Blending Horizon: June 2009

I am sure most of those who watched DD in the 80’s and early 90’s remember a series of ads (Vicco Turmeric Ayurvedic Cream, Pan Parag, Nirma Washing powder /soap bar, Dabur ka lal dantmanjan, Glucon-D, Tata Namak, Gold spot, Amul Chocolate, Vicks Action 500, Brooke Bond Red Label Chai etc.) that preceded the programmes and many of us have a strong recall value of those ads which bring nostalgic memories.

One among those was the RASNA ad (an ad that sent kids scampering to parents, demanding a glassful too) which had a cute and chubby girl saying before the ad ended: I love you Rasna!

In the mid 80’s and early 90’s, the Rasna ad was a huge hit. The ad showed a lot of kids drinking Rasna, and included one fat uncle who drank a huge jug of Rasna. The jingle went like “Ras ki rachna Rasna Tarah tarah ke swaad ki rachna rasna RASNA!”

Everytime they added some new flavour, the ad and the jingle would be modified. The ad showed a cute girl saying: I love you Rasna! (She was one more reason for the ad being a hit.)

Time changes everything. Sometimes, the changes are so drastic that it makes you feel uneasy. So is the case with Rasna. Rasna ruled the market and had a huge market share during that time. But slowly it lost its market share to its direct and indirect competitors.

Rasna has also included many others products in its product line and today when i was reading the news paper i saw this article which said that Rasna is lauching a new health drink and spending Rs.25 crore for various promotional activities this year.

Will this be helpful to Rasna and can it gain back its market share is the big question mark still?

Must read of what the chairman and MD of Rasna has to say.

I just finished a course on Business Ethics and I felt like writing this post as there was so many questions tickling in the minds of people like: Does Ethics class really makes sense? Why should we study ethics in this unethical world? Will ethics class change us? Will it tell us what is wrong and what is right? Why is Business ethics important? And so on.

First of let me tell you that Business ethics is the study of business situations, activities, and decisions where issues of right and wrong are addressed. But what is right and what is wrong has not been addressed. What may be right for me may be wrong for you.

Is it that business schools include this subject in the curriculum so that they do not want to take the blame if the students are not ethical in the future or are caught publically doing something wrong?

While business schools are not entirely responsible for the unethical behavior of their graduates – nor can they take full credit for students' ethical actions either.

Ethics classes, sermons, exhortations, and appeals to our better natures cannot cure cheating, but it always tells us how we should proceed in a right path.

The implication of not following ethical standards is most serious for finance and to a lesser extent for Marketing or other intellectual activities. In case of manufacturing, distribution or other physical and material functions, it is generally not possible to get around the truth. It will get caught sooner rather than later.

Just one course on Business ethics cannot change a person completely. A lot depends on the values which are imbibed to him and the environment in which he is living and bought up.

Let me tell you ethics in a broader prospective:

One must always maintain quality standards and benchmarks in either business or in life. I will explain you this with a very short story where there was 75 years old women with two grocery bags in her hand and a young boy who were waiting for a bus at a bus stop. When the bus came the old lady climbed the bus first and the lady started moving towards the only seat which was empty in the bus. The boy behind took big steps and sat on the seat. The old lady fell down in the bus with her grocery getting scattered. The old lady told herself that what etiquettes that boy had. In the same bus there was a lawyer and said that there must be a law to protect the same. The other person in the bus was a surgeon who taught that the old lady must have broken her three ribs and the psychiatrist said the boy had some mental problem. Here we can see that four different people thought in four different angles, but no one thought was the behavior of the boy right or wrong.

Looking at the situation was the boy right? No

Should anyone do like this to anyone else? No. This is called as Universal benchmarks.

Children are born innocent and some of them are spoilt by their parents only. Suppose a small 6 years old child picks up a call which is for his dad and his dad instructs him to tell the other person that dad is not at home. The innocent child is mystified. Here they are thought “Do wrong but don’t get caught”.

One more common instance is that when a child of 6 years is accompanied by his parents to go to a park or cinema hall, some parents try to reduce their child’s age to take them free along with them inside.

These things will have a negative effect on the child and right from that young age he is thought of unethical practice which is telling lies here.

It’s not Practice what makes a man perfect, but its perfect practice what makes a man perfect. If we do good and ethical stuff we rise in our own eyes and we can feel the magic of self esteem or else we fall in our own eyes. I guess you must have also observed this.

It is very essential that our value system should be clear, and then the decision making becomes much clearer. It’s easy to take decisions about what is right and what is wrong but it’s difficult to take decisions about what is right and what is more right.