The most powerful words in any language are &ldquo;Let me tell you a story&rdquo;. No wonder some of advertising&rsquo;s greats, from David Ogilvy and Leo Burnett onwards, have been great story-tellers. As the legend goes, when Ogilvy was on his way to the shoot of the first Hathaway Shirt ad, he picked up a few props which could add a story element to an otherwise unremarkable fashion shoot. And one of those props was, of course, the famous black eye-patch. In an era when dashing veterans from World War II occasionally wore eye-patches, it immediately created a mythology around the elegant silver-haired male model with the expensive lifestyle: Who was he? What was his story? What was the mysterious secret of his past? These things were never explicitly revealed over the next fifteen years that the Hathaway campaign ran, unchanged.

'Let me tell you  A story'

Business Standard

I watch the telly. It&rsquo;s boring. I sit. I&rsquo;m fidgety. I stand. I pace around the room, listening to tunes on my iPod. This is a nightmare.&rdquo; This is how Wayne Rooney, in his book My Decade in the Premier League, describes how he felt a few hours before the biggest match of his life &mdash; the 2008 Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea.

Rooney&#39;s own goal

Inside the sprawling 2,000-sq ft Roberto Cavalli store at New Delhi&rsquo;s DLF Emporio, a crocodile-leather handbag in luxuriant gold, silver and copper tones sparkles on a throne of its own. The iconic Cavalli &ldquo;Florence&rdquo; handbag, a rare &ldquo;price on request&rdquo; item at the store, we are told, was recently bought by the Queen of Bhutan for an undisclosed sum.

High street debut 

Although efforts have been made to export Indian wines for 25 years, the &ldquo;balance of trade&rdquo; between Indian wines exported and imported wines is still terribly one-sided, with only about 35,000 cases exported against some 300,000 cases of wines imported into India in 2011-12. The value would be even more skewed, since Indian wines tend to be priced at $3-4 per bottle (FOB or free on board), whereas there are many high-end wines coming in for star hotels.

A taste for vintage India

Emerging from the violence and chaos of the 1990s, Croatia is a great tourism destination today. It has excellent infrastructure, including a new six-lane expressway connecting all its main regions, not to speak of a rich heritage, culture and cuisine.

Dalmatian adventures

I committed, a few weeks ago, to spending one column telling you what&rsquo;s so great about tango. This is that column &mdash; partly because I meant to think up some other ideas, but didn&rsquo;t have time now that I spend all my waking hours looking up YouTube videos of debates and newsclips related to the US election. It beats me why I&rsquo;m so interested in the US election. I suspect that CNN has somehow found a way to whisper into people&rsquo;s ears as they sleep about how the US&rsquo;s choice will impact us all.

Tango crack II

No matter how packed his day is, PVR Cinemas&rsquo; Managing Director Ajay Bijli never misses out on his workout. And he also expects his employees to look fighting fit. The marathoner shares his fitness mantra with Aabhas Sharma at his home gym.

Man on the run

Most smartphone owners would know about Rovio Entertainment&rsquo;s ludicrously popular game franchise, Angry Birds. The company, which first launched the Angry Birds iOS game in 2009 and went on to add three more titles in the same series, is now out with a new game called Bad Piggies.

Bad Piggies is no Angry Birds

With over one billion users, Facebook is now about three times the size of the US population. But, the social networking site is struggling to prove that it can make money from this huge pool of users.

Facebook in bid to give more bang for ad buck

&lsquo;And sometimes we should stop to think about our campaigns and their true purpose and the difference they are making to the lives of our people.

Purposeful spending

Most smartphone users are left wanting in terms of battery life. Heavy users can pray to get a day out of their smartphone&rsquo;s battery (though no such luck for BlackBerry users who can never leave their houses without the chargers). And, since most new smartphones (like the iPhone, Galaxy S series, etc) are sealed units, carrying an extra battery isn&rsquo;t an option.

Power packs for smartphones

Home-grown companies venturing abroad have been on the rise. But the trip is fraught with challenges and risks Ritesh Kumar works for a Rs 1,000-crore fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) company. He&rsquo;s a vice-president there and has recently been given charge of pushing the company&rsquo;s interests abroad. This is a break that Kumar has been seeking for long. He gets down to the task, hiring consultants to study the potential markets for his products.

Cracking new markets

Divergence is the critical organizational skill in the practice of planned serendipity. We can put people in the path of serendipity by getting in motion, and we can see the possibilities serendipity presents to us by developing the skill of preparation, but without the ability to take divergent action, serendipity will never stick.

Lucky by chance?

As we look at our product development plan, starting from how many engineers report on the project, how many vehicles we need to build for testing, where do we get certain components from to which equipment do we buy, we look for the bells and whistles that we can do without. These elements have to do the most important job at hand, albeit, without compromising on quality because the consumer should never feel any difference between frugal and regular engineering.

Frugal engineering is not at all about cost-cutting: Pawan Goenka

Since the launch of Lever Brothers in India in 1988, FMCG companies have built brands and defined the brand marketing landscape. One hundred and twenty four years later, the energy of retail growth is palpable, and consumer choices are exploding. New products, retail formats, brands and channels are being introduced every day and the opportunities for retail growth are dazzling.

Loyalty coalitions

Over the years McDonald&rsquo;s has beefed up its menu in India, adding new items that are not available globally. Now, it has abandoned the traditional pre-made and kept-warm fare for food made-to-order.

Has McDonald's bitten off more than it can chew?

I don&rsquo;t have to think hard to know, which campaign is my best yet. Even after eight years, it smiles back at me &mdash; the Aditya Birla Group series of commercials. To define what makes this campaign worthy is also to recount my ongoing journey with this project. I cannot see the two as separate.

'We arrived at the communication strategy with a long-term objective'

THE OUTSIDERS : EIGHT UNCONVENTIONAL CEO&rsquo;S AND THEIR RADICALLY RATIONAL BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS by William N.

The top 10 business bestsellers

    This top ranked company got its name as a result of a search for a word that was meaningless and without connotation in any language. 10,000 names were produced by a computer which was finally reduced to 234 by extensive opinion polls amongst 7000 people and finally 6 names were short listed. Further these 6 names were examined for meaninglessness in more than100 languages. Name the company.

The Strategist Quiz (#274)

Weekly deals offered by retailers to price-conscious shoppers have grown the proportion of consumers that actively seek offers in stores (Click on graphic)

Rise in Deal-seeking shoppers

Indian companies have rapidly increased the pace of globalising their sales and operational footprint in the last decade. The role of corporate centre in terms of its location and talent is a question that has become increasingly prescient for such companies. In the first wave of international expansion, firms traditionally relied on two contrasting approaches &mdash; exporting senior talent from India to these new markets or hiring senior local talent to augment the majority Indian operating team in international locations.

Managing HQ & local relationships

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'Let me tell you A story'

Rooney's own goal