There are far too many times I see those two words in press releases, or worse still on invites, "Come experience a paradigm change in washing powders" or something like that. And invariably after sitting through the most excrutiatingly boring powerpoint presentation, where you discover the only 'Paradigm' that has changed is the ability of a marketer to come up with insanely long and pointless acronym, and the executive will mumble something about how "ABCXYZ" technology will dramatically alter your world view. But seriously, the only acronym that can dramatically alter your world view in my humble opinion is LSD, everything else is always bullcrap.
And the worse thing is that executives get snappy when you decide to ask them questions and point out that their massive 'paradigm shift' was actually developed by someone else six years ago. Of course, there will be the odd journalist who will pipe in over here with his comments, doing more PR for the company than the company needs, in auto journalism that chap is the quite entertaining Murad-san, who decided to back up RNT's answers at the Nano launch with his own quite unsolicitated comments.
I am not saying the Nano is not a paradigm changer, it is a dramatic change in the way cars are engineered and manufactured. But you see, Tata Motors didn't send out Press Invites advertising it as such. If a company has done something innovative, some of us, who know what the crap we are talking about will realise it, but try to go easy on the superlatives on the invites. Because if I end up attending something at nine in the morning and see a fancy looking copy, I will not be a happy camper.
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2 comments:
Yeah, but the media has gone through a paradigm shift lately too, right? I mean, instead of research and investigate, mostly it is about "if it isn't on google then it isn't true".
So its dozen of one and twelve of the other. Many of us have figured that the media will publish whatever we tell them.
If the media swallows PR b/s, then both sides are equally to blame.
However, I do agree that nine in the morning is simply too drastic a step. Nine am should be banned.
I haven't laughed so much in ages, and I hope you know what I am talking about, and it isn't Murad or Ranojoy and their chicken sandwiches either . . .
Strolled into this site, purely by chance because it seemed to be about Indian media. If it is, and not just about what's happening in an outpost called INX, then, it's certainly worth spending time on.
The truth of the matter is that it's not this site that's being run by "wannabees", journalistic or otherwise, but most of new Indian television. I say new, because, at least, the early entrants had a vision that went beyond "valuation" and self-promotion!
Nowadays, Indian media, particularly what passes for Hindi News, is run by political bag-men (and women, I hasten to add), builders and developers, black marketeers and people with false delusions of grandeur. Take Anurradha Prasad (who's she, you might well ask?) and her brain-child, News24. Other than laying claim to political connections (cleverly, she seems to have covered herself between both the ruling party and the leading Opposition - one by marriage and the other through a sibling connection), what makes her the new (in her own eyes, of course), Queen of Media? Under the pretense of "News is Back", she's parading the same old crap, and that, too, not even in a new bottle. Even her channel's packaging is indistinguishable from the dozens that have preceded her (thankfully) almost invisible entry into the world of Indian media, let alone the content on the channel, which is a mish-mash of "Aaj Tak" and "Star News". The editor (if there is one) seems to have an identity crisis!
To compensate for her complete absence of ability and credibility, Ms. Prasad struts a few has-been, semi-retired media professionals as her front-end management team (if nothing else, it gets the stock exchange to take a temporarily positive view of her company, which is all that she cares about) but, if market gossip is to be believed, emasculates their authority, if they even begin to think of taking their role in the Company seriously. It's all a spy versus spy game designed to make Anurradha Prasad look good and bolster her inherently low self-esteem.
The trick of new Indian television owners is to find either a foreign sucker to buy a stake in the Company (or buy it off entirely) within 12-18 months of launch, before the crap really hits the ceiling and the bottom falls out of their ill-conceived plans. Which is also about the time that the so-called media professionals realize that they have no role to play (beyond either being scapegoats for bad decisions taken by their vision-less owners, or decorative pawns in power-point presentations made to potential investors), and begin to quit.
So, rather than make personal attacks on the likes of Indrani Mukherjea, we would be doing the investing world a favour if we were to investigate what the The Great Indian Television Rope Trick is and how the Great Indian Investing Public (not to mention its foreign counterpart) is being made an absolute fool of.
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