Wednesday, 15 April 2020

The Control Freak - Chapter 1


      “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.

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