Practical M(AXI)gic

"It’s a frax thing. You get 15 marks for having fun."
- IR Senior

"Baah! Something for people looking to get easy grades."
- BM Senior [fin stud]

"Dekhega kya hoga... "
- BM Senior [my group leader] - in ominous tones, when I reported the above conversation to him.

If anyone had told me that I would be painting thermocol into wee hours at XLRI, I would have looked at that person as if he were demented. Not any more. Last January, I had my first night out even remotely connected with studies - I was busy cutting and painting thermocol for MAXI fair.

If B-Schools are supposed to teach us how to take on the unexpected, then MAXI fair fits the description. Amidst the crepe paper and the other paraphernalia we were learning the basics of time management, setting priorities, team work and thinking out of the box. How to get an Enfield inside the stall? How NOT to get lost inside a maze and look unruffled when ghosts and demons scream and pounce upon you? How to make people smell four kinds of fragrances of soap without them seeing the soap?

MAXI Fair is not just about how to juxtapose a primary school art n' craft class onto market research. It is also about speaking to the common man, the faceless entity categorized as consumer - or customer. It is about listening to old women bored to death, waiting for someone to visit them so that they can talk. It is also about trying to sell tickets going to each home and experiencing, perhaps for the first and last time, how it feels to be a door to door salesman. It is about saying NO politely - like the Controls team did all day long.

When the diro had addressed the batch and said that he did not want computer games and new technology to hijack MAXI fair, the tech junkies amongst us wondered why change was anathema to MAXI. Post the fair, we stand corrected, and feel glad that it will not be another tick-and-click thingy.
For MAXI fair is not just about Marketing Research. It’s just a little bit of commonsense education - the best of its kind.

Author: Surya S IR 2006