My colleagues and I sat around the coffee table this morning (Thursday, July 27, 2006), pondering over recent events. We spoke admiringly of a little prince who chased a rat into a long, deep hole, and then emerged from it almost unscathed two days later. We reminisced about what we were all doing on 26/7 last year, and wondered if we would be flooded out again next month. And then the conversation led to a mysterious development closer home.

An agency operating out of Signature Towers in Gurgaon with 60 hardworking employees and over 20 clients, including “the car maker to the nation”, had been secretly spirited away – wiped clean, kaput! Dropped out of the charts without a trace. What could have suddenly happened to them? Did they all run down a long, deep hole chasing an army full of rats and will hopefully emerge sometime soon? Or did the bean counters lose their beans – did they simply forget to contact any of the Vanishing Agency’s clients while counting?

“Wait a minute”, someone said. “Just two months ago, this agency was rated No. 4 by the country’s No. 1 business newspaper, and just two weeks ago, the world’s largest media agency measurement service proclaimed them No. 3 in the rankings. Dear me, we must go find them, they can’t just disappear like this!”

“Ah, here they are,” responded another. “Found them way down there at No. 10 in Mumbai. But isn’t that the PM’s official residence in London?”

“Yes, it is. Must be some kind of mix-up. I got a call from a TV channel just now asking what is the going rate for a perception score? They wanted to know if it had anything to do with the going rate for TV ratings.”

“This is nonsensical talk,” I interjected, before the conversation took an unprofessional turn.

And then I asked the group if any of the Vanishing Agency’s younger siblings in Mumbai and Bangalore were found in the bean counter’s bag. One had heard that together, the entire family was doing rather well, with measured 40% growth figures for the year. Alas, they had all gone missing too. A dark mystery indeed.

One that begs solving of course. But till we go find Sherlock Holmes, I do want to say clearly to one and all, that the Lintas Media Group (yes, that is our name, and we wish the august ACNielsen would not try to re-baptise us to suit their subscribers and colour up the beans) continues to be immensely proud of and deeply grateful to its people, its clients, and its values. Ultimately, that’s all that matters.