Economics has always acknowledged the deflections of human or customer behaviour from what should be accepted as normal or natural. It is most commonly found in the trends of acquiring, what is known as luxury goods. Usual studies have come to come to conclusions that demand should be inversely proportional to it price of the commodity. Simply put, as the price of the good rises, its demand starts falling. However, diversion from this has been the result of the Bandwagon effect and the Veblen effect.

More and more people are succumbing to this form of buying where higher the price of the commodity, the more desirable it becomes. The basis of this statement has been built over a long period of time where advertisers and marketeers have chosen whether or not make their products niche or massy. Niche products are always wrapped in a garb of high social status. Therefore, nowadays when everyone is trying to go up the social ladder and hence get socially more accepted and influential, the Bandwagon Theory is more relevant than ever.

With trends changing every day, brands merging, companies shutting down due to low business during the lockdown, some brands names have outshone despite the situation. This has worked out because of years of brand building and safe-keeping of the brand loyalty.

As a Brand Manager, I have to first determine my target audience. Considering the research, most people are inclined towards high-end brands pertaining to their lofting social standing, I will also like to keep my branding in a way that more people loom up to the brand name. The brand messaging should stand out from its competitors. If I have a company that sells tea, it should be unique in some way. Since tea was a Chinese invention, we can emphasize on its authenticity by showing its history, give it a very grand look and feel. From the packaging to its taste and its message, all should be in a way that the consumers can look up to it. The availability of the tea has to be reduced; its price should be at par with the best quality tea in the market. Now, we cannot randomly afford to place a brand on a pedestal and not offer anything in return. There has to honest effort behind creating that aura around the product and the company name, the product has to be made out of top-quality ingredients, the company should not be involved any controversy that could spoil the prominence or influence. A customer base is also reliant on word of mouth, so once a defective product is sold under the name of the brand, covering up the dent becomes difficult. As a brand manager, one has to look into everything that goes out and comes of the company.

If we look at any high-end brand, for example, Gucci, Versace, Mercedes, Rolls Royce, and more, they do not have frequent displays of their brand. At this point, they have created a name for themselves and no number of commercials can help popularize it anymore, only lessen its standards. Similarly, a new brand to reach such heights will need considerable time, a pre-existing company or brand can launch a different line of productor sub brand that will have a niche customer base because the others already have a preceding reputation.

To conclude it all, a brand has to make the decision of their target audience and take steps depending on that. Once target audience is figured and the best quality product is set to sold, it is mandatory to boil down the message from and image of the brand. The research has already been carried out, so the need of the hour can be somewhat be deciphered. Acting upon it is the only thing that will help creating strong base.

“Project Streedhan- My Iron is my Wealth”, is an absolute favourite of mine. It was very intelligent and witty of the makers of the advertisements to divert the idea of women from being show pieces for others and think of themselves for a change.

The advert has been entirely targeted towards women. FCB Ulka, the ad agency with Swati Bhattacharya as the chief executive officer was behind this creative masterpiece. This initiative was taken up by Dutch State Mines- Bright Science, Brighter Living. As the advert states, one out of two women suffer from anemia in this country. However, people pay little to no heed towards it at all. The occasion of Dhanteras was skillfully chosen because it is known for transaction of gold. Very different from the tradition, the ad urges people to invest in iron as it is more constructive and less gaudy than gold. However, iron here is the nutrient, which is mostly to stabilize the hemoglobin levels in women’s bodies. Menstruation is one of the reasons for anemia in women as menstruation results in a loss of blood and if proper meals are not consumed, it may result in iron deficiency. So, everything about this ad points towards something all women are tabooed for, if not tabooed then paid the least attention towards.

“Established as “De Nederlandse Staatsmijnen” (Dutch State Mines) in 1902 by the Dutch government, DSM is a multinational corporation specializing in what they call “Life Sciences and Materials Sciences” which means that they create the ingredients that make up the ingredients of numerous products. From food and enzymes for animal food, to chemicals for crop protection, to ingredients for pharmaceutical products, to resins for paints, and more. Much, much more. DSM has over 170 locations worldwide and employs more than 20,000 people. This week DSM announced a new identity explaining that “This is the right moment to present our new identity to the world. We have successfully transformed DSM’s portfolio. We are now a true Life Sciences and Materials Sciences company, with a clear mission to create brighter lives for people today and for generations to come.”” – BrandNew. Therefore, the company has entered the Indian market with this path-breaking ad. The importance of healthy diet can be found in every inch which in turn talks about their own food products.

If we talk about the cultural aspects of the advert, it is extremely heavy on Indian culture. It can never connect to the audience outside the country. Women from all over India feature in the advert tasting food of their contemporary states, or just nibbling on iron-rich edibles. If this ad is played in some other nation, they will hardly be able to relate to it due to their lack in knowledge about Indian culture. The beauty of the advert may be spell-binding but then critics have also commented that it looks “too perfect”, it looks like that the actors on the film have been overtly sensualized. The entire idea of women-empowerment and freedom takes a backseat if females with “perfect bodies” and screen-fit faces are featured in the ad.

In spite of a few negative aspects, the bigger picture here is the message which is loud and clear. Women need to think about themselves before they can help others, which even as a thought is very much discomforting to Indians. This is exactly where every woman finds relevance in the ad. The cinematography of the film is mesmerizing. It shows small instances from the lives of women throughout the country. A lot of it is focused on the food, which is one of the important constructs of the ad. The look on the face of the actors is daunting and confident when they straight look into the camera lens, as if talking to the audience.

In all, this ad has my heart for every reason possible!

The financial advantage received from investments is called Return on Investments which is the best way to judge if the allocations made in the various sectors of a multimedia platform company are working according to the set goal or not. It is important that when it comes to return on investment, the goal as a marketer is for every other department is to have a maximum return for minimal investment. Cross-media return on investment stands for the cumulative of all actions that create value for the company. All the work, resources, time and money should amount to some profit either in monetary terms or in terms of visibility. It should give the stakeholders including the investors, an insight that can show if the efforts put in marketing and advertising, the resources allocated are being used effectively. It should show the potential impact that the particular media has across the business. This is useful not only for marketing purposes but also reflects the increase in sales, brand equity as well as awareness. It assists in determining if the resources and efforts in making the brand known are even effective. Taking notes from the results, the company can finally shift their focus on working on improving themselves.

Every company generally follows the SMART policy- specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and achievable. All the resources such as human effort, material and finance should be optimally deployed across all media platforms for receiving efficient and effective thereby impacting socially, economically, politically and environmentally. The mathematical formula for calculating return on investments is: (profit/investment) *100. Besides this, other variables affecting the result is- culture, faith, ethnicity, communication, access to information, availability of essential commodities, health education, standard of living in case of social factors. Political factors include civic education, media pluralism, political pluralism, freedom of press and democracy. Economically, infrastructures, technology, research and development etc., play an important role. Therefore, the impact depends on the quantity and quality of the resources allocated, the efficiency and effectiveness of the deployed resource. The allocation is also dependent on the development level of the nations or communities involved.

For specific companies to advertise themselves they can take up various combinations of media mix depending on their product or the status and message of their company. This will again be dependent on the target audience and the media that they mostly access. The mix of broadcast, print, social media, radio and trade publications is pretty common; however, fund allocation will require more evaluation for customization. Finally, the feedback received from all sorts of media, prominence and circulation among the audience will help to figure the ROI.

Media Literacy is the capability of identifying and critically evaluating the various media that throw facts at us. With this capability comes the encouragement to ask more intelligent and thought- provoking questions. One should be able to analyze all sorts of media and communicate with it or with the help of it beneficially. The more people know about media, the broader their perspective will be. People will know how to deal with certain situations like cyberbullying, racial stereotyping, sexual harassments and how to separate correct information from the hoax. Every piece of article will make more sense as the individuals will have an idea about the author, their respective point of views and the basis of discussion. Media ownership can also be included as a structural part of the study.

The Age of Information has taken a toll on the human brain. Just like any other piece of work needs focus and concentration, information to be processed in a logical method too needs concentration of data. The fact that the industry is overflowing with data, numbers and details is only increasing the load on individual’s mind. The more information shoved down on the public only leads to confusion, panic and irrational decisions because of their inability to grasp on to the truth. Information Overloading or infobesity or infoxication is the result of this continuous pouring in of feed.

Unfathomable amount of information is being pumped onto the web every minute. Around 2.5 quintillion bytes per day. There are so many HD movies available on all the online streaming sites that it would take us around 47 million years to finish watching all of them. At present, there are almost 1.8 billion websites with around 571 new ones cropping up every minute. Large quantity of information is only a secondary problem. The primary concern is the filtering of information, the lack of quality-control and finally, the boards not being able to control the incessant inflow of feed.

There are a handful of reasons why Information overloading is occurring in the first place. Internet, technology and the gifts they bring like the social media is a huge cause for this overloading. People from all over the world make and upload their content on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Besides, now that streaming has become easier due to the advent of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Zee5 and others, the scope of releasing more and more content has become more feasible. Even uploading content is a matter of a few clicks. Technological advancements have ‘blessed’ us with handy devices like the laptop, smartphone and tablets which could be carried around. the user does not have to wait to find a medium or specific time to share their opinion. The web is flung open to them 24×7, 365 days.

When it comes to news or any information of notable importance besides all the news portals are treating the news in different light or focusing on separate aspects of the same piece. Social media too plays a heavy role disseminating news in various forms. Most individuals decide to support or diss a particular party/angle, this gives rise to conflict in opinion ideas getting biased overtime. A genuine reader thus finds herself lost in an ocean of facts and is in a dilemma regarding which one to believe. The oversharing, duplication and transmission of information is also another reason for overloading. This also takes place when there is a dearth in content and news channels, competing with each other try to put forward the same ideas. Among readers there lies the absence of enough tools for them to assess the validity of the news so they go on consuming whatever is fed to them. Therefore, media literacy takes hard hit. In a research, it was found that 68% of the interviewees agreed that social media was the root cause of the problem. Students ranging up to 61% agreed that they get negatively affected by it. Out of them 56% vehemently agreed that it alter their academic undertakings.

Infoxication does more harm than good. Many individuals have complained of a ‘mental fog’, a condition where the brain consumes more than it can process at a time resulting in cognitive overload where the person is irritated and puzzled. As a community, overloading disrupts the dissemination of new knowledge and bars further innovation. Individuals who make up the society are responsible to improve their surroundings. So, an adverse effect on personal psyche will result in the cumulative loss of the society. A lot of time is wasted in cross-verifying known facts or reading similar news articles on different apps. Self-confidence in depleted in the process due to the feeling of ‘never knowing enough’, it gives to anxiety and hinders productive outcome.

There are a few ways in which infobesity can be dealt with. Each one will have to work their ways around it. Having an organized mind always help, one needs to clarify which portions of the news they want to consume, specific searching by using appropriate words, use reliable sources of information and finally focus and analyze only one news at a time.  

Movies have always been a medium of propagation of ideas, a reflection of society. When we speak of a society it includes aspects like various forms of media and how are they intricately intertwined with the concepts of activism, law, politics, democracy and social behaviour as a whole.

Media is the regarded as the fourth pillar of democracy, considering which law and politics have a special subject of interest of all media houses. When politics comes in question, without an opponent (in this case, public having the right of speaking against the government) the entire point of a democracy will fail and therefore, activism is required and essential.

No One Killed Jessica and Peepli Live are two movies that brings forth the occurrences of what goes on behind the scenes and what actually provokes media to take or not take any action.

No One Killed Jessica narrates the biographical story of Jessica Laal who was shot at point blank range. Why? Because she refused to sell a drink to the son of a political leader who was intoxicated by alcohol and power. Jessica’s sister tried her best to give justice to her brutal demise and put the culprit behind the bars. She centered her entire youth around finding and building a strong case. Little did she know about the political pressure on the police, the incessant bribing of the eye-witnesses which was almost hundred people who saw Jessica getting shot in the head. After a tiring and disappointing attempt, she gave up hope. The case received little to no coverage by the media in the early years as it was thought to be an open and shut case. However, to Meera’s (a well-known reporter) surprise she came across the news that the judgement was passed in the favour of the culprit, she took it upon herself to somehow reopen the case. This is where the power of media is felt by everyone, the newspapers and the channels get flooded with Jessica’s story.

Media goes politicians, they gather proof against the shooter. Meera drags back a hopeless Sabrina to rejoin the quest for justice. She arranges interviews with judges, opens up phone lines so that they gather the public support for the cause. She takes the legit help of law to prove the crime, the same framework that was butchered by protectors of law themselves. It was at this moment of a heated scenario that a woman gets the idea of a candle light march inspired from the movie ‘Rang De Basanti’ and called it ‘#JusticeforJessica’. The message carrying idea spread like wildfire. The public was angry, they were ready to take down whoever would come in their way of justice. From this entire situation a picture of media activism and a cumulative social behaviour was clear. As a result of this mass movement claiming their democratic right of freedom of expression with the media on their side, the case was reopened. They had witnesses on their side, achieved through sting operations. There was a good chance of them winning the case this time.

Peepli Live however, portrays a negative aspect of media. Here, the media is shown as a means of gaining TRP and sensationalization of news for their channels. Media, in this context is seldom helpful in acquiring support for the ones in need of it, mostly the poor. The satirical approach to farmers’ suicide is another example of how ruthless and stoic the media can when it comes to popularity among the masses for the sake of it.

The little village of Peepli was an insignificant speck in so-called developing Indian sub-continent until a farmer (Natha) decided to commit suicide under the pressure of a crushing debt. He wanted a compensation of 1 lakh from the government as a compensation for his death, only to get rid of the banks coming to his doorstep and squeeze out the loan from his living body. The media rose to this occasion and ran down to this cover this story. The politicians could not stand back and watch. The prevailing party of Samman Party was accused of the miserable living conditions of the farmers and being a pro-industrialist. They had to do something to save themselves from getting voted out in the coming elections. The party tried their level best to stop Natha from committing suicide. Opposition parties of Apna Dal and CPI also made use of his remorse to spread propaganda to their benefit. The media houses of regional and English preferences had their own feud going on. Democratic rights, media activism takes a backseat in the face of acquiring fame and prosperity.

The spread of the Covid-19 virus has raised serious questions as to how any of the businesses will run considering the lockdown imposed for good. These operators have to use different methods of working and innovative ways of promoting and sustaining themselves. Every aspect of the society has been hit hard and media is no different. Starting from television, print, radio, internet, film and mobile have affected in some way or the other.

The lockdown has resulted in lower to almost no distribution of printed copies of newspapers. Their profits are declining in huge numbers. UK’s national newspapers are experiencing a slump of as much as 39% due to the shutting down of high streets and all its employees being kept at home. There were no reporters or people at the printing presses. The circulation of The Financial Times and the i newspaper were reported to be declining the most, down 39% and 38%, respectively. The newspaper incurred excessive loss due to the bulk of distribution of free copies at locations like airports, railway stations and gyms. So, they had to get rid of this to stop any further declination. But some national newspapers were able to get back up in the game as they began paid home delivery of the newspaper so as to save themselves from any more financial backlash.

Radio may as well be positively affected by corona. It needs lesser manpower to read news and spread word through radio broadcasts which not true in case of television. In spite of the lockdown, radio being more accessible has paved the way for positive utility of stations.

The worldwide pandemic inflicted by coronavirus is affecting the fields of photography and imagiing industry in numerous ways. Professional photographers have been facing various canceled sessions over weeks and now months. Postponement of events of international importance like the and the Olympics has added to the sorrow of the freelancers as well as company-based individuals. Cancellation of major trade shows like Photokina and NAB have affected the livelihood of photographers to a great extent. Newer models of cameras and tools for videography have been delayed as the lockdown has forced factories to shut down. Important camera companies like Canon and Fujifilm have begun to develop medical supplies. They hope this would help offset revenue losses. This industry is facing yet another setback due to the lockdown which was already facing adversities because of the highly capable phone cameras.

Television too has been broadly impacted by the lockdown. Channels like BBC, ITV, etc., have been thinking of different methods of production and not cancel shows that do not include a huge team. Events like Olympics and Paralympics have also been postponed resulting in the backlashes sports channels. BBC is therefore, into talks regarding insurance arrangements on its TV rights. The DTH services will also be affected as Star has already delayed the launch of 5 channels, hence, impacting their revenue.

Mobile apps have become the new and only favourites of all in the time of quarantine. A research reveals that China and Italy were most active on their phones (more than the usual) during this time. On January 2020 the lockdown was first imposed on China and in February it was concluded that on contrary of 2019 results, time spent on the phone had increased up to 30 percent which is 5 hours jump per day. In Italy as well, a similar occurrence took place. It had the second highest jump of 11 percent. Educational sites such as ZOOM cloud meetings had found their place in every mobile due to a stranded process of going to school. Business and insurance apps too found themselves on the as stock market and banks had almost shut down.

South Korea was an early contractor of coronavirus. Therefore, since 23rd of February 2020, there was a hike of 35 percent compared to 2019 in terms of the average weekly game downloads. When compared to the month of January 2020, the hike was measured up to 25 percent. 

Various forms of media have fallen victim to the pandemic yet some have immensely benefitted from it. This is a testing time when every company has the opportunity of challenging itself and pushing its borders to the fields that they had seldom imagined would be required.

The companies are supposed to support their stakeholders, especially, in this time of vicissitude when the economy is at a standstill and earning a bread has become more difficult. The nations are raging towards an impending stagflation and hence, a declining GDP. Such a situation is considered to be stagnation of inflation. The phenomenon is characterized by high unemployment (taking into account the ruthless sacking of employees), high rate of inflation with halt in demand, looming over a long period of time. However, the company themselves are incurring heavy losses. The domino effect results the entire supply chain to get adversely affected.

When it comes to advertising companies, we cannot say that it has been all bad for them or otherwise. Some aspects of it are somehow positively affected since so many people are spending their time inside their homes during the quarantine days. Since more and more people are getting dependent on the internet, specifically the online streaming sites, music portals like Spotify, YouTube, gaming and television, the spending on their advertisement must have sky rocketed. But the games such as the Olympics or any other outdoor event had been cancelled which did not do any better for the advertising companies who had already spent a fortune in charting out their plans of publicity, PR and commercials.

According to the Global Ad Trends report (by World Advertising Research Center) forecast the advertising spend would have reached 660 billion dollars this year if there had been any intervention from the virus which will now be re-allocated for later in the year of 2020.  

WARC Data’s managing editor, James McDonald is an interview told that on account of a major disruption from coronavirus long-term restrictions on movement and large gatherings would be unavoidable. On the contrary, if more time is being spent at home, people would eat at home rather than restaurants. A senior analyst, Collin Colburn, said delivery services such as GrubHub might amp up advertising in this case. However, consumer-packaged goods or manufacturing-related companies might decrease ad spending if there are inventory issues due to constraints on the supply chain.

Small and local companies have their doors shut for an unfathomable period of time. So, local advertising hardly will yield any results in a situation where they simply need the enough money to suffice their daily requirements. Delores Tronco-DePierro, owner of a West Village restaurant claimed that she had celebrated her highest week of sales ever at the ‘Banty Rooster’. Now, she had to entirely lay off the 33-person staff and has been constantly dealing with her stakeholders like loan agents, insurance companies and suppliers to try to stay afloat during the pandemic.

Even tech giants like Microsoft and Apple have issued warnings that Covid-19 could impact their sales outlook for 2020, along with Facebook cancelling its F8 conference.

Co-Founder of Kirin Crayons (the integrated marketing solutions provider to Chinese brands in India), Sukrit Singh, said, “Chinese brands are intrinsic to our country’s fabric. Over 8,000 executives (who had travelled for Chinese New Year) are stuck in China. This will have a domino effect not only on the brand and media industry but the economy at large.”

Nevertheless, hardly hit areas of travel and tourism in the stock market have not entirely lost hope and are still spending on advertising, including Carnival Corporation and its cruise ship brands.  They claim, “…we are able to quickly move our cruise ships as needed to alternate destinations. We have thousands of guests sailing with us each and every day. We continue to advertise and promote cruising through all our channels with all our brands.”

The future is volatile, unforeseeable and uncertain but the companies are trying to go strong with changing their techniques of advertisement. Most companies are going online and introducing stay-at-home working conditions. Everyone is trying to manage themselves so as not to hit the rock bottom.

Movies involving investigation and research gives us an insight of the intricacies of thought and deduction which is rare in most human minds. Films like ‘Talvar’ and ‘Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!’ are based on a true event and a work of fiction respectively. The character of Byomkesh Bakshi was penned by Sharadindu Bandhopadhyay as a work of fiction based in Calcutta. On the other hand, ‘Talvar’ is an actual criminal case which had taken place in Noida. The movie was directed by Meghna Gulzar and written by Vishal Bharadwaj.

These two movies, rather the case that is being dealt with in the movies have two entirely different methods of investigation. The Bakshi case started off as a missing complaint of Bhuvan Babu which blew up to include elements like murder, gangsters and drug mafia. Whereas, Talvar is based on a double homicide case of Shruti Tandon and their house help, Khempal. These were the basic initiation points of both the plotlines.

As far as the investigation technique is concerned, the double murder case switched many hands beginning from the local police to the CBI and then the seniors of the officers working on the case. In this entire process, many of the circumstantial evidences were not taken into account, some got erased like blood stains on the walls of the terrace and fingerprints. However, the investigation started from the point where the murder occurred and spread around the location of the crime only. The little details of when the maid had come in, who opened the door, who gave handed over the key to the maid and when were the victims seen last. Interrogation was the most commonly used tool throughout the enquiry since that was the only thing they could rely on, at that point, pertaining to the loss of any more physical evidences. Other information like the Shruti’s father’s extra-marital affair was also a key information for the progression if the case. The former complaint in the Bakshi story just proved to be a clue for a much larger spectrum of criminal activities. Byomkesh Bakshi had to go around the city looking for clues, he had to investigate many people in order to reach to a conclusion. He picked up hints at every point through interrogation, following sources and going undercover. The Talvar case was more evident but it was more difficult to prove who the actual murderer was, the Bakshi case was really complex to figure however, was more straight forward.

On analyzing the entire situation in the Talvar case, the blame was placed on the servant before he too was found dead. Later on, the parents were accused of honour killing as they had allegedly found Khempal and Shruti in a compromising position. Upon further enquiry by the CBI, the parents were led off the charges. The investigation went on and the parents were finally found guilty of the homicides. Byomkesh Bakshi’s study led him to varied conclusions. He went on to find the murderer of Bhuvan where he found the heroin which finally led him to the drug mafia spear headed by Yang Guang (Anukul Guha). This was set during the time of the second World War so it involved other countries like the Japanese who were trying to own the opium business in Calcutta.  Therefore, Bakshi also found out that he was about to strike a deal with them so that they attack Calcutta and take over the city.

As a result of the Talvar case, nothing could be proved definitively regarding who the murderer was. The CBI officer Ashwin Kumar did not put the deceased’s parents on the stand but the other officials and apparently most of the evidences did. Therefore, we cannot pinpoint if the ultimate decision was justified or not. The Bakshi case, even if closed but the accused runs free, the movie ends with a  cliff hanger where Guang is promises to return for revenge.

Observation is the method of data collection through closely looking into matters and intimately deducing facts. It is a participatory study, because the researcher has to immerse herself in the setting where her respondents are, while taking notes and/or recording. While observing the site concerned or the topic in question, one cannot not pay attention to the subtle details. She should be able join the dots and derive a conclusion from all the clues that she has got. It helps if the researcher has innate knowledge of the subject which further lubricates the process of observation.

The movie “Rear Window” by Alfred Hitchcock is a masterpiece when it comes to showing-off observational skills. The protagonist (Jeff) used to watch over his neighbours since he was housebound due to a leg fracture. There are a series of events that happened one after the other – one night during a thunderstorm, he overheard a woman screaming and then the sound of breaking glass followed by Thorwald (the suspect) leaving his apartment, carrying a suitcase while it was raining cats and dogs. The morning after that he noticed that the suspect’s wife was gone and he was cleaning a large knife and handsaw. Later the protagonist saw the man moving away a large trunk tied with rope. Soon after, the neighbour’s dog is found dead with its neck broken. When the body was discovered and everyone was panic-stricken, the man sat with his cigar, unmoved. Jeff was sanguine that Thorwald buried something incriminating in the courtyard flower bed, and killed the dog to stop it digging there. Jeff, to his amazement found Lisa in Jeff’s apartment. She was there to look for clues and when saw her, her hands were pointing to her finger with Mrs. Thorwald’s wedding ring on it.

Thorwald was later caught trying to kill Jeff, furthermore he confessed his crime of killing his wife as well. From the entire scenario we can conclude that one has to have a keen eye for hints and a sharp mind to form a complete picture out of it.

I as a person like to observe people over a period of time to, if I may say so, kind of judge them so that it is easier for me to deal with them. If there is any trait or quality which I feel is harmful for me, I would like to maintain distance in certain circumstances. Besides, I prefer to fall back on past experiences and assume their actions accordingly. People act differently emotionally in different situations, according to the people around them, react to certain stimulus depending on the source, therefore, it is essential to consider everything before passing a random judgement or looking down upon anyone in particular.

Watching Sherlock Holmes was an eye-opening experience for me. Before this, seldom did I think of how to solve mysteries. I am an adult but whenever I watch the movies or series takes me back to my childhood days when I could give up anything to become a detective. The adventures were so unearthly yet so familiar at some instances.

Sherlock and Watson have been my kind of superheroes. While other superheroes were gifted or simply a victim of coincidences, Sherlock and Watson are self-built in every sense of the word. They have paid immense attention to details, observed things and situations as closely as possible and have the intelligence of separating the important from the not so important evidences.

In the series, when Dr. Watson first met Sherlock, he took one good look Watson and almost told him half of his life story. But their friendship ticked off when Watson saved Sherlock’s life. Watson himself had a set of deduction skills. He was an army doctor so it was easy for him to figure out the kind of bruise or the reason of death. Sherlock always addressed Watson to be someone who puts in more effort in saving lives, which he iterated as a best man at Watson’s wedding. We see an example of him deducing conclusions in the last episode of the entire series. When Sherlock was compelled to take his help. Watson looked at the rifle and figured its range and number, who will be able shoot using that, which helped Sherlock in solving one aspect of the final problem.

Sherlock had developed what is called a ‘mind palace’. He stored all important information in it, in rooms and compartments so that he could go back to them and find it where he had stocked them previously. His research skills were extensive- he was a voracious reader, he was well read about almost every subject in the world, he knew the basics of forensic and had detailed knowledge of chemistry. Sherlock Holmes would look at every inch of the clothing, the scars if any, the gestures and every other minuscule detail to form a character analysis or figure the whereabouts of the person. In spite of all this material, he did not know that the earth revolved the sun. Watson astounded by this but Sherlock shrugged it off saying that it was “useless information”. Thus, we know that he only remembers facts that are relevant and are worth keeping in his mind palace. Charles Augustus Magnussen, we can call him a man of equal worth (with similar skillset). Sherlock had complete idea of the extent this man’s capabilities which led him to kill this man, the only way to stop him. no evidence or information was available against him because every set of facts that he knew was in Charles’ mind palace. Sherlock liked doing all his work by himself. He wanted to attain the full reach of his mental capacity for which he resorted to heroine. All this for a case, he wanted to remember something that happened way in the past. He used to take drugs to some extent but went overboard when required. Being able to constantly trace back clues and deciphering following clues should be imperative to detectives.

Sherlock had a great network of people on whom he could trust. In any field of research, reliable people are required to get concrete information or simple digging out secrets and facts.  The sources should be closely knit as was in the case of Sherlock’s homeless gang of people, including some of his closest people- Watson, Lestrade, Molly, Mary and his brother Mycroft.

Wrapping it up, Sherlock was one character, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has put down mastery on pages. Sherlock and Watson using their methods of investigation proves to be a study in itself!