33 – Disney World II

Disney is an American entertainment conglomerate founded in the year of 1923 by Walt Disney and Roy. O Disney. The success story of Disney is like a fairytale. Walt Disney was born in Chicago. He started his work life by being an apprentice at an art studio which didn’t work well for him, he tried his hands in acting and failed at that too.

He was always a ardent fan of sketching and drawing and decided to dive into the business of animation and introduced his first animated character series Oswald The Lucky Rabbit which wasn’t appreciated either that’s when Walt Disney decided to introduced most famous and renowned character Mickey Mouse which was known as Mortimer mouse until Walt Disney’s wife suggested him to replace the name. Walt Disney bank on the character of Mickey and featured him in all of his predecessor’s animated films which became a tremendous hit.

In the year 1934, Disney decided to try something new and planned to produce his first feature-length animated film but the road to movie making wasn’t easy as Walt Disney had to mortgage his house as it exceeding the desired budget but Walt Disney backed the project and invested three years to complete “Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs” which became a huge success. Times magazine called it an “Authentic Masterpiece.”

32 – Disney World

A visit to Disneyland is in every kid’s wishlist. In the year 1954, Disney decided to build a place where anyone can come, enjoy and experience the Disney world with their families. Visitors started to visit, from various countries and Disneyland continued to grow, Walt Disney planned to expand Disneyland to various countries.

In 1966 Walt Disney died because of cancer, his brother doesn’t want the world to forget the name of Walt Disney and that’s when he decided to open a Walt Disney World, which is still the most visited destination resort where around 50 million people visit every year.

March 2019, Disney acquired media assets of 21st Century Fox and became the largest media powerhouse of the world.

31 – Free Trade Agreement and India

RCEP, which is known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, is a free trade agreement between the 10 members of ASEAN countries and FTA partners, which are – China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. It’s been in the news lately as India opted to stay out from the pact.

There are many reasons for this decision. One of the biggest reasons is India lacks in export trade. Dairy farmers to small businesses and small manufacturers are worried about their business, as they are trying to recover from a huge loss which they faced because of the demonetization and GST implementation. India is the largest producer and consumer of milk. Countries like the UK and the USA don’t accept Indian milk products. According to their policy, priority should be given to the local dairy farmers.

Economic Slowdown – India is going through an economic slowdown and GDP growth rate is falling, most of the sectors are facing a slump, from automobile to e-commerce.

China’s hidden agenda – Some people believes it’s China’s hidden agenda to flood Indian markets with their products as China is already in a trade war with the USA, and because of the size of the Indian population and our love for Chinese mobile phones and products, it will push them to leverage this opportunity. Fear is, market will be filled with Chinese products and it will break the backbone of Indian sellers as sales are already down, productions are at halt. PM Modi shared his concerns with China’s president XI Jinping and talked about imbalanced RCEP deal which isn’t going to be beneficial for India.

01 – Rich getting richer and poor getting poorer.

Income Inequality is going on since ages not only in India but also in other part’s of the world. A lot has been said over the years to decrease the Inequality, But The Truth is
inequality between the rich and the poor increased significantly and it keep’s on increasing day by day.

Fastest growing Economy like India is also facing the same issue. There are several reasons for it –

Overpopulation.
Draught.
Illiteracy.
Corruption.
Bad Governance.

We all know 60 to 65% of Indian population live in Rural areas, Where they don’t have basic amenities to live, Most of the rural population indulge in farming. Farming is unpredictable as it solely depends on Moon-soon. Less rain will destroy the crops, Excessive rain will destroy the crops there is nothing a farmer can do once they are done sowing the crops. Even if everything goes well, In the end they don’t get enough amount in return. Farmer’s suicide rates are increasing as they they lend money for the farming and because of draught or heavy rainfall, They unable to repay the amount which they borrowed.

Government introduced various schemes for farmers for Unemployed and Unskilled peoples, But it doesn’t make any difference as the policies are never been implemented properly. On ground level nothing is changing, The gap between poor and rich is widening.

Overpopulation is also the cause of The Gap, We keep producing more mouths to feed, Even though we know we don’t have enough for our-self. Lack of family planning.

Illiteracy is a malediction, We can see most of the developed countries have very less or no Illiteracy rate, As they provide free education and actually spend the money wisely on healthcare and education system. Where as in india illiteracy is still persist as there are no Ingenious and robust policies, Although in our constitution we have a Right to Education.

Uneducated and Illiterate population tend to widen the gap between rich and poor.
Governments should act to ensure that taxes raised from wealth and businesses paying their fair share are used to eradicate illiteracy.

There is enough wealth in the world to provide everyone basic necessity but the poor stays poor the rich get richer it’s just so disproportionate .

30 – The forgotten Games

I remember, back in my childhood day’s we used to play a lot of different types of games, some are extinct and some are going to get extinct soon since the rise of technology.

Mobiles, Laptops and Gaming controller has become the real playground for teenagers since they no longer like to play outside.

While my parents used to scold me when I used to play outside all the time, nowadays parents wish that their kids should play outside at least for some of the time.

There were so many games that were like a part of our life, part of our daily schedule. The day will be incomplete if we miss any game.

The moment I come back from school, I used to call all my colony friends to come out as Cricket was our religion too and we used to play, till evening we only used to wrap once our mothers started scolding us.

In winters we used to play a lot of games like Badminton, Ice water, hide and seek we used to enjoy all the seasons instead of just sitting at home in the blanket.

Summe breaks, everyone waits for that, in summers we used to visit our maternal grandmom’s house where all the cousins used to gather together. Grandfather used to distribute comic books to each one of us Nagraj, Dhruv, Bankelal, Pinki, Billu we used to look forward to reading new comics every day, back in those days reading was a part of life, chatting isn’t.

Time flies, Things change but the heart remains the same.

29 – Brands and Crisis

“People buy brands, not products” we all know how true this line is because we are all consumers, we consume products every day and most of us have our biases towards some brands which became a part of our life over the years.

In the social media era, brands need to evolve and innovate to stay relevant in the market. Every brand has its life cycle, some keep rejuvenating from time to time, some fade away.

In this article, I will talk about some of the brands who faced crisis and survived by innovating themselves and their strategies.

Maggi – When we think about ready to cook food, we think of Maggi

We all know about Maggi controversy – The most loved and consumed by brand of bachelors, students, hostelers, and everyone suddenly falls into controversy and FSSAI strictness leads the brand to recall and rebrand Maggi.

Cadbury Dairy Milk – ‘Kuch Meetha Ho Jaye’ faced huge flak when it suffered from the worm controversy, instead of addressing the issue, the company denied by saying it isn’t possible at the manufacturing stage and because of several incidents being reported, the company’s inability to address the issue led to a sales drop.

Cadbury put a lot of efforts to save the brand – They revamped the packaging to foil packaging which you will find only in India. Cadbury hired Amitabh Bachchan and with various campaigns, they recovered from the crisis.

Samsung – Samsung exploding phone controversy cost the brand a lot, Samsung had to recall over 3 million Samsung galaxy note devices, Samsung failed to manage the crisis andas the time passed people did forget about the issue, Samsung recalled the defective phones, which helped the brand to build a positive image once again.

28 – Rubiks Cube and Life

Life is like a Rubik’s cube. Rubik’s cube is a 3D puzzle to be precise, nine stickers, six solid colors, yellow, blue, green, orange, red. Match all the colors perfectly and you will be able to solve the Rubik’s cube.

You might be wondering how is this related to life, why life is like a Rubik’s cube, well just like Rubik’s cube life is complicated, you have to keep guessing, working and moulding on to figure out which is the right path for you.

Just like various colors in Rubik’s cube puzzle, in our life also we have different colors red represents love or passion, yellow for friendship, blue for freedom and trust, orange for warmth, enthusiasm, white is associated with goodness or peace, green is related to nature.

Red color represents love or passion. We need to be passionate about our work, we need to be loving to be loved. We all know how depression is on the rise and teenagers are badly affected by this, we need to show love and care towards them to solve their complicated Rubik’s life.

Yellow- Yellow is for Friendship. Life without friends is something one cannot imagine right? Doesn’t matter where you go, school, college, workplace, you keep making friends in your journey of life, sometimes they complicate the puzzle of your life and sometimes they help you to solve it.

Blue – Since blue is associated with freedom, we all know the importance of freedom, no one wants to be a slave or a caged bird in life, our ancestors faced a lot of hardships in the British era, they fought for our independence, our freedom because they know what life is like under restrictions, without freedom.

To be continued. . .

27 – OTT Platforms and Censorship

OTT or over the top is a media streaming service where you can watch tv shows, movies directly through the internet. OTT is the modern thing, all you need an internet connection to watch anything, anywhere. OTT apps offer a diverse range of tv shows, movies, sitcoms many things.

Netflix, Amazon, Hotstar, Voot are some of the most prominent names from the OTT club. Gone are the days when you sit in front of the tv and wait for your favourite show or movie, now you can find all your favorite tv shows and movies on your mobile or pc, just one click away. Demand and popularity for online streamed content is growing.

There are two sides of everything the good and the bad, whereas OTT platforms are getting popularity, some OTT platforms are showing adult and vulgar content without even thinking about who is consuming the content since nowadays cell phone is in everybody’s hands and even children are avidly consuming the content of OTT platforms. It is highly recommended that government introduces some restriction policies.

Just like the censor board certifies the movies and BARC act as a watchdog for television. A watchdog board is need of an hour to curb the adult content of OTT platforms.

26 – Storytelling

A few days back, we got an opportunity to meet the mentor of one of our mentors Mr. Shashidhar Nanjundaiah – He used to teach our Dean in his college days.

We never thought we will get an opportunity like this. Shashidhar sir talked about a lot of things like corporate storytelling, industry 4.0, hyper-communication, etc.

Storytelling isn’t the start of something. It’s the culmination of everything. Nowadays, everybody is a communicator or wants to be one.

Memes that are most popular and viral between all the teenagers are also a story, but do you know what it takes to make one? It isn’t that easy. There is a difference between content and storytelling. Some people often confuse them with each other – content might be boring, but storytelling is all about evoking emotions.

A PR professional is a storyteller – you are writing for someone whom you can’t see.

5W+1H is the most basic yet most powerful tip to always keep it in your mind while communicating or storytelling. Storytelling is persuasive, the content may or may not be persuasive. Your strength of storytelling lies in your reader’s imagination, how well you evoke emotions, can they visualize what you are writing in your piece of communication and are they able to understand..

25- Master Class with Rashmi Naik

We had a session with Ms Rashmi Naik and she shared her professional experiences with us.

Some of the important things which she wants us to stick with are:

Investing early – She told us why investing is important once you start working and earning, instead of going out and spending money on pubs and parties, stay at home buy a book increase your knowledge and save money. Get into the habitual practice of investing a little amount at least every month.

Love/Hate – In your work life, there comes a point when you start making decisions within a few hours or days, one should not do that, don’t love quickly, don’t hate quickly. If you don’t like the job or the boss, give at least 6 months, then jump to any conclusion, ‘Don’t be judgemental’.

Care – Once you start working, you start skipping your meals, your workout, your life decisions everything takes a back seat. Don’t do that – respect yourself, never skip your meal, look after yourself because health is wealth. Do yoga, meditation, running, try to stay physically and also mentally fit.

Life decisions – Don’t postpone your life decisions, you want to get married, you want to move abroad, you want to change your career, just do it. Delaying your life decisions isn’t a good idea. Most of the people who delayed their life decisions because of many reasons aren’t happy and regret it later.

Techno friendly – Always be aware of the latest technology that will give you the edge over others. Blockchain, data mining, cryptocurrency are the parts of the future. Learn and understand at least the basics about it.