“I told you that
your idea just wouldn’t work. But you didn’t listen to me. Now the client is
upset and threatening to go to another agency for this campaign. It is one of
the costliest campaigns we were working on, and just because of your stupidity,
we will be losing it to our rivals,” Shikha remarked caustically to a nervous
Supriya, the attractive visualizer of the Advertisement Agency, ‘Shikha’s
Creations’.
This agency was
the brain child of Shikha Bajpai, the beautiful, dynamic and high-strung
Director; who had started it single-handedly and struggled to make it one of the
best Ad agencies in the town, ten years ago. After interning at a small ad
agency, during her studies for a Diploma in Public Relations and Advertising,
she had realized that advertising was her calling. She had also realized that
she was not cut out to work under anyone or take orders from anyone! She wanted
to be her own Boss!
Being highly
creative and talented, she set her sights on achieving her aim of starting an
Ad agency of her own. She read up all the information regarding the field of
advertising and mastered its nuances from the internet, journals and books by
authorities on the related subjects, watched the media for the latest trends in
advertising, worked as a freelance copywriter for numerous ad agencies, before
she was fully confident of striking it out on her own. And then she never
looked back.
She obtained a
bank loan and leased a huge office space for three years, bought computers and
office equipment and other essentials for running her agency, registered her agency
as ‘Shikha’s Creations’ and started her venture, with very less money in her
pocket but with a whole load of enthusiasm and positive attitude. She couldn’t
afford any staff, except the maid who came to clean the office once a day, hence
she managed all the roles of marketing manager, client servicing executive, accounts
executive, copywriter, visualizer, graphic artist and designer; besides being
the office boy; and looking after recoveries and research.
She was good at
time management hence straddled all the jobs with aplomb. But as her business
grew, she could not cope with the increasing work-load and pressure, hence she
advertised for staff for the various positions in her agency. She interviewed
and employed the best talent on offer and decided to thenceforth concentrate
solely on business acquisition and expansion. She was raring to start branches
of her Agency in all the metropolitan cities, A-grade cities and so on and so
forth. Even the sky was not the limit for her burning ambitions.
To be continued.....
This story written by me was published in Alive magazine in January 2012.
