Stages of learning

Last week I got to know a good funda regarding learning any skill. According to this, the learning of any skill happens in four phases -

1. Unconscious Incompetence - In this stage, you are not aware of the fact that you are lacking in a skill.
2. Conscious Incompetence - You progress to this stage when you realize that you lacking in the skill and you need to do something about it. In my opinion, this is the most difficult stage to overcome. Mainly because of inherent laziness to take effort for learning new skills.
3. Conscious Competence - You reach this stage by learning the skill in which you were lacking. This stage is good to be in because you are now aware that the skill is with you.
4. Unconscious Competence - I call this stage "Nirvana". This is the stage in which you are not even aware about a skill, but you are executing the skill with extreme perfection.

Coke Vs Pepsi Spoof Ad war

They are at it again. The spoof ad war between coke and Pepsi has resulted in new set of ads. I don't understand why they do this when their original ads are so brilliant. These companies use their sister brands to fight out their rivalry.

First Pepsi started their campaign with Yougistan Ads featuring SRK, Ranbeer and Deepika.


Coke used their brand Sprite to make spoof of the pepsi ad.


Pepsi decided to retaliate by making spoof of the Thums Up ad featuring AK.

Here is the original ad. (On completely unrelated note, I suspect the car he is driving is Ford Mustang, my favourite.)


And the spoof.

Hutch rocks! Great Ad campaign again!

After coming back to Des, the inevitable thing is to get a cellphone connection. In Mangalore, it is a choice between Airtel or Hutch (oops Vodafone). Both have almost same rates, plans, connectivity and bad customer service. Very little to choose between them.
Bu I have stuck to Hutch (really difficult to call it Vodafone) since the day I came to Mangalore. The attractive thing about it is their logo, ads and overall marketing. The Hutch logo which was orange and black earlier was changed to pink and blue. The Vodafone logo in red and silver looks just as good.
The ads are just amazing. The hutch ads with tag line "Wherever you go, our network follows" were brilliantly portrayed by a kid and a cute dog. The dog follows the kid wherever he goes with background jingle of "You and I in this beautiful world. Raindrops, Sunshine, in this beautiful world!"
This summer they have come up with another theme to advertise their customer service. This time it features a girl and the dog. The dog helps girl in catching fish, finding her socks and running behind her school-bus with her necktie. Beautiful way of showing that they care about their customers. The jingle is composed by someone for vodafone and has great lyrics -
"Everyday I want to fly, stay by my side,
Everyday I want to dream, stay by my side,
Every morning I wish I could just play,
Wish the mornings would just stay!"
Watch the video below and more ads on Vodafone

India is changing???

I guess it is. After coming back to India, I have observed so many things in last 6 months that were unimaginable two years before. Mangalore now has two new malls with many more planned to come up. I imagine shopping in single shop in Saibeen complex for two years. It has Adlabs now, where you can watch new movies on first day of release in AC. I remember watching movies after 6 months of their release in theatres where people used to take their shirts off because of heat. Kolhapur now has big bazaar, subhiksha even a FM channel on radio. There are many things like this but two of them -

Impact of EPL - When i went to Kolhapur last week, a soccer competition was in progress. Soccer was always popular in Kop, with lot of clubs in town and tournaments organized frequently. Some clubs had foreign players coming from countries like Kenya, nigeria. but one prominent thing which I noticed this time is the impact of EPL in the city. The stadium where the tournament was going on had huge hordings of players like Christiano Ronaldo and Steven Gerrard. The spectators were wearing the t-shirts of Manu, Arseanal, Chelsea. This to me was a live example of penetration of global phenomenon into even smallest of cities in India.

Share market - I started trading in shares about 4 years back after completing my first year of job. None of my friends traded shares or even knew anything about it. Most of them preferred to invest money in traditional ways. These days everyone is attracted towards the trading after the rise of sensex last year. There are 4-5 TV channels dedicated to all kinds of trading, even in Hindi. Every newspaper has a separate edition containing business news. The paper stall owner near my house tells that now-a-days editions of Business Standard newspaper get over before others.

I need to make lot of changes to my thinking to be part of this changing India!

New Coke Ad - Jashn Mana Le

Coke has come up with the new theme for their ads this summer. The ads are based on theme Jashn mana Le.

The first ad in this series features Hrithik Roshan showing how a bottle of Coca-Cola transforms every moment into a celebration. It has few young guys and girls looking for food in the night and finding that all shops are closed. Hrithik opens a bottle of coke and everything comes to life with some great food. The background music is catchy and Lyrics are apt. The lyrics are something like this -

गजब की शाम है यारों, मिले है हम मतवाले,

वक्त ये कहा रुकता है, आज हम जशन मना ले!

Certainly reminds me of spicy Anda Bhurji and Coke at Shivajinagar station. With following ads in the series expected to feature aamir khan, I can't wait to see them.

The war of ads between Coke and pepsi has really improved the quality of ads and people enjoy them rather than thinking it as annoying break in the middle of a serial or movie. The Pepsi ads are full of cricket and bollywood stars with Sachin and SRK wooing the people. On the other hand, coke ads are theme based and with some story around it. Their previous ad campaigns Thanda matlab coca-cola and Paanch had become a huge success and certainly would have helped their sales.

Being a loyal Coke fan, watching these brilliant ads with coke in hand is a great joy.

(Image taken from www.mid-day.com)

Cricket with Harsha Bhogale - Ek aur daalega kya?

Congrats to team India for a fabulous victory in Perth test. Rubbishing talks of Australian all pace attack, bouncy pitch and 170 kmph Shaun Tait; they came up with splendid performance to beat a 16 match winning streak. After the Sydney fiasco, this victory will bring joys to Indian cricket fans for sure.

The joy of India winning the match gets doubled when you are watching the match on Star Cricket. They have the best team of commentators and high quality broadcasting. The commentator team consists of great batsmen like Sunil Gavaskar and Ian Chappel; ever young duo of Shaz and Waz; funny characters like Harsha and Gautam.

Gavaskar and Chappel provide you detailed information about every shot offered by batsmen. What is wrong in every shot and how the batsmen should have played it. Both being former test captains, they tell what should be captain's move in every situation. Shaz and Zaz provide the same information about bowling. Harsha and Gautam make sure that you are not bored. If enough action is not happening on field, then they fill in the gap with their remarks and off-field action.

Like today they showed how Ishant Sharma bowled the over in which he got Ponting's wicket. They captured the on-field conversation between Ishant, Kumble and Sehwag. Ishant had bowled 7 overs on traut troubling Ponting almost every ball. When he seemed to finish his spell and gave way to RP, Sehwag comes and tells Kumble that in domestic Ishant bowls long spell. Kumble asks Ishant - "Ek aur daalega kya?". Ishant says yes and they got ponting two balls later. I can see this dialogue becoming headlines of tomorrow's newspapers. Only because these guys noticed it.

The quality of broadcasting this team does makes you feel that you are actually playing the match. Compare it with Neo sports where they skip last ball of the over to squeeze more ads. Wake up BCCI!

(Image from Cricinfo)

Where are you from?

In one of the scenes from last year's hit movie Chak De India, SRK asks the girls in his team to introduce themselves. Everyone come forward and starts saying their names and states they are from. SRK gets angry with this and kicks them out of team. His point is to make everyone feel that they are representing India and he does not care about the state they come from.
I get the same feeling whenever anyone asks me this question. Whenever I join a new team or meet new people, second or third question of my intro is - Where are you from?
In my introduction, I always skip the 'place' part. Because I believe it does not matter if I come from Maharashtra or Kerala. There the only thing which matters is your qualification, skills and experience. This is particularly true at workplace.
India has a diverse social background with different languages and cultures followed in every state. The moment you tell anyone about your place, people start making judgements about you. They have a vague idea about personality of people from a specific region, (This comes mostly from somone they have met from same region) and they start behaving with you based on that. This definitely affects the concept of teamwork and gives rise to groups within a team. This really struck me when I worked in Trivandrum for a month and I am more determined to break my regional mindset.