Billionaire College drop outs!
We all would have dropped the line in defense of our mediocrity in school, “You know what? Bill Gates was a college drop-out. I’m better – I just get low grades.” I am totally in the favor of college drop-outs and the underdog making it big, but not of mediocrity. As we all feel and agree, grades just don’t mean anything. I am not totally against formal education. We need schooling at a young age as its a leveler and instills some form of discipline & competitiveness into us. But there’s only so much formal education can do! To strengthen the argument I present to you some of the world’s richest men, all worth in billions who were college drop outs. These extraordinary people are more exception than the rule. Still, don’t be skeptic. And why would you slot yourself amongst the ‘rule’, than the exception?
“Real or Rumour”, a new feature in Southscope. Need your take!
I was reading all kinds of celebrity tabloids in my trip in the US. Some of them are People, OK! Magazine, US Weekly, inTouch which churn out huge amount of celebrity gossip week after week. All the magazines look identical, cover the same stuff & there are loads in the market. People everywhere love to read gossip about celebrities. Dont know how it works in the West, but in India especially our southern states where fan loyalties are extreme, many people get offended when something nasty is written about their favorite stars. Some of the gossip like star link-ups & movie news are harmless, but a section of the media hit the celebrity below the belt, trying to malign their image & benefit from it.
Telugu cinema wouldn’t have silver jubilee films again.
Indian cinema had this unique culture over the year, of measuring a movie by the number of days it ran at the theatres. A hit movie would run for 100 days in the theatres ideally, and an average movie around 50 days. Silver Jubilee, or being 25 weeks in the theatre is the sign of a blockbuster. Very few films a decade have that rare distinction. We fans, industry people and actors celebrated each milestone 50 days, 100 days and 175 days grandly. It worked perfectly as a metric to measure the movie’s success.
Geetha Arts’ new corporate identity & What we’re upto!
As people might noticed, from Jalsa (2008) onwards all of us at Geetha Arts are working towards revamping the company. From a independent producer-driven enterprise, we aspire to become a full-fledged Hollywood-like studio with a presence in film production, distribution & exhibition. Rather than a Warner Bros (owned by Time Warner), or 20th Century Fox (owned by News Corp), we’d like to be something like a Lionsgate or Dreamworks SKG, which is independent and not owned by any conglomerate.
(PART – II) Celebrity endorsements in South India – the next ‘Big thing’.
South Indian brand ambassadors – a Rs 50 crore market!
(Click here to read PART – I) People in the marketing industry estimate that the South Indian celebrity endorsement market is under-tapped. In today’s levels itself the market could be worth around Rs 50 crore. Yet it’s only Rs 20 crore in size. One of the prime reasons, I have found out is that – brands don’t know which celebrity suits their brand and how to sign them. With South India being such a pluralistic market, it’s hard for an outsider to know the big names and their image in each of the four states. Brands have the intention and budget to have a single brand ambassador for the whole of South India, or separate ambassadors for each market. But, most of them don’t know who the big names are – or if the celebrity’s image suits their brand.
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