Job profile jokes

AGKSPEAK

Job mismatch exaggeration can be funny, but it's very silly not to be nice.

What I've liked

I had once talked about the huge sigh of relief that ad agencies must be heaving these days because today's audiences are mature enough to deal with exaggerations. The monster.com ad has been on air for quite some time and I have finally got the opportunity to talk about it. Beautifully produced, humorous and relevant, this little piece does a marvellous job of communicating the irony of being stuck in a job that you are not cut out for.

They too have gone on a limb to make their point, but it has clearly been handled with taste and an inarguable sense of sophistication which is apparent is every little vignette. Be it a chef employed as a hairdresser, or a cricketer hammering the life out of dirty laundry with his prized willow. Exaggerations all, but reined in at just the right moment. At no point does the storytelling make you wince.

Rather, it puts a smile on your face as you begin to see the humour in a situation which can best be described as a twist of fate. That's the tricky part of this creative route. Exaggerations do have to be handled with the utmost expertise. If not, it can backfire. Like the Tata Sky ad for instance. I can see what they are trying to say but really, I do hope that the product lives up to expectations, otherwise it might end up being flung out of an apartment too, like the commercial does with some valuable pieces of entertainment electronics.

Or the hugely popular Hari Sadu ad for naukri.com. I guess it's popular because it articulates the bitterness fermenting in most employees on the brink of their resignation, in a slightly exaggerated story. But to air so much negativity? Isn't it a much wiser move to leave your employer on a good note? As I mentioned before, it requires a good measure of taste and skill when you use exaggeration to make a point, and ensure that you leave a smile, not a grimace in its wake.

What I've learned
It pays to be...nice

Or, as the cliché goes: attitude determines your altitude. We have a saying in Telugu: "If your tongue is sweet, the village will be sweet to you." Our ancestors recognised this universal truth and packaged it into a catchy little saying. But just as we've forgotten most of our legacy, this fundamental truth too seems to have fallen by the wayside of progress. As for me, I learnt this very early in my career.

As early as 1976 to be precise. During the early days of Vimal, we in the advertising department had our work cut out for us. Every piece of work we produced had to receive the consensus of three of Dhirubhai's close colleagues who were in charge of various aspects of production and marketing at Reliance Textile Industries, as the company was known in those days.

Now, these three venerable gentlemen were Dhirubhai's old friends, some of them from as far back as his Aden days, and their word was pretty much law. Even though Dhirubhai was always accessible to me, he was understandably preoccupied with the building of Reliance and had delegated most of the decision making to his trusted aides.

So it was up to me to get the creative passed by his team. To do that, the first task I had to accomplish was to sell myself to them. I realised that if they didn't like me, they would never buy my work, no matter how creative. It is a reality that holds true even today. People never buy from people they dislike.

Clearly, this is where being nice really pays off. Once you're able to get past that barrier, then the least you will be accorded is a fair hearing. And nine times out of 10, if they like you, they will listen to what you have to say. It is when your attitude puts people off that you encounter resistance to your work. No amount of hard work can save great work, if the bearer of the work provokes hostility from the client.

In fact, the right attitude used to be one of the key traits we used to look for when we hired people for Mudra. Skills can always be taught, but attitude is a quality that is innate, and in the business world carries more premium than knowhow or talent. Little wonder that the recruitment motto of several large organisations is: recruit for attitude; train for skills.

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