This summer – treat yourself with Mango delight!

Summer is here and we Punekars adore nothing more than a crate full of Alphonse (Ratnagiri Haphus as we call it)! As an ardent Punekar nothing makes me happier than the word Alphonso.

Most of the times, I heard people complaining about the excess heat every summer, and there is this one common phrase repeated every year no matter where you are – “Yaar, itni garmi kabhi nahi giri, It’s been the hottest summer this year”. But We, I personally and I can safely include all Punekars here, eagerly wait for these 3 months because it gives me the eternal joy of slurping mango, yes I slurp, proudly!

Peace you find from that orange-ish yellow raniform shaped fruit (well, calling it just a fruit would be disgrace to such an amazing creation of supernatural being, but then I did not find any other interchangeable noun – so let it be) is enormous.

So today I am going to talk about 3 of the most exquisite places where you can find some delicious mango recipes, you just can’t afford to miss out on these places if you are in Pune, take a look.

1) Sujata Mastani: Mastani and Pune has a very old connection. Undoubtedly, first thing that comes in one’s mind is the very famous Bajirao – but if you are a Punekar your mind quickly take you to an even more famous Mastani, Sujata Mastani. A go-to place in Sadashiv Peth where you can find numerous variants made of mango from ice-cream to shake to their very own Mango Mastani.  Mastani is nothing but a thick milkshake served with a big dollop of ice-cream and dry fruits. It’s so deliciously yummy that one just cannot stay passing by the road without having it, you just have to have it once you are in the vicinity.

2) German Bakery’s Mango Cheesecake: Well if you go by regular foodies review, Mango Cheesecake of German Bakery is to die for. What better way to finish a delightful dinner with mouth-watering cheese-cake. It’s exquisite texture toppled with mango cream is all that you need after a long summer working day, and suddenly your cells get activated in different dimensions altogether.

3) Pasteur Mango ice cream: Any talk of summer and food would be incomplete without any mention of ice-cream. It’s so essential part of our summer routine that one can’t ignore the importance of it. One place which definitely ticks all the brackets is Pasteur’s Mango ice-cream.  You will find many varieties of mango there ranging from ice cream to mango softy to juice to tub and shake. Well I recommend you to try everything because each one is better than the last. Its deliciously loaded mango shake with pieces of fresh mango fruit cut is ideal dividend to all the 9-month wait of summer.

There is a beautiful saying from the ancient Roman Empire which goes like – “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. It’s what I recommend to all the visitors, students and professionals coming from all corners of India to Pune, summer is the time to leave your daily diet and follow a Punekar to get the best out of this season.

So, this summer go hard on heat, set yourself free. Go and buy some Alphonso, make delicious mango mastani. Eat yummy Pasteur Mango ice cream. Beat the heat in Punekar style!

If you haven’t been to any of this above place, please make a plan ASAP. Grab this opportunity and make this summer an excuse to give pleasure to your taste-buds.

Playing with jargons

Bottom of the Funnel, Call-to-action, Inbound Marketing. Ever heard of this term? You must have, you’re a budding marketers!

Jargons are fascinatingly boring. We all at some point in time use it to show off our Marketing “knowledge”. The purpose of this series of articles is to go beyond the verbatim meaning of a marketing jargon. Yes, you may impress a bunch of students with fancy jargons in a couple of college seminars, but not your marketing head and definitely not your customers.

So where do we start? Let’s start with my favorite one – Brand Equity! It’s a case in point for most used or abused jargon of the management fraternity.

“The commercial value that derives from consumer perception of the brand name of a particular product or service, rather than from the product or service itself.”

So many jargons within the definition of a jargon, huh!

Let me just simplify this a little more – It is the equity associated with a brand.

To reduce it to bare bones - It is those extra bucks, those extra miles that you as a customer willing to put for that brand, so that you can have it, and not any other! Why? Just because you have got that name associated with your product. This is gold, right?

Now ask yourself “why do you pay Starbucks 160 for a cup of coffee, when you can still get it for 15 anywhere else” (Gujjus, please skip this one – I know you have never visited Starbucks)

The reason might be anything – you may genuinely like the coffee there, or you need to boast it to your colleagues about your visit there or any other, but Starbucks has just earned over 10 times the other product from your single visit there.

Now we all can relate, right?

One thing that strikes immediately in the definition is the consumer perception. Consumer is the most important part of the whole process of creating a brand worth equity.

Back in the 1990’s David Aaker described brand equity as “a set of assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that adds to or subtracts from the value provided by a product or service…”

To convey the importance of the Brand and BE, I would like to quote the prestige in the context relevant to this,

“Every great brand consists of three parts. The first part is called "The Product". The marketer shows you something ordinary. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't (probably). The second part is called "The Branding". The marketer takes the ordinary something product and makes it something extraordinary (by creating customer loyalty and brand awareness). Now you're (and the competitors) looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because, of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because creating a brand isn't enough; you have to justify it, in monetary terms. That's why every marketer/company/organization are in pursuit of this third part, the hardest part, the part we call "Brand Equity".

Of course, branding and brand equity goes way beyond than this in understanding.

Often a Marketer/Company get into the mode of playing safe once they start hitting regular profits and stop marketing the product/service as rigorously as earlier, and this is probably the biggest blunder an organization can make from the marketing perspective. That is the reason most organization end up as a mediocre one, where they follow the classic product life-cycle and sooner the profits fade away and product dies. There is no reason making your brand just another commodity, rather make it a strong brand – build loyalty around your customers and then leverage that bond to earn “premium”

Building brand is a mammoth task, creating equity around it is even difficult and rarely happens overnight but, is essential for the lasting success of your business.

Referencing the past

Let me tell you something about references. Wiki says "Reference is a relation between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to refer to the second object. The second object—the one to which the first object refers—is called the referent of the first object."

On the basis of this definition - is it really possible for us to refer to our past or our future at any point of time? Like we all know space can be bent (not like the Beckham though, nobody can bend it like Beckham) and time can warp, it may not be as improbable as it may sound. Just like the movie Interstellar, the actor referred to his own past to give the clue of the co-ordinates and at the same time guided her daughter in the further future. Can we right now at this very moment affect any point of time of our lives? I think we can. We can go back to an event and guide our own past or future (at least in this 3-D world) emotionally. We can certainly give emotional strength or weakness to our own past or future staying right here in this moment.

It is not a secret that our thought process can have a significant impact on our daily lifestyle or it can even exist physically if the connection is too strong. It is the same theory, through visualizations and various other techniques and positive thinking - we can impart all our present positiveness into our future being or to our future situation, helping it starting very today - making the possibility so strong that it has no other option than to execute itself. Similarly, if we think about some past event - be it dreadful or fun - and whatever mindset we carry through while thinking, it is also possible we are affecting our own past, making it strong or weak at the same time similarly as we did to our future. However improbable or impossible it seems, there is some possibility, some chances that our future also has some impact on what we doing in the present. Who knows, if some of these ideas are being exported into my mind from future me, desperately bending space or warping time through his mind!

It's incredible how a single syllable word can alter the way of thinking of a very complex, rationale and irrational mind of arguably the most intelligent species on the Planet Earth. It is the most profound emotion found in the life of a human being from the very beginning - the fear of unknown to the very end till its last death - the fear of death itself. It exist even before a human come to its very existence. Since more than often, A mother is fearful of the baby she carries in her womb, hence it is safe to say that every person is inherited with this emotions right from his very existence. What makes it so special then? So many literature are already written on this very topic and yet nobody has still been able to crack the code to be fearless. Of course, one can act fearless in a moment through inspiration or motivation or through some reasons. But to prolong it is as difficult or impossible as to travel the universe without a spacesuit. Consider it exaggeration or a harsh analogy but it is very much true, even the greatest leaders once had felt this emotion - secretly it may be, but they surely had. If not for himself, for others.

However hard it may be to overcome, time and again I come up with articles which elaborate how the emotion can perform its role in intensifying your will to perform and the most common argument is it is the fear of losing that keeps you going, so one should have it however notorious it may pictured. One thing I think is that because it shows you the possibilities of your failure, in other words it literally shows you all the possible hurdles in your path through you can fail, and if you stay focused and do not let that emotion carry you away - you can eliminate all those hurdles in a timely manner and make your path more clear and excel at your performance, but then again it is easier said than done. The main problem here lies is most of the people get carried away or back out at this very stage, the possibility of failing discourage them so much that they just give up even before the start and I have come across many people who uses it as an excuse to the failure, which is completely unacceptable. So now the question is - how much fear is a good fear?

Answer to that is very simple, till the extent that it does not make you slave to your own emotions. It shouldn't come in the way of your progress. It shouldn't be the excuse of the failure you may going to face, or the worst case it should not become the very cause of not trying to attempt because of a certain possibility of a failure. Since if you classify the parameter of the result of any task into - success and failure, then both has equal opportunities at least in the beginning. It is up to a person attempting it that how much emotions he need to instill that can make his performance efficient and make him excel. So do not stop yourself because of the fear of failure. Do not lay back and relax. Push yourself and try harder so much so that you can defeat the fear inside you. That will certainly make you stronger, if not successful, in the end. A very beautiful quote sums it all here - "If you will try, you may fail. But if you won't try at all, you will certainly fail". Let your fear be your guide and not your enemy.

Wimbeldon’15 – Has Federer really past his best?

Yes surely he has, but is he out of the game? Certainly a Big NO.

He has proved it definitely against Murray, that he still has got somewhat of his magic that has won him all his 17 Grand Slams – with the flair he had throughout that semi-final match, with his backhands (not really his comfort zone), he has stunned the 2013 winner and how. Yes he did fall a long way short against a relentless athlete in Novak in the final, but again he tried his level best to match the energy of his fellow 28-year old, but he was always going to fail to get that much amount of energy, which Novak has reservoirs of.

 

Again he showed some glimpses of his prime era, especially in the second set when he was falling behind in the tie breaker and came back strongly to cut 3-set points to grab the set. But in the end Novak’s determination (one from the advertisement) proved too strong for Federer to resist. I would have love this competition a few years back – to see how Federer manages to cut down the energy of the opponents with his master-class strokes. Now, although that is too much to ask for a guy who has certainly past his prime. Although, Great man define by the character they show on the pitch and that’s exactly what Federer has shown throughout the tournament – on his beloved Grass and centre court. Probably this was his best chance to get that illusive number 18, but against a determined and tireless Djoker, I would still say he has done everything he could. He has put all his efforts and entertained us with some of his elegant shots. Losing is always a disappointing thing especially when you are so habitual to win and this was a desperate time for him. He really needed this one to hold and kiss it like old days and engraved a name that has been for so many years ruled the centre court. I still wish he come back strongly next year, but then I think Novaks, Murrays having age on their sides will come back stronger. The thing that has kept the Great guy in the game is his calmness and his stroke-plays, hope he can get the tune right and come back as strong as ever.

No doubt Novak deserved the way he cut down the fierce forehands of Federer, let us congratulate the oldest man to win 9 Grand Slam titles and hope he gets to his 10th sooner.