PRIME CRIME IN THE MAKING.....

The vagabond scrounges for meaning under the haze of neon lights, the well-worn furrows on his face primed and stark for the next battle of survival. The halogen swirls in a surreal, dank dream.

The shadows of a murky Mumbai lose themselves in the alleys and the brooding darkness doesn’t let you see what lies a few feet ahead. And Aamir Khan in Talaash prods and pokes at the fringes, digging out the unpretty side and thrusting it into popular mainstream consciousness.

Talaash, while executing the clichés of the film noir tradition, has a righteous cop questioning not only his own beliefs and shortcomings, but also peeling the humane layers behind the complexity of crime. If he had not been more discerning of his choices in saving his child, he had no authority to rail at the hardball choices of others borne out of their lesser privileged circumstances in life or their lack of ability. And therein lies the struggle to accept his flaw with theirs. Coming as it does after Kahaani, the other film that stripped the genteel veneer of an intellectual Kolkata, disembowelling its bugs and beasts, the underbelly is not only dominating our films but percolating to the popular drawing room space of television.

Weekend prime time bands, so far confined to the Karan Johar-isation of a relaxed mindspace, are now beginning to revel in gore and grime. And the fact that it made it to the `100 crore club and crime shows are scaling the ratings graph, it seems that the city underbelly has indeed become what NYU Professor Aurora Wallace recently likened to macaroni and cheese, the new “comfort food of television”. Or as filmmaker Anurag Kashyap puts it succinctly, “Throw away the warm duvet. Take off the skin and see the turmoil of emotions beneath, the tangle of messy heads and unfulfilled expectations that we so wish to hide under the carpet. Look at the failures because of our egoistical pursuits, our indulgence of the ugly.”

THE REASON
What is with this obsession with the macabre, this almost self-crucifixion of sorts on popular space and not some rap-venting at an alternative music concert? Sociologically speaking, the myth of the big city shimmering as a backdrop has ceased to represent highs in a globalised world. The idealistic struggle to chase rainbows has finally taken its toll, extracted too steep a price and left one wounded. Some have made it in the big city, others have reconciled to their migrant lot while yet others have been defeated and condemned to the hook or crook means to an end. The tussle for a new India has divided the self, exploited it and fuelled a bestial resurrection against odds. The moral fabric is frayed and flawed.

There is no room for oscillating between extremes, city life has perched itself on binary axes of neo-excellence and decay. These ideas have informed popular literature from time to time and have now invaded the mainstream. The abnormal and misbegotten, the chawls around the high class districts of Mumbai, the labyrinthine coldness of a Bob Biswas in Kahaani, the horrid stories of a deformed mind on Crime Patrol are all metaphors for a Mr Hyde co-existing on the same plane as the gentlemanly Dr Jekyll. Evil, too, has a next door neighbourly face, living a smooth life off it.

This acceptance of the war within society to push the city’s limits to the maximum has finally spilled over its popular tools of expression, films and TV. Celebrity chef Vikas Khanna, who has journeyed from a village in Punjab to setting up the Junoon restaurant in New York, has himself wrestled with the warts of a big city alongside his two club feet. “I believe the best expression comes from suppression. Take the literature and art of post-War Europe to understand the depths of the human condition, the cynicism, the desperation and the will to tide it along. For far too long we have lived in brackets. Finally, the time has come to break those barriers... this is happening in films, TV and even food. Street food and community platters are even making it to the high end eateries.”

Kahaani story writer Advaita Kala talks of the counterfoil approach. Says she, “The whole noir tradition got some attention in literature and has moved to film, which is an often noted transition. I think the audience is over being feted by stylised sets. I think the nineties and the representation of a ‘photo shopped’ India was a possible reaction to the socialist India of the recent past and the visual drabness of it. I think we are now in a space where we can deal with the reality of our cities. I think human psychology has a tendency to veer towards the macabre, it’s what makes us slow down while passing a vehicular accident on the road. Curiosity for the macabre, the forbidden. When done well, it can be art and even entertaining.”

Explaining the underbelly premise further, she adds, “Crime has always been a popular subject in films. I think there is a certain cleverness that is needed when plotting a good crime thriller, staying one step ahead of the audience, unlike a romantic film, in which you carry your viewer with you on an emotional wave.” Perhaps it is this cleverness which has been permeating the urbanscape as an edgy subculture that has come to the forefront. The raw, deviant and the manipulative mind is finally out. As Kashyap said before the release of Gangs of Wasseypur, “I didn’t glamorise crime or criminals as an exotic indulgence of the upper class vision of how the underbelly is, I present crime from a human level, making the viewer himself analyse the real outcome of crime. I present reality and make you think on the subject.”

THE BUSINESS
Not only that, the urban underbelly is becoming quite the grosser. While filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee moved from tugging at the subliminal in Oye Lucky Lucky Oye to the gruesome excesses of Love Sex Aur Dhokha and an upturned middle India in Shanghai, all at a profit. Kahaani and Talaash made it to the crore club. Vishal Bhardwaj took Shakespeare to heartland India in Omkara while Anurag Kashyap took Wasseypur’s eccentricities and grammar to Cannes.

Distributors now say that what was once a niche business in multiplexes — these making about 0.06 per cent of the 12,000 screens in the country — is contributing 38 to 40 per cent of box office revenues.

And if films have showed the way, television has completely broken new ground. Sony TV experimented with urban crimes in a docu-drama format over the largely unclaimed entertainment band of the weekend. Its CID continues to run in its 15th year and notched up a TRP of three till the last TAM reports came in. The newsy Crime Patrol notched up 2.7 points and Adalaat 1.7. Vipul D Shah, the producer of Crime Patrol, says: “When we started the show, our focus was on humanising the news around us. Drama and entertainment has to be part of anything on small screen, so we cashed in on the emotional and human aspects. We concentrated on storytelling and the TRPs shot up. Reality always had a recall value.”

Sony’s pioneering move was followed by rival channels across age groups, each show notching up ratings decent enough to sustain itself. Zee’s Fear Files, treading the unexplained and spiritualism a la Talaash, scooped up 3.6 points, while Savdhaan India on Life OK and Shaitaan on Colors inched closer to the analysis of the criminal mind. “It’s been the year of clones. Our commitment to creating original, differentiated content over weekends has spawned an entire range of such shows across channels.

We take imitation as a form of flattery and try to stay ahead with our commitment to characters, originality and quality,” says Vivek Bahl, chief creative director, Sony. The youth Channel V broke complete format with Gumraah, probing how urban youth are grossly waylaid by their own twisted beliefs. “We are not just retelling the crime, we go into the psychology of it. Maybe this show helps them talk about issues which would have already been swept under the carpet. We are building awareness in that sense,” says Prem Kamath of Channel V.

Suffice it to say that serious production houses, with entire teams dedicated to research and choosing cases juicy enough to be told in the drama format, often cannot put a finger on what works in this novella-like approach. For some, it’s the conflict of the good and the bad, the thrill of who will be the greater kill and the resolution — all elements of great drama and storytelling. For others, there is a sort of finality in a case closed under an hour compared to the much awaited justice in the real world.

Most though find the characters fascinating. They wonder why people like them or even those well placed in life are driven to heinous crimes and murder. “Everybody wonders why an average clerk would kill his wife and keep her body in the freezer, why would somebody poison his own children, why would the moneyed be perverse in his excesses, why a teen rapes an old woman or an old man abuses a child. Often it’s more about the possibility of flawed relationships in a society that’s tensile strength is being challenged by constantly changing circumstance, be they social, economical, cultural or political,” says a creative head.

Shows make a connect only because they focus on the emotional impact on victims and relatives. It’s more about the jealousies, the disappointments, the alienation of people and the hitback born out of these insecurities. In a way the belly-up approach essentially means coming to terms. And that, as some creatives say, is cathartic. Apparently a leading broadcaster is already making plans to launch the country’s first crime-only channel along the lines of Fox Crime and has approached filmmakers Kashyap, Banerjee and Nishikant Kamath to make pilots. Anil Kapoor is taking on the terror threat in our cities in the Indian adaptation of the hit series 24.

THE RECONCILIATION
There is a moral debate raging on the ethics of bombarding TV with violent imagery, particularly at a time when news television is flooding the same in our minds day in and day out. “I do not think the growing crime spiral in our society is responsible for these shows or raking up the underbelly is atavistic or altruistic. If not anything, it opens up our mind to triggers that could explode anytime. What we are doing is building a sensitivity index. Our show is not premised on the bad or its horrific dimension, it is about how the usual can morph into anything. It’s about understanding, not moralising,” says Shah.

If at all we are raising the ethical question, it has to be that as a viewer we are most often lulled into believing that violent crimes are for a certain class, a certain mindset, a vicarious pleasure in the fact that while we peep into lives of others, that life can never touch us. Popular media is just shaking us out of this misplaced idea and projecting the criminal mindset as lurking everywhere. As a creative says, “Keeping the blinkers on isn’t fair or ethical either.”

Kala, nevertheless, talks about the need for caution, “Drama is an integral aspect of storytelling, nobody wants to read an accident report or a FIR. One has to populate it, dare I say manipulate it or use the convenient ‘creative licence’ to engage the viewer. But it can’t be ridiculous, and it often is.” The need for a creative balance is further highlighted by the fact that, as Kala says, “nobody is writing good crime thrillers. And there is enough crime in our everyday lives unfortunately, we are not easily surprised anymore by excesses.” The oddball mind is the new superhero, a product of its time, engaging and entertaining in equal measure. Kala should know.

Vidya Balan may have avenged her loss with the help of clerical cops in Kahaani but it is the potbellied, mulish Bob Biswas with an outdated gun and a menacing push, whom advertisers are lapping up. He may be making his money as a hired assassin but he also owns real estate and could be your next landlord or neighbour. Hey, he is now online too.

Bigg Boss 5 - Launched with Bashing Duo, Sanjay & Salman

By M H Ahssan

Actor Sanjay Dutt, who makes his debut on televison as the host for the fifth season of reality show Bigg Boss, says he was nervous initially but co-anchor and friend Salman Khan built his confidence.

The Bollywood celebrities made a splashing entry at a promotional event here last night, where they played anchors and questioned each other on various things including Khan's recent surgery and talk of an alleged tiff between the star-duo sometime back.

"As an anchor I enjoyed and liked it. I got confidence from Salman. Since this is the first time I am hosting a show so there was nervousness backstage. I was nervous but when we came on stage and Salman started the act and then I became comfortable....and we went with the flow," Sanjay said.

Both Salman and Sanjay have worked together in films like Saajan and Chal Mere Bhai, and share a great friendship.

Sanjay says he considers Salman like his younger brother. "We share a great chemistry, there is a great bond and friendship so all this is fun to do," he said.

Salman, who is hosting the show for the second time, won't be there for few episodes. When asked Sanjay how will he manage the show alone, he said, "I will call up Salman and take his help...we will be in touch. And I have seen the previous season as well."

Sanjay even asked for suggestions on how he should present himself on the show. The response was to perform his famous 'Munnabhai' act and do 'Gandhigiri', considering that the show starts from October 2. The show will be aired from Monday to Friday at 10.30 pm and on weekends at 10 pm on Colors channel.

The fifth season of TV reality show Bigg Boss promises to get bigger and better with two star hosts - Salman and Sanjay - who will be welcoming 14 new inmates including probables like boxer Mike Tyson and pop singer Shakira.

The show sees celebrity contestants stay in a house for about three months, cut off from the outside world. They are overseen by a "mysterious person" known as Bigg Boss.

This time, the location of Bigg Boss house has been shifted to Karjat from Lonavala. Interior designer Shayam Bhatia has designed the 9,000 square feet house.

This year there are two separate bedrooms as against the single bedroom last time where all 14 housemates stayed. The bedrooms have been done in shades of green and fuchsia with a hint of white, brown and yellow. The confession room varies with a shade of royal green and the jail concept is back and black.

The beautifully designed open kitchen is connected to a dining room that extends to the garden area. The outdoor spot consists of a pool, the activity area, gymnasium and the kitchen sink.

This season there will be over 55 cameras following every move of the contestants 24x7. Like last year there will be a special bedroom for the Head-of-House who will get special privileges.

Also, the show will also see two hosts for the first time --Bollywood stars Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt. Salman, who hosted the fourth season, is the only celebrity who will be repeating the feat for the second time.

Fourteen handpicked strangers, locked in the house for about three months will have to perform all the household chores right from cleaning to cooking to tasks.

The names that are doing the rounds include - former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson, Colombian singer and dancer Shakira, former cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu, Nihita Biswas (wife of convicted murderer Charles Sobhraj) Mexican actress Barbara Mori, former South African cricketer Jonty Rhodes, British singer-rapper Jay Sean, stand-up comedian Sudesh Lehri, Jaspal Bhatti, Shekhar Suman's actor son Adhyayan, TV actors Parul Chauhan (of 'Bidaai' fame), Karan Singh Grover (of 'Dil Mill Gayye') and Amar Upadhyay.

However, the names of the housemates will be out soon as the reality show is set to hit the small screen on October 2 on Colors channel.

"I feel this is the best time to do TV. Earlier I was little afraid to do it. When I went as a guest on Salman's show Dus Ka Dum he had told me that I must host a show. And if there is a good opportunity then he will ensure I do it. It is Salman who told me about Bigg Boss and that is how I came on board," Sanjay said.

Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA)

Divergent thinking, creativity and an out-of-the-box solutions approach

“Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad as an entity wishes to distinguish itself firmly as a Communications Management School, differentiated by creativity, divergent thinking and out-of-the-box solutions approach,” says Professor Ashok Ranchhod. He adds, “We wish to be identified as the best C-School (Creative School), globally.”

Students are exposed to core courses in their first year to develop a general management perspective. The second year they need to specialise in any of the four broad themes: Brand Management, Marketing Research, Advertising Research and Media management. Course work also comprises rural research projects, understanding communication in the urban context, corporate venturing and entrepreneurship.

Factors that point towards an effort to build up a good resaerch base include steady tie-ups with good institutions in the UK (Southampton Solent), USA (Southern Methodist and Georgia), and Singapore (Nanyang), encouraging faculty members and students to engage in writing research papers, and the introduction of a PhD programme this year.

While the library, better known as KEIC (Knowledge Exchange and Information Centre) is resourceful especially in media & communications, market research, brand management and advertising, one wonders why they are not as aggressive on publishing. KEIC, open 24 hours a day, houses the best online resources, be it the databases of the World Advertising Research Centre, TV commercials, Luerzer’s Archive or Euromonitor Intelligence.

Post tea at Micafé, Vivek Shah, a final year student, takes us on a tour of the campus. First, MICORE (the research division) and then the entrepreneurship cell. We walk through Chhota, the 24-hour canteen, the only smoking zone in the campus and then reach the hostel Silveroak, meant for exchange students and entrepreneurship cell scholars, which has rooms little better than the twin-sharing rooms in other hostels. Other MICA centres of excellence consist of Management Development (MDC) and Development Communications (CDC).

The gym and football field spring to life post 5 p.m. And you have post-dinner meets to discuss projects etc.

MICA Radio also focuses on issues relevant to residents of the neighbourhood, and has MICAns generating their own content and music. Another eye-catching feature is the not-so-well lit gallery where students showcase their intellect and creativity.

Professor A F Matthew, who has an interest in Development Communication, is literally a campus USP. His lecturing-style includes screening films. Jyoti Sudhir, Communications Manager, MICA quips, “It’s a myth that MICA is only for those who wish to pursue careers in media and advertising. It also offers courses in market research, retail, creative communication and more.”

FAST FACTS

Location: Shela, Ahmedabad
Director: Prof. Ashok Ranchhod
Flagship programme: PGDM (Communications)
Approval/ Accreditation: AICTE approved
Student intake: 120 Fees (full course): Rs. 500,000
Board & lodging (two years): Rs. 75,000
Admission test cut-offs: CAT- 89.5, GMAT - 600
Full-time faculty: 25 (Senior Professor & Professors - 11; Associate & Asst Professors - 7; Faculty Associates - 7)
Faculty with industry experience (over 10 years): 8 Student placements: 100% Average salary: Rs. 7.50 lakhs
Top recruiters: JWT, L’Oreal India, Media E2E, NDTV, Ogilvy and Mather
Conferences: Chutnefying English- International conference on Hinglish
Student Activities: MICANVAS (annual brand management event), Sankalp (in-house theatre society), SPICMACAY, MICA Lecture Series (MLS), Black Coffee (in-house magazine)
Other programmes: PG Programmes in Retail Communications Management, Crafting, Creative Communications Executive PG Diploma Programmes in Management (Communications) Fellowship Programme in Management
Web site: www.mica-india.net

Impact of Celebrity Endorsement on a Brand

By Saurabh Katyal

The motif behind total branding may be decocted as an attempt to amalgamate diverse activities to win customer preference. Apropos to this context, the topic “Impact of celebrity endorsement on overall brand”, is a significant one. The crescendo of celebrities endorsing brands has been steadily increasing over the past years. Marketers overtly acknowledge the power of celebrities in influencing consumer-purchasing decisions. It is a ubiquitously accepted fact that celebrity endorsement can bestow special attributes upon a product that it may have lacked otherwise. But everything is not hunky-dory; celebrities are after all mere mortals made of flesh and blood like us. If a celebrity can aggrandize the merits of a brand, he or she can also exacerbate the image of a brand.

If I may take the liberty of rephrasing Aristotle’s quote on anger, “Any brand can get a celebrity. That is easy. But getting a celebrity consistent with the right brand, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way... that is not easy.”

Celebrity endorsements are impelled by virtue of the following motives:

• Instant Brand Awareness and Recall.
• Celebrity values define, and refresh the brand image.
• Celebrities add new dimensions to the brand image.
• Instant credibility or aspiration PR coverage.
• Lack of ideas.
• Convincing clients.

The scope of a celebrity on the incumbent brand:

Simply stating, a brand is a differentiated product and helps in identifying your product and making it stand out due to its name, design, style, symbol, color combination, or usually a mix of all these.

Before we can scrutinize the effects of celebrity endorsement on the overall brand, we have to ferret the implicit nuances that act as sources of strong brand images or values:

• Experience of use: This encapsulates familiarity and proven reliability.
• User associations: Brands acquire images from the type of people who are seen using them. Images of prestige or success are imbibed when brands are associated with glamorous personalities.
• Belief in efficiency: Ranking from consumer associations, newspaper editorials etc.
• Brand appearance: Design of brand offers clues to quality and affects preferences.
• Manufacturer’s name & reputation: A prominent brand name (Sony,Kellogg’s,Bajaj,Tata) transfers positive associations

The celebrity’s role is the most explicit and profound in incarnating user associations among the above-mentioned points. To comprehend this, let us analyze the multiplier effect formula for a successful brand:

S=P* D*AV --the multiplier effect
Where S is a successful brand,
P is an effective product.
D is Distinctive Identity
and AV is Added values.

The realm of the celebrity’s impact is confined to bestow a distinctive identity and provide AV to the brand; the celebrity does not have the power to improve or debilitate the efficiency and features of the core product. Thus, we are gradually approaching an evident proposition claiming,

“The health of a brand can definitely be improved up to some extent by celebrity endorsement. But one has to remember that endorsing a celebrity is a means to an end and not an end in itself.”

An appropriately used celebrity can prove to be a massively powerful tool that magnifies the effects of a campaign. But the aura of cautiousness should always be there. The fact to be emphasised is that celebrities alone do not guarantee success, as consumers nowadays understand advertising. They know what advertising is and how it works. People realize that celebrities are being paid a lot of money for  endorsements and this knowledge makes them cynical about celebrity endorsements.

Compatibility of the celebrity’s persona with the overall brand image
A celebrity is used to impart credibility and aspirational values to a brand, but the celebrity needs to match the product. A good brand campaign idea and an intrinsic link between the celebrity and the message are musts for a successful campaign. Celebrities are no doubt good at generating attention, recall and positive attitudes towards advertising provided that they are supporting a good idea and there is an explicit fit between them and the brand. On the other hand, they are rendered useless when it comes to the actual efficiency of the core product, creating positive attitudes to brands, purchase intentions and actual sales.

Certain parameters that postulate compatibility between the celebrity and brand image are:

• Celebrity’s fit with the brand image.
• Celebrity—Target audience match
• Celebrity associated values.
• Costs of acquiring the celebrity.
• Celebrity—Product match.
• Celebrity controversy risk.
• Celebrity popularity.
• Celebrity availability.
• Celebrity physical attractiveness.
• Celebrity credibility.
• Celebrity prior endorsements.
• Whether celebrity is a brand user.
• Celebrity profession.

Successful celebrity endorsements for a brand- An Indian perspective
The latter part of the '80s saw the burgeoning of a new trend in India– brands started being endorsed by celebrities. Hindi film and TV stars as well as sportspersons were roped in to endorse prominent brands. Advertisements, featuring stars like Tabassum (Prestige pressure cookers), Jalal Agha (Pan Parag), Kapil Dev (Palmolive Shaving Cream) and Sunil Gavaskar (Dinesh Suitings) became common. Probably, the first ad to cash in on star power in a strategic, long-term, mission statement kind of way was Lux soap. This brand has, perhaps as a result of this, been among the top three in the country for much of its lifetime.

In recent times, we had the Shah Rukh-Santro campaign with the objective of mitigating the impediment that an unknown Korean brand faced in the Indian market. The objective was to garner faster brand recognition, association and emotional unity with the target group. Star power in India can be gauged by the successful endorsement done by Sharukh for three honchos- Pepsi, Clinic All Clear and Santro. Similarly, when S Kumars used Hrithik Roshan, then the hottest advertising icon for their launch advertising for Tamarind, they reckoned they spent 40 - 50 per cent less on media due to the sheer impact of using Hrithik. Ad recall was as high as 70 per cent, and even the normally conservative trade got interested.

In the Indian context, it would not be presumptuous to state that celebrity endorsements can aggrandize the overall brand. We have numerous examples exemplifying this claim. A standard example here is Coke, which, till recently, didn't use stars at all internationally. In fact, India was a first for them. The result was a ubiquitously appealing Aamir cheekily stating Thanda matlab Coca Cola. The recall value for Nakshatra advertising is only due to the sensuous Aishwarya. The Parker pen brand, which by itself commands equity, used Amitabh Bachchan to revitalize the brand in India. According to Pooja Jain, Director, Luxor Writing Instruments Ltd (LWIL), post Bachchan, Parker's sales have increased by about 30 per cent.

India is one country, which has always idolized the stars of the celluloid world.
Therefore it makes tremendous sense for a brand to procure a celebrity for its endorsement. In India there is an exponential potential for a celebrity endorsement to be perceived as genuinely relevant, thereby motivating consumers to go in for the product. This would especially prove true if the endorser and the category are a natural lifestyle fit like sportspersons and footwear, Kapil-Sachin and Boost or film stars and beauty products.

Some Global Examples
Globally, firms have been juxtaposing their brands and themselves with celebrity endorsers. Some successful ongoing global endorsements are as follows:

• Celebrity endorsements have been the bedrock of Pepsi's advertising. Over the years, Pepsi has used and continues to use a number of celebrities for general market and targeted advertising, including Shaquille O'Neal, Mary J. Blige, Wyclef Jean, and Busta Rhymes, who did a targeted campaign for their Mountain Dew product.
• George Foreman for Meineke. He has also sold more than 10 million Lean Mean Fat-- Reducing Grilling Machines since signing with the manufacturing company.
• James Earl Jones for Verizon and CNN.
• Nike golf balls, since the company signed Tiger Woods in 1996, have seen a $50 million revenue growth. Nike's golf line grossed more than $250 million in annual sales. In 2000 he renegotiated a five-year contract estimated at $125 million.
• Other successful endorsements like Nike—Michael Jordan, Dunlop—John McEnroe, Adidas—Prince Naseem Hamed, and so on.
• Venus Williams, tennis player and Wimbledon champion has signed a five-year $40 million contract with sportswear manufacturer Reebok International Inc.

Advantages of a celebrity endorsing a Brand
Brands have been leveraging celebrity appeal for a long time. Across categories, whether in products or services, more and more brands are banking on the mass appeal of celebrities. As soon as a new face ascends the popularity charts, advertisers queue up to have it splashed all over. Witness the spectacular rise of Sania Mirza and Irfan Pathan in endorsements in a matter of a few months. The accruement of celebrity endorsements can be justified by the following advantages that are bestowed on the overall brand:

• Establishment of Credibility: Approval of a brand by a star fosters a sense of trust for that brand among the target audience- this is especially true in case of new products. We had the Shah Rukh-Santro campaign. At launch, Shah Rukh Khan endorsed Santro and this ensured that brand awareness was created in a market, which did not even know the brand.
• Ensured Attention: Celebrities ensure attention of the target group by breaking the clutter of advertisements and making the ad and the brand more noticeable.
• PR coverage : is another reason for using celebrities. Managers perceive celebrities as topical, which create high PR coverage. A good example of integrated celebrity campaigns is one of the World’s leading pop groups, the Spice Girls, who have not only appeared in advertisements for Pepsi, but also in product launching and PR events. Indeed, celebrity-company marriages are covered by most media from television to newspapers (e.g. The Spice Girls and Pepsi)
• Higher degree of recall: People tend to commensurate the personalities of the celebrity with the brand thereby increasing the recall value. Golf champion Tiger Woods has endorsed American Express, Rolex, and Nike. Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones is used by T-Mobile and Elizabeth Arden. 007 Pierce Brosnan promotes Omega, BMW, and Noreico.
• Associative Benefit: A celebrity’s preference for a brand gives out a persuasive message - because the celebrity is benefiting from the brand, the consumer will also benefit.
• Mitigating a tarnished image: Cadbury India wanted to restore the consumer's confidence in its chocolate brands following the high-pitch worms controversy; so the company appointed Amitabh Bachchan for the job. Last year, when the even more controversial pesticide issue shook up Coca-Cola and PepsiCo and resulted in much negative press, both soft drink majors put out high-profile damage control ad films featuring their best and most expensive celebrities. While Aamir Khan led the Coke fightback as an ingenious and fastidious Bengali who finally gets convinced of the product's `purity,' PepsiCo brought Shah Rukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar together once again in a television commercial which drew references to the `safety' of the product indirectly.
• Psychographic Connect: Celebrities are loved and adored by their fans and advertisers use stars to capitalise on these feelings to sway the fans towards their brand.
• Demographic Connect: Different stars appeal differently to various demographic segments (age, gender, class, geography etc.).
• Mass Appeal: Some stars have a universal appeal and therefore prove to be a good bet to generate interest among the masses.
• Rejuvenating a stagnant brand: With the objective of infusing fresh life into the stagnant chyawanprash category and staving off competition from various brands, Dabur India roped in Bachchan for an estimated Rs 8 crore.
• Celebrity endorsement can sometimes compensate for lack of innovative ideas.

Disadvantages of a celebrity endorsing a brand:
The celebrity approach has a few serious risks:

1. The reputation of the celebrity may derogate after he/she has endorsed the product: Pepsi Cola's suffered with three tarnished celebrities - Mike Tyson, Madonna, and Michael Jackson. Since the behaviour of the celebrities reflects on the brand, celebrity endorsers may at times become liabilities to the brands they endorse.
2. The vampire effect: This terminology pertains to the issue of a celebrity overshadowing the brand. If there is no congruency between the celebrity and the brand, then the audience will remember the celebrity and not the brand. Examples are the campaigns of Dawn French—Cable Association and Leonard Rossiter—Cinzano. Both of these campaigns were aborted due to celebrities getting in the way of effective communication. Another example could be the Castrol commercial featuring Rahul Dravid.
3. Inconsistency in the professional popularity of the celebrity: The celebrity may lose his or her popularity due to some lapse in professional performances. For example, when Tendulkar went through a prolonged lean patch recently, the inevitable question that cropped up in corporate circles - is he actually worth it? The 2003 Cricket World Cup also threw up the Shane Warne incident, which caught Pepsi off guard. With the Australian cricketer testing positive for consuming banned substances and his subsequent withdrawal from the event, bang in the middle of the event, PepsiCo - the presenting sponsor of the World Cup 2003 - found itself on an uneasy wicket
4. Multi brand endorsements by the same celebrity would lead to overexposure: The novelty of a celebrity endorsement gets diluted if he does too many advertisements. This may be termed as commoditisation of celebrities, who are willing to endorse anything for big bucks. Example, MRF was among the early sponsors of Tendulkar with its logo emblazoned on his bat. But now Tendulkar endorses a myriad brands and the novelty of the Tendulkar-MRF campaign has scaled down.
5. Celebrities endorsing one brand and using another (competitor): Sainsbury’s encountered a problem with Catherina Zeta Jones, whom the company used for its recipe advertisements, when she was caught shopping in Tesco. A similar case happened with Britney Spears who endorsed one cola brand and was repeatedly caught drinking another brand of cola on tape.
6. Mismatch between the celebrity and the image of the brand: Celebrities manifest a certain persona for the audience. It is of paramount importance that there is an egalitarian congruency between the persona of the celebrity and the image of the brand. Each celebrity portrays a broad range of meanings, involving a specific personality and lifestyle. Madonna, for example, is perceived as a tough, intense and modern women associated with the lower middle class. The personality of Pierce Brosnan is best characterized as the perfect gentlemen, whereas Jennifer Aniston has the image of the ‘good girl from next door’.

CONCLUSION
Despite the obvious economic advantage of using relatively unknown personalities as endorsers in advertising campaigns, the choice of celebrities to fulfill that role has become common practice for brands competing in today's cluttered media environment. There are several reasons for such extensive use of celebrities. Because of their high profile, celebrities may help advertisements stand out from the surrounding clutter, thus improving their communicative ability. Celebrities may also generate extensive PR leverage for brands. For example, when Revlon launched the "Won't kiss off test" for its Colorstay lipsticks in 1994 with Cindy Crawford kissing reporters, the campaign featured on almost every major news channel and equally widely in the press. A brief assessment of the current market situation indicates, that celebrity endorsement advertising strategies can, under the right circumstances, indeed justify the high costs associated with this form of advertising.

But it would be presumptuous to consider celebrity endorsement as a panacea for all barricades. Celebrity endorsement if used effectively, makes the brand stand out, galvanizes brand recall and facilitates instant awareness. To achieve this, the marketer needs to be really disciplined in choice of a celebrity. Hence the right use of celebrity can escalate the Unique Selling Proposition of a brand to new heights; but a cursory orientation of a celebrity with a brand may prove to be claustrophobic for the brand. A celebrity is a means to an end, and not an end in himself/herself.   (Newsindia Syndication)

BOLLYWOOD BOXOFFICE DHAMAKA!

By M H Ahssan

It's raining blockbusters at the box office, with three movies crossing the Rs 100 crore mark this year. To keep the mood upbeat, there are several high-profile films waiting to hit the theatre. Is it going to be Bollywood's best year in a decade?

The year 2010 was awful for Bollywood. Big ticket films were flopping and producers were hard-pressed to search out for other avenues (like TV, music, satellite and overseas) to bring down the quantum of losses. It wasn’t clear whether the industry would find the will and gumption to reorganise and re-strategise in order to survive the big slump in fortunes. The first quarter of 2011 did not see much difference, but once Salman Khan’s Ready hit the theatre it became another story altogether.

The film had a gargantuan marketing budget. Salman, otherwise a reticent actor, became the star campaigner. Song and dance numbers of the film were splashed across channels, creating a buzz and hype previously seen only for Amitabh Bachchan’s movies in his heyday or Rajnikanth’s films even today.

The resurgence
The downpour of blockbusters we are witnessing today began with Ready which, despite being substandard and like all Salman enterprises totally kitschy in content, could beat 3 Idiots to become the second-highest grosser in the opening weekend after Dabangg. It appropriated Rs 41 crore in the first three days of its release. It also recorded the biggest non-holiday weekend take, surpassing Raajneeti. But such films don’t have longevity and, as expected, Ready took a downward turn once the initial hype and hoopla got over. Yet, such was the marketing of the film that it went on to cross the Rs 100 crore mark despite witnessing a great slump after the first week.

Then came Ajay Devgn’s turn to roar at the box office. Singham, in its very first weekend, raked in approximately Rs 31 crore on an all-India basis — the highest ever first weekend collection for an Ajay Devgn-starrer. In fact, Devgn was trying to resurrect his action-hero persona after a spate of successful comedies and he too hit the bull’s eye, crossing the Rs 100 crore mark within no time.

Singham was ably supported by Zoya Akhtar’s Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, which despite a fabulous star cast, was a surprise blockbuster. The film was expected to do well but not as well as it eventually did.

It was, however, Salman again who took the Bollywood’s profit chart to an unassailable height. His second film of the year, Bodyguard, which was released on August 31, went on to become the third highest all-time grosser after 3 Idiots and Dabangg.

In between one witnessed megahits like Murder 2, riding on cheap publicity for some sizzling ‘hot’ scenes between Emraan Hashmi and Jacqueline Fernandez, and Delhi Belly. Sunny Deol’s Yamla Pagla Deewana and Sanjay Dutt’s Double Dhamaal, too, did well at the box office.

The mechanism
According to veteran trade analyst Vinod Mirani, “Eid appears to be the festival day — and Salman the perfect poster boy — for Bollywood. Last year it was Dabangg that broke all records at the box office. And, this year it was again Salman’s Bodyguard that set cash registers ringing.”

So, why is the box office showering such whopping returns all of a sudden? Trade analyst Taran Adarsh gives credit to the “triumph of craft”. He says, “Innovative marketing strategies, catchy promotions and outdoor advertising have drawn the audiences to the theatre.” Aamir Khan, based on his experience with movies like Peepli Live, Dhobi Ghat and Delhi Belly, says that “creative and cerebral themes” — and not necessarily the “formulaic films peppered with song and dance” — are most likely to work at the box office.

Mirani disagrees. “The recent spate of successes at the box office is because filmmakers have understood that the age-old formula of songs, dance and action must be tweaked to suit the new generation of cine-goers. So, we have the same basic formula in a newer package of peppy songs and superficially-stylised action. The villain, too, has to have enough menace to make the hero look good,” he says.

There’s, however, a method in this madness. Today’s blockbusters are more akin to what a trade analyst calls “cloudbursts” — exploiting the potential of a film in the very first week by providing it the widest possible release. Bodyguard, for example, was released across 2,600 screens in the country. Digital technology has helped cut down on print costs, making such wide release affordable. No wonder, by the time people realised Bodyguard was an ordinary movie, it had already crossed the Rs 100 crore mark!

The box office trends of the past few years suggest that films releasing between January and May usually fare poorly. Mirani says, “This is because of cricket (IPL, etc) taking precedence over everything else. Traditionally, the monsoon brings people at the theatre. Most of the big-budget films are released during this season and towards the end of the year — Eid, Dussehra, Diwali, Christmas. This explains why year-ends mostly bring huge returns for films at the box office.”

The industry is now looking at RA.One, Don 2 and Agnipath to consolidate the 2011 success story.

The phenomenon
After his successes with Yash Chopra, Karan Johar and Farah Khan, Shah Rukh Khan was hailed as the star with the Midas touch at the box office. But today the picture is different. Shah Rukh hasn’t had any release this year. Hence for him to retain his pre-eminent status, his films — RA.One and Don 2 — will have to do phenomenally well.

Salman, on the other hand, is sitting pretty with a plethora of blockbusters to his credit. Wanted, Dabangg, Ready and now Bodyguard have taken his standing in the film industry to a new high. In fact, if Bollywood is in such a good shape today, the credit largely goes to him, along with Ajay Devgn.

“Salman is an all-rounder — he is a comedian, action hero and romantic lover boy in one single power-packed package. After all, mainstream Hindi films don’t need much acting; it’s all about promoting an image suitable to that of the star. That augurs well for Salman at the box office provided the films he does give him ample scope to brandish those elements,” says Mirani.

Salman hasn’t shown any thespian talent. He is a non-actor, who even cannot shake a leg to save his face. Yet, whenever he comes on screen, his presence is magnetic. Why is it so?

Salman represents a certain kind of macho masculinity that Indian males aspire to achieve. But what goes most in his favour is the fact that he combines rural appeal with urban aesthetics, something that his predecessors like Govinda or Mithun Chakraborty lacked. It’s this ability to evade the urban-rural divide that has allowed him to connect with both the masses and the classes, and retained his charm for 23 long years. In fact, Salman of today can be compared with Rajesh Khanna at his peak; people are ready to tear their shirts at the very sight of him. It seems, as one of the commentators has observed, of the two other Khans, Aamir has the greater acting skill but not the aura; Shah Rukh has the style, but not the reach.

What also goes in Salman’s favour is the fact that people find him genuine. Whatever he does on screen basically shows off his innate character to good effect. From his romantic films (Maine Pyar Kiya, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun) to comedy (Partner, No Entry, Judwaa) to the demented (Tere Naam), Salman never embodies the character; he always plays himself with a panache that endears the masses.

Salman is a success story that cuts across all classes, defying logic, traditional wisdom and even aesthetics. But one should not bother to analyse him. As it’s raining blockbusters in Bollywood, one just needs to remember him — and give him the credit which has been due for the past 23 years.

How to feed your billionaires?

By M H Ahssan

Freebies for the IPL - at a time of savage food subsidy cuts for the poor - benefit four men who make the Forbes Billionaire List of 2010 and a few other, mere multi-millionaires.

And so the IPL fracas is now heading for its own Champions League. Union Cabinet Ministers, Union Ministers of State, Chief Ministers (and who knows a Governor or two might pop up yet) are being named as people trying to influence the bidding process. Both houses of Parliament are in uproar. The taxmen have launched a "survey."

Many in the media and politics are happy to reduce it all to issues of propriety or personality. For, the BCCI-IPL is one platform where the Congress and the BJP cohabit, normally with ease. Big money is, after all, a secular, bi-partisan space. (Or tri-partisan: let's not deny the central contribution of the NCP to this phenomenon.) It's also interesting that the media, though now compelled to give the IPL's underbelly some coverage, are still reluctant to ask larger, harder questions. To go beyond their Modi-Tharoor feeding frenzy. And to avoid induced amnesia.

It was just 10 years ago that cricket was rocked by the game's biggest-ever match-fixing scandal. That too had its centre of gravity in Indian cities, and involved Indian bookies and Indian businessmen. But along comes a new hyper-commercialised version of the game. It has scandal-waiting-to-happen written all over it and the media say "wow! This looks great," promptly going into the "willing suspension of disbelief" mode.

This venture had the right names, high glamour and, above all, big advertising and corporate power. There were obvious conflicts of interest (apart from what it did to cricket, the game) from day one. Here was Big Business in open embrace with its political patrons. There were also those who did not give the public office they held a fraction of the time or importance they gave to the BCCI-IPL. But few serious questions came up in the media.

Now there's a forced discussion of opaque dealings, bribes, and "we-know-how-to-deal-with-you" threats. Of shady investors, murky dealings and, possibly, large-scale tax evasion. Of franchisees alleging they were offered a $50 million bribe to exit. Or claiming that a Union Minister warned them to withdraw from the rodeo with grave threats.

It all leads to things much bigger than Modi versus Tharoor or issues of "impropriety" (a nice, genteel word). Leave aside the narrow money details or the fact that some franchisees are thought to be losing tens of crores each year. Skip the fact that despite those losses, newer franchisees between them put up over Rs.3000 crores for two teams that don't exist. Only a tiny band of journalists have at all shown the scepticism demanded of their profession. These few have stuck at it gamely only to find themselves isolated, mocked as party-poopers and the recipients of threats and abusive mail.

How about questions on public subsidies going to some of the richest people in the world? The BCCI-IPL cost the public crores of rupees each year in several ways. The waiving of entertainment tax worth Rs.10 to 12 crores for the IPL in Maharashtra alone was discussed in the State's Assembly. It was little reported and less discussed in the media. Maharashtra has extended other support to the IPL, which is yet to be quantified. This, despite being a State whose debt will cross Rs.200,000 crores in the coming year. And there are similar subsidies and write-offs extended to the BCCI-IPL in other States, other venues.

A whole raft of concealed freebies from public resources to the BCCI-IPL is also not discussed. We have no picture of their full scope. No questions either on why a public sector company should be billing itself as the "sponsor" of a team owned by the fourth richest man in the planet. No questions asked about issues ranging from super-cheap land leases and stadia rentals and low-cost stadia security. We don't even know what the total bill to the public is: just that it is probably in tens of crores. We do know that these supports to the IPL from public money come at a time when subsidies to the poor are being savaged. But we don't want to go down that road. An inquiry into the IPL must cover the BCCI as well and must record all the open and hidden write-offs and subsidies that both get.

Who stand to gain from the public wet-nursing of the IPL? Among others, four gentlemen who make the Forbes Billionaires List of 2010. Three of them are team owners and one is a title sponsor. All dollar billionaires and long-time residents on the Forbes List. Then there are the mere millionaires in the shape of Bollywood stars. For all these and other worthy people, governments bend over backwards to make concessions. Even as they slash food subsidies in a period of rising hunger. Big time partying is an integral part of the IPL show. Only look who is paying for that. Street argot has already begun to brand the IPL as Indian Paisa League or, more directly, India Paisa Loot.

But the BCCI and the IPL preside over huge sums in advertising. So even when the IPL angers the media by pushing them around on coverage restrictions, the media cave in. The larger silence continues. The strongest criticism of what has been going on (till the Kochi chaos) has come from Sports Minister M S Gill, an old-fashioned cricket lover actually worried about the game. Not from the media that cover the IPL. He has criticised the tax concessions and security subsidies that have hurt public security in the cities concerned while the IPL is on.

It's also worth pointing out that Mr. Gill is the one Minister (of the four Ministers on your TV screens in the present drama) actually connected with sports in a legitimate way - and not tainted by scandal. But maybe that's natural: the IPL has little to do with sports.

The Sports Minister pointed out a long time ago that there were dangerous conflicts of interests at the top levels of the BCCI-IPL. He also told Karan Thapar on television that he found the idea of "letting off tax" (waivers for IPL) quite unacceptable. "This is a poor country. I never forget that. There is a huge deficit in the budget even this year ..." And went on to say that: "when business is earning it in the shape of these teams and whatever the structure, I think the legitimate tax should be taken and should be used for the country maybe even for sports, other sports." Far from that happening, we are taking it from the public and handing it out to the billionaires.

Fire brigades in the cities have been muted or overruled in their objections to the IPL's 'hospitality boxes' (where seats can cost you Rs.40,000) as fire hazards. But some of these tickets also get you to a late night party with IPL stars and other dubious benefits. Some have raised the question of what this does to the players' performance the next day. But the party goes on. Nothing could be further removed from the lives of the 'cricket crazy public' - whose supposed interests are invoked for every new spin to the game. IPL does not come cheap.

Mumbai's elite recently preened themselves on Earth Hour where the city saved some power by switching off lights for 60 minutes. Great savings could be made if all IPL games were played in daylight. There is something ugly about that much electricity consumed by a private profit entity (guzzling public money) in a season when Marathwada and Vidarbha suffer 12-15 hour power cuts. Something that always devastates the performance of their poorer children in the examinations. They could end up having (on paper at least) a Right to Education, but none to electricity.

With the IPL comes the convergence of the most important media trends: the ABC of Media - Advertising, Bollywood and Corporate Power. Corporate barons and Bollywood stars own cricket teams. One IPL team is owned by a newspaper. Other dailies have become 'media partners' of IPL teams. Some Bollywood stars have 'promotional agreements' for their films with TV channels who disguise their paid-for gushing over those films as "news." Once national heroes, cricket's top icons are now 'capital assets' of the franchise owners.

Once proud of their disavowal of tobacco and liquor advertising, the icons now plug for the latter in surrogate form. And are linked to the former in other ways. And a once great game moves from heartfelt public ownership to a pocket-driven private one; from a national passion to a hyper-commercial nightmare.

ADVERT: ADINDIA MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

NEED A GOOD MARKETING COMPANY?
ADINDIA Media & Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. is a one stop marketing company, providing end to end services ranging from content development, publishing, printing, creative development for advertising campaigns, event management, media buying, public relations, production of advertisement films & new media marketing like SMS & email marketing. We understand your requirement & devise the most appropriate strategy to build your brand and promote your products or services. Our vast experience in launching new products, and our ability to enhance the appeal of existing ones makes us a marketing company that can make a difference to your business.

OUR SERVICES
- Content Development
- Publishing
- Printing
- Advertisement Films
- Event Management
- Public Relations
- Corporate Films
- Media Planning
- Media buying for Print, TV & Outdoor
- Creatives for Print & Outdoor campaigns
- Creatives for POS, packaging & catalogs
- Jingles
- Advertiser funded TV Programming
- BTL Activation
- Email Marketing
- SMS Marketing
- Celebrity Endorsements

GET GREAT QUALITY AT THE BEST PRICE
At ADINDIA we believe in giving you great quality at the best price. We understand what "cost effective" means, and are able to deliver it to our clients as we have a complete creative design & development set-up inhouse, also state of the art post production studios for film making, our own sound, light, video & decor fabrication infrastructure and the best production & servicing people to ensure your work is in safe hands. Our vast media network gives us the ability to get you the best deals in media buying and maximum exposure for public relations campaigns.

ADINDIA is located in Hyderabad & services clients across India for their marketing requirements. Our clients include reputed Indian corporate houses and individuals. We have been instrumental in launching various brands and promoting a variety of businesses. Call us (+91 9177388580) or Email: hydnews@gmail.com for a credential presentation.

World Wildlife Week – October 1, 2009

By Jayashanker V S

It is an irrefutable fact that India is way behind other world countries when it comes to creating awareness among the public and their contribution towards wildlife conservation. Every year during the World Wildlife Week celebrations between October 1 and 7, the children, youth and the elderly are made to go through the customary set of activities leaving them with no or little insight into the ways and means of contributing to wildlife conservation.

Usually, the world wildlife week begins with batches of people being taken on guided walks through the various animal sanctuaries in different cities, and the tiger and lion safaris in the few national animal parks. And for children it is just fun time as they take part in the painting and elocution competitions with the theme being wildlife. Then what follows are the customary lectures on the alarming statistics on wildlife in India, the various animal welfare and conservation programmes and screening of the films and documentaries on wildlife.

But is this enough? Can these mere talk shows, guided tours and walks and thematic painting and elocution competition really help wildlife conservation? Sadly, only very little! I am not on a fault-finding mission here; these do help a bit create some awareness on the wildlife scenario and the ‘ongoing’ conservation efforts in the country but the more important aspect of public contribution are completely ignored.

Conservation is about understanding, and practising small things that could make a big difference in the lives of our canine friends! There has to be workable programmes introduced, beyond the traditional week long wildlife celebrations inside the tall walls of the sanctuaries and the open fields of the national parks, which would inculcate the active participation of everyone in the society towards wildlife conservation!

Need of the hour: Taking cues from the global wildlife conservation efforts
The action should start from the streets, and at our homes! And remember, these conservation activities cannot afford to stop after one or two weeks; it is a long term vision and has to go on and on till we have healthy figures on par with international standards.

Take for instance some of the programmes launched by the various wildlife federations across the globe. The U.S-based National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has active wildlife conservation programmes for children and adults. The idea is to make kids understand the importance of wildlife conservation and start early! For example, there is the children magazine on wildlife, wild animal baby music CDs, and DVDs, and the most popular attractive scheme called ‘wild animal baby adoption center.’ No! It does not mean that children are asked to adopt a wild animal and raise it! It is a symbolic wildlife adoption by paying a small amount which will help the NWF towards wildlife conservation. Children make small donations to gift themselves the certificates of adoption, a free plush animal, a wild animal baby story card and much more interesting stuff.

This serves the twin purpose of creating awareness and helping wildlife conservation. Camping tips are also held where kids build tents and spend time to study the animals around them. Children are also encouraged to clean up their backyards, plant the right mix of plants and help create a haven for wildlife and their pets.

Global warming – Your small efforts can make big difference in wildlife conservation
Forests are the homes of many wild animals and deforestation kills their habitat. Planting trees is an effective and viable solution to gift back the natural habitat to our canine friends. Global warming is equally bad to animals and wildlife conservation! Changes in temperature, water, food and their habitat have a negative impact on the health of the wildlife and in raising their young ones. Scientists around the world agree that cutting just 2 % of carbon emissions every year, that’s 80% over the next 40 years, we can avoid the worst impacts of global warming.

Our tiny little every day actions can make a big difference to help reduce global warming. By doing this we help ourselves and our fellow animal friends! Go green! Switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs, adjust your thermostat, and join the ‘lights off’ campaign. You can also turn off lights when you don’t need them! Check how your computer can be tweaked to save energy and reduce global warming. Adopt high fuel efficiency standards for your vehicles. Even the kind of clothes you wear can help reduce global emission. It is being said that the production process for a cotton T-shirt blended with polyester uses petrochemicals and releases roughly 10 times the shirt’s weight in carbon dioxide.

The furniture we buy also adds to the destruction of tropical rainforests around the globe. This in turn adversely affects the wildlife habitat and their future. This doesn’t mean that you should not buy furniture at all. It simply means buying only certified furniture that will help protect rainforests and wildlife like furniture made out of wheat panels, sunflower board, aluminium, polywoods, wrought irons, metals, and stones. For example, in the U.S the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has certified some companies making and selling outdoor and garden furniture. Choosing FSC-certified Garden furniture ensures that forests are managed to protect water, soil, and wildlife habitat in addition to providing wood products.

Similarly, solar powered products can help greatly reduce carbon emissions and help us and the wildlife. Choose wisely eco-friendly electronic items like cell phones, TV and other gizmos that could help in reducing global warming and wildlife conservation.

Corporate responsibility can help in a big way in cutting global warming and in wildlife conservation. With a little initiative, corporate houses can turn their backyards and farms into eco-friendly garden and a wildlife-friendly habitat.

e-way and wildlife conservation
With blogging being widely used today, spreading awareness on wildlife conservation and sharing stories of how global warming has affected your neighbourhood wildlife could well make a huge difference. All that is needed is a little understanding and effort.

Stock taking
How many of us know about the number of wildlife sanctuaries and wildlife national parks in India? Many of us have heard about Project Tiger but do we know what is being done to protect them? How many of us do our bit in our everyday lives to reduce global warming? Are you an active animal activist? Take a pledge today and help you, others and our beloved animals. Remember, it’s their world too!

Split Personality - A myth or Reality?

In this world today, there are a lot of unbelievable diseases. One of them is the disease of human's mind, and a split personality is counted as one of the disease. Not many of people around the world believe if this disease really exists or not, or they rather think that the person is acting.

I was on my way from Bangalore to Mumbai and on the way, as I was interacting with one person and suddenly we got this topic, “Split Personalities” and started discussing about it.

When I was in collage, I had one very good friend, by name Mr. T. Kiran Kumar. The uniqueness of our relation was our compatibility and depth of understanding. If we are with kids, or classmates or elderly people or uneducated people or females or highly intellectuals, how we will behave, was purely on the type of circle or group we were into. Believe me, our attitude, approach, behavior, and the way to react to a situation was based on the type of group we were into. Does that mean that we were having split personalities? If that is the case then all of us are having split personalities. We behave differently with our family members, with our friends, our spouse, and unknown people, right? Lets see.

Let us understand the term “Split Personality”.

Definition of Split Personality: “A relatively rare dissociative disorder in which the usual integrity of the personality breaks down and two or more independent personalities emerge”.

Explanation: There is no category or phenomenon in psychiatry called split personality. The term is commonly used in popular language to indicate a contradictory or drastically and dramatically alternating type of behavior of the"Jekyll and Hyde" type. It is often confused with the medical illness of schizophrenia because the etymology of the latter (from the Greek schizein, to split + phren, mind) suggests, misleadingly, that schizophrenia is a type of split personality. In schizophrenia, however, the splitting is within one single personality as the individual's thoughts, feelings and emotions are seriously and confusingly disconnected from each other in a chaotic and random fashion. Schizophrenic individuals, far from having split or multiple personalities, actually have a great struggle maintaining the coherence and integrity of even a single self.

Before proceeding further lets try and understand as what do be mean by term “Personality”.

HUMAN PERSONALITY
THERE are three distinct meanings for the term "personality," two of them general and popular and the third technical and philosophical. The first and most general meaning is that personality is the sum of the characteristics, which make up physical and mental being. These include appearance, manners, habits, tastes and moral character. The second meaning emphasizes the characteristics that distinguish one person from another. The two meanings overlap or merge into each other, as the first considers all characteristics pertaining to the individual, without comparing him with others, while the second sees the same facts in relation to the outside world and fixes attention mainly upon the features that distinguish the subject from his fellows. This second meaning is equivalent to individuality. It represents a widely prevalent conception of the term.

But the third meaning is the most important, and is the only conception of any value to the psychic researcher and the philosopher or psychologist. This conception of personality is concerned only with mental characteristics; it makes no distinction between common and specific marks. In fact it connotes mental processes rather than fixed qualities. The capacity for having mental states, or the fact of having them, constitutes personality for the psychologist and the philosopher. Personality is thus the stream of consciousness, regardless of the question whether any special state is constant or casual, essential or unessential. Physical marks will have no place in this conception, unless they may serve as symbols of mental states. It abstracts from them and denotes only the stream of mental phenomena.

This third meaning is so radically different from the other two that it gives rise to perpetual misunderstandings between the philosopher and the public. These misunderstandings arise particularly in the discussion of survival after death. The layman with his conception of personality looks for physical phenomena of some kind to illustrate or prove it. Consequently, if interested in psychic phenomena at all, he prefers materialization, which best satisfies his conception of personality. He cannot take the point of view of the psychologist or the philosopher, who neglects these purely sensory characteristics, and fixes his attention on mental states as the proper conception of the personality, which may survive. Materialization would supply the very characteristics, which the layman fixes upon to represent personality. But precisely the fact that mental states are not presented to sense, leads the philosopher to conceive of immortality as possible.

If the layman's conception were correct the philosopher and psychologist would deny the possibility of survival with entire confidence, as a necessary implication of bodily dissolution. The day could be saved only by the doctrine of a "spiritual body," an It astral body," or an "ethereal organism," supposedly a replica of the physical organism in its spatial and other characteristics. These represent personality after the manner or analogy of the physical body. The real spirit may indeed have a transcendental bodily form; but the stream of consciousness remains the same whether there is any "spiritual body" or "ethereal organism" or not. This is the fundamental element in all conceptions of spiritual reality. It is not necessary to decide the question of a "spiritual body" or "ethereal organism" as the condition of believing in the existence of spirits. That is another and perhaps a secondary problem. What we need to know is, whether the stream of consciousness survives, whether the personal memory continues, not how it continues. The fact of survival is to be considered first and the condition of it afterwards.

Historical Review of “Split Personality”
Possible cases of split personality have been reported in the medical literature since the early 19th century, and the condition was formally defined in the first years of the 20th. But until recently it was considered extremely rare--fewer than 200 cases were described before 1980. The diagnosis became much more common in the 80s for several reasons. One was the phenomenal popularity of Flora Schreiber's 1973 book Sybil, which told of a woman with 16 personalities. Stories of "multiples," fictionalized or otherwise, were nothing new--The Three Faces of Eve dates from 1954, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" from way back in 1886--but Sybil made a crucial innovation, introducing the idea that multiple personalities stemmed from trauma during early childhood. Around the same time, child protection advocates and feminists began arguing that child abuse, especially sexual abuse, occurred far more often than previously supposed. And in the late 70s, in a phenomenon thought to be linked to the resurgence of Christian fundamentalism, reports of so-called satanic ritual abuse first captured the public's imagination.

Presented with, on one hand, allegations of an unrecognized epidemic of crimes against innocents and, on the other, a simple mechanism to explain why their troubled patients couldn't remember any abuse (i.e., the personality divides in order to shield itself from horrific memories), a small but devoted group of therapists began diagnosing multiple personality disorder with alarming frequency--more than 20,000 cases had been reported by 1990. Under the influence of hypnosis and other techniques, subjects reported dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of "alters" whose behavior, age, sex, language, and occasionally species differed from that of their everyday personas. Alters were coaxed into revealing bloodcurdling stories of abuse by family members, or of sacrificing their own babies to shadowy cults. One prominent multiple personality specialist claimed that the satanic network programmed alters into its victims, which it could then trigger to act in certain ways by sending them color-coded flowers.

By the early 1990s it began to dawn on rational folk just how preposterous the whole business was. Having investigated more than 12,000 accusations over four years, researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Illinois at Chicago determined that not a single case of satanic ritual abuse had been substantiated. A 1992 FBI study arrived at the same conclusion: overeager therapists had planted horror stories in the minds of their patients. In 1998 psychologist Robert Rieber made a convincing case, based on an analysis of audiotapes, that even the famous Sybil had confabulated her multiple personalities at the insistence of her therapist. The bubble burst, and diagnoses of multiple personalities subsided.

Some real Life Examples of Split Personalities

Case-1
The first patient is a man named William S. Milligan, he was caught by the charge of rape in Ohio at 1977. As police and the psychologists examined him, they found the unbelievable fact that he had several personalities. Here are the first ten personalities they found. In The Minds Of Billy Milligan;

1. The first personality is the main personality, Billy, twenty-seven years old, blue eyes, brown hair.

2. The second personality is Arthur, twenty-two years old, British. This personality and the next one are the keeper of the "Spot", where they can have the control of the body, or become themselves open to the outer world through the body of Billy.

3. The third personality is Leigen, twenty-three years old, Yugoslav, who knows how to fight and can use gun and other dangerous stuff, controls the hate.

4. Fourth personality is Allen, eighteen years old, talkative, only one who smoke and right handed.

5. Fifth personality is Tommy, sixteen years old, knows how to unlock chains or handcuffs, and the specialist of the electricity.

6. Sixth personality is Danny, fourteen years old, always scared to something especially man, blond hair, blue eyes.

7. Seventh personality is David, eight years old, controls pain, red-brown hair blue eyes.

8. Eighth personality is Christine, three years old, cannot talk, blond hair, female.

9. Ninth personality is Christopher, thirteen years old, brother of Christine.

10. For the last tenth personality, Adarana, nineteen years old, quiet, lesbian, female.

Those were the main ten personalities of the William S. Milligan. As if you wonder how they know their outlooks, William Milligan, Billy has a hobby of painting, or some of the personalities do. Therefore, they draw each other on the painting and that is how they get to know their outlooks.

Case-2
The woman's name is Claudia Ellen Yascow. She was arrested by the charge of killing four people, which they found later that she was not the suspect. However, it was not unnecessary for the police to think that she was the suspect, because she had information of the scene that cannot be known unless the person has been there. Even though the information was confusing and messy because of her mental disease, police believed her and thought that she was the suspect, for she knew even where the pot and other little detail was at when the crime occurred. She was caught once but let go after few month with the check of psychologist that she has a incubation type of split minds, and the lie detector found her answer to the question that she was not at the scene when the crime happened showed what she said is true, "No, I did not."

Her trouble is brought up mainly because of her mental disease, incubation type of split mind. Claudia is different, as she can always be herself even she is in a great pressure, but she will be losing a collect criterion to judge what kind of situation she is in. For example, when she was caught in jail, she truly thought that she was in a middle of movie taking and she was playing her rolls of main heroine. "Suddenly she put the smile on her face and said 'I never thought that I could have a great chance like this,' She leaned her head on the wall. 'I've always thought of having a chance to do a big act like a big actress. I do have some experience of acting in few films as a supporting player, but if I play this murderess act, maybe I can be very famous.' Dye stared at her and asked, 'You think we are making a film right now?' She slapped his hand softly, smiling, 'Oh Dye, you have seen all those cameras at the corridor and those of TV's. I hope I can have a deal with a lot of money coming in, you know it is kind of hard to act.'

As you can see above, by the shock she got from been captured by police, her mind had made an escape way from pain by believing that all the stuff going is an act and not a real deal. This is very close to what Billy has done to himself; only the difference is that fortunately, Claudia was not getting shocked when she was before teenager, but after she became an adult. I think that this is the reason why she was quite right in condition even though she had some mental problems since she was fourteen and had been looked after by a psychologist. Her case is still, with a great trouble, that in such a hard circumstance like in the police office, she would be nervous and will not be able to say what she really want to.

As she says in Unveiling Claudia, "If I am lying to you right now, that is anything but my will."(72) She is telling the truth here that her mind is trying to protect herself by not telling the truth about the matter, and she cannot help it. It is rather an act of her instinct, to let the shock coming above her because of telling and remembering the truth softer in order to not breakdown for it.

This has been appearing in the way of making the book. As she was making the confession about the murder, she always kept telling a one big story with half lie and half-truth. As you will find later that the truth was such a hard one that it was too much for her to remember it and telling it to the person who you met one or two years ago. This can be seen in Unveiling Claudia, " 'Claudia, I don't know what I should believe in you.' She put her hand on my shoulder and looked into my eye. 'I'm sorry Dan. I do trust you more than before. But not enough.'" This conversation was held more than two years past after they have met, and as you can see that she is very careful about telling the truth and that is why she kept telling lie, or something that she believed it was a truth and unfortunately it was not. Although she is always careful about telling the truth, she is always an easy person to make believe. If someone tells her that she has a superstitious power, she believes it and so on. This has prevented her from stopping the murder, because she had known that the real suspects of the case had planned to proceed the crime week before the murder. However, she was busy and also her weak mind was scared with the pressure what if she tell it to the victim and the what if the suspects would know about it and come after her? In the way of her mind escaping from the reality, she started to believe that it was an oracle, and she could not stop the crime. This story was one of the reason she was arrested once by the story told by her friend that she knew that the crime is going the happen a week before, and the truth was different.

The shocking truth was told on the end, and it was shocking enough for her mind to look for some escape way. On the night when crime has occurred, she was forced to go to the place with a gay, right after the murder had happened. The man was gay but he had a gun in his hand and she could not refuse to go there with him. Their car came in front of the house just in time when two suspects where killing the victim, and after they had gone away, they went to the house's garage where there was a one dead body of a man and one body of woman laying on the floor. Claudia was forced to put her hand into the dead woman's genitals and find a bag of drugs. Now, this is a real hard and sick experience for the twenty-six years old woman, or any other person in the world. She was shocked and her mind could not stand it and she has lost her memories in order to prevent the breakdown.

After few days she find herself knowing about that crime and could not find out why she know about it so much, she told the story to the police and they misjudged her as a criminal and put her in jail.

What They have to say
My father is a metal health counselor here in the US. He has seen only 2 multiple personality disorders in his 20+ years of private practice. In both cases patients were former participants in covens. One was a willing participant and the other was supposedly the unwilling offspring of a "breeder" program.

Neither my father or I are generally prone to believe such things for the very reasons that you put forth in your article but never-the-less both patients exhibited classic multiple personality disorder symptomology. In the case of the unwilling participant he came to the conclusion that the majority of the damage to her psyche had been done by a previous therapist, when he met with the therapist and watched him work with her he was then certain that this was the case... Perhaps this fits with your theory of therapists putting ideas into peoples heads.

Unfortunately, this leaves a difficult problem to solve... Whether or not the problem is caused by a therapist or by some other external force, what is to be done with these people? Regardless of *how* they got that way they still deserve to be whole persons which will probably require further therapy... The *cause* of multiple personality disorder is not so important to determine for these patients as healing is.

The process used by my father in his therapy sessions is called re-integration where the personalities are not taught how to *co-exist* but rather how to re-integrate with the main persona or the core identified "true self" as discovered in therapy. This re-integration can be very simple or complicated depending on the strength of a particular personality.

For instance, if a person has one major alternate and several minor ones the minor ones would be integrated first before the major etc. The difficulty arises because for each personality present there is a tremendous loss of individuality for each one and in each case this loss of an individual "persona" is often felt as a grief or loss of a friend for the true self. As each personality is re-integrated the true self becomes more in tune with its own emotions and feels this grief more keenly. For this reason it is important to take things slowly and to address only personalities that emerge rather than force anything.

In many cases a persons sense of self may be so buried under all of these layers of 'others' that finding the true self may be the most difficult part of the therapeutic process. Often this self is so weak and lacking in will that it presents as a smaller, other personality. It takes caring, sensitivity and insight to help these people since this true self is often a very young child.

It might sound strange and eerie and it is... The problem with your argument of is it all in their head is that of course it is... Does that make it any less real for the people who suffer from it? It is very similar to people who experience vivid hallucinations, are those things real? No. Do they cause them grief and pain? Yes.

The question then becomes not about testing the *reality* of the multiple personality claim but instead helping the person experiencing it with care. Coming from the therapeutic standpoint that, if it is real for them, it is real.