Cant say about Nestle S.A.

but Nestle India may be going through its most schizophrenic phase ever. Appointing a creative consultant called Scarecrow simply takes the cake made with Nestle MILKMAID, perhaps, now that the Company is into confectionary, when news as interviews last came in! What does Nestle India want to scare? The birds off its corporate logo? Sounds a bit like the forest department in a country or the environment ministry appointing AXE or better still PODU, which among our tribal communities is short for slash & burn! The public sector may well be excused for not estimating the image impact, such as we pardon our tribal brethren for not connecting poducultivation to overall environmental degradation. But brand sensitive Nestle? Hands off and hats off, of course, if this has the nod of the bosses in Vevey. Because, if the best ad agencies of the world aligned with the Company globally cannot solve Nestle Indias creative problems, well, then welcome Scarecrow! It was the companys pride once that if you took roughly 35 Nestle brands to a country and factored in about 85 years of Nestle operations in 145 nations, Nestle India would always have close to half a million brand marketing experiences to bank on at any given time. Clearly not enough for India! Basis the recent census, thats only 0.00036 ideas per capita. Too few, in the local companys view, in this viral age of social networking thats taken mass customisation simply, or not so simply, to dizzying heights altogether. No? Particularly when compared to a promised investment of a staggering Rs.19/ - per capita planned for next year! Cant make a co -relation? Well, all Nestle India has to do is raise prices by a mere 5 paise per product it sells in India and hold it for a year t o be able to fund the so called bullish investments it promises to make in the coming year in factories, capacity increases and new technologies. For this it needs Scarecrow? More likely a scare to take it out of deep ennui set around a myth an old Indian rope trick that has transcended into a rope-a-dope trick that the Indian consumer of Nestle is reluctant to pay 5 paise more per person per day for the exquisite products it buys from the Company, because of no other reason than that s/he is an odd kettle of fish! (Now theres a new visual that the Company may consider once the birds have flown leaving the local Indian counterpart an empty nester!). But seriously, is Scarecrow expected to brood over a full fledged marketing services department that I inherited and a full fledged advertising unit that I created and a full fledged Communication Department that I launched for the first time in the history of the Company in India? Or is it going to impart soaring lessons to a once battle ready adult mother bird that appears to have regressed into a fledgling? If it does not scare that bird and its chicks away in the first placesquawk! So, whats the brief going to be? Please help our advertising to take wing without scaring the pants of our blue ey ed trainees, wet behind the ears, because our communication induction programme is just not in place! See, how we cannot spell confectionery right! (Aside: is that confectionery or confectionary, man?) And that milk factory we have up North in whats that place, Monga or Moga , please check out the correct place with our production manager, will you ? Well, what can we do to increase sale of powder milk among the farmers there who supply us liquid milk in the first place? They are a rich lot you knowHow ab out painting every farmers house blue with the Nestle EVERYDAY logo? Great idea! You know outdoor is cheap in the hinterland and we are a bit tight on budgets. But no worries, well protect your 15%, okay? Or will that be 2% for your creatives on all medi a spends and remaining 13% to the AOR who will buy the media? But because the walls of farmers houses cost nothing in media terms, well, youll just have to give us the designs and we will get it painted ourselvesbut, of course, the logos are with us!Th ats right! But you can give it a

great slogan, no? Just make sure its in the local languagePunjabi or Gurumukhi or whateverfind out from the Nestle CERELAC guys they are doing this all the time, in 16 Indian languagesso, if you have a great slogan fo r powder milk or dahi we can take the campaign all -India. Oh, no no, notdahi that will have to be in Marathiare there any farmers in Pune whose derelict walls we can paint? or near the factorytheres bound to be prosperous farmers thereaboutsoh, but thats a co-packer so, forget it.or, wait, well get back to you on that later ok? Also, could you audit our ads for us, too? You know, compile all the ads on a discthis I need urgentlyVeveys asking for itso can you do it quickly no , no dont cont act our aligned agencies for this it can take ages and will never comeyou just buy it off the market ..yes, yes, Ad Index will do buy off our ads and tell them not to put the Ad Index logo on itor take it out ..how long will this take? Really urgent, this! Top priority, theek hai? Just avoid that Cup-o-Noodles ad in it thats right ha ha imagine a couple of kids carrying hot water in flasks to eat instant noodles on a picnic in a jungleAre they going on a trek or are they going on a noodle eating t rip? I mean, wheres the convenience? Why wouldnt they just carry hot food instead if they can carry hot waterThen theres that splash in the end in really dirty brown mucky water in the jungle with Cup -o-Noodles in hand the cues are totally wrong so forget that ad just compile the rest.. Speaking of MAGGIits just MAGGI, o.k., not Nestle MAGGI never make that mistake.. Why? Ill tell you why in fact, why dont I come over and make a presentation of our brand architecture, the worldwide standardi sation of colors, logos, categories, brand names, descriptors, and the birds in a nestlittle nest, you knowthats what Nestle meansin Germanor is it French?well, you know Switzerland is a big country I mean, its a small country geographically but is hugely influenced by its neighbouring countriesthats right , neutral during the war and all thatyou know the history400 years of peaceimpressive , hahn? ..achha, so well send you there for a junket if you do good work ahemahemperhaps organise a w .w. seminar at Rive Reinehow would you like that? But we also need this name for a new MAGGI flavour we are launching so, you have to conduct that contest of course , response will be huge we did that many years ago when we launched MAGGI only..we as ked for names huge responseand then we called the brand MAGGI ..after Jules Maggi, founding father very creative it was ! Now, you handle this contestno no, TOMATO TANG kahan chalegain fact , nahin chalait cannibalises our ketchup sales but you dont have to come up with a brand name .. yaarthat will come woh ayegawe have more than 35000 brands around the world and still counting tum sirf contest ke entries handle karosamjheya, ok, well pay per prospectper hit , if you like What ? Sevian in soya milk kya abhi jaga hai ya soya..woh soya project kab ka soya hua haiwas shut down ages ago, manbahut laphda tha , boss! But keep generating ideas who knows what may workNo no no , this Deepika NESCAFE thing dont touch ..so what if she is not doing the brand ambassador thing as defined in your classic promo books, bhaiyawoh sab chhodo bhool jao your MBA tembia I tell you dont fix whats working all the hip gyration during coffee preparationits doing wonders of course we lose sales in the summer months ..but we pick it up in the winter months, naso business as usual hai ki nahin Then we have the press you know very noseychirp chirpwe use them only for product launchescurrent news walla fundataaza front page full page w e could afford in the past ab quarter chalata haipauakuchh strip shripkuchh arcane publicationsand we use T.V. for regular advertising ..trp trpand we dont care for editspaid or not I know, I knowtotally lost opportunitywe really wanted to slip some news out about how unhygienic is the daily milk supply in our cities and how mothers ought to turant switch to Nestle tetra PURE

MILKwell, what to do there was this chap here earlier , in my place, so headstronghe wouldnt do it and he wouldnt allow anyone else to do it either saala bada saadhu ban ta thahe put out a Press Policy that stopped everyone and anyone from talking officially to the press except himself and his boss, the Market Headreal chalu.. Real duffer, if you ask me added no value for 8 years so we asked him to quit and true to form we took his nest away you know, this house the Company had loaned him money to buy a houseso, he built it ..and just when he was ready to move in , with his family da baangg! we had him put in his papersso he builds the nest and we get to lay eggs in itserves him right! Communication was in a mess then much better now we allow more people in the Company to talk to the Pressdidnt you read how one junior guy told this national newspaper off when it tried to pry into our Nutrition Programme in colleges.. we cannot give you details of our programme because it will adversely impact the competitive position of our Company, he was quotedsolid, boss kya maarathen he resigned , of coursepata nahin kyonmust have got a higher package elsewhere for his amazing communication effort about our strategic CSRwe have a reputation for that ..HBR padho, sab samajh jaoge ! Its nothing short of a miracle what we have done in Punjab. You can organise a media visit thereyes, yes, another good idea! So, dont worry about this controversy that Scarecrow will scare away the Nestle birds in its logowell fix the guy who started this Incidentally, how did the press get to know that Scarecrow has been ap pointed Nestle creative consultant? Oh, you squawked, did you? Well, dont do it again without my written permission, okwe have a Nestle India Press Policy, you knowits our NIPPle contractallows us to show just as much as we like no more, no less.. al l in writing, proof read by meNext time media wallahs call, on a slow news day, just avoid, or direct them to me. And yes, before you go, you can look after our in-house magazine, VARTALAPyes Nestle VARTAPLAP, but with a small Nestle on top, or on the si denot too big..HQ is very sensitive about associating the world wide NESTLE bird nest visual id with every this or that publicationbut we use it discreetly, sort of, because we so value internal communicationsor should that be communication