Having been to many sparsely attended tests, the sparse attendance and empty stands at the Modi Stadium stand out for me as particularly bizarre.
Guy decided to get rid of a Sardar Patel name and named it after himself.
And yet, no one will come.
No one ever comes.
"the stands look empty cos it is a big stadium. In the old Motera, this crowd would look respectable."
What was the make and model of the gun they held to Modi's head to force him to give his name to a 1.3 lakh capacity stadium in cricket-indifferent Amdavad?
Anyone who actually knows anything about Indian cricket, unlike shehzada Jay Shah, knows that the only venues where you get a reliable test crowd are Bombay madras Calcutta Bangalore and maybe Delhi.
RRR ending US awards season with 3 historic win reminds me, the Indian media and public are 2 decades overdue on apologies to Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai, Priyanka Chopra, Lara Dutta, Diana Hayden, Yukta Mookhey etc.
Might seem like a random tangent but hear me out.
When these young women won international pageants, fresh out of their teens, the dominant narrative was "oh they are winning cos MNCs want to sell products to India".
Which was both accurate and unfair. Unfair to the women. They worked hard and they worked smart for the wins.
It is very accurate that beauty pageants, just like award functions, are fundamentally Marketing vehicles.
But to suggest that it means the long stretch of period in late 90s early 00s when a lot of Indian women won these titles, was just because of marketing reasons, is wrong.
Long time followers will remember that as far back as December, just on the basis of which white neighbors and colleagues kept asking me about RRR, I was like, this is the best campaign by any Indian movie yet. And it will win globes song, globe foreign film, Oscar song for sure.
Found it.
This was my post after Susan asked me about it again and again.
Susan is a 75 year old lifelong New Yorker who actively watches foreign film. And likes many Indian films. Of a certain type.
This at the end of the day is the Bezos business "genius". Very legit too.
Realizing that in a service economy becoming even more service based, you win by giving customers the best, even over generous service. And make money from your resulting brand in other ways.
From a Marketing perspective, Amazon is where it is because Bezos might have pissed off a lot of suppliers and overworked workers and partners and investors but Amazon customers are consistently satisfied on aggregate. Cos their customer service really is ridiculously nice.
Precisely! No one "loves" Amazon the brand like many people love, with positive feels, Apple or Nike or Southwest or Ferrari.
But everyone knows Amazon will
a. Deliver stuff fastest& cheapest
b. Will take care of any wrong orders or defects very easily
From where I stand, it seems Jada's crimes against Chris Rock:
- sleeping with men other than Chris Rock
- suggesting an Oscar boycott years ago
- getting alopecia
- not loving a joke on her alopecia
I haven't seen this new Netflix special cos I don't find anything comedic in personal resentment bits. Why I don't watch Chappelle in recent years either.
But I saw a clip of the bit where he scorches the Smiths. And kept thinking, dude what did Jada ever do to you?
That Oscar boycott years ago, is he going around bashing Spike Lee for it too? I don't even get the logic of the bits bashing Jada for an Oscar boycott many people suggested and participated in. Unless she pulled a gun on Chris personally and tried to coerce him to boycott.
Was telling my students just 2 days ago in our pre-Oscars class how people don't realize what a massive amount of revenue for Disney comes from theme parks. A quarter of their revenue. In comparison, for Comcast, it's less than 10%.
Oh that is THE main point I make. unlike Hershey Park or Legoland or 6 Flags, Disney world is ridiculously expensive, remote, swampy, with nothing else much (other than Universal properties).
What they are paying for is the brand value and loyalty for Disney built for decades since you were born. The potential customer for Disney World is literally every single family in the world.
It is a singularly valuable brand relationship that starts when you're a toddler.