Month: November 2010

  • Revu

    [scribd id=51587966 key=key-1m7f3udse6dwu8sx5yan mode=list]

  • Peppa Zzing

    This review was first published in Bangalore Mirror, and though the title I had given was ‘Zzing is King’, someone obviously loves playing with articles, so it was edited to ‘Zzing is the King’ :|. Anyway, this is a revised version.

    So, Peppa Zzing opened shop on October 4th, and is run by popular MC Mark Rego and his wife Rini. It owes its name to their daughter who thought ‘zing’ best denoted the food, happiness and colours of the outlet. The ‘Peppa’ just adds to the spice. And thus food soldiers on Infantry Road now have a new place to focus their attack on. Parking shouldn’t be difficult. There’s all of Infantry Road and even the Safina Plaza area. Walk a bit, trust me, it’ll help.

    Pleazing, that’s how the ambiance can be described. Peppa Zzing has a typical fast food place feel to it, with functional furniture, and a prominently displayed menu. But the bright red hues and the pictures add a zing to what otherwise might have been a predictable setting.

    Guests for the evening were Umesh and Ranjani. Many thanks to Umesh for not chickening out despite a minor accident on the way. The third person I’d invited called me just as I entered the place to give me a flimsy excuse after confirming just half an hour back. I’m just barely resisting the urge to link his twitter account here. Thankfully, good friend (of mine and all things edible) Gautam John was around to beef up the efforts.

    The menu is not really big, but after my encounter with the Whammy, that’s not something I’d accuse the burgers of. They also have plans to add some steaks soon. Gautam, Umesh and I focused on the meatier portions of the menu, even as Ranjani volunteered to test the greener side.

    (click for larger image)

    The menu has burgers for three player levels – the regular Burger for the beginner, the Monster Burger for the advanced and the Whammy is quite obviously a multi-player option, except for those six brave people (including a woman) who have managed to finish it so far. If you can get there by 1 pm today, you can perhaps be part of the Whammy challenge and win a trip to Goa.

    We started with a Bar-be-cued Chicken wings, which suffered thanks to a domineering sauce, and the Cheesed Fries were a bit too hard for our liking. But the Potato Wedges were done well, though tending towards bland. The lamb and beef burgers were fantastic. The patty was crisp on the outside, tender on the inside and the toppings we tried – mushroom, fried egg and cheese complemented it well. The Whammy Burger is a planet in itself and I just managed to explore half of it.  The Pasta with Tomato sauce also did not disappoint. A few more dessert options would help, as the Hot chocolate fudge we tried was only average.

    The service was quick, helpful and there were hardly any delays. Though the place was definitely value-for-money, they don’t mean plastic money, but we were told that they’d start accepting credit cards in a couple of days. If you have any sort of inclination for fast food, this is definitely the place to drop in. You need solid guts to vanquish the Whammy burger, and from experience, it’s a battle you need to win in your mind first!

    Peppa Zzing, G-18, Kedia Arcade, 92 Infantry Road Ph: 41232843

    Menu at Zomato

  • Content, Media, Distribution

    I read an interesting post at Social Media Explorer titled ‘Is content marketing the new advertising‘. More than the specific subject itself, which I write about occasionally, it made me wonder about the various entities that seem to be vying for the marketer’s attention. So even if we do limit ourselves to the thought that brands (and businesses) would create their own content, how does the distribution work?

    I remember writing about this a few weeks back, and asking whether content is merely a titular king and distribution is the real power. Its ironic because much of the power of the web’s second wave is in the ability to create content and distribute it fast. But over a period of time, the platforms we use for sharing have undergone a consolidation. The presence of traditional media outlets and brands on these platforms validate this.

    Now if we zoom out further and consider the various other things that are making their presence felt – social gaming, location based services (check out the Foursquare-Pepsi and SCNGR-Coke deals, and the new contexts of advertising they’re creating), group buying; apps on iPhone/ iPad (Murdoch and Branson are making a newspaper/magazine specifically for iPad) and Android. (do add on) This is in addition to the terrains that the incumbents – Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter will discover and develop at least for some more time, and the technological possibilities that will arise. (eg. Augmented Reality, and the return of QR codes) Each of them are building their own distribution systems, and its difficult to bundle all the ‘content’ that appears on them under one umbrella. And that’s only the digital world.

    All of this also makes me think of destination sites. I can count mine on one hand. Every other consumption is via Reader/Twitter/Facebook and occasionally email. When the web (and its consumption) is rebuilt around people and their connections, what value does a destination site (belonging to a brand) add? How does the brand deal with fragmentation? The good news for the brands is that there are many more options than ever before. Not every campaign needs to be a TVC, radio spot, newspaper ad, site banner. There are smaller, more scalable and more flexible options. The challenge is to find them, and develop things that enable them to connect with the consumers. We live in interesting times indeed.

    until next time, many kings and many thrones

  • Decision Faker

    Of all the books I’ve recently  read, one I liked immensely was Thrity Umrigar’s “First Darling of the Morning”. Some of it had to do with her wonderful articulation of the pop culture phenomena close to my generation, some of it had to do with her personal traits, which I could identify with (“The more silent and introspective I grew from the inside, the more smart-alecky and verbal I felt compelled to be“), and a lot of it had to do with her honest portrayal of human relationships – their gray areas, their changing nature with time, and many such nuances. Will put up a review here soon.

    One of the things that made me think was this

    And finally, I know that the world still belongs to the adults, and although, in their kindness and mercy they may pretend to share it with us, ultimately it is still their world. It is they who decide when we are old enough to stop playing with dolls, when we should give away toys that they’ve decided we’ve outgrown……”

    I tried to think back to the first decision I had ever gotten to make by myself, but I couldn’t think that far back.  I remembered the days in engineering college – love, politics, future plans, all of which were perhaps my decisions. I also remember getting back from GIM and feeling exactly the way the author describes her last days in college.

    I am nowhere close to being ready to be anything but a college student. The world suddenly feels too big a place for me to navigate.

    And then it dawned on me, that however much I’d like to think that decisions are my own, they perhaps aren’t. There’s always a set of people who play a role in the decisions, directly or indirectly, influencing the outcome. But the decisions are made, for better, or worse. In her acknowledgment, the author uses a phrase “Thank God we don’t get what we deserve in life”.

    When i see ‘kids’ these days, this one for example, or N, and the seeming ease with which they take decisions and handle themselves, I wonder if its a generation thing or a personality thing. Even at this age, there are days when, just before I sleep, I wish I could go back to those times, when by the time I got up, my parents/ grandmother would have fixed the mammoth problem that had seemed so future-threatening to me the night before. These days, I wonder if they ever felt all grown up and in control, or were they just pretending, like I do  many a time now.

    until next time, deservedly so.

  • MobStac

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