Friday, April 8, 2011

Day 1 : What I learnt . Marketing Strategies

Day 1 My pseudo stint as an event manager. Well, not entirely an event "manager", but more like a sponsorship getter, if thats even a word.

I made a list of all the possible questions regarding details of the event, got it clarified, prepared a budget break up and what we can offer to the sponsors, got ready and headed off to one of the busiest streets in town.

Brigade Road, Bangalore.

I went to around 20 showrooms/franchise/ shops which included places from banks, handicraft items, antique piece showrooms, watch showrooms, hotels, photo studio, gold loans, and I did not even spare government registered emporiums.

To my surprise, I got really good response from a lot of people. The bigger brands just ended up giving me their card with their manager's e-mail address asking me to send them my proposal.

But some shops where I went were totally interested and were really friendly. I never got even a single person signalling me to get out or stop disturbing him or anything.

It was like a nice cushion for the fact that I had just collected the material, and without an agenda or a particular shop to go to, my randomness looked quite positive.

Another thing that I understood in this field is : You'll meet different kinds of people, some may be truly business minded and will ask you " Isme hamara faayda bataao", or people who expect smooth talking like "Considering your product will attract art lovers the most" etc. Also, always remember that if you are girl, you'l also have to deal with over-friendly shopkeepers , if you know what I mean. Essentially, don't take anything to heart, and if you get compliments , there is no need to get offended... Just take it :)

Somehow I didn't even mind those over-friendly shopkeepers, they seemed completely harmless.. and in fact they were really nice people.

I got back, with 20 visiting cards, lets see how "The Proposal" goes. But happy to have a good start at least.

Can get some peaceful sleep tonight. Except if I get dance dreams again.

Early morning, time to get up and get going

I got up a little early today. Even in spite of not having my dance class today morning.
So I have a few things to do for my agenda today. Today's main agenda is getting sponsorship for this programme of my dance class . There is an event happening in July for which I need sponsorship worth 2L. Ive done some small level sponsorship in my college where I did not get too much either. Infact I hardly got anything out it. Thats why I thought I venture in for a few days and see how successful I can be at getting sponsorship.

Secondly, I have my regular dance class today evening. Before that, I need to finish my regular stretching, the aim for being able to do a full split . Shockingly, yesterday after I got done with my stretches and cooled down, and when I sat for dinner, I saw a few scars on my knee, the ones you get when someone punches you or you hit some object very hard. Like a blood clot. It was pretty scary and the spookily the first thing I remembered was the movie "Black Swan". And ouch, the scar hurts a little. But as most experienced dancers say, if you can live with the pain like nothing happened and continue dancing, the pain will go. I am not a firm believer of that in many cases. I believe it works when you have an internal ailment, like fever or cold. But if your bones are damaged, let them rest for sometime before messing with it.

Ironically, the same person who is saying this ended up practicing for 6 hours straight before the dance auditions with a damaged ankle and succeeded in reducing the pain. I just dont understand how the human anatomy works.

Anyway, these days I have got totally obsessed with dance. I dont remember a single night after coming back from the auditions where I haven't dreamt of being auditioned . And surprisingly, everytime I seem to be getting selected in every dream. Seriously weird as I thought I got over the whole auditions thing, got back to Bangalore and started planning of what to do next.

By the way, I am planning to conduct my first ever dance workshop in my apartment itself. I plan to schedule it next week. I need to get a flyer ready so that I can stick it all around my Apartment complex. I am still finalising on he dance style and which audience to target.

Fingers crossed.