India and How Not to Save the Himalayas: A Lesson in Weird, Misconceived, and Failed Promotion Strategy

I’m on LinkedIn. Practically everyone’s on LinkedIn. One of the first things you learn about LinkedIn is some people simply don’t “get” that it’s cheap and tacky to ask you to connect and then try to enlist you to help them shill something. Most of the time I hit “delete,” as LinkedIn itself is one of the worst offenders, allowing some of its special friends to keep spamming you no matter how many times you complain.

But I’m both a curious and curmudgeonly guy. Sometimes this stuff pisses me off. It’s why I went digging around and discovered that a perfectly legal grift calling itself The Brave Movement vacuums up both public and private sector money all in the name of helping to fight sexual violence against children while seemingly doing very damn little in a tangible sense.

You know something’s off when the person fronting the operation or doing their communications won’t answer direct questions and acts offended or nonplussed when you want to know more.

Now not every operation without prompt answers is necessarily a scam, but their apparent ineptness and poor responses should make us all wonder what’s going on. Are they just dumb as paint, incompetent? Or did they deliberately set up their project to fail?

Which brings us to a Shankar Borua, who purportedly teaches at the School of Business at UPES, a university in Misraspatti, which if Google map is correct tells me is couched right near India’s Himalayas.

I didn’t go looking for Borua. He came to me, asking me to “add him to his network.” Yes, sometimes LinkedIn puts out invitations “from you” to others without even asking your permission — which is so creepy — but in this case, Borua clearly targeted me. No sooner had I accepted than Borua messaged me and asked me to share his production on social media (“a recent production of mine” were his precise words, no credit given to others).

And no, you won’t see a link here because I don’t want to reward him with the traffic. As of my posting this online October 1, Tuesday afternoon, the video had less than 1,000 views. Now I’ve got videos that have chalked up tens and hundreds of thousands and ones of a few hundred or less, and it’s always pretty pathetic when you rank low, but I’m one guy. You’d expect a school of business product to perform better.

And this is where it gets odd. His “production” is a two-minute animation film promoting an event about photography in the Himalayas that’s already come and gone. So, Borua reaching out to me isn’t to help his actual event, which is now a distant memory from September, it’s because “We really need folks on other continents to get on board with us.”

The big problem is you learn NOTHING about the Himalayas or the cause in the animation. The actual running time where you see anything is only 1:34, the rest given over to end credits. The animation is fairly crude, in which you see two creatures — a mother and child who are something that’s hard to identify. (Deer? No, Mama’s got hooves but also fangs, so… what the hell are they?) Anyway, they evade some very stiffly moving humans who leave food wrappers lying around and who take selfies. As night falls, the humans leave, and Mama Animal sighs, “Thank God.” Then as we tilt up to the sky, she says — in what the actor clearly intended to be an achingly moving delivery — “At least they can’t take the stars away from us.”

Which prompted me to wonder, What, so with that much tourism, there’s no light pollution in the region?

And then we get the text and voiceover, “SAVE THE HIMALAYAS.”

Now who could have a problem with that? Well, I do. Remember, this video was supposed to be a promotion for an event. It was called “Himalayan Photography: Challenges and Opportunities.” According to the video’s description, the event would “highlight the pristine beauty of the hoary Himalayas, the flora and the fauna, as well as the land and the people thriving in this unique and bio-diverse environment which has for decades been under immense pressure due to extensive deforestation and widespread development activities.” Two “prominent photographers” would talk about their work and their “journey over the years.”

So why are they not in the video? More importantly, instead of giving us barely moving cutesy images of an idealized Himalayas which look like they came out of a children’s book, why don’t we see some of their photographs?

I find it hard to believe that the two photographers would not want to showcase their images if they’re willing to participate. But okay, let’s say this video was created to build awareness beyond the event. After all, that’s what Borua digitally tapped me on the shoulder for in the first place. But then why is the video description not updated? And again, wouldn’t the real Himalayas in their photos do a better job?

An even better question: just how are we supposed to save the Himalayas? There is no link in the description or graphic in the video that offers us any organization where we can donate, volunteer, get involved, etc. What then was the point?

Right after I watched the video the first time, I messaged Borua back to say, “I have learned the hard way to be very careful about just passing on people’s promo material… Please send me some kind of background document, some briefing material with actual substance so that I can properly understand the issue.”

Borua’s reply was polite, even cheerful. The core of his response was: “Just watch the two-minute movie when your schedule permits and if it piques your interest please do check out what the mighty Himalayas are all about!”

Again, how? Check out where? With whom, if not you?

“I did check out your animation, Dr. Shankar,” I wrote back, “hence my request to please send me actual substantial briefing material. Because sorry, no offense, but your cartoon tells me nothing.”

Borua: “Well can’t help it if it tells you nothing! No offence meant! Cheers!”

“How much did this video cost?” I asked. “And how much did your sponsors spend each?”

Silence.

Among the “official partners” are the Wildlife Institute of India, Delhi Metro, and T10 Sports. You can see them in this screen image taken from the video. It’s unclear whether their “partnering” went towards underwriting the animation or the costs of the event itself, and it only raises more questions.

But I never learned any specifics from Borua. I waited and waited, and as there’s a considerable time zone gap between Canada and India, I kept on waiting.

And I guess he doesn’t feel like talking anymore, as he’s cut his connection on LinkedIn and even gone to the trouble of blocking me. Sure, that’s not suspicious at all.

Keep in mind that — once again — I didn’t go looking for this guy. He came to me, bugging me to help his cause.

But either he’s the most incompetent business professional I’ve ever run into who doesn’t know the skeletal basics of marketing and public relations (which would involve, duh, go get someone who specializes in this thing to do it for you if you don’t know), or there is something else going on.

If this was merely some kind of business school assignment, why not say so in the video description? If there’s a legitimate organization where folks sincerely interested in preserving the Himalayas can go, where the hell is it?

And what did the “official partners,” for which I feel reasonably safe in assuming have a sponsorship role, pay for? What is their involvement?

The animation is competent but so cheap and bush league — requiring only two individuals — that surely you don’t need multiple corporate partners for that, even if you throw in the cost of the voice work and music bed. I’ve produced videos and done film work of my own; I’ve hired professional crews and a composer. Two minutes with ordinary footage might take you two to three hours to edit in post, max, but let’s be fair and generous: let’s concede that you might need five or six for this, covering the time as well to create the original drawing of the art (there’s even an animation function on certain art tablets).

That still wouldn’t cost that much. And since the photographers’ talk was held at the UPES School of Business itself, I presume the partners didn’t need to help pay for a venue. Did they pay for honorariums for the photographers’ appearances? Maybe their expenses to get to the event…?

Shankar Borua gets his own “produced by” credit first, right after the partners’ logo and before anyone else. So, why is he so shy about answering simple questions about what this video is for and where the money went?

This all might come across as making a mountain out of a molehill, and I weighed carefully whether to blow two hours of my day chronicling two minutes of weirdness.

I went ahead because I don’t like — and neither should you — individuals who track you down, suggest you get onboard with their causes and then act offended when you ask legitimate questions about what they’re doing with resources and funding.

As someone who’s done journalism, who’s worked as a communications professional, I look at the end product of that silly video and have to wonder, What is this? Somebody’s tax write-off? Homework assignment? What? What the hell is it?

And when you invoke environmentalism for this kind of shoddy job, you debase more than one legitimate cause, you hurt others. What kind of business professor, or teacher of any kind, says what essentially amounts to: “Hey, watch my cartoon and share it. Then if you give a shit, go Google or… something. See ya!”

It is so embarrassingly amateurish, with no educational content or key messaging to justify itself — let alone any attempt to satisfy the most basic curiosity — that I almost wonder if its failure is deliberate.

Which, in turn, makes me wonder about the involvement of the “official partners.” The more cynical might think, Well, they get to look like they care about something. But that’s all it is, appearances — a logo in a cluster of logos.

I don’t know enough about the state-owned finances behind Delhi Metro or what funds Ficci Flo, but if I were a reporter in India or an oversight bureaucrat there, I might want to pick up my phone and start calling around, asking hard questions about these organizations’ role in this dinky little video and if any public money ever went towards it.

Many of us want to help; we want to get involved in social causes we believe in. But don’t think for a minute that you get a pass on oversight because you can persuade a corporate backer or animate an owl. Don’t insult our intelligence.

By the way, this is a shot of the real Himalayas in India I randomly, lazily scooped up from Google. Beautiful, isn’t it? Makes you want to see more photographs rather than a crappy cartoon, doesn’t it?

Makes you think the region deserves far better.