Thursday, September 17, 2009

Here’s the perfect Mr. Creative Suit!

He would have been a CA but for a friend who saved him by convincing his mom that he would slash his wrist. Kind fellow!

His twinkling eyes and ready laugh belie the hard-nosed number crunching that the man keeps doing day and night. As Head,Creative and Content for MTV India, Ashish Patil not only ensures that his creative juices keep pouring forth, but he happily shoulders the additional burden of the music channel’s Profit & Loss division too. Just the apt example of what we refer to ‘creative suits’ these days! So even if the creative part of his brain (or his team’s for the matter) churns out the whackiest of ideas, rest assured that the shrewd business side of the brain will do its own sifting, toss the idea over the TRPs grill, before allowing it to hit your TV screens! “I think the future belongs to the creative suits. They are a rare breed,” he says, in an almost self-congratulatory tone.

And he does have reason to congratulate himself! Being both creative and business driven can be a blessing in disguise, both for you and your co-workers. “A really crazy joke that we share at lunch, many times just ends up on air at MTV,” says Patil, giving the example of MTV’s Rakhi Sawant and Rakshabandan special. One day at lunch the topic of Rakhi Sawant came up. Rakshabandan was round the corner and someone joked about Rakhi and ‘bhaiyas’. The result was a popular Rakhi Sawant block on Rakshabandhan and the viewers applauded!

Rendezvous with Semi Girebal, a MTV spoof show of ‘Rendezvous with Simi Garewal’ had similar beginnings. “One day I read an article on Simi Garewal getting a new hair-cut and a big debate on her clothes at some party. It was irritating. I mean, who cares? So we came up with the spoof,” explains Patil. Since Star aired its original show on Sunday at 9.30p.m., the MTV dudes aired the spoof on the same day, same time. Semi Girebaal rated four times the TRPs of the original show. Thinking aloud, a rueful Patil says, “I think we destroyed her career. Her contract never got renewed.” Beginning his career as a copywriter in 1992, Ashish was almost destined to be among the creative types in ad world (or so he thought back then) “but the middle class Maharashtrian phenomena overpowered my family. They told me that I can’t earn a living as a writer as I had to get married.” So Ashish went ahead and got a degree from a B-school. He joined an ad agency again, only this time in a different role as a member of the planning team at SSC&B Lintas. But when Patil got a call from a head hunter to join MTV’s marketing team in 1998, he jumped. “MTV is such a cool brand to work with,” he says.

Life at MTV allowed him to dabble in just about anything he wanted. He handled marketing for a while, before making a lateral switch to content in 2003 to head talent and artist relationship. His typical day then would start at 9p.m. with Pan Parag chewing producers, brandishing gold watches and chain, with flashy cell phones stuck to their ears. “And of course, a gun,” adds Ashish. “Usually the conversations were like ‘Ashishji gaane ka rotation thoda badhana chahiye’ and the moment I would answer in the negative, the gun would be out,” he says with a loud guffaw. Signing off, the fourth member of our occult cracks another joke about his stint with MTV. “I am a part of the furniture here. Every Diwali they move me out, dust me and put me back again...” he grins.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2009

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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