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Showing posts from September, 2008

CRICKET, THE SECOND RELIGION IN INDIA!

As the media clutter becomes deafening, the sure-shot way to make your message reach the ears of consumers is to ride on current events and hip happenings! Oh God… Oh God… please, please let Sachin play well this time. I hope India reaches the super six. Shall we make it to the finals? An example of some of the prayers heard all over the country when India goes to play the world. The best part is that the same prayers are heard in many boardrooms, advertising agencies and television studios as well! It’s the biggest and the greatest spectacle of the year. The heartbeat of the whole country seems to be in the hands of these eleven players. These are the demigods and the whole country looks up to them. The match is not just a game, it’s a fight and they better win! A victory is adulated, but a defeat brings so much wrath, it is actually scary. Cricket is the only thing that unites India like nothing else. North, South, East or West, go to any part of the country and you’ll find the same

Dream of anything... and get it too ! ! !

History is packed with instances of great dreams coming alive on the back of great negotiations... Every deal is negotiable; yes, every! This is the story of a boy in his twenties. He was into the real estate business and this was his first deal. He wanted to buy an old dilapidated hotel named Commodore Hotel, near Grand Central Station on Forty-second Street in New York City. The hotel used to remain vacant most of the time. It had a sleazy club and the land on which it was built was owned by another bankrupt organisation Penn Central Railroad. The city was in a financial mess, so much so that no bank would even consider giving real estate loans in Manhattan. This boy planned to buy this hotel by convincing a bank to loan him $80 million to rebuild & transform it into a state-of-the-art hotel. It seemed an impossible task and when he discussed it with his lawyer George Ross, the latter thought the boy was totally crazy... but agreed to help him nevertheless. After two years of pla