Design Critic #7 & 8

Here comes the final 2 in the lot... Seriously which one are you ;)

~ Satish Chathanath Call : 9884011654 Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Design Critic #5 & 6

~ Satish Chathanath Call : 9884011654 Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Design Critic #3 & 4

The next 2 design critics are here...

~ Satish Chathanath Call : 9884011654 Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Design Critic #1 & 2

According to us, there are 8 types of design critics... presenting the first two today... others are on the way!

~ Satish Chathanath Call : 9884011654 Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Overnight Success in Business

Doodling a business idea for some time now... make sure you are ready for the jump before you actually jump... here is a quick test:

1    1)  You like chaos, challenges and setbacks

2    2)  You like corner place, command and easy cheques

If you have selected 1), I think you should continue reading...

You should be ready to forgo vacations and do more work than a 9-6 job offer. You will be forced to change your role from a strategist to a clerical admin without changing your seat.

And on the softer side if you embrace your start-up with all your time and energy, be ready to miss the hugs and kisses from your home partner.

And on the harder side reality can suck... your sales presentations face repeated rejections and your potential buyers turn you down. Every nerve will be strained and tested as if you need to prove to them that you are still in and want to succeed. You better hang on!

And the toughest part is that you need to do this not just for days or weeks or months... buddy it could be for years... if things work out well... it will be less than 8 years!

Forgive me for yet another motherhood statement: “Achieving 'overnight success in business' takes a few long years!!”

~ Satish Chathanath Call : 9884011654 Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Super Optimist or Stupidest Pessimist

Anyone can be a super optimist. Anyone can be a stupidest pessimist. But the toughest thing to be is just being 'human'! I think people who belong to this mid-category usually come up with creative work that packs more energy than the extreme bloats and hollows of the world. Mark my word, it is pure luck to meet a handful of such remarkable characters before you catch the last bus to heaven!!

~ Satish Chathanath Call : 9884011654 Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Who cuts the oxygen to your Ideas?

Wonder why great ideas are always booed away and shoed away?
Because it creates fear in the minds of people around you - peers and managers! They don't want your idea to challenge their pay cheque or authority or cosy zone.

In most corporates, most of the ideas are rejected for selfish reasons!

~ Satish Chathanath Call : 9884011654 Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Post - The Last Emperor

Today is World Post Day! One of the most visible faces amongst community workers is Post Man! From 1700s - the era of messengers, who travelled large distances on foot or horseback to today’s swank mail vans, they delivered smile, laughter, fun, money and sadness. But now whenever I see the vanishing post boxes or fading postal services, it reminds me of Bernardo Bertolucci’s classic movie – The Last Emperor. Only future will reveal how long post can fight the grand entry of emails and smart phones...  but their stamp of red will never be forgotten!

~ Satish Chathanath Call : 9884011654 Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Public in Public Relations ?

Does your PR agency reach your customers directly? Or do they still depend on the media to communicate your story?

In the US, PR success is measured on this challenging yardstick too. It is still nascent in India! So what do we do to achieve this. Do we have to rework the PR tools? Or change the PR agency ;) Probably, I think, both clients and the PR advisory firms need to change their mindset about PR. And bring 'Public' into Public Relations!

How easy it is to make such motherhood statements and smile at it innocently?!?!?

~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Sales Killers !

What do retailers do when sales killers are their customer’s companions? Some time back when I was shopping with my wife in a tourist location, I played the villain role unintentionally. She was looking around for handicraft show items. After a while I lost interest and almost parked myself near the exit door, occasionally urging her to finish it soon. After a few impatient glares, she decided to drop it altogether and walked out with me.

The poor retailer watched a sure sales scenario tripping into a no-purchase situation. Reason : the companion of the customer. And most often, I assume the culprit is the male gender.

Later that day, I was thinking about this unfortunate scenario. How would retailers engage the companions while the real customers make some serious purchase? Retailers should come up with clever ideas to keep their sales from being killed by the companions of their customers. Retalers, jump in with your ideas!!


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Human body as a billboard !!

Crazy!! Human body is the next target for marketers!

New Zealander James Stewart is taking guerrilla marketing to a new level by selling tattoos as advertising space on his leg in a bid to raise NZ$1m (£384,000).

Stewart, a 24-year-old geology graduate, is promoting a website for local artists and will sell tattoos for NZ$500 per square centimetre.

His left leg offers 2,000 square centimetres of ad space in total and he has already confirmed the first tattoo will be a 10 x 7cm image of a seated fairy on a striped background.



~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Client Presentation

Client Acquisition Presentations? Hours and hours of number crunching, pots of coffee, packs and packs of Gold Flake Kings... you hit a great presentation. Catch some sleep, jet your way to client's place and... And... present it. I really like it if my client, after my 20 minutes gyan, says leave the presentation with him or send him the e-file. In fact I encourage them to use my presentation to present it to their superior bosses.

If the presentation can make them look and feel smart... you have the second line of management backing you as a preferred vendor!!


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Be a contrarian

Creating a meaningful and sustainable brand experience matters to every organization whether it is big or small. But SMEs find it tough to create superior brand awareness and value in today’s cluttered, saturated, and price-driven marketplace.

The best branding approach for SMEs would be to move away from ‘Unique Selling Propositions’ (USPs) to ‘Unique Buying Tribes’ (UBTs). At Aspire Systems, we have successfully formed a unique tribe called ‘Producteers’ - they are not just software developer but specialist product engineers. It has worked remarkably well for us. There are talents from biggies and giants of software industry joining us now.

SMEs should shatter the myth that brand-building is a complex exercise that involves lots of funds. Brands may start out small, but their power and reach is only limited by our goals and creativity. At Aspire Systems, we have rigorously used one brand building tool with consistent results – and that is to be a ‘contrarian’.


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

How cool is 'Cuil'?

Cuil Inc (mouthed 'cool') is the new competition for Google!! Guess who is behind Cuil? Ex-Google specialists!! Who else!!

Promoters claim that Cuil, a new search service, can index, faster and cheaper(read it as 'than Google').

But one thing is for sure... that the time has come and the time is right for a formidable challenger who can really make Google sweat. For the moment let us forget that it is coming from Google's own farm of innovators.

Itching to check how 'cool' is Cuil? Sorry for the intended pun!

Growth or ROIC or Both ?

Often SME companies are caught in the 'growth freeze' zone. For example, a 500 head count company will struggle to hit the next big target of 1000 people. They have to sustain as well grow as well create value for customers as well produce profits for the stakeholders. Big ask!! When you find time, read what Bin Jiang and Timothy Koller of Mckinsey got to say on growth pangs.


Here is the summary of the Mckinsey Article :

'Value-minded executives know that although growth is good, returns on invested capital (ROIC) can be an equally—or still more—important indicator of value creation.1 Yet even executives at the best companies often wrestle with strategic decisions in order to reach the right balance between growth and returns. We repeatedly come across executives whose companies earn high returns on capital but who are unwilling to let those returns decline to encourage faster growth. Conversely, we see executives at companies with low returns working to promote growth instead of improving their ROIC.'

~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

75% Talk & 25% Songs

Recently I got a chance to listen to the entire plethora of FM Stations in Chennai during a long drive. It's unbelievable. Except for a few frills and noise elements, all sounded the same. Same formula. Same themes. Same jokes and satire.

Did a bit of research and found out that currently the ratio of talk to music playing time is 70:30 in most of these channels. This is excluding the ad time.

Probably some newbie should enter in and turn things around its head. Say do 75% talk and 25% songs. At 3:1 ratio! This might take listening and conversing to a different level and hence 'value' differentiation happen.

Any takers for a daring risk like this ?? After all a creative idea is something that scares everything out of you. And it produces an eerie feel of a kick-boxer's pinching punch in the abdomen. This eerie feel transforms into crazy delight once you see the buy in and positive results.

~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Mackay 66

The Mackay 66 is a tool Harvey Mackay,founder, Chairman and CEO of Mackay Envelope Corporation, uses and recommends for gathering information about customers: personal information, business background, special interests, lifestyle, their business needs, and the nature of your relationship with them.

His approach to using this information is both practical and ethical: it is not used to deceive customers into thinking we care about them more than we do, but rather to allow us to treat them like we would want to, if only our brains could handle the information.

You could download his famous 66 questions from his website : http://www.harveymackay.com/tools/mackay66.cfm