In Company of Kabeer !

Passion for doing something , starting something which may seem nothing but your interest. Your heart wants to follow it not knowing whether there is some benefit in it , whether there is a purpose to it , can it serve higher interest who cares?. Those who start walking are bound to meet with so many destinations , its upto them to choose whether to stop here , whether to walk continuously , should some one else be included , is there anything meaning full to this ... If you would have thought ofthese questions I bet you would have never started that kind of journey which Ms Shabnam Virmani in Kabeer Project.

Kabeer is a mystic poet of 15th century from Northern India , he did not have much knowledge of scriptures or any holy book but seems he had the ultimate experience of true self and purpose of human life , he wrote small verses which contain elixir of life from daily living to highest meditation and very aptly such knowledge can not come from reading , such knowledge can come only fromexperience . Map his words to the most ancient hindu scriptures and it will match word by word be it about description of the lordwithout any form or be it about rituals vs simple meditation. Yet he symbolizes what I may say the most secular figure of Indian history , no wonder India is a secular state , It is land of Kabeer after all. Ms Shabnam Virmani now director of Kabeer project in bangalore started her journey to collect different shades of Kabeer across India, the question is why across India , what do you mean by different Kabeer? well the fact is Kabeer died leaving his work unstructured and unconsolidated , later when people started collecting it they realised there are so many other verses written by local people and credited it to Kabeer ( huh and they say web 2.0 and user generated content is discovered in 20 century after internet) So there is a kabeer who wrote in awadhi and typical north indian but there is one who wrote in Rajasthani and then other in gujraati and also in punjaabi with urdu influence . There can be only one explanation that all these Kabeers are a core idea followed by local people to generate their own Kabeer the one which they understand better , the one which talks in their language and gives example for their lives.

Thats why Miss Virmani found it a passion to explore local folk song artist who sing Kabeer , she did not have any idea of what this project will turn into but today her journey has taken her from bangalore to Malwa, Ayodhya, Kanpur, Jaypur, Karanchi, Lahore and guess what to Stanford where there are research on Indian literature and Kabeer at its pivotal.

Kabeer project today has a set of 4 movies which are screened for free in annual events at Mumbai, Pune and bangalore followed by a gala event of marathon classical and folk singers across border , talking about love, spirituality and boundrylessness. It publishes literature and translation from Kabeers verses and has launched DVDs .People now give ideas to Ms Virmani that she should enhance the projec to promote secular image , to bring Kabeer to urban youth and what not but what she has already achieved was beyond imagination and transformative
for her self and people associated with her . Kabeer is truly becoming an idea much larger than just being a historic poet.. thanks to the project Kabeer

Follow your heart and every time you do start with grass root :)

Kabeer project ORGANISING Kabeer festival in Pune , today being last day there is a concert in Symbiosis Vishwashanti bhawan !

http://www.kabirproject.org/

Promoting organization and not the product

Intel has always been an organization believing in promoting name of the organisation and the brand it stands for rather than promoting any specific product of its own. It has repeated the attempt yet again and this time with all its might . In couple of recent adds where intel describes how its stars are different from common stars and in other where it talks about "our inventions are so big that you can not see them". In first impact it gave me feeling of some political parties which normally promote parties rather than promoting the work done by them but they do so because they have not done any work and they dont have any thing to talk about on the contrary this can never be case with intel which is so fast in product development that the time it releases its ad for one product till than you have other products on the shelf .

Than what prompts organisations to promote themselves rather than any specific product , one reason for sure is that they have moved beyond any competition and competitor in specific product segments which make them fearless knowing their products are picked up by customers anyway. but whats the objective of such ads In old time intels advertisements were criticised saying they don't provide any ( or enough) reason to buy the intel processor.These ads have been able to build a strong top of the mind recall and a better brand value for intel so much so that even people who do not know computers or whats a processor know intel exist at the same time it is difficult to name any other competitor in the same industry ( specially when intel captures 80% of the market share).
In case of companies like Intel the start of such campaign is the kind of product or services they are in, a processor may have been the most critical part of the PC but it was always hidden from the customer and that is where Intel changed the game with intel inside program plus it was very difficult to market or advertise the complexity and benefit of processor to a normal end user so it was easy to just ensure that the name Intel is known .
One more such attempt was recent ad of Tata with tag line "Desh ko hum chalate hai" for one moment I got confused that this is an advertisement of a political party specially its timing with elections but an organization like Tata which is servicing so many touch points of our daily lives can certainly claim that they run a major part of the country and the benefit will be in terms of much needed trust and goodwill.

Overall I feel such marketing happens in following cases
1) Surrogate marketing where product is tobacco, alcohol and can not be promoted directly2) Organizations which have too many products and services either in the same area (bank, LIC) or in diversified areas3) If the product is too complex to explain 4) Political parties or social organizations.