My Interview of 4th Dec........

.....that changed everything---my Past, Present and most of the Future!
Well, at first there was a Pre Placement Talk or PPT by FCB Ulka panel, which included Ms Savita Mathai and Mr Shashi Sinha.At the beginning, they showed 10 of their ads, which included
1.AMUL
2.Mahindra Scorpio
3.Santoor
4.Sundrop Oil
5.Indigo Marina
6.naukri.com

I would like to add that the latest Zee Cinema's ad, which is about a little girl who gets abducted by dacoits and becomes a dacoit herself, and whose life changes under the influence of Zee Cinema, and she opens a dance school; is also a product of their creativity.
FCB Ulka group includes 7-8 companies, which includes FCB Ulka Advertising, Cogito Consulting, etc.
So where were we? Ya, they talked about the company, the profile that they offered and the selection procedure.
The selection procedure started off with a 10 minutes written test, which was very Kotler-ish and something about FCB also. From that test, 4 people were short-listed and I heard that I was just below the cut off or something like that. Then we had an interview.
The interview was as follows........

Q. Tell me something about yourself.
A. I am basically from Singhbhum district of Jharkhand. I did my schooling till Class 12 there and then I shifted to Orissa, from where I completed my Grad with Commerce. In 2003, I appeared for CAT (I was smart to sneak 1 year gap in between my graduation and CAT), got through NIFT, NIRMA, IISWBM and IMDR.

Q. Why did you join IMDR?
A. It was the introducing year of MBA at NIFT, so I cancelled NIFT. Another reason was that NIFT is known for Fashion Designing and the quality of Management education was uncertain. IISWBM's HR (as far as I knew) was more popular, so I ruled it out because I was interested in Marketing. Ahmedabad was politically disturbed with riots, too far away from home and nobody of acquaintanc there. Besides, they were doubling the seats, and my director at TIME also suggested that you better go to IMDR than NIRMA!
I knew an alumnus of IMDR (Gurucharan Singh Gandhi), who told me it’s all about priorities. If you are looking for huge pay for placements, IMDR is not the place to be in, but if you are looking at quality education, this is the place to be in.
When I came here, my first reaction was what do we have here???But now I realise, there's nothing else we need for a quality management education. We do not have air-conditioned auditorium or carpets here but we have enough of what is actually needed!

Q.Have you read any book in Advertising? Which one?
A.I have read FCB Ulka Brand Building Advertising. But I read it right at the time when I joined IMDR, but ya, yesterday I glanced through it again because I thought it necessary, and I am glad I did (a few questions in written paper were from that book). Actually, I found it missing from our library since 1 month but tracked it down with 1 of my classmates finally.

Q.So you must have read the cases discussed in it? Which one of them did you like?
A.I had read it thoroughly one-year back but I can tell you which one I liked. It was Santoor.

Q.Why did you like it?
A.This ad attempted to position soap in a different way which none of the other soaps were doing. Other soaps featured filmstars or soft skin but something like this (age-defying positioning) was unique.

Q.Now that you have talked about Positioning, there are 7-8 variants of Positioning. Which one of them did this ad use?
A.Benefits

Q.Which other books have you read on Advertising?
A.The Uncommon Sense of Advertising, The Craft of Copywriting, Advertsing--Pure and Simple, etc, but I try to read more of Indian authors, no matter what the subject is!

Q.Why is that?
A.Because it gives an Indian context to relate to.

Q.So you must have read fiction or non-fiction by Indian authors as well?
A.Yes sir,Scenes from an Executives life by Anurag Mathur, Kiran Bedi's biography, The IITians, etc.

Q.What's your rank in a class of 42 students?
A.10th. But I would like to add that along with the class activities, I have always been involved with the extra-curriculars like campus reporting for Maharashtra Herald, participating in inter and intra-collegiate festivals, being part of editorial boards for close to five years!

Guys, I would continue the remaining part of the interview tomorrow because I have got to rush.OK, so just wait for one more day.
Thankx guys for visiting my Blog!
Take Care