iBlog: Nishit Shah

  Brand Equity Quiz is one event that I look forward to attend every year. Sadly is always as a member of the audience but would love to be a part of the participating teams. This year’s finals was held at MMRDA grounds. I liked the last year’s venue (Turf Club) better than this one. The semis and the grand finale were held back to back and quizmaster Derek O’Brien had promised to pop the champagne for the winner exactly at 9:43pm. He was absolutely precise in his calculation. The event was supposed to start at 6:30pm and I barely managed to reach the venue on time as I had gone for the first Directiplex outing. First the semis took place and then the grand finale started at 9pm after a short break. I really wanna know how to get VIP invites to this event because every year I fill up the online form or get in touch with the Economic Times guys and get the pass for the audience section which is quiet far from the stage. I need to start networking more with influential people

I managed to write down few of the questions from the semis. But, as the game progressed my pace wasn’t good enough to jot down everything. On second thoughts I should have learnt how to write in shorthand. Coming to the quiz, the theme for this year’s event was history of quizzing in India. How the first quiz took place in 1960’s to the present day. For every round there was some quizzing trivia for that decade and the best part was that the winners of those rounds got the prizes that were given way back then. The first round winners were given a couple of beer bottles and a live duck in a cage as these were the prizes given way back in 1967 by Derek’s dad Neil O’Brien who conducted the quiz back then. Even the quiz was carried out exactly the way it was back then. The questions were written on stripes of paper which were kept in an old biscuit box and Derek took them out randomly. The scores were written on blackboards with chalks back then, and also at Brand Equity Quiz finals for the first round. As the technology progressed in the 70’s and the 80’s the quizzes were carried out in the exact same manner and the prizes given to the winners were same too including a gift hamper which contained many things like shampoo bottle and shoe polish ! lol…that was innovative thinking ! But the best prizes went to the winners of the Brand Equity Quiz, TCS, who walked away with prizes worth 13 lakhs including 2 Mahindra Scorpios.

The audience were not spared either, Nokia E series fones, two Kingfisher Airlines tickets to any destination in India; three Pierre Cardin watches and one Sykz Gym voucher worth Rs 15,000, one Star Cruise package for a couple for five nights, etc were given away. And the best part was if anyone answered the question, the whole row would get prizes, which was pretty cool. I have uploaded few of the pics of the event here.