Adventures of a Salesman in Art World – Part 6

Through this series ‘Adventures of a salesman in art world’, Mr Chandrashekhar Ojha, former DGM Marketing of Camlin continues to share his insightful memories. Throughout his career spread across four decades, he gathered a wealth of insights about the art world through his interactions with artists and art lovers. In this sixth part, he shares his experiences about the AICCC – ‘All India Camlin Colour Contest’ which he credits as his teacher.

Part 6 – ‘Learning from AICCC’

The All India Camel Colour Contest (AICCC) was launched in the seventies and when I joined Camlin, it was fairly established. However, since the Jodhpur HQ was started with me only, its penetration in my area was very low. This gave me an opportunity to take it to many schools for the first time and convince them for participation. I am probably the only person who had worked on AICCC as a foot soldier to the national head and hence my relation with it is special.

AICCC, might mean differently to people touched by it, but for me it is not less than a teacher as it has helped me learn many skills. Might sound funny to you, but I think whatever I have achieved in my life and career, can be credited to AICCC, directly or indirectly. Okay, let me explain it and quell your bewilderment.

AICCC was a conceptual contest and had many rules, which were different from other popular contests of those days.  So in order to convince the schools, we had to give them logical backgrounds. i.e. to explain NO topic, I would tell that they limit the creativity of the child, are against free expression and there are possibilities of guided and rehearsed output. The common pessimistic topics, like deforestation, drugs or dowry, would sensitize the students’ unnecessarily towards these vices, plus what anyone can paint on drugs apart from dead or dying persons? Moreover, such topics are for posters and not for paintings. This practice helped me in creating better communication resulting into greater success in all my endeavours.

Once the school leader okayed the participation, our task was to brief the art teachers about the operational aspects. Sadly, most of them would say yes to everything but wouldn’t try to understand much. This would lead to the goof-ups and since the rules wouldn’t allow, it would jeopardise the efforts and opportunity both. Hence, we had to invest lot of time in repetitive briefings so as to ensure flawless conduction, but the catch was that the teacher had to get the crux well without getting irritated about the repetition. We would ensure to boost the ego of the teacher while repeating the communication time and again.

We would also attend the conduction in some schools, especially those which are prone to goof-up and make sure that it goes on as per the directives. Here we would invariably find some participants using rival brands’ products. It was possible to disqualify them, but I felt that it would be rude and would antagonize the students, who were future brand ambassadors I would not like to hurt. So I would softly ask them the reason behind not using Camel colours, inform them about the superiority and request them to always use it. I can’t substantiate but I am sure it would have made a lot of fans and supporters of the brand.

Pasting filled-up AICCC coupon on the back of entry was mandatory, which was always the bone of contention with the schools. They would resist it but we had to ensure the compliance. Apart from the logic of locating the actual winner etc. we had to use great negotiation skills to ensure it. Once the entries are ready we had to lug them from school to our HQ for judging. It was pure physical task, requiring lot of energy to pack them well and strength to carry those heavy bundles.

Judging was also very cerebral task as we were supposed to find jury members who were knowledgeable, passionate, fair and impartial. We would mostly invite educators from non-participating schools to ensure non-partisan judging and also to improve relations. We had to ensure that they gel well with each other and there are no ego clashes. Briefing to jury was important so that they can appreciate the rules and keep them in mind while judging. Though we would not entertain and allow any favouritism, we would urge the jury to ensure a better spread of prizes, among the areas and towns to motivate the participants.

This will bring us to the final leg, where we would hold exhibition and PD functions for winners. It would give us opportunity to all event management skills like, finding a suitable and affordable venue, invite chief guests who can further the cause and activity, arrange display, plan refreshments, prepare duty chart & event flow, conduct the function and ensure that everyone is attended to and goes back happy. It gave us an opportunity of public speaking and made us prepared to address any gathering.

It also taught me to write for press actually. After my first function when I visited the PRO with the press-note received from HO, requesting to it to all newspapers, he assured to do so but also said none will carry it. On my asking why, he said they will print it only if you oblige them to convert it into a news item or give it to them in ready to carry format. He helped me to draft my first news item and it was carried by all the papers next day.

Later on more friends helped me in polishing this skill further. After a function in Agra when we visited the editor of Amar Ujala, who was the friend of my local colleague, he said why it is only a couple of lines and no longer? To this I commented that why to waste effort and time because the papers don’t carry long times from commercial entities without any gratification. His reply was very interesting, he said that you never know that on days we don’t have enough and really need stuff to fill the pages. If it is so, we will carry it in full and if not it will give us an editorial satisfaction to chop it. A real scoop, which helped me ensure many column centimetres for Camlin.

There are more learnings from AICCC during my Delhi and Mumbai days, but let’s save them for later.

Chandrashekhar Ojha