MERRY MEADOWS - Chapter 3 - The Motor in Pakistan

For some very valid reasons Najeeb came to the conclusion that I was an under leveraged asset that he could leverage to his advantage. I love such people who think like that, and have been in search of them all my life, mostly to no avail.

At TCS I had crashed the ‘club’ laterally, and for all practical purposes, I suppose, I carried about me the air of senior management, having consorted with senior managements all my life as a sports management practitioner. Moreover, I carried on my bio-data an impressive list of accomplishments, provided youth development and nation building were the yardsticks for measuring accomplishment, and not some purely profit focused bottom line analysis. My formidable store of chips was intact, and I was now looking for ways and means to monetize a few of them.

I found in Najeeb a pleasant enough extrovert, with ants in his pants. His mind appeared to be in a constant state of feverish activity with his body not lagging too far behind. Partly because of his genetic make up I’m assuming, and partly because he was possessed and driven by the thought of filling shoes clearly a few sizes too big for him.

Khalid Awan had lit Najeeb’s afterburners in no uncertain fashion by elevating a relatively inexperienced young executive to the very senior post of director marketing, and that too of a major national company aspiring for a multinational role. For such a person to be taken seriously by his new found peers on the national corporate landscape, he needed to notch up some quick and meaningful successes, or that is what Najeeb’s body language seemed to imply.

His family’s stinging criticism also added fuel to the fire. It is in this context that can possibly be explained Najeeb’s fast tracking of his comfort zone’s expansion with me. He was keen to explore which of my assets could be leveraged for maximum gain, and I, needless to say, was more than willing to be explored for such purpose, within the bounds of decency and good taste, naturally.  

Since JJ had taken over all discretionary authority where Connect was concerned, Najeeb and I began meeting more frequently to brainstorm a variety of undertakings, outside the TCS ambit, where Najeeb could be in the driving seat as the publisher. Very quickly we arrived at the need for a magazine that catered to the automobile industry in Pakistan, indeed worldwide, covering both aspects of business and sports.

The Motor-in-Pakistan was born, and that put another 30,000 rupees in my pocket with every issue that was published. Najeeb, as the marketing man, would ensure an adequate supply of advertisements to keep the magazine up and running.

I made it very clear to Najeeb that as a writer and editor I was ill-suited for the marketing function. The reason for that was simple enough. To add weight to my writing I needed to believe that when I put pen to paper something priceless emerged. Marketing, or at least the sort that pervaded the publishing industry in Pakistan at the time, was all about luring advertisers by offering discounts, and accepting a lower worth for editorial’s intellectual output than what editorial believed it to be.

The material poverty of Pakistani writers, and the contempt with which their output was treated, was a measure of Pakistani society’s intellectual poverty. This intellectual poverty, and the crass behaviour that it spawned in the corporate classes, was not something I felt comfortable engaging with as a seller of advertising space.

The magazine’s pricing and its pitching was best left to professionals who possessed not the sensitivity of writers. I really was better off not knowing what transpired during sales calls. Wheeling and dealing was Najeeb Nayyer’s forte, and good luck to him.

The one occasion when I did engage in a marketing related function, I almost lost the client. It was a simple matter of picking up the cheque from a multinational tyre brand. Najeeb was caught up in a meeting and asked if I would do the needful.

I visited their office in Clifton, thinking that there would be someone waiting there for me with the cheque. Instead I was met by blank and rather rude stares, and asked to visit their office on Chundrigarh Road. I blew a fuse. No marketing man should ever blow a fuse.

To his credit Najeeb got Saqib and JJ onboard the new magazine to the extent that they agreed to underwrite the magazine’s designing, printing and circulation costs in exchange for a TCS advertorial. It was a real sweetheart of a deal for sure that made possible for The Motor a sustainable future, and testimony that Saqib and JJ would support Najeeb when he came up with a good idea, the cloak and dagger tension of corporate succession notwithstanding.

The first issue of ‘The Motor in Pakistan’ was brought out with great fanfare and was an instant hit. We carried the Quaid-e-Azam’s 1938 Packard on the cover. It wasn’t just an image lifted off the Internet. Permissions were taken and a proper photo-shoot organized at the Quaid’s Mazar where this stately vintage and classic beauty rested in a glass encased enclosure, fully restored.

For the cover story I had spent many hours traveling down memory lane with Najeeb’s father, Nayyer Bahawalpuri, who had taken an active interest during his working life in the Mechanical Transport Department of the Bahawalpur Amirs. The in-depth interviews yielded a fascinating account of the subcontinent’s history, and the many priceless vehicles that had populated the ‘Motor Khana Nij’, and how the old princely state had risen to the occasion upon the creation of Pakistan, and then been taken over entirely by the new state and left much the poorer for it, a great deal poorer, in fact. One could see in it the early onset of nationalization with the detrimental impact. 

The Motor in Pakistan’s first issue covered the period November-December 2003, with a special introductory price of 75 rupees. It was printed on glossy mat finished expensive paper, and in A-3 size, with Syed Farazuddin, known to both friend and foe as Faraz, as graphic designer designated Art Director.

Faraz performed in the same capacity at TCS Connect, and we were engaged in an often and not so subtle duel. JJ and I pressed him to throttle back on the artist in him that was bent on subsuming the text and pictures in bold and bright background colours. These often rendered the text unreadable without first having to strain one’s eyes, and paled the natural vibrancy of the photographs.

What we ideally wanted was someone who could operate the Apple design computer for us, and understand and make tangible the many designs in our heads. Faraz, like any self-respecting artist, would go with his own understanding of what was needed, with the end result turning out to be quite bizarre on occasion, with customer feedback indicating as much. Slowly we aligned and arrived on the same page.

Najeeb seemed to have met some part of his promise to The Motor in Pakistan and secured corporate support in the shape of advertisements outside of the TCS advertorial commitment. In the first issue we carried Standox, Trakker, Michelin, EFU General, Honda, Hinopak Motors, and Shell Helix. But it was the backing of TCS that made it possible.

It didn’t matter to me because all I was getting out of this deal was 30,000 rupees per issue, with no share in the profits. It was Team Nayyer’s venture, but I did fervently hope that the magazine’s advertising yielded a healthy enough surplus amount so I could bill it for my travels to car shows, and be able to report first hand. The glittering capitals of the world beckoned. Najeeb egged me on, for this was just the kind of wishful thinking that he thrived upon.

Within me there was now a palpable sense of excitement, one that comes from having seen the route one needs to take. TCS wanted to enter the supply chain management business in the automobile sector, enabling a seamless flow of inventory from vendors to manufacturers. What better way of charting the landscape than through a magazine, autonomous for all practical purposes, but secretly aligned with the TCS corporate objective?

Auto sports in Pakistan were finally finding their feet, and The Motor was poised to quickly make the transition from print to the electronic media. The possibilities were endless.

Connect was a magazine that was highly focused on the TCS business, a one advertiser publication. The Motor offered a much bigger canvas to paint on, and my mind was already in overdrive listing the many automobile clubs that were just waiting to happen once The Motor got into event management mode.

Between Connect and the Motor I was beginning to discover the rigors involved in the publishing and event management trades, and was pretty much stretched to the limit, but gladly so. There was definitely a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, and I was looking forward to getting to it, and in the process developing muscle and expanding my handling capacity to do more.

I discovered the world of graphic design, and established lasting relationships with Faraz, Shahbaz, and Asif who populated the TCS design studio, and Wasim at Team Nayyer, all talented artists working as graphic designers that turned my writings and photographs into glossy works of art on high-tech design computers, and rode herd on printers to deliver immaculately printed end products that wowed the readers.  

Merry Meadows - Memoirs of an entrepreneur