For a couple of years, many years ago I handled a leading brand of toothpaste and worked on their advertising. And as was wont in those days the first thing I had to do was learn everything about the toothpaste, from its composition to its manufacture. To its limitations of packaging and to its constraints in printing.

Needless to say the advances in technology in several spheres of production have made many of these constraints redundant. But there are still knowledge bytes that I picked up that are still valid and relevant.

For example we were told that we should always keep a toothpaste tube in the upside down position i.e. mouth down tail up. This makes sure the toothpaste settles near the mouth and makes it easier to squeeze paste out of the tube.

The second thing we were taught was that the width of the mouth of all tubes had been deliberately enlarged so that more paste came out per squeeze and thus consumption of toothpaste was maintained at a sufficiently high level.

Another thing manufacturers and marketers did was to visually depict a squeeze of toothpaste being the length of the toothbrush. This again contributed to consumption. Just to make it customer friendly the amount of toothpaste used increased the foam generated and that contributed to satisfaction.

We were also told that to derive the maximum benefit from a tube of paste we should learn to roll the end of the tube as we consumed the paste so that every little drop of paste found its way onto our brush. And that of course appealed to our typical Indian attitude towards thrift.

I was recently subjected to a series of presentations by a group of young MBAs from various schools in India and abroad. And I realised that the art of talking for a long time without having to say anything was still the basic lesson taught at B-Schools.

(Now don’t get me wrong. I am a drop out from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and I have immense respect for the overall MBA course but I’ve always had a problem with the jargon, with the going round in circles etc). And it struck me that my understanding of the toothpaste tube put me in a unique position to understand these MBAs better.

First of all they make much more sense when made to stand upside down i.e with their mouth below and their feet up. It has perhaps to do with the fact that this seems to be the only way they get a realistic understanding of the world we all live in.

The next revelation is that MBAs seem to have a congenital big mouth (much like our tube) so the art of brevity has been lost and they are chronic patients of Verbal Diarhorrea. In plain English of course that means they talk too much. Way too much.

And the amount of gyaan they disseminate is much more than necessary. It’s given to justify the consultancy bill but has no real significance whatsoever.

But the most important commonality between the tube and the MBA is that they are both eminently ‘squeeze and throw’. And maybe that explains the hordes of MBAs from non descript institutions who can be seen basking in the false glow of self importance.

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