Spring back from rejection: An evening with Dr Ambi Parameswaran

On Friday, May 28, we had a very insightful webinar featuring Dr Ambi Parameswaran, a distinguished alumnus of IIT Madras and IIM Calcutta and an advertising industry veteran. He is currently an independent director on the boards of various reputed companies. He is also a coach and mentor to budding entrepreneurs and corporate executives. Dr Parameswaran has authored 9 books on branding, advertising and leadership, all of them very insightful and worth reading. An extremely articulate speaker and grounded in the realities of the world, Dr Parameswaran spoke from his heart about how to deal with rejection. The webinar was very well moderated by our R Prasad and Sudhakar Rao.

Introduction

A spring always bounces back. Similarly, we should have the mental resilience to bounce back. That is also the main theme of Dr Parameswaran’s book: Spring-Bouncing back from rejection. We all have a mental spring. We must reflect: How agile is our mental spring? There are some 60 different stories in the book on how people dealt with rejection.

To deal with rejection, we need to break it down into three components:

Face: How do we face rejection? We have to be confident and positive, going into any important situation. But we must also be ready for rejection and have a Plan B. We must not take things for granted.

Process: How do we learn to process rejection and move forward? We have to introspect and analyze what went wrong. We should not get defensive. We should try to understand what happened.

Learn: How do we learn from each rejection and become better? If we do the same thing again and again, we will get the same results. We must change the way we operate.

Facing, processing and learning rejection

The webinar was full of powerful stories to illustrate how we can face, process and learn from rejection.

. Dr Parameswaran started off with a personal story. As a Chemical Engineering student at IIT Madras, he appeared for a job interview with Hindustan Lever and was eliminated in the first round. After going back to his hostel room, he realized that he had failed to answer an easy question. Then he got admission to IIM Calcutta, where he was at the top of his class at the end of the first year. This time he appeared for a summer internship interview with Hindustan Lever. He went into the interview very confident as he was doing very well in the course and knew the subject well. He moved into the final shortlist of two students. Just when he thought that he had made it, he was rejected.

The rejection by Hindustan Lever prompted Dr Parameswaran to reflect and decide on a new course of action. He chose to remain in Calcutta to understand the city better and pursued his internship with Rediffusion, a relatively unknown ad agency those days. He learnt more about the advertising business and decided to pursue advertising as a career. He did not even apply for Hindustan Lever during his final placement. Essentially, Dr Parameswaran used rejection to discover a new direction in his career.

Once the famous Carnatic singer, Sanjay Subramanian was invited to Mumbai to perform. As luck would have it, the auditorium was empty due to the bad traffic that evening. The South Indian community, which was the target audience, was not living close to the venue. But Mr. Subramanian took it in his stride and mentioned to the organizers that he would perform even if there were only five people in the auditorium. The concert went off well and got a very good review in the media. Essentially a potential “rejection” for Mr. Subramanian was converted into a success by looking at the positive side of things.

What we can learn from this story is that we must perform to our capacity in any situation. We may go for a meeting with a client to make a sale, with a venture capitalist to pitch an idea or a job interview with a company and see some seemingly junior people in the meeting room. But we should take the meeting seriously and give our best. Though these people might look young, they could be key decision makers or influencers in their organization. If we do not take them seriously, we will get rejected.

What is common to Stephen King, Jeffery Archer, JK Rowling, Jack Canefield and Amish? They were rejected by several publishers. But they did not lose heart. In the case of Stephen King, his wife encouraged him to continue with his book. In case of Amish, his agent supported him all the way through. When we develop the inner conviction that we are doing something good, we will keep trying till we succeed. Our boss may reject the idea once but we will not give up. We will go back again to persuade him. Copywriters are known to save rejected ad campaigns and sell them to some client at a future date.

Another famous story which Dr Parameswaran narrated was that of former President, Dr Abdul Kalam. He was the director of the Space Launch Vehicle 3 project in 1979. Several scientists had worked on the prestigious project of national importance for years. At the Sriharikota launch station, the satellite was about to be launched. But the computer sounded an alarm as there was a leakage in the control system. The experts in the room did a quick calculation and established that in spite of the leakage, there was enough fuel to put the satellite in orbit. So, Dr Kalam bypassed the computer and went ahead with the launch. Unfortunately, the satellite failed and fell into the Bay of Bengal.

Dr Kalam’s superior and Chairman of ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) Dr Satish Dhawan’s reaction was amazing. He faced the media and took all the blame on his shoulders. He answered all the tough questions during the press conference. He accepted the failure but maintained that his team was great and would succeed soon in their mission. One year later, the team succeeded. This time, Dr. Dhawan stayed out of limelight and told Dr Kalam to go and handle the press conference. This is a great example of how great leaders help their people to handle rejections by trusting and supporting them at critical junctures. We can hear the story from Dr Kalam in his own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4k2jHNNid8

The famous cricketer, Rahul Dravid was dropped from the Indian One Day International team in 1998. Geet Sethi who was practicing in Bangalore for the world billiards championships those days, was surprised to see Rahul early in the morning at the Kantiveera stadium. Instead of complaining that he had been rejected, Rahul had chosen the break to exercise and build his upper body muscles. In the 1999 World

cup, India did not do well but Rahul was the highest run scorer. The lesson: when we are rejected, we must practice more and get our act right.

Saral Designs was a startup established by Suhani Mohan and Kartik Mehta. They wanted to manufacture low-cost machines to make high quality sanitary napkins. Thanks to some angel funding from friends and family, they built a protype. But even after a hundred presentations to VCs, no funding was available. Sporadic orders kept the company afloat. The turning point came when the founders were invited to San Francisco to make a presentation. After the presentation, a lady in the audience told them that their pitch was all wrong. Theirs was an impact start up. Their aim was not just to make money but also make an impact on society. Once the pitch was changed, the founders met 10 VCs. They got 4 cheques! This story illustrates the importance of finding mentors who can help us navigate through rejections and make the required mid- course corrections. If we do the same thing again and again, we cannot prevent rejection.

In 1997, the Indian car market was opening up. Hyundai which had just entered the country was looking for a good ad agency. Dr Parameswaran and his team went to Chennai to make the presentation. As they flew back, they realized that the presentation had not gone off well. As expected, they lost the business.

But the team did not lose heart. They knew the Indian car market was opening up. More companies would enter the fray. So, they decided to get ready by studying car buying behaviors and car advertising across the world. Shortly thereafter, they competed with 15 other agencies for the Tata Motors account and won the business. Tata Motors remained the largest account for the agency for several years. The campaign they developed, Tata Indica-More dreams per car- was truly sensational and became one of the most popular campaigns ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RX2-j-iKQo

What do we learn from this story? After every rejection, we must play back what went wrong and learn from the experience.

Being rejected is common in academics. Papers and theses are rejected and even if accepted, they often go through multiple rounds of changes. We can use each rejection to become a little better.

We should also be comfortable talking about failures. If we do not, it means we have not aimed high enough. A failure usually means we tried for something beyond us and have learnt something which can take us there at some point of time.

Dr Parameswaran also shared a very interesting story about the famous Santoor ad campaign. When he relocated to Mumbai to take charge of Ulka in 1989, the client and the agency were at loggerheads. The agency felt that the soft skin and mistaken identity (mother being mistaken for a college girl) were powerful themes and were very much relevant but the client argued that sales were not going up. Soon Ulka came up with a modified ad that became very popular and drove up the sales of Santoor impressively. It became the second largest soap brand in the country, overtaking Hindustan lever’s Lux. The profits generated by Santoor helped Wipro fund other businesses. The lesson to be learnt from this story is that sometimes, we can get around client rejections by reframing our offer

Dr Parameswaran thanked Hindustan Lever for rejecting him. That was what helped him to get into the world of advertising and build Indian brands such as Santoor.

Q&A session: Key points

The session was moderated by R Prasad and Sudhakar Rao.

Are rejection and failure one and the same thing? They may look similar. But there is one difference. Rejection refers to a situation in which someone does not consider us to be fit or eligible for something. Failure refers to a situation when we do not achieve something we wanted to achieve. (So, it would seem rejection is more painful than failure. Think of someone giving us negative feedback and compare it with finding the mistake ourselves. Negative feedback is far more difficult to swallow.)

What kind of mindset can cope effectively with rejection? People who think they are smart and have already arrived, have the fixed mindset. They think they are smart and deserve to get what they’re aspiring for. People who think they have scope to improve, are prepared to work hard and are not afraid of failure have the growth mindset. Growth mindset people are far better at dealing with rejection. Fixed mindset people are easily demolished by rejection.

When facing rejection, we should neither blame ourselves nor blame the person who is rejecting us. We should take the middle ground and try to analyze what went wrong. If we are not able to do the analysis ourselves, we must get hold of a mentor. The right time to find a mentor is when we are doing well and not when we are down. When we already have mentor in place, it becomes that much easier to consult her when we are rejected. Many champions were rejected. But they dealt with the rejection effectively by learning from it and improving, often with the help of a mentor.

We can all develop resilience. It is about finding our inner voice and quietening it when necessary. There are various tools available for building mental resilience. Meditation can be very useful. Being conscious of what is going on will help. Journaling, i.e., writing down how we are feeling when we are rejected is also useful.

When consumers reject a product, what can we do? Every brand can go through its share of rejection. The trick is to recognize it early. Many marketers deny the problem and argue that one more campaign can turn around the product. It is important to go to the consumers and find out why the product has been rejected.

If a market does not exist for the product, it may make sense to drop the product. Segway failed because it did not fulfil a particular customer need. It was not a bicycle, scooter or car.

But in many other cases, the insights can help us to reposition the brand. Think of the Eggs campaign (National Egg Coordination Committee) and the Amul Milk campaign. Both campaigns helped in repositioning the product and boosting consumption.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lW37OedACU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B-UF-tuMgg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAyW9XGOna0

How do the different media compare? When Dr Parameswaran began his career, print and to some extent radio ruled supreme. Over the years, television has become far more important. But print has not died and is still relevant. Digital advertising has become more popular in recent years. But we should not hype it beyond a point. The most digital brands like online games and Byjus are on television. Television and print provide the credibility to a brand that is not possible in digital.

During the pandemic, the bigger brands have benefited at the expense of the smaller brands. When in doubt, consumers stick to the tried and trusted. This is also reflected in the rising stock markets as the Sensex and Nifty are heavily weighted towards the larger companies. The smaller brands must realize that they have a mountain to climb.

Marketing has been pulverized during the pandemic. Other functions such as Supply chain, HR, Finance, IT have become more important. Once the pandemic is over, it is important to increase the marketing budget, make more customer visits and invest in market research. Marketing must do this to come back to the fore front. After all, it is the function which represents the eyes and ears of the customer.

The role of creativity in marketing. While data is increasingly driving marketing, stories will remain important. Stories appeal to our emotions. As Prof Aswath Damodaran mentions in his book,” Numbers and narratives” even the most hardnosed financial analysts are carried away by stories. So, creativity will continue to play an important role in marketing.

Healthcare can do with a lot of advertising. Think of the polio vaccine campaign. Dr Parameswaran recalls how he was closely associated with building OTC brands like Coldarin, Strepsils and Bunol. OTC advertising should pick up. We must avoid going to the doctor for small ailments and rely on self-medication. Health insurance and E Medicine advertising will also increase. Health consciousness will continue for some more time.

On coping with mid-career rejection. Career rejection can come in various ways- not being hired, not being promoted, being dismissed from service, etc. It is important to find out why we are being rejected. Having a mentor can help as Dr Parameswaran illustrated with a story.

His nephew was working with large media agency. When he got a better offer in Jan 2020, he decided to leave. His employer offered to match his salary. So, his nephew decided to stay back and informed the other company accordingly. As a matter of fact, the other company had stopped hiring and resumed hiring only in July. But since his nephew had indicated he was not interested; the company did not consider him when hiring resumed. To complicate matters, the company where he was working, asked the nephew to leave in Sep 2020.This came as a big shock as he had a wife and kids to support.

The nephew started doing some free-lance work and then got an offer from an unknown television channel. There was pressure from the family to accept the offer and earn a steady income. That is when the nephew contacted Dr Parameswaran. His advice was: “You have been working for 12 years in good agencies. Why do you want to spoil your resume by joining an unknown company? Continue with the free lance work for a few more months and only if a better offer does not come by then, consider smaller companies.” The nephew took this advice seriously. In Jan 2021, the nephew was rehired by his old employer at a much higher compensation. Dr Parameswaran was not surprised. His nephew had the right skill set and it was only a matter of time before someone would find his skills valuable.

On preparing students for rejection. Students can be prepared to handle rejection in various ways. Students are often told by professors to chase their dream job. This is dangerous advice. Students can chase their dream sector. But all students cannot expect to be placed with the “dream” companies. They will recruit only that many students. The concept of Day 0 and Day 1 placements complicates matters and does not help the students in any way except for increasing anxiety by triggering a rat race. Ironically enough, many of the students leave these “Day One” companies within a year. Dr Parameswaran himself stayed away from the rat race and joined a small ad agency. He has certainly done well for himself.

Concluding notes What can we learn from Dr Parameswaran’s presentation? We should not worry about rejection. We must look at a rejection as an opportunity to improve or change direction. We must look at the positive side of things when we are rejected. We must become super springs and bounce back after every challenge. As Nelson Mandela once mentioned:” Do not judge me by my successes. Judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

We thank Dr. Vedpuriswar for bringing out the highlights in the form of this note