Desi Apple

Now that’s a launch !

It pushes all the right emotional buttons and it’s the soul of simplicity. And it’s the sort of work possible when the brand name and logo merge seamlessly into a single entity. Forbes magazine has rated it as the most valuable brand in the world.

And the ‘coolness’ factor that it embodies is beyond price.  It is one of those brands that doesn’t even bother to advertise in some key markets; the product pull is so strong that customers seek information on their own, and update each other on new launches and delivery dates.

It was not always so.  The original logo was a B&W pen and ink drawing of Newton sitting under the apple tree, but Steve Jobs (whose idea that was) had the good sense – and the lack of ego – to bring in designer Rob Janoff.  After a week spent drawing apples, Janoff arrived at the minimalistic graphic that is now the ultimate branding icon.

Which leads me to think that Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, was a dangerously naive idealist.

 

 

Mumbai, 24^th Sept.

Rhea, Sara, Deepika, Shraddha, Rakul, Simone...is it a gentlemanly ‘ladies first’ policy at the Narcotics Control Bureau or is there a deeper motive ?

It has certainly left a section of macho Bollywood more than a little miffed.

“This Women’s Empowerment is getting out of hand,” complained a male action star on conditions of strict anonymity,”Not only are they starting to get paid a decent fraction of a man’s fee in this business, they have started to dominate the spotlight in cases like this. I have been using cannabis for years and years and nobody is bothering to summon me.”

Another industry spokesman commented that there was no such thing as bad publicity in Bollywood – whereas no publicity is death. “Many a flagging career has been revived by a drunken brawl or an extra-marital affair.  A drug summons and rabid network reporters chasing you down the highway to the NCB office is the new PR coup. You can’t buy exposure like that.”

Forget about ‘hash/THC/weed/doobies’ as the endearingly uninformed tabloid press put it, the men of tinsel town feel that they have put in the time and earned their reps – as Fardeen did with a possession of cocaine charge, nearly twenty years ago. And Sanju...let’s not go there.

“These young women are amateurs who want it all NOW,” is the common complaint, “They are unwilling to do the hard work, the all-night parties, the learning that comes from watching the senior druggie artistes at work. One puff of weed and they think they own the limelight.”

And the NCB ?  Well, that’s just the patriarchal bureaucracy that India excels at.  Why summon a truculent, sweaty, male star full of testosterone and arguments ?  Here they can dominate and bully pretty and wealthy women who they would normally tiptoe around.  

And for the rest of their lives, some ageing and overweight NCB officers will dine out on the stories, not of seizing heroin caravans at the Pakistan border, but of grilling Deepika for 6 hours straight across the conference table over a three-year old WhatsApp chat that mentions the word ‘hash’.