No Second Hand Here

I was pained to read about the HMT watch division shutting down after 53 years of keeping the nation’s time. This is the result of corruption at top levels and loot of the company from within. Nehru had called it a jewel in India’s crown, now it is in the gutter. In 1994, I was unceremoniously ousted from HMT as DGM and chief of PR. But my heart still beats to the time I had there as a PR professional. I joined with stars in my eyes and even today I look back on the four very turbulent years I had there with pride and professional satisfaction. The opportunities I had were unique and the resources to fulfil them plenty.

It was great excitement for the PR department (or me, to be precise) when Dr M.R. Naidu, the then CMD, agreed to our handling the launch of the Pace watch for the youth segment, in Bombay and Bangalore. Earlier, product launches were marketing activities. I convinced Dr Naidu that a launch, with a corporate image focus, was in the realm of market-driven PR. He saw sense in this. My colleague K.S. Nara­hari and I had camped in Bombay to negotiate with Shiamak Davar, the inimitable jazz dancer, to perform for the launch. I rem­ember how reluctant the cartoonist R.K. Laxman was to accept our invitation and even chided us for “degrading” the image of HMT with a jazz show! But the sport that he is, he agreed to release the International series. What’s more, I caught him tapping his foot during Shiamak’s performance.

Bombay was to be the first launch base for Pace. The press meet coincided with Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to attend Sharad Pawar’s daughter’s wedding. When I went to invite the press, they all promised to come but said they would leave early to follow the excitement of Rajiv’s presence in the city. It was not a conventional PR conference as I designed it as a celebration sit-down lunch with one senior HMT executive at each table to answer queries. Bangalore was the next launch and we had none other than Zakir Hussain and Vikku Vinayakram in a most thrilling jugalbandi.

In great contrast was the launch of Pace in New Delhi, overseen by the marketing department. It was on a Sunday morning with the then Union minister P.K. Thungon as chief guest, who had come to launch the Ambedkar watch! After the snazzy launches in Bombay and Bangalore, this was a damp squib. Talk of death of a salesman...this was murder of a product!

Another bloomer was the marketing department’s launch of Zap, a children’s watch, in Delhi. It was a great hit in Bangalore where the entire Cubbon Park was rented out to HMT for a day and the kids of the city were treated to a great fete. Once a success need not always be a success. In Delhi, they repeated the idea at Appu Ghar, which is 10 times the size of Cubbon Park, and had Preeti Sagar singing nursery rhymes at the outdoor theatre. She was superb and so was the Hindi emcee and the setting was perfect. Only, the audience was a group of children from a non-Hindi medium school, on a picnic and forcibly made to attend! They had no clue what Preeti was singing. The only one who rea­lly enjoyed the clapping and singing was Mr Thungon the minister. Talk of a brilliant idea in a wrong setting.

It is a pity that the watch marketing chief failed to make use of PR support to boost sales. He perceived me as a threat and tried to keep me away. When I expressed my anxiety about this attitude, the then CMD P.C. Neogy (PCN) advised me to keep off and not tread on anyone’s toes. During the milestone event of HMT selling its 750 millionth watch, I had suggested to PCN to make it a vintage watch rally inviting owners of HMT watches to provide proof of its vintage and gift the milestone watch to the one with the oldest piece. It would have given us a database of our customers for future business promotions and kept the excitement of the milestone event on for some time. PCN thought it was a great idea but the marketing chief vetoed it. He preferred releasing an ad in the papers, with a message from the President of India congratulating the company! Typically bureaucratic stuff for an organisation which had to  compete with a titanic opponent known for its marketing savvy. As PCN would often tell me, propriety is more important than performance in a PSU.

(The author is a former chief of PR, HMT.)