Is Nike’s Just do it the worst tagline ever? Or the best?

Just do it. By Serena Williams.

Say you were Nike’s Chief Marketing Officer. 

Say you were searching for a tagline that would define your brand. 

Just do it. By Alex Morgan.

Would you choose a line associated with good karma, with success, with victory? Or would you choose a line spoken by a notorious serial killer facing the death penalty? 

You’d choose a line associated with success, right? Or maybe not. 

Nike’s famous Just do it slogan is derived from the last words of the serial killer Gary Gilmore.

The story is that the unrepentant serial killer was facing a firing squad and was asked if he had any last words. He said, “Let’s do it”. 

Dan Weiden, the head of the ad agency handling the Nike account, took Gilmore’s words and changed “Let’s do it” to "Just do it". The rest is history. Just do it remains one of the most powerful and successful marketing campaigns ever. 

To be fair, "Just do it" is not really comparable to my previous post about VW Phaeton. “Let’s do it” and “Just do it” could be general purpose English words in a way that Phaeton clearly is not. But the interesting point, the counter-point to the VW Phaeton story, is that good ideas need not originate from sources with good karma.

Let's do it. By Gary Gilmore.
On his way to being executed.

Was VW Phaeton the worst brand name ever?

A VW Pheaton rolling out of its "Transparent Factory"

Say you were a big company’s Chief Marketing Officer. 

Say you were searching for a brand name for your new super-premium flagship product. 

Would you choose a name associated with good karma, with success, with victory? Or would you name your product after one of history’s most notorious losers? 

You’d choose a name associated with success, right? Or maybe not. 

Back in 2002, Volkswagen chose to name their flagship luxury car the Phaeton. 

The Phaeton was the most premium car in VW’s history, a luxury sedan positioned alongside the Mercedes S class range, priced at over USD 100,000 in today's money. 

The German engineering worked. By most contemporary accounts the car was superb, with a Lamborghini class engine, with refined road-handling, fully loaded with features like passenger-specific climate control. It was made in VW’s famous Transparent Factory in Dresden, where customers could visit the shop-floor and watch their cars being assembled.

Yet, despite the superb product, the Phaeton was a commercial disaster. Production had to be stopped in 2014. 

VW Phaeton’s story follows the same narrative arc as that of the mythological Phaeton, the demi-god the car was named after.

The original Phaeton was born to Apollo and a water-nymph Clymene. 

In those days, the sun rode around the heavens in Apollo’s chariot, drawn by four white horses, guided by the charioteer Helios. 

Phaeton had not trained as a charioteer. But the teenager ignored his own unreadiness, took advantage of an unwise divine promise and took control of his father’s sun-chariot. Unable to control the sun-chariot’s incredible power he steered it too close to the earth (therefore scorching the Sahara), he then overcompensated and steered too far away from the earth (therefore freezing the tundra). At this point he panicked and was plunging the sun towards Greece itself. Zeus had no choice but to throw a thunderbolt at his grandson to strike Phaeton dead. Zeus had his duties. He had to save the planet.

So, why did Volkswagen’s Phaeton fail? 

Like all big events this failure doesn’t have a single cause. But let’s not rule out the possibility that Volkswagen invited Zeus’ wrath by invoking Phaeton’s name. 

Maybe the Chief Marketing Officer would have been better off choosing a classical sounding name that Zeus didn’t have strong feelings about, like Lexus or Acura.

Phaeton the unready charioteer plunging toward the earth

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P.S. This blogpost was triggered by reading the chapter about Phaeton in Mythos, Stephen Fry's excellent retelling of the Greek epics.

Atal Behari Vajpayee, please meet Cliff Richard: a fellow bachelor boy from Lucknow

Vajpayee mural in Lucknow

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was unquestionably one of Lucknow’s greatest citizens. 

Vajpayee was a freedom fighter, poet, orator, and diplomat. The late Prime Minister represented Lucknow with distinction in the Lok Sabha for three decades. He was a statesman who could work for peace with Pakistan even while decisively defeating them on the Kargil battlefield. His term as India’s Prime Minister is still remembered as a time of unprecedented progress and prosperity. 

Lucknow is justly proud of Bharat Ratna Atal Behari. 

The City of Lucknow honoured him with a giant mural.

The City of Lucknow also honoured Sir Cliff Richard with a similar mural.

Cliff Richard mural in Lucknow

While Sir Cliff is not generally associated with Lucknavi tehzeeb, he was born at King George’s hospital in Lucknow. His Anglo-Indian parents worked for the colonial Indian Railways. They were based in Dehra Dun at the time. They came down to Lucknow for looking for better maternity care. Cliff Richard's family later moved to Calcutta and emigrated to the UK in 1948, when Cliff was eight years old. 

So, what do Cliff Richard and Atal Behari Vajpayee have in common? If their murals were to come to life, would they find anything to talk about?

Maybe they could talk about being bachelor boys. 

One of Sir Cliff's greatest hits is "Bachelor Boy". The song goes: 

“Son, you are a bachelor Boy

And that’s the way to stay

Son, you’ll be a bachelor boy

Until your dying day.”

Sir Cliff, being a man of integrity, lived by his own advice. He dated many charming ladies, including Sue Barker a tennis player and former French Open singles champion. But he has remained a bachelor (at least until his eightieth birthday).

Atalji was a bachelor too. 

The way Vajpayee put it "main kunwar hoon par brahmachari nahin" (I'm single but not celibate). 

Sir Cliff might relate. They might just have something to talk about. 

Though I doubt if even Sir Cliff’s persuasion could get Atalji to do the dance steps from the Bachelor Boy video (click here to watch). Those immortal moves can belong to one and only one of the Lakhnavi bachelor boys.

Summer Holiday - the album featuring Bachelor Boy

Did Don McLean anticipate the 2020 Biden-Trump election?

I was reflecting on the weirdness of Donald Trump refusing to concede to Joe Biden and the words that came to mind, unbidden, were:

“The players tried to take the field 

the marching band refused to yield…”

From Don McLean’s American Pie.

Could Don McLean have foreseen this moment fifty years ago? 

Sort of like Nostradamus foresaw moments in the future? I’m only half kidding. 

American Pie is so different from, and so much better than, the rest of Don McLean’s work that it is easy to imagine that the song was written by a higher force that just expressed itself through Don McLean when he was in an altered mind-state, sort of like the state Samuel Taylor Coleridge was in when he wrote Kubla Khan.

Victory to Kamala Harris! Or...Jaye Jaye He Mahishasura Mardhini Ramyaka Pardhini Shailasute!

 

See the picture above? 

Meena Harris (Kamala Harris’ sister Maya’s daughter) tweeted it a few weeks ago. 

It has to be my favourite image from the just concluded US presidential election. It’s a crazy, whacky, light-hearted juxtaposition of the Mahishasura Mardini Stottram with the rough and tumble of electoral politics, just what the doctor ordered to lighten the mood at a time when both religion and politics feel awfully serious. 

Unfortunately, Meena Harris had to take this off Twitter because it "offended Hindus”. 

I find that odd. I am a Hindu and I see nothing offensive in the image. So, I’m recirculating the image now with a little explanation on how this image can be an access-point to deeper Hindu ideas like advaita, karma yoga and bhakti. 

Consider advaita, the idea that divinity is latent within each of us, that the purpose of life is to give expression to the divine within. In this context, Kamala Harris could be seen as giving expression to the power of Maa-Durga, the divinity who lives within her. 

Or consider karma yoga, the idea that spiritual attainment is not the exclusive privilege of world-renouncing monks, that the divine can be fully realised by engaging wholeheartedly in worldly work. In this context, Kamala Harris could be seen fighting the good fight on the electoral battlefield, therefore getting ever closer to the divine by treading her chosen path as a karma yogi. 

Or consider bhakti, the mystic experience of oneness with the divine, unfettered by intellectualism or duty. To me personally, that is the association the image brings to mind most readily. The Mahisura Mardhini Stottram, which this image is riffing on, is one of my favourite prayers. I was brought up listening to it as a part of life’s ambient soundtrack. This stottram is typically set to a rhythmic, hypnotic beat (click here to listen) that lends itself to the immersive rapture of bhakti. 

The point (hopefully the now obvious point) is that there is nothing anti-Hindu about the picture above. It's not even anti-Trump. Caricature has always been (and should be) a part of politics.

So, let’s keep alive our sense of humour and sense of perspective and enjoy the jokey juxtaposition of the Mahishasura mardhini stottram with American politics. Let’s enjoy the fact that Kamala Harris will be the first person of Indian descent to ascend to the White House. And let’s trust that the Devi will manifest herself in Kamala, Maya, Meena, and in strong women everywhere, as the cycle of time turns and good times return.

Why we gamble on Deepavali

Goddess Lakshmi
Deepavali's Presiding Deity

It is Deepavali today. We’re going to play cards in the evening. We always have. It’s  a tradition.

How come? How did gambling, something generally frowned upon in Indian culture, become such an integral part of India’s biggest festival?

My father had an explanation for this seeming paradox. His funda was that gambling, risk taking, is essential to Deepavali because it is a festival of Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth.

Lakshmi represents prosperity, plenty, abundance. Deepavali is an invocation to Lakshmi, an invitation to the Goddess to bring her cornucopia of goodness into the home. But Lakshmi can only come into a home which has space for Her. One has to make room for Lakshmi. And one makes space for Her by gambling, by taking a risk.

The symbolism is all about the work needed to create prosperity. All prosperity, all abundance, has always been created by risk-taking. Hunters going out on the savanna to spear bison, farmers planting a crop in anticipation of the monsoon, software engineers pooling their savings to fund a start-up, they are all taking risks; to create room for Goddess Lakshmi. 

No pain, no gain. You may want the risks to be small and the gains to be large. But if you never take a risk, you’ll never give the Goddess a chance to shower her blessings upon you.

Is this interpretation authentic? 

Hard to say. Google tells me that there is an ancient legend of Shiva and Parvati playing dice on Mount Kailash which gives divine sanction to gambling on Deepavali. 

But the beautiful thing about Hinduism being an open-source religion is that I can choose to believe my father’s interpretation without looking for institutional sanction. I like the interpretation. I choose to believe it. 

So, I’ll be playing teen patti and blackjack with my card-shark nephews at the family dining table this evening. 

Happy Deepavali blog readers. May the odds be ever in your favour. May the bets you take work out. May the effulgent Goddess Lakshmi inhabit your homes forever.

Shiva and Parvati playing dice

Discovering the Meaning of "Aagosh"

Do we have an English word for a mother’s shadow, for her presence, for the comfort derived from a mother physically being there? 

I don’t think we do.  

Maybe we should just import aagosh from Urdu to fill this gap. That is what aagosh means. 

Its sort of surprising that English doesn't yet have a word for aagosh. It's a universal experience. I'm sure my dog understands the idea behind aagosh perfectly.

BTW, I discovered this word in Priya Malik’s poem Main 2019 Mein 1999. Click here to watch her perform this piece, and notice the way in which she introduces a maternal tone into what is otherwise a romantic line.