Best Indian management related television series/videos

TV, smartphone, internet and the visual media has completely enveloped us. The visual media is all encompassing and its effects are seen in all sectors and more so in the education field. Students have become visual oriented and their learning is easier and faster if the visual media is used. An attempt is made to throw light on the best management videos/TV seriesworth watching.

The Ries Report:The one set of videos that I would recommend are the set of videos available on the YouTube and also on the web site www.riesreport.com. Riesreport is a video blog and it has very informative video clippings about the latest in the field of marketing. The author is Al Ries yes the same Al Ries of the iconic pair of Al Ries and Jack Trout. The video blog is great fun and is a compulsory watch.

Storyboard; CNBC- TV18 (2001): This informative programme is a weekly and carries the latest news about marketing, advertising and media. The videos are very educative and can be a great supplementary viewing after reading the text book. I found 422 videos on the youtube.com.

All About Ads; NDTV Profit (2006): A long running TV programme “All about ads" is a neatly packaged and presented show about marketing and advertising. All About Ads is more focused on the advertising part and it features a very popular year end countdown of the India’s' best advertising campaigns.

All About Ads also features specials like "brand Sachin" "Iconic advertisements of the 70s and 80s" etc.These specials are very good for collection and are a treasure cove for academicians.I found a mind boggling 537 episodes of All about Ads on the NDTV’s website.

Brand Equity; ET-Now: The newspaper supplement,Brand Equity isa great favorite among the management students. The digital form of the Brand Equity is featured in ET NOW. Brand Equity the television programme is as much fun as the print version of Brand equity. The videos of brand Equity are available on the website of ET NOW.I found over 2400 videos of Brand equity on the ET-Now website.

Boss’s day out; NDTV profit (2006): We all wonder how the Managing Directors, CEOs and the Chairmen live their lives.We are filled with curiosity. Are their lives like ours or are they very different? Boss’s day out a long standing and long running series from NDTV Profitprovides us with the answers.

Boss’s day out captures a day in a boss’s life. Told in graphic details, the series shows how a CEO spends his entire day. The host faithfully follows the corporate big shot and we are given privy to tit bits that we can never get to know by ourselves.

We see the bosses as they are and then it hits us “oh they are just like us, they are nodifferent”. With hard work and perseverance it is possible to become a CEO and one day be featured on the iconic NDTV Profit’s Boss’s day out show. I found a whopping 231episodes that could be watched in the NDTV website.

Leader TalkCNN – IBN (2013): Leader Talk was hosted by IBN’s Rajdeep Sardesai. The talk show featured some of the world's most well-known corporate leaders and sports legends who came together and shared their ideas, thoughts and experiences on leadership and talked about their success secrets.

Leader Talk brought together two contrasting personalities and it was very revealing and enlightening to hear a corporate honcho and a sports superstar who are as different as chalk and cheese discuss leadership. It suddenly dawns on us that irrespective of the field, leadership is that trait that moves mountains.

A good leader is one who creates awe and makes others follow him unquestioningly. Season one’s first episode featured N. R. Narayana Murthy and Prakash Padukone. Season one had 10 episodes and season two had 4 episodes. All 14 episodes are available on the youTube.com.

Inside India’s best known companies: Bloomberg India TV(2012):Inside India’s Best Known Companies series went onto the factory floors of some of India’s most successful manufacturers who have used technology and innovation to transform their products and markets.

The show looked at how these companies had used the best tools and technology to transform themselves and gave credence and credibility to the “Made in India” tag. All in all 39 companies were featured in the series. All 39episodes are available on the youTube.com.

Brands that built India; ET – Brand equity (2015): was a celebration of Indian brands that built India and had become world famous. It featuredfood brands like AMUL which nourished generations of Indians. Others like Bajaj gave wheels to the entire nation. Brands that made Indians lives easier and which continue to inspire awe and self-confidence that yes made in India can be a force to reckon the world over.

The series also picked the brains of some of the leading marketing minds on various subjects like how the brand personalities helped the brands became iconic and globally recognizable. The assignment; Bloomberg India TV (2010): season one and season two of the assignment revolved around giving challenging tasks to cushy corporate executives for a day.

Assignment threw the executives off their zone of comfort and checked whether they could excel in a rapidly changing business scenario. The corporate executives had to understand the business, plan out their strategies, execute and succeed in achieving the set targets – all in a day’s time.

In one intense and gripping episode a hotshot high level ISB trained management expert from Pepsi Co was given an assignment to sell sugar cane juice on the roadside for a day. The travails of the PepsiComanager to come to grips of selling sugar cane juice on dusty roads made for a very compelling viewing experience.

In season three executives were given a chance to live their dream Job, mentored by an expert from the field. The Assignment captured the corporate hot-shots grappling with the responsibilities of their dream jobs.They were asked to set their own challenge, that is, live their dream job for one day, analyse their own performance and figure out if it was as ‘dreamy’ as they imagined it to be. The assignment season one had 13 episodes, season two had 5 episodes and season three – Dream Jobs had 13 episodes. All 31 episodes are available on the youTube.com.

The pitch;Bloomberg India TV(2011): India is full of bright young people who want to branch out on their own and seek their own pot of gold – all by themselves. They would like to test the entrepreneurial waters. The stumbling block? Lack of adequate finance. Pitch provides the answers.

In each of the seasons of the pitch (meaning the convincing of the customer by the sales person) contestants cross sword with the brightest of the bright and test their wits against each other. One contestant gets eliminated each week and the final three contestants’ slug it out for the 5 crore prize money and to prove that time has arrives for their idea. Season 1 had 10 episodes, season two had 13 episodes and season three had 13 episodes. All 36 episodes are available on the youTube.com.