuable lesson of how hard work and innovative thinking leads you to win gold and a reminder of how much I love my city, Chennai.

Contributed by Varsha Vasudevan, Marcom Varsity, CBS Batch 4, 2009-10