I will remember 2009 as the year when the industry took its eyes off the ball. With reports of the slowdown in the West, the year began with huddled conversations around water-coolers, taxi stands, golf courses or five-star coffee shops (depending on your grade) about the impending effect in India. Everyone waited for something to happen. The game was stopped. Not because of bad light, but foggy thinking. Because six months into the year, when nothing seemed to have been accomplished by waiting, everyone decided it was time to make doughnuts. And boy, did that happen. In most sectors we saw dramatic growth fueled by primary demand and availability of finance.
So lesson No.1: In a global world we are still, thankfully, not that global. Maybe it is good to stay that way.
The other significant revelation for me in 2009 was the true attitude of the private sector towards human assets. Let me assert that quite a few Indian firms have acquired the insensitive, exploitative attitude the worst global MNCs have towards its employees. In a quest to please shareholders, several of them instituted headcount reduction. Why? Because it was easy to do, and it was visible, by way of cost cutting. The downside is that they antagonised a whole bunch of talent. So now when they need them back, do you think they respond?
So, lesson No 2 : Human assets are not to be treated like inanimate inventory. They happen to have feelings. Good times, bad times, you need to take them with you. 2009 was a splendid year for CEOs to emerge as Human Leaders. I don’t think that really happened.
Two standout memories in the media landscape --- the emergence of Colors as the new leader in the GEC category with an astute blend of the breakthrough and mainstream, they have been able to keep the Indian populace mesmerised. And the other is Vodafone’s Zoozoo campaign. It just that showed a great advertising idea well executed can still make commercial breaks a welcome event. Also it made all those celebrity-filled ads look so passé.
The last memory of 2009 was the emergence of more buzzwords. There was this urge to label everything. So we had a deluge of seminars with speakers who carried their power-point deck from hotel ballroom to the other. Why I hate this is that it makes us just trend watchers. In 2010, I’d rather we become trend creators.