Author: Paul Syng

Read part one first. Before the one bedroom hall kitchen there was a room. Not just any room. It was a classroom at the end of a hallway on the third floor of a school. Yeah, thats right. You heard me right.

The room was divided into three parts, appropriated with a bed without sheets, a temporary bathroom the size of a port-a-potty and a bucket for bathing, a little kitchenette and common area littered with plastic furniture.

There were two windows, the one in my room looked into the corridor and the one in the common area overlooked a terrace with trees for pubic hair. On days when the moon took centerstage that terrace begged to be used for dating.

“Hope.”

This makeshift arrangement was meant for temporary guests of the school. But, by any stretch of imagination, this wasn’t anything more than a roof over my head. There were no kitchen supplies either so I’d eat “pure” vegan food and champion a glass of watermelon juice down a neighbouring restaurant.

“Bathing twice in the night to stay cool under the breath of an aged ceiling fan was my version of a wet dream. It was fucking hot. I slept topless, knickers torn.”

I’d be woken up to the incessant chatter of pubescent kids in the hallway and classroom inches from my door. On occasions, when I slept in, I’d be greeted by stares and giggles through the corridor window. With the staircase on the other end of the hallway I’d have to walk across all the classrooms on the third floor every morning.

A stretch best described to walking across a railway platform with bogeys stuffed with kids- preparing for departure. Little had they known, for some of us, the next station was beside science class.

“Did I mention schools smell funny? And it was hot and humid in Mumbai at the time. Most of my batchmates felt I was a princess and borderline pretentious. Don’t fucking think so. Pretentious one hundred percent. Back to the story.”

While I was struggling to stay afloat, my friends (who were, also like me, struggling to find work) and I had decided to keep spirits high and not lose sight of our goals. Every other evening we’d gather at The Queen’s Necklace (Marine Drive for those virgin to Mumbai) to share each other’s stories. We’d laugh the hardest by the sea. It was medicative. Unperturbed by agency rejections, we’d keep our pencils sharpened at all times.

Our evening theatrics entailed fantasies of conquering the agency world, earning accolades and awards, and driving BMWs. We were a bunch of pompous kids with only chewing gum in our pockets. Those days ended at Crystal, a Punjabi food restaurant, before boarding a local from Churchgate station. I think it was Punjabi.

Kindly note only I wanted a BMW. The other guy wanted a Porsche. Trust me, you don’t want to know what the third guy had in mind. A horse. He wanted a fucking horse. Told you so.

Every night I’d show up to a deserted school with a security guard perched at the gate. We’d become accustomed to crossing paths at such odd hours. With all the kids gone there was only deafening silence. I’d walk up a flight of stairs to the third floor and walk down the hallway towards the end of my path. Spooky as fuck. I knew I had to stay strong and not let the weight of my backpack get to me.

The final part coming shortly.

 

The bell to our one bedroom hall kitchen rang. We were expecting burgers and fries from McDonald’s this afternoon. But, this wasn’t your regular delivery.

There was a catch.

My roommate and me were jobless and broke as fuck. No advertising agency was willing to hire virgin copywriters. I was told repeatedly that I lacked creativity. During this period of financial adversity we began to creatively approach our cash. We had struck a deal with the delivery guy from McD.

Here’s the opportunity we saw, on a casual visit to a local McD, by observing the staff and operations. All the food (burgers, wraps and fries) that was prepared could only stay on the shelves (right behind the cashier, acting a divider to the kitchen) for a certain number of minutes- which was/is deemed fit for humanly consumption. Beyond the stipulated time, the food was discarded and replenished with a fresh stock.

On seeing this we couldn’t bear the thought of all this perfectly edible food being dumped into the bin- all while we were hungry and broke.

Btw. Hats off to McD for only serving customers “fresh” food.

On our way out we struck up a conversation with one of the staff members preparing to deliver food. He became our hook-up. On receiving a coded text message, he would bring us the discarded food (burgers, wraps and fries) in lieu of a decent tip.

A win-win for everyone, if you ask me. McD didn’t want anything to do with the wasted product (which was technically discarded because of time alone) and we were too high and broke to miss the opportunity.

As this routine continued we had put on several pounds. Only months into our hustle, it had become quite apparent health hazard so we had to fire our hook up.

It was hard to let go.

We made several phone calls, contacted everyone we could find in our combined network and sent our resume to every possible agency to no avail. But one fine day, my roommate got hired, scoring a job at an agency doing healthcare client work, leaving me to stare into the emptiness of our flat.

Bored and with nothing to do, I decided to revisit my resume. Long empty stare later I came to a conclusion. Clearly it wasn’t effectively conveying who I was and how passionate I was about copy. There had to be a way I could get the attention of Creative Directors so they would, at the least, meet me.

Being on their radar became my first, self imposed, creative assignment. I began to explore different ideas and constantly found myself going back to Neil French for inspiration and ideas.

I was a fan of long copy. I dreamt of doing long copy for several brands and winning awards. Naive is what I was. But that’s the one thing that worked in my favour.

Part two coming shortly.

There we were, at the end of a long day, huddled together at a pizza place, debating the intentions of “circular-pizza-sliced-perforations” on the top of a pizza box.

Let’s quickly add context to “we” here. There’s the founder, the designer and I. Back to that evening.

“It’s meant to keep the pizza fresh,” prompted the founder, to which the designer agreed without hesitation. Not satisfied with the logic I interrupted, held up the pizza box and pointed it toward the cashier from across the store. “What are these perforations for?” I asked to which the cashier replied…

“Dip! It’s for our dip!”

That was our moment of epiphany and the cause of this blog.

Allow me to explain.

Prior to our whole-wheat, tandoori chicken pizza perforation debacle, the founder and I were at a cafe ideating over a startup name. Most parts involved fleshing out a brand persona, characteristics, values and belief systems and zeroing on a vision.

We had spent nearly 2 hours debating, discussing and collecting our thoughts (which if you ask me, having worked and conducted strategy workshops for over 10 years) being unfair to the process and a complete disregard for everything we know about creating successful, transformative brands. Essentially, not allowing time for research, perspectives, insight and fact-finding and so on.

In walked the designer friend who glanced over our shoulders heard our banter and dropped the lean bomb. No, it’s not a type of fart. He was referring to Lean Startup or Running Lean, books which talk about validating your idea and focusing on the customer or user.

Having customers become a part of your product development cycle and being cash-positive from day one can be a source of encouragement and learning real insights. These books champion a great idea which should be a part of your toolkit but at the same time, I wouldn’t get carried away.

If you knew anything about the art of talking to people in public or read any books on subjects related to influencing people or winning them etc. etc. they’d draw upon a similar landscape. Approach first, calibrate after. Make it about them and be genuinely interested. Assumptions and fears of how the other person may react before triggering a conversation is where shit goes down.

In all fairness, the founder just wanted a name. Sound familiar? But we just want a name right now… or we just want a logo or we just need a website with all the functions of Airbnb and Uber… and so on. Get the drift? It’s so easy to fall into this hole right of the gate when you’re trying to start a business or company.

And it comes from a simple place. We look at successful brands around us and see the cosmetics and connect those symbols with success. It’s what goes on behind the stage that makes them great. Ever imagined the hours Audi puts into perfecting the sound of a car door closing. Yea, exactly. To the untrained eye, the four circles are what the brand is but look closely and there’s engineering, people, logistics, design, art and so much more.

Have assumptions about your product and the customer? Well, what do we know about the aforementioned assumptions? In my terms, assumptions are when you speak out of your ass and assume the shit to be true. Looking like an ass for winging it has its own perks. Don’t judge, we’ve all been there. But we’re not here to debate the perks of assimilating naive fantasies. That’s a lot of ass right there.

Great brand and product strategy are based on real insights and understating of the customer/user needs, and not fucking assumptions. It’s where most of us fail. Focusing entirely on the cosmetics. This quickly turns into a conversation of lack of money, poor talent and immature market being the root cause of failure. This is when the client wants to make the logo bigger or the button more yellow.

It’s cause and effect.

Successful brands and products are not only different but relevant, credible and sustainable over time. Let me add here, that we should factor in what your objectives and goals are. Are you trying to scale an idea, find investors with an exit strategy or aim to be cash-positive from day one with intentions of running the company? Again, there’s no sure shot way to success but a school of thought you adopt. It’s the underlying pattern that helps manage and steer a project.

More on that in a future blog.

For now, let’s keep the focus on what you should do before anything else. Start with a great product and your customer. “Building 100 loyal customers who love you over 100000 who kind of like you,” is the most appropriate nugget some important person said that one time. Again, roll with me here on the analogy.

The name, logo and website, like the Lean Startup and Running Lean methodologies are tools to convey, engage, differentiate and drive your brand and not the lipstick on a gorilla.