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How A Brand Image Can Be Ruined By Its Own People

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In a highly competitive business environment, the only sustainable option is to build a brand that attracts certain types of buyers with quality products catering to their interests. Or to put it simply, brand image is key for long-term success. Unfortunately, too many brands make simple mistakes that can undo years of marketing exercises and not even realise it. The one I want to talk about here is how brand image is ruined/tarnished by its employees and affiliates.  I recently attended the Indian MotoGP and due to event circumstances, my tickets were adjusted to a different stand at the Buddh International Circuit. Mind you, these were far from the more affordable tickets and had a lot to live up to. My new seats were in a stand that had been rebranded as the Yamaha stand with massive tapestries and flags all around. The MotoGP is a three-day event with the main race on the final day. The first two days, casual fans did not bother to show up so that meant the stand was at half-capaci
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Fast X: Movie Review

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This is it, the final instalment of the Fast & Furious franchise that started all the way back in 2001. To be precise, it's the first part of the tenth and final instalment in the series. There was a lot of build-up around this one with various petrolhead circles making plans for group viewings. But I wanted my Fast X experience to be as unadulterated as possible. I did not even watch a single trailer and did not have any inkling about what to expect in terms of stunts and new characters. I did not mention story plot expectations because I knew that there probably wasn't going to be one, not really.   Everything from hereon can be considered a spoiler, so skip to the final para for a rating/assessment. The "Plot" The central storyline, if that's what we can call it, for Fast X gives us a flashback to 'Fast Five' (arguably one of the best movies in the series in terms of heist sequences). We are treated to some tear-jerking flashbacks of Paul Walker as
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I Spent The Last Day Of 2022 By Myself. It Was Great!

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There's a lot of pressure on most people for how they spend December 31st, better known as New Year's Eve. If you're a family person, you're guaranteed to spend quality time with your family as the bare minimum, maybe with some close relatives, or with another friend who also has a family. If you're with a partner, the least you might do is plan a nice dinner together with some drinks, maybe invite some close friends who are also coupled up, or at least one single person of each sex in case they might find each other's loneliness/availability attractive for the night. If you're just a person who is social, you try to organise a New Year party with friends of all sorts, or at least get invited to one. And if you've got no one to spend time with, you probably spent it in a desperate search for some sort of social gathering or event that would make you feel like you were part of something. A good chunk of New Year's Eve celebrations are for the last cat
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Celebrating 10 Years Of Forza Horizon: One Of The Best Driving Games Ever

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The category of racing games has been dominated by a handful of franchises over the last couple of decades. I've been lucky to play one or more editions of these games. Like any form of entertainment, video games cover a wide span of genres with sub-genres within them. In the broad category of racing games, there are two broad factions: Arcade and Simulations. Most competitive driving games offer a close-to-reality simulator experience, often with cars and tracks directly from global motorsport. Meanwhile, an arcade-style racing game needs to offer more in terms of entertainment as well as engaging driving physics. So, when XBOX needed a platform-exclusive title to expand on the success of its Forza Motorsport racing simulator into a more fun-to-play racing game genre, it gave us one of the best open-world driving games ever: Forza Horizon.   The title made its market debut on October 23, 2012, and it is now in its fifth generation, i.e., Forza Horizon 5. Developed by Playground Ga
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Three Thousand Years Of Longing: Movie Review

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Walking up to the ticket counter of your nearest cineplex to see what's the next available show, irrespective of the genre, is an adventure I haven't taken in some time. But that's how I ended up watching this movie and it was an interesting experience.   This movie is so out of my realm, I had to read the title multiple times to make sure the title was as mushy as it sounds despite having a far more exciting poster design. I recognised the lead actors - Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton - which gave me confidence that the movie would at least pack a good performance. And I was right. The movie is clear to establish its overarching premise early on. It's a story about storytelling with the lead character being a professional academic in the field of narratology, Dr Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton). On one of her adventurous excursions, the English lady somehow ends up with a trinket that houses a Djinn (Idris Elba). While trying to clean the glass bottle, she ends up summonin
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Horror Movies Are Bad For Feminism

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Movies and shows that fall under the genre of horror may have the same base objective – to scare you while entertaining you - but go about it in very different ways. The horror production toolkit includes jump scares, gore, suspense, handheld PoV and the grainy security cam where you can never see who did it. But the true key to any horror story is stupidity. The characters have to be exceedingly stupid to keep putting themselves in perilous situations while ignoring clear signs that something is not quite right with their surroundings. Worse yet, the dumbest and least aware character who tends to set things in motion is almost always a female.     I usually only watch horror movies by myself or with a friend of mine. The first half of the film usually focusses on individual hauntings and brutal killings before the dopey characters try to become ghost/monster hunters. Some side characters would get murdered or disappear to suggest that something evil is afoot. However, the dumbest ch
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Red Notice: Movie Review

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 It's quite common for movies to be made with no plot, a cast of popular actors with loyal fanbases and a big CGI budget. Red Notice is one of those movies. Netflix has been churning out an increasing number of platform-exclusive movies, but it's now harder to find good ones. When they dropped the first trailer for this action-flick starring Ryan Reynolds and Dwayne Johnson, I knew I was going to watch it as a fan of the Canadian funnyman. They also showed Gal Gadot as a key character to onboard a slew of horny teens as well. The movie plot is a treasure hunt for an Egyptian artefact, a bejewelled golden egg and part of a set of three, known as Cleopatra's eggs. It explains off the bat that the term Red Notice is the highest wanted level in Interpol, which is a sort of global police agency. The movie then introduces us to a generically-sassy boss lady Inspector Das, played by Ritu Arya, who's chasing one of the best art thieves in the world. She enters the scene accompa
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