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One day, while a woodcutter was cutting a branch of a tree above a river,his axe fell into the river.
When he cried out, the Lord appeared and asked, "Why are you crying?"
The woodcutter replied that his axe has fallen into water, and he needed the axe to make his living.
The Lord went down into the water and reappeared with a golden axe. "Is this your axe?" the Lord asked.
The woodcutter replied, "No."
The Lord again went down and came up with a silver Axe. "Is this your axe?" the Lord asked.
Again, the woodcutter replied, "No."
The Lord went down again and came up with an iron Axe. "Is this your axe?"the Lord asked.
The woodcutter replied, "Yes."
The Lord was pleased with the man's honesty and gave him all three axes to keep, and the woodcutter went home happy.
Some time later the woodcutter was walking with his wife along the river bank, and his wife fell into the river. When he cried out, the Lord again appeared and asked him, "Why are you crying?"
"Oh Lord, my wife has fallen into the water!"
The Lord went down into the water and came up with ANGELINA JOLIE "Is this your wife?" the Lord asked.
"Yes," cried the woodcutter.
The Lord was furious. "You lied! That is an untruth!"
The woodcutter replied, "Oh, forgive me, my Lord. It is a misunderstanding. You see,if I had said 'no' to ANGELINA JOLIE , You would have come up with CAMERON DIAZ .Then if I said 'no' to her, you would have come up with my wife. And I would have to go home with all the three...!!!!
The moral of this story : Whenever a man lies, it is for a good and honourable reason, and for the benefit of others.......
A gentle man named Rajiv Sabharwal of a frontline advertising agency (then and even now) told me this story some years back. (Now don’t ask me.... if he was a gentleman, what the hell was he doing in advertising...)
Rajiv was an excellent story teller and I’m not, still I have to tell you this...
The client was an egoist (I bet you knew this..) and an IKE type ....... Rajiv and his team in the Account management/CS , wasn’t too happy with the type of client they had had but had to cling on for want of a better choice...Their Agency in that city had only one major client worth to be called as a client, and so it went on. The agency did a study(almost a life threatening exercise) on the feasibility of the clients produce, which was a ready to eat stuff, mostly vegetarian and traditional. The packaging was archaic, the logo was close to primitive, the mascot belonged to the stone age......
Study ..you ask.......? With so much of clear reason what is there to study?
Advertising is where clear reason has no place according to Rajiv.....and hence the study went on to find out the obvious...to unravel secrets which even the tea boy at the agency knew...to discover insights with which street kids across the agency played....
And the finding... nothing great and everything as expected...the city had grown ,it said and people have all become modern..the garb of tradition and filter coffee mania has disappeared...The young lot has taken over and old things are out.....old images......old culture......old habits... including (sigh!!!)the clients primeval produce...
The client refused to accept it..the agency was vociferous..was argumentative ( for a change..!!) Spat and squabble followed and the client won. As in marriages it is always the other party who has the last laugh finally....
When he cried out, the Lord appeared and asked, "Why are you crying?"
The woodcutter replied that his axe has fallen into water, and he needed the axe to make his living.
The Lord went down into the water and reappeared with a golden axe. "Is this your axe?" the Lord asked.
The woodcutter replied, "No."
The Lord again went down and came up with a silver Axe. "Is this your axe?" the Lord asked.
Again, the woodcutter replied, "No."
The Lord went down again and came up with an iron Axe. "Is this your axe?"the Lord asked.
The woodcutter replied, "Yes."
The Lord was pleased with the man's honesty and gave him all three axes to keep, and the woodcutter went home happy.
Some time later the woodcutter was walking with his wife along the river bank, and his wife fell into the river. When he cried out, the Lord again appeared and asked him, "Why are you crying?"
"Oh Lord, my wife has fallen into the water!"
The Lord went down into the water and came up with ANGELINA JOLIE "Is this your wife?" the Lord asked.
"Yes," cried the woodcutter.
The Lord was furious. "You lied! That is an untruth!"
The woodcutter replied, "Oh, forgive me, my Lord. It is a misunderstanding. You see,if I had said 'no' to ANGELINA JOLIE , You would have come up with CAMERON DIAZ .Then if I said 'no' to her, you would have come up with my wife. And I would have to go home with all the three...!!!!
The moral of this story : Whenever a man lies, it is for a good and honourable reason, and for the benefit of others.......
A gentle man named Rajiv Sabharwal of a frontline advertising agency (then and even now) told me this story some years back. (Now don’t ask me.... if he was a gentleman, what the hell was he doing in advertising...)
Rajiv was an excellent story teller and I’m not, still I have to tell you this...
The client was an egoist (I bet you knew this..) and an IKE type ....... Rajiv and his team in the Account management/CS , wasn’t too happy with the type of client they had had but had to cling on for want of a better choice...Their Agency in that city had only one major client worth to be called as a client, and so it went on. The agency did a study(almost a life threatening exercise) on the feasibility of the clients produce, which was a ready to eat stuff, mostly vegetarian and traditional. The packaging was archaic, the logo was close to primitive, the mascot belonged to the stone age......
Study ..you ask.......? With so much of clear reason what is there to study?
Advertising is where clear reason has no place according to Rajiv.....and hence the study went on to find out the obvious...to unravel secrets which even the tea boy at the agency knew...to discover insights with which street kids across the agency played....
And the finding... nothing great and everything as expected...the city had grown ,it said and people have all become modern..the garb of tradition and filter coffee mania has disappeared...The young lot has taken over and old things are out.....old images......old culture......old habits... including (sigh!!!)the clients primeval produce...
The client refused to accept it..the agency was vociferous..was argumentative ( for a change..!!) Spat and squabble followed and the client won. As in marriages it is always the other party who has the last laugh finally....
The findings were replaced by something new-fangled......since the client and his primordial products couldn’t be touched, and since the agency couldn’t also blame itself for the quandary that they were in, what left was to be blamed was the consumer..it was the paradigm shift in the consumer attitudes that they got to blame...
Every one was happy.....
The client -for his football size..oops..stadium sized ego remaining untouched, even glorified...
The agency- for the extended lease of life, until the next campaign also flops and people still refusing to buy ....
It went on...
Rajiv says ...There was a hanging in the walls of the agency which after this incident he thought was the synonym for the ultimate irony in the business of advertising...
It read so...
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee to ever-widening thought and action......
Rajiv says that the best lesson that the agency learnt (in a hard way of course) was that the client is always right..and when you are wrong admit it..when you are not wrong also admit that you are wrong, and if at all you are right, shut up...
Tail piece:-
Patient: Doctor! You've got to help me! Nobody ever listens to me. No one ever pays any attention to what I have to say.
Doctor: Next please!
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