For God's Sake

Tripathi) Parameswaran Ambi (Foreword by Amish

Description

An adman constantly strives to connect market research data to insight on a winning campaign. Ambi Parmeshwaran has developed a fascination for how Indians are getting more religious but also more consumption driven. Combining his thirty- year experience as an adman with a lifelong passion for religious studies, Ambi seeks to answer questions like: Why has the bindi disappeared from advertisements? How did Akshaya Trithaya become such a big deal? What makes Lord Shiva so cool? How did a Chennai-based department store start the New Year's Sale phenomenon? Are Muslims more open-minded shoppers? Why do people who have no interest in using an MBA degree still get an MBA degree? How did the Manusmriti do a disservice to Hindu women? What can Harvard Business School learn from the Kumbh Mela? Ambi has filled this book with personal stories, anecdotes, lessons and excerpts from research and other publications. This book is a treat for anyone interested in how religion has evolved and how clever marketers have ridden the wave by tailoring their products and services.

Sujets

• Economics
• Earth science
• Gestion et management

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351186083
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ambi Parameswaran

FOR GOD S SAKE
An Adman on the Business of Religion
Foreword by Amish Tripathi
Contents
About the Author
Also by the Author
Praise for the Book
Foreword
Preface to the Paperback Edition
1. Introduction
2. The Mystery of the Missing Bindi
3. A Great Year for Weddings
4. From Off Season to On Season
5. An Old Festival Gets a New Look
6. Inaugurate with a Puja-Enjoy Perpetual Prosperity
7. Planning a Home Gets the Divine Touch
8. Will Travel for God
9. Why Do Women Pray More?
10. So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
11. TeleRama to TeleDrama
12. Riding the Puja Boom
13. God Okay, Gandhi Not Okay
14. Every Fifth Indian Will Be Muslim
15. Thank God, He Created Nothing
16. Burqa Ke Peechhe Kya Hai?
17. Pray for Better Health
18. Religious Music Can Rescue Ads
19. Parsi-owned Car Sells in a Jiffy
20. Timeless Religious Art
21. Religion Goes Hi-Tech
22. Honesty, Charity, Religiosity
23. Can Spirituality Lift Business Education?
24. The Last Word
Footnote
8. Will Travel for God
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Religion: An Essential Vocabulary
Selected Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright Page
PORTFOLIO
FOR GOD S SAKE
Ambi Parameswaran has spent a large part of his thirty-five-year working career in advertising at DraftFCB Ulka where he rose to be Executive Director and CEO.
An engineer from IIT Madras and MBA from IIM Calcutta, he also completed his PhD from Mumbai University in 2012. Ambi has authored/co-authored six books on topics ranging from brand building and advertising to consumer behaviour.
When he is not busy at work, reading, writing or teaching, you can find him at a music concert. His wife, Nithya, is an ex-marketer turned stock market investor. His son, Aditya, is an alumnus of IIT Bombay and Stanford.
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
FCB Ulka Brand Building Advertising: Concepts & Cases
Understanding Consumers: Building Powerful Brands Using Consumer Research
Building Brand Value: Five Steps to Building Powerful Brands
Ride the Change: Perspectives on Changing Consumers, Markets and Marketing
DraftFCB Ulka Brand Building Advertising: Concepts & Cases Book II (With Kinjal Medh)
Strategic Brand Management (Co-author with Isaac Jacob for the Indian version of the book by Kevin Lane Keller)
Praise for the Book
The way he stirs the pot with a dash of humour, some very apt quotes and some good old-fashioned research is what makes the book a winner all the way - Business World
Using anecdotes and research from thirty years in advertising, this is a fascinating book on the business of Indian religion - Free Press Journal
This is an easy-to-read, jargon-free book that keeps you intellectually engaged till the end - Business Today
All told, this is a book that is worth reading and is a must in every B-school library - Business India
What a magical conundrum for marketers! The facts in this book are thought-provoking and beg and prod you to debate. It s a brilliant 4D documentary, so For God s Sake, just go, get it - Financial Express
For God s Sake has a simple agenda: to understand the ways in which religiosity interacts with the manner in which we are marketed to, the way we shop and the way we express our desires - Business Standard
A must-read for anyone in marketing, believers or atheists - Campaign India
This book provides a trivia-heavy look at the pervasiveness of religion in India, from the point of view of the fast-moving urban Indian. Even though breezy, the book is valuable, especially for young readers - Money Life
The chapters are meticulously researched, the writing is effortless and the anecdotes interesting - Week
The book is replete with observations and insights, exploring along the way television programming, music, films, books, auspicious dates, weddings, tourism, micro-religious typecasting, information technology and more - Deccan Herald
Parameswaran with his experience and easy writing style connects with the reader and gets him/her involved in the anecdotes and experiences mentioned in the book. It is evident from this book that there are a lot of Indians who appear to have a stake in god s take - Business Outlook
Foreword
I spent many years in the wilderness of atheism till I discovered God and He empowered me to write the Shiva Trilogy, and it was His blessing that they went on to become big sellers, prompting me to resign from my job and pursue writing as a full-time career.
God inspires what I do and I am grateful to Him for His blessings.
So when Ambi called me to request that I write a Foreword for his book For God s Sake , I did not hesitate for a minute. The book, which is an anecdotal take on how God and religion influence our day-to-day life, is indeed timely and relevant. On the one hand we as consumers are drifting in many different directions. Our love for God is what is keeping us moored and anchored, in spite of the winds of change buffeting our lives.
In this book, Ambi is slicing and dicing the many ways religion is impacting our everyday life, from the way we design our houses, to the way we plan our holidays, to the way we celebrate our festivals and so on. While the experts had predicted the slow decline of religion, I don t see that happening for a long, long time-if anything, the force of devotion is becoming stronger. As we live in a VUCA world (the term coined by the US Army War College to indicate the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world we live in), the one thing that we can be certain about is God and our own faith and beliefs.
It is no wonder that in this VUCA world we are seeing consumers and citizens of India going back to their roots to look for greater meaning, or a simple ritual, that helps them feel more grounded. The manifestations are all around us, in the books we read, the music we listen to, the programmes we watch on television. But is there a method to this and is there a way we can understand how it will impact our own lives and businesses?
Ambi has used his own three-decade experience in marketing, advertising and communication to address each dimension. The stories he will tell you are all drawn from his own experience and, therefore, they are on one level personal and at another level very real. Each topic is presented through a combination of personal stories which are then linked to a religious anchor, be it the Vedas or the Manusmriti or the Koran, and then each chapter presents a way you too can benefit or not get hurt by the trend.
There is something that you can take out of this book and put to use in your day-to-day life, unlike many other non-fiction books you may read.
I would like to imagine that India will rise as a superpower in the coming few decades, if not earlier. Our own religious beliefs will continue to anchor us as we grow more wealthy. I am also hopeful that as we become more and more literate, we will start seeing the commonality of all religions, and we will find His grace in every belief system, as Shiva or Vishnu or Shakti Maa or Allah or Jesus Christ or Buddha or any other of His myriad forms. A day will come when we will start appreciating our great nation with its inherently liberal culture which melds beautifully with our traditional views on religion, rather than hold in esteem the fraud-liberalism we practice today where those who are religious are looked down upon.
We will once again become a Cradle of Civilization .
May God bless us all! May God bless our great nation, India!
AMISH TRIPATHI
Preface to the Paperback Edition
It was a cold winter morning in Ranchi. I was in the city to speak at the TEDx event hosted by IIM Ranchi. The student volunteer who picked me up from my hotel asked me if it would be okay if we stopped to pick up another speaker. Of course, I said.
So we went to the Ramakrishna Mission where I met Swami Sarvapriyananda 1 . On our way to the venue of the talk the Swamiji and I got talking about his interests, and about my new book For God s Sake that was just about to reach the bookstores. Swamiji, who had embraced spiritual quest after completing his MBA from XIM Bhubaneswar, was intrigued by the area of my research and my book s approach to religion and marketing. We spoke about how the Protestant work ethic treatise by Max Weber was the first exploration of religion and commerce. And how it was in the late nineteenth century Germany that it was proposed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche that religion as we know it would not live for very long. Swamiji then told me a joke of how some supporter of Nietzsche had written on a wall, in large and bold letters: God is Dead-Nietzsche . Soon after Nietzsche s death in 1900 someone apparently wrote below that, in even larger letters: Nietzsche is Dead-God .
I thought this anecdote would make a very interesting opener to my TEDx talk and used it to get the audience into a good mood. Little did I realize that the speaker to follow me was Brinda Karat, the Rajya Sabha member from the Communist Party of India (Marxist). In her talk she decided to clarify that communists are not necessarily all supporters of Nietzsche s view of God.
When my book came out in early 2014 the country was in the grip of despondency and frustration. God seemed to be the only possible saviour. It is difficult to imagine how within twelve months the mood has changed to one of optimism and energy, interestingly spurred by a political leader, though from the religious right wing, who is speaking the development mantra.
My book did not address the aspects of Hindutva and how religion plays a role in Indian politics. I felt that these areas have been very well covered by books written by learned media experts and psephologists. Interestingly the rise of the BJP and Narendra Modi over the last one year has not been driven so much by hard-core Hindutva philosophy as by a strong, economically driven developmental