Date: 10 December 2016
Probably the last Indiblogger Meet in Bangalore for 2016. This meet was held at the Lalit Ashok, a 5-star hotel near the Bangalore Turf Club, on a Saturday afternoon.
This Indiblogger Meet was sponsored by Berger Paint India, particularly to promote their Express Painting service.
You would think the dessert would be a saving grace when it would be chocolate fudge, malpua + rabdi, and gulab jamun. But even the chocolate fudge felt watered down and lacked the necessary sweetness. The gulab jamun — yes the standard Indian dessert — wasn’t very good either. Jeez, how can a 5-star hotel not get gulab jamun right?
Anyway, enough about the food. It was time to enter the ballroom.
The meet started the same every Indiblogger begins, with Anoop from Indiblogger leading the proceedings with an activity to get our bodies active and a round of introductions after that. When I was asked to introduce myself, I brought up the fact that it was rather unconventional of a brand like Berger Paints to be sponsoring a blogger’s meet. But at the same time it made me want to attend all the more since I’m always curious as to how well a marketing campaign can be implemented if done right.
Anoop agreed and the marketing head at Berger said the same thing when he took to the stage, that this was out of their traditional marketing efforts but the previous meet went so well that they wanted to do another in namma Bengaluru.
Which is why Berger claims that using Express Painting can be done at “no extra cost”. It may appear expensive at first glance but they claim when you factor in the longer time taken by local painters doing everything manually, the cost and time savings, make it all the same.
After the presentation, there was a Q & A round with surprisingly many (good) questions from the bloggers.
The Berger head answered them well. I guess we all wanted to know about such services because either we have bad experiences working with local painters or are looking to possibly opt for such services like Berger’s Express Painting when it comes time to do our homes. My brother is doing interior work for his new apartment, so that’s why I was keen to learn more about this service.
The Berger folks explained how an apartment or house, even it is fully furnished, gets painted using Express Painting. On the day of the job, their team move any delicate items out of the way, then large furniture like sofa sets are covering in plastic sheets (which they bring) and only then do they begin with sanding process. The covers come off only after the paintwork is completed.
We were shown how to mix paint and each assigned tables and canvas. Seven teams were made and each had to select a theme and present a painting that best describes the theme.
My team didn’t win but that’s alright.
After evening tea was served, there was a final quiz for the audience. I won a voucher, which made my effort to jot down notes during the presentation all the more worthwhile.
In conclusion, this was actually one of the better Indiblogger meets. Maybe it’s because I had kept my expectation on the down low and it turned out much better than expected. Berger Paints made it an evening of fun when it could have simply been a boring “here is our product” presentation and “now go write about it”. And trust me, there have been lazy efforts by the sponsor at previous Indiblogger meets. So props to the marketing guys at Berger India for not letting a marketing expense simply go to waste.
For those interested in trying Berger Express Painting for your home, SMS XP to 56767 to get started.