What is "client servicing" really about?

Learn all about it from the newbies and the experts in this great new column from Mint. Here is an excerpt:

Being the juniormost member in a team of five, [Rajvi] Bhow finds herself handling the bulk of operational jobs. She is often on the phone, making sure promotional material is printed just so and delivered on time. Other times, she could be rushing to the local markets—to a Matunga flower seller’s, say, to make sure he has the DoCoMo colour scheme right in the floral arrangements for a launch party. Once a week, she must ferry creatives (layouts or copy created by the agency) to the weekly meeting with her clients at Tata DoCoMo’s office in Chinchpokli or Navi Mumbai, then come back to her office to hand them back to the agency’s creative team for changes.

With so many interactions where she is the “face” of the company, Bhow has to adhere to a dress code that is conservative: trousers and full-sleeved shirts or Indian formals. However, she adds, “Fridays are jeans and T-shirt days, but only if there are no meetings on those days."

She finds it exhilarating to be in the frontline. “My best moment in advertising was seeing the actual campaign come to life—seeing that first hoarding, the full front-page advert in a newspaper. It was incredible to see something you’ve worked on for so long now being seen by millions of people.”

• For another take on client servicing, this time by travel write Indu Balachandran, who also runs workshops in advertising and creative writing, go here.

The iPad turned inside out

How do you write about a techie whose business it is to do a "teardown" on the latest gadgets?

How do you make this interesting for non-techies? Learn from this article by Gabriel Madway of Reuters:

An excerpt:

The iPad had no screws. But working with a tool called a spudger, it took Soules only 10 minutes to separate the iPad’s handsome, 9.7-inch facing from its silver-backed casing.

He surveyed the iPad’s design, a maze of parts that would be utterly inscrutable to most people.

“That’s very, very nice,” he said almost reverentially.

Teardown firms are hired by an array of clients, their data used for competitive intelligence, in patent disputes or to keep current on industry benchmarks.

By 9.30am, Soules had turned the iPad inside out and was sharing its secrets with the world.

• Photo courtesy: Reuters

Can LinkedIn fire up your career?

Fortune magazine believes it can, so it has made LinkedIn the cover story in its April 12 issue. Here's an excerpt:

Facebook is for fun. Tweets have a short shelf life. If you're serious about managing your career, the only social site that really matters is LinkedIn. In today's job market an invitation to "join my professional network" has become more obligatory — and more useful — than swapping business cards and churning out résumés.

Read the article in full here.

• Photo: LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner (courtesy Fortune)

The Indian connection: LinkedIn country manager Hari V Krishnan says in an interview with Mint that the networking website for professionals has five million registered users in India.

Read the whole interview here, especially Krishnan's answer to the question, "Why would someone get on the network?"

(April 23, 2011) Last week, BusinessWorld's columnist Mala Bhargava devoted her column to LinkedIn. Read it here: "The Social Professional".

Why you can trust Lonely Planet Magazine India

Here's the Lonely Planet Magazine India "promise" (as printed on the Editor's Page):

Lonely Planet Magazine India provides trusted, independent travel advice and information that has been gathered without fear or favour. We aim to provide you with options that cover a range of budgets and we reveal the positive and negative of all locations we visit.

Because we believe it is important that our journalists experience first-hand what they're writing about and because you require comprehensive information from every corner of the world, at times it may be necessary for us to seek assistance from travel providers such as tourist boards, airlines, hotels, national parks, etc. However, when receiving such assistance, we ensure our editorial integrity and independence are not compromised though the following measures:

• 
  

  by publishing information on all appropriate travel suppliers and not just those who provided us with assistance

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  by never promising to offer anything in return, such as positive coverage.

How many magazines in India can make such a promise -- and deliver on it?

*

Living up to the Lonely Planet reputation can't be easy but this magazine does it with elan. Pick up a copy (it's not available on the web, sadly) and you'll see what I mean. Also study the readers' photos, and the captions -- the March issue has some superlative contributions from readers. You should send in your pictures, too.

What do you do when your 42-year-old brother...

...is a low-functioning autistic? How do you write about his plight -- and his future -- sensitively?

Read this moving article in Time.

Photo courtesy: Time

Larry King: 50+ years in television

Do you agree with the perception that you ask soft questions? -- Michael West, Copenhagen

Larry King (pictured here at the mike in the late '70s): Don't agree with it. I'm not there to pin someone to the wall. If I were to begin an interview with [speaker of the House of Representatives] Nancy Pelosi and say "Why did you lie about torture?" the last thing I'll learn is the truth. I'd be putting them on the defensive to make me look good. At that point, they're a prop. To me, the guest is not a prop.

To read some more questions and King's perceptive answers in a recent issue of Time, go here.
 
And go here to absorb the seven lessons from King's life.

• Photo courtesy: TV Guide

Some gems from Time Out Bengaluru

1. Tintin in Hindi

Instead of barking, "billions and billions of blistering blue barnacles," Captain Haddock is lilkely to holler, "karodon karod kasmasate kale kachhuve" -- millions and millions of squirming turtles.

2. The gent who sings, "I want to eat Chicken 65 on a Madurai tree"

Time Out tracks down an internet phenomenon.

3. A day in the life of... The Monkey King

The case of a simian climber drawing crowds at the ramparts of an ancient fort.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

The Monkey King is also quite the showman, pretending to slip, or twist his hand when climbing a sheer rock face, while the curious bunch of onlookers that he inevitably attracts gasp in utter horror. Each time that he lands back on firm ground after a climb, his audience crowds around him, clamouring for his autograph and requesting him to pose with them for photographs.

Read the full piece here. (Want to shoot a documentary on this minor YouTube superstar?)

4. How do you review a fitness video?

Arati Rao shows you how.

5. And how do you write a review of a "military hotel"?

Learn from Jaideep V.G.

(That concluding paragraph is one to be savoured.)

6. A brief book review...

...by Joshua Muyiwa, who addressed the First Years at Commits a few months ago. (His last paragraph adds local flavour to the review.)

7. Even the film reviews are a treat to read.

Check out the LSD review by Nandini Ramnath. It's not on the website yet, sadly.

8. You may not walk into these dives for a drink...

...but you will be full of admiration for the Time Out reviewers who did and then came up with these intelligent and spot-on critiques. Go to the home page and under 'Search Bengaluru' type in the keywords Burton Wines, followed by Night Booze Bar. Better still, read the reviews in the magazine because on the web the review of Night Booze Bar is an older version.

The angry young woman

Arundhati Roy went to meet the Maoists in Chhattisgarh recently and wrote a long (thousands of words) essay for Outlook. Read the essay here.

And then read a critique of the essay by Salil Tripathi in Mint:

"Maoists have killed many and manipulated many more. Their latest victim is Arundhati Roy, who uses her gift of writing vivid prose to clothe their trite claims with poetic adornment. She equates their cynical quest for power with the genuine demands, rights and concerns of the people who live in the forests. She gives new meaning to the binary logic of 'us or them', something she ridiculed when George W. Bush used it. Without having been the Maoists’ hostage, Roy has caught the bug called the Stockholm Syndrome."

Read the full column here.

The angry old man

"Amitabh Bachchan has the right to speak out, but we expect more from our greatest icon." Thus writes Sidharth Bhatia in Mint.

Why is Amitabh lashing out on his blog at his critics? Has he become too touchy? Read Bhatia's thought-provoking opinion piece here.

"The five traits of a successful writer"

I am usually wary of most of the self-published content on the net, but this Aussie blogger seems to have given some thought to what goes into the making of a successful writer. Here are his views (you must read the comments too).