Old wines, in same old cups...

A tourist walks into a pet shop in at cyberabad, and is browsing around the cages on display.

While he's there, another customer walks in and says to the shopkeeper, "I'll have a C monkey, please".

The shopkeeper nods, goes over to a cage at the side of the shop and takes out a monkey.

He fits a collar and leash and hands it to the customer, saying "That'll be Rs.15,000". The customer pays and walks out with his monkey.

Startled, the tourist goes over to the shopkeeper and says, "That was a very expensive monkey, most of them are only a few hundred rupees . Why did this one cost so much?"

"Oh", says the shopkeeper, "that monkey can program in C with very fast, tight code, no bugs, well worth the money."

The tourist starts to look at the monkeys in the cage.

He says to the shop keeper, "That one's even more expensive, 30,000Rs! What does it do?"

"Oh", says the shopkeeper, "that one's a C++ monkey; it can manage object-oriented programming, Visual C++, even some Java, all the really useful stuff."

The tourist looks round for a little longer and sees a third monkey in a cage on its own. The price tag round its neck says 75,000 permonth. He gasps to the shop keeper, "That one costs more than all the others put together! What on earth does it do?"

"Well," says the shopkeeper, "I don't know if it actually does anything, but says it's a strategy expert."
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My friend Anurag,(name -changed for obvious reasons)still works in advertising, in an ad agency as a senior clients servicing guy...he brands most of the ad guys as parasites...and blood sucking leeches.. again for obvious reasons.

He told about a strategy session they recently had with the client... with creatives, account planners( most of them strategy gurus or knowledge banks by their own declaration), and poor client servicing things.

The inhouse meeting discussed ,what they are going to do for the client one hour before the client team came down to the agency.

wife A and wife B-- the creatives explained-- are newly wed and happy..

wife B has a worry and that should show in her face.. her green washing powder( refering to the competetor) is horrible and cant wash her hubby's white shirts white.. while wife A ,makes her hubby happy with astonishingly white clothes..

You guessed the rest of the story..? no prizes ....it is any fools guess..and so was anurag's..

Butexcuse me sir.. he interrupted the narrator.. it sounds so familiar.. and so formulaic..

You dont understand the strategy .... said the strategy guru in the crowd..

ya ,i dont ...said anurag.. can u explain..??

The creative- strategy guys combine unleashed jargons, and my man was a poor client service guy,, a lesser mortal..

The same show repeated before the client and the client accepted it based on the assurances that it is "strategy"...

the ad's failed... anurag told me...maybebecause the target audience (house wives mainly) didnt know the "strategy" and they neednt know.

simple....

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foot note:Now that marketing strategy is such that, outside the packaging might be just beautiful and inside it might be just nothing!