Berger XP IndiBlogger Meet - Dwarka, Delhi

It was a fun filled Saturday with the Indiblogger team ganging up with Berger XP to create a fun-filled, knowledgeable event. It is always great that brands like to facilitate a blogger event to send their message across but it is super when a brand takes pains to make it all interesting and interactive.

I thought that the venue ( Vivanta by Taj ) would be too far away from my place, but surprisingly I encountered very little traffic and hence was one of the first people to reach the event. They were still getting everything all set up at 11.30 when I reached the venue.

The people at the desk gave me a cool looking badge when I registered sharp on time and asked me to get a picture clicked at a photo booth set up. The beginning was indeed ominous as during coffee break, later on, they asked us to give a video byte at the same booth. The marketing personnel from an agency working with Berger shot off some questions and I answered them, with spotlight too harsh on me. 

Coming back to the event, and its awesome start which was made more awesome with a lunch to die for. You add fish and chicken and top it up with sumptuous desserts and welcome drinks made with cranberry and apple juice, you know your day is going to be great.

(This is Gaurab Tarun and me. Gaurab has been blogging since forever, just like me)

I mean the lunch was so good, that an Indiblogger team member had to come remind that the event was to start soon and we should come inside asap. I said I am done eating and when he left, went for another helping of dessert. Then another.

Anoop from IndiBlogger must have some brilliant interns working for him its seem (kidding). In every meet, he brings in some super cool ice breaker activities. This time, we were all given envelopes containing 5 strips of paper.On them were written blog URLs and descriptions of people present in the audience. And we had to check with everyone as to whose blog was it. Folks who got my blog URL were quite lucky. They just hollered Tushar and were able to identify the owner of the blog. I managed to locate just 1 blogger and failed badly at the task. It was still a lot of fun.

Mom wants our home painted and painting is a topic we often discuss at home. I dislike the whole process of getting the home painted for the mess it would be. After the initial warming up session with Anoop, Mr. Das from  Berger Paints explained the benefits of Berger's new innovation, Express Painting.

He spoke for some time and even took questions. A great guy who understands what he is talking about and speaks like a true expert. He made no attempts to bore the audience with technical or mundane. Kept the session short and simple. During the Q & A, many people asked him whether the new service would be expensive or not. He made it amply clear that due to cost saved on labor time, there would be no difference of cost between traditional and new modern technique to paint.

 Basically, the Berger people have gone beyond the selling a product philosophy. They are focussing on selling a service. A painting service. Like all good innovative ideas, they have figured out time-saving as a priority. For this, they have come up with automated tools and trained people to use them for painting and do that in the best professional way possible. The home painting tools not only save time but are also efficient and ensure a uniform spread of paint.

They also have a system to make the whole process of painting neat and dust free. As a learning & development person myself, I liked the idea of opening up training institutes for painters. Skill development is the need of the hour in almost every sector. Experienced and well-trenched corporates doing their bit to bring in trained manpower into the system is a great step.

Of all the machines, I liked the best was the sanding one. Basically, the sanding process is a grueling job, with manual labor slowly and painstakingly sanding the wall to make it smooth to apply paint on. It takes a lot of time and energy to get the wall surface right. Because you are literally scrubbing the wall for hours, there would obviously lot of dust as well. With their tools, Berger has automated the whole process. They have also incorporated the mechanism for the machine to suck in most of the dust. Saves time saves labor and the dust problem gets solved too. 

(Tarun is a great blogger. I always want to review his blog here. But the plan just keeps getting postponed.)

Bloggers won plenty of awards for social media posts. I posted this pic but sadly won nothing here too. We were dressed up like this for the sanding a plyboard thing. All three of us believed that this was really an award winning pic. Should have got us something.


Post session with Mr. Das, we had team based activities. Two activities were planned and points accrued in both activities was to determine the winner. Sadly my team stood second and won nothing.

Still, I think our team did pretty well in both the tasks given to us. This one was to smoothen the surface using a sandpaper. We actually got the entire thing off. In a pretty quick time too. Tarun rubbed the thing so hard that his gloves wore off.

The second activity to do some painting on a chart paper. 

When all other teams were discussing ideas about what to do with the painting activity wherein all teams were given a theme, I came up with the best idea of all. Let's go to the stage and get a team photo clicked.

In this pic, I am discussing with Ravi the strategies of painting and mixing. Ravi is a super cool guy and a photographer too. Our team which we named Surgical Strikes, got a pretty cool theme, Delhi Diaries.

They gave us some awesome colors to play with. Also gave us tips to mix and play with colors.

This is us, the Surgical Strike team with our very beautiful painting. Post the painting session, we had a demo session wherein the experts from Berger explained their painting tools. You could just see the passion oozing out of them while they told us how cool their toys were. Must say, a very involved and zealous team they have at Berger. It did not feel like they were just doing the bidding of higher ups.

Or that they were happy to leave everything to the organizing staff, Indiblogger team or the agency people. The company team was fully the part of the event and not just a background observer. Which made it all the more special knowing that you are talking to people who know their stuff so well. And are happy to share their knowledge with you.

As usual, we end the day on a high note, sad that the show is over and happy because it was so good and because outside they will give us some goodies to take home :)

And before you leave,  you can check out the Youtube advert by Berger. It's super cute.