I must have been about 10 years old when I read Sukumar Ray’s Shobjanta Dada . Shobjanta Dada was the eldest brother, all of 10 years old himself, the one who knew everything. Since he was the eldest among siblings and cousins, ‘ dadar dadagirir anto nei ’, Rai wrote. Translated loosely, it says that there was no end to the superiority (or bullying) of the elder brother.
Many years later, I heard Stevie Wonder’s magnificent ‘Misstra Know-It-All’. “Give a hand to the man/ You know damn well he’s got the super plan/ He’s Misstra Know-It-All/ If we had less of him/ Don’t you know we’d have a better land/ He’s Misstra Know-It-All.”
What’s common to Shobjanta Dada and Misstra Know-it-All is that both thought they knew everything, and both felt that everything they were doing was prefect, and how they did things was the perfect way to do things.
Neither felt the need to learn.
Our industry is replete with Shobjanta Dadas and Misstra Know-It-Alls.
Last Thursday, Leo Burnett and Bajaj Auto hosted a party to reveal a documentary on the role of the INS Vikrant in the 1971 war and how it led to the creation of the Bajaj V - the Invincible, the new bike from Bajaj, inspired by the heroics of the Vikrant .
The concept was Leo Burnett’s. Graciously, Leo Burnett had invited members of the advertising and marketing community, including those who compete with them.
Sadly, many of its peers chose not to attend. Perhaps they knew everything. They had no urge to learn what led to the creation of the bike, what travails the communications team went through to speak to officers of the Vikrant , how they were more inspired and, finally, how Bajaj signed off on the concept.
The next morning, I flew to Delhi to attend the MTV Youth Marketing Forum. After a late night at the Bajaj-Burnett do, it wasn’t the easiest of mornings as I took the red-eye to Delhi, but the pain was worth it. I had a long conversation with Cindy Gallop, now entrepreneur-founder of two businesses, IfWeRanTheWorld and MakeLoveNotPorn. Thirty minutes of conversation and thirty minutes of learning.
Once done with Cindy, I spent another 30 minutes with Will Sansom, director of content and strategy at Contagious Insider. This was another 30 minutes of schooling, as I learnt the challenges that communicators and brands face now and will face in the new future as youth, the big demographic dividend that India speaks about from the rooftops, challenge the status quo and change the way they perceive brands and destroy conventional targeting methods.
MTV had invited almost every marketer worth his or her salt to the event, but, sadly, the majority of the attendees were those who had speaking slots at the event. Perhaps the others had no need to learn. Perhaps they knew it all.
These two examples are not stray, rare occurrences. Year after year, the Ad Club, the AAAI, IAA and Kyoorius struggle to pack a house — even a small room — even when the content is exemplary.
Cindy Gallop filled a hall at Cannes with hundreds of the best in the business; TED thought that her views on Porn and Sex were extraordinary enough to call her to speak at their annual conference, yet, at QLA in Delhi, it was tough for MTV to fill a room.
What is it about Indian professionals that makes them so unresponsive to learning from their peers and even their seniors, their juniors and their betters?
In Ray’s work, the younger siblings, some only two years younger than Shobjanta Dada, were eager to learn from him.
Perhaps, at that age, the hunger to learn overrides the ego.
The writer is Editor, Storyboard
