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Paradigm shifts are now a little outdated, a little like synergy was overused and abandoned a few quarters ago. It’s now the season of tectonic shifts, the one that moves the plates on which whole continents or land masses rest, to portray the machinations of the stock market.

In a world seeking the boson or the ‘God’ particle, analogies get created all the time. To describe the size and scope of the quest, as it were. We need affirmation that what we are doing is grand, overarching, magnificent. Exaggeration is the norm, not the exception. The problem is that in this age of Viagra spam, our preoccupation with size is taken to ridiculous lengths. And breadths.

I have yet to see a book that has been made into a film. It’s always a ‘major’ film. Adjectives are the first resort of the aspiring copywriter. Which is why when I see an ad that is effective and still does not exaggerate, I say a silent prayer. To the creative person who conceived it. And to the client who had the gumption to approve it. Like this one from Max New York Life.

Sachin Tendulkar is back to being an iconic brand again. Public memory is fickle, wavering and swings wildly. Untouchable just a few weeks ago, he’s now back at the pinnacle. With a very quotable quote -’When people throw stones at me, I turn them into milestones’, he’s riding the euphoria of becoming the world’s biggest run-getter. It’s also the first time I’ve seen Sachin in an advertisement where he’s standing still and being measured – literally- for RBS. Throughout the film, it seems to be an ad for a new suiting brand – until it reveals the dapper little master. looking mature for the first time.

We prefer our heroes to be without any flaws at all. They’re either all there – or not at all. Saurav’s dream run as captain is history. The fact that he brought India into the reckoning with an attitude where the Indian team emerged from it’s timidity abroad is forgotten. He finally had to throw in the towel and announce his retirement when his selection for the current Australian Test series was questioned. For the first time in years, he batted without the burden of expectations and notched up his first century in nearly four years.

We only see the big money, the glamour, the endless celebrations when times are good. But in a career where 35 is ‘old’, it can’t be easy. In any other profession, succeeding at 35 would be seen as an achievement. Moving from gladiator to spectator can be a wrenching affair. Especially when life can go on for decades more.

To be noticed, never do what the majority does. Or even in order to be effective, never do the expected. Warren Buffet tells you this is the best time to buy stocks – when everyone is running as far away from equities as they can. It may also be the best time to buy a house in the US.

Every marketing manager now is saying that budgets will be cut during 2009. More of the mob mentality. It will require nerves of steel to argue with a Board that insists on cutting spends to say that spends should actually be increased. It’s easier to flow with the tide, say and do the same things that the rest of the world is doing.

Two years from now, you\’ll read the stories of people who did very well simply because they bucked conventional wisdom (an oxymoron) and insisted on doing things their way. Paul Graham writes in this piece that a downturn is probably just as good a time to start a startup. Microsoft and Apple were founded during one.

The wrong question to ask a client at this time is for the budget. He’ll tell you he does not have one. But he does have a target. And he cannot reach there by simply sitting on his haunches and hoping for the best. There are fortunes to be made in a recession. By doing things that nobody else dares to do. At a time like this, or at any time for that matter, do what the world doesn’t.

The term ‘Maverick’ has glamour firmly attached to it. It paints the picture of a man (or woman) highly individualistic and with a disdain for norms. Ricardo Semler, the chief of Semco used it as the title of his autobiography. The term has been bandied about a great deal in the recent US Elections, where John McCain has assiduously built his image as a maverick.

It’s the classic ploy in advertising. Tell people they are different. Reebok lets U-Be-U. Or Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ Apply it to the mass and tell all of them they are different. That they do not follow the herd. Works like a charm. Which is why I found this article fascinating. Mr Maverick came to represent the individualistic streak precisely because he refused to brand his herd, while the rest of the cattle-owners followed the rules. Like Gandhi, the very antithesis of advertising was forever embedded in the ‘Think Different’ campaign for Apple. It’s amazing how advertising takes the individual trait and converts it to mass aspiration.

I always knew there was a connection between slipping into a deep sleep and cracking a campaign. Not necessarily in that order. But here comes proof. From the article “Most unappreciated of all, sleep improves creative ability to generate aha! moments and to uncover novel connections among seemingly unrelated ideas.”

Now you know why creative guys seem to be doing nothing. It’s hard to show your mind is at work. There’s no grinding of gears, no visible straining of the muscles, no smoke emanating from the ears. So how can thinking be ‘work’?

Try this next time. When a deadline looms, don’t do any frenetic searching on the net. Or flip wildly through a dozen magazines or play the latest award winning commercials from Cannes. Take a deep breath, read the brief all over again and put your feet up in the most comfortable position. Sleep if you can. The ideas will come looking for you. What I realized pretty early on is that you can’t force the mind to think. The more the effort, the less the results. The mind is no machine. It doesn’t work on the laws of physics. It’s all chemistry.

Being in advertising, one is always the first to feel the chill of a recession and the last to feel the warmth of the market springing back. The lack of a time lag between what happens in the US and its effects out here signify that this year may not be the bonanza that shopkeepers want- especially with the festive season in full swing. But ‘The Hindu’ newspaper disagrees. Apparently, the Onam festival shopping was great and the coming festival season promises to be just as good.

An interesting statistic that cropped up today was that when the restaurant index declines and when people spend far less on restaurants, the general food index moves up. No one can stop eating obviously, but they can spend a lot less money doing it.

That way, street food will never go out of style. People will move from the opulence of a buffet to the simple pleasures of a ‘bajji hot from the wok. And a plate of ‘bajjis’ can be bought everyday for a whole month for the cost of a single buffet. People spend less on activities that cost money.They rediscover the simple pleasures of a book or spending time with friends. They hold on to their existing cars, postpone the big screen TV and the fancy new cell phone. The objective is to manage with less. From being addicted to consuming, suffering withdrawal pangs may not be such a bad idea.

It’s going to be harder to get people to spend over the next couple of years – which is why agencies and clients will work a lot harder at mining insights – and discover ways to deliver more value. When times are good, gluttony is in. It takes a shortage of resources, people and money to get the mind to really think.

There will be less to go around – in budgets, spends and the emphasis will move even more towards ‘Free’. But understanding how to expand the market during this time will separate the men from the boys. Agencies will get to be really creative now – there’s a huge difference between singing for your supper and singing for an award.

There was an interesting article in BBC Magazine that made the point about President Bush having made a mistake in selling the $700 billion plan as a bailout instead of a rescue. If only things were as simple. But there was a nasty comeback which suggested that a rescue was only for innocent victims and not for captains of ships who navigated knowingly into a storm.

What struck me was the ludicrous sizes of the mistakes we are seeing these days. $23 billion unaccounted in Iraq. It used to be that a few thousand dollars could go missing. This cannot happen without active collusion and oversight. People may think that they have covered their tracks very well but there are always mistakes made that cannot be undone.

The size of the bailout also has another sidelight. It’s very close to the money spent on advertising every year. As advertising agencies stare down the barrel of a gun of depleted budgets and belt-tightening measures, they can only hope that optimism about the future will collectively bail them out. But accountability and measurability are here to stay. The agencies that can deliver will be the only ones left standing.

Why are agencies so defensive about how much they charge for creative? They cling to their commission, or what’s left of it for all it’s worth but they give the ideas away for ‘free’. As if ideas are commodities that the world is awash with. The whole business of venture capital is built on money chasing ideas, not the other way round. Start any meeting with the question “Does anyone here have any ideas?” and see the silence that descends. People have opinions, retorts, explanations, justifications and excuses but ideas are beyond the pale of most.

That’s simply because ideas belong to a realm that cannot be easily explained. Are they merely thoughts? If they are, where’s the work because we all have thoughts, all the time, anyway. Non-violence is an idea but it took a Gandhi to show the power of it’s execution. It was nothing but a thought in his head to begin with. The fact is, he was able to spread that power into the hearts and souls of millions and bring independence to a nation.

Some clients I have met have been brutally honest and told me to my face that they couldn’t have recognised a good idea even if it yelled out from the storyboard. They relied on the reputation of the agency selling them the work to do their job. Fair enough. But then there are those who tell you “Your artwork costs are too high” Or “How can you charge me so much for concept creation?”

How do you even begin to justify costs in this case? Basically, when no value is perceived, no price is too low. When the cushion of commissions is no longer fluffy and inviting, it is time to define new value systems. I believe smart clients have already found the way ahead. They invite debate and disagreement. They look for strategic inputs instead of that other cliche – memorable advertising. The best ads don’t even look like ads these days. Look at the new Max New York Life commercial – Karo Jyaada Ka Iraada. Try forgetting it once you’ve seen it. The kid saying a mangled ‘Czechoslovakia’ is a classic.

There are times when I am aware of every second. There are others when weeks don’t register in their passing. I’ve always found the concept of time fascinating. Metronomic when the eye is on the second and unmoving when it’s on the hour. Rolex or was it some other equally famous brand like Omega showed the 100 metre runner and said “He trains ten long years for ten short seconds” Kind of sums it up very well.

It’s a long wait for success. Much shorter and much more often for failure. As a child, I remember looking out of the window waiting for the bell that signalled the end of a long, boring period. Time would seem stuck in some eternal trough then, advancing a reluctant second at a time. Being a prisoner of time was never pleasant.

It’s a game we’re forever playing. Weekends linger, weekdays pass in a blur. Before one knows it, a year is gone. I wonder if it is because we lead such packed lives, or because we lead empty ones, always waiting for the next bit of excitement or trying to cram too much activity into a single day. It seems we no longer have the ability to pause and savour time. There’s too little of it in our frenetic schedule anyway.

It took me quite a while to figure out how to use the T9, or dictionary function on the mobile. Being the purist, I could not bring myself to type those ridiculous abbreviations without vowels, distorted into forms where words are squeezed, stuffed and changed into unrecognisable grunts. ‘R u thr’ may make a lot of sense to the current generation but I prefer the ‘Are you there?’ message anytime. To the spelling challenged , it’s a godsend to camouflage a weak ability under something cool. So, I laboured through those three taps on the mobile to get at one letter. Sending an SMS or ‘Texting’ as the US calls it, was like typing out a Morse Code. I kept it short and simple all the time.

Realisation dawned in one of those long nights in a post-production studio. I found this young guy effortlessly sending off messages. I asked him how he managed with such ease and he provided the enlightenment that no user manual ever manages to capture. “Spell it out on the keyboard’ was the mantra. I told him that all kinds of junk appeared on the screen every time I typed the first two letters in. “That’s simply because there are a lot of two and three letter words” he told me. “Persist and you’ll see how easy it gets.” He was right. While I still don’t send out messages like obsessed teenagers, I maintain a fairly decent SMS conversation when I need to.

But ‘Twitter‘ is beyond me. I can’t, for the life of me, see what’s so great about random thoughts being sent into the atmosphere. Does it have to do with some primal need of expressing oneself? Or is it the thrill of having responses from a total stranger? Why would anyone be interested in what I had for lunch? Or that I was standing at the junction of Mount Road and Spencer’s and I wanted the whole world to know. Maybe I’ll follow one of these erudite articles and get a clue. Apparently, from the ‘twitters’, a pattern emerges. What twits! Doesn’t that come from actually having a conversation that makes sense? Or is that too much to ask of people who are on the phone all day?