Musings

Waiting for Godot

2010-05-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, I blogged on campaignindia.in about the desperate search amongst digital advertising agencies in India to identify a creative messiah and how it may be a fundamentally flawed search. Please do read and share thoughts / feedback.

3 Idiots and the new Hindu growth rate

2010-01-16T08:52:00.000-08:00

Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines, written in the mid 80’s has a section which very evocatively brings out the quiet desperation of a newly emerging middle class to not slip back into destitution. I read it over 20 years back and it still resonates. It talks of the writer as a young school boy who is visiting his not-so-well off relatives in a poorer part of Calcutta and from their balcony he looks out at the shanties and ramshackle landscape around him:

It’s true of course that I could not see that landscape or anything like it from my own window, but its presence was palpable everywhere in our house; I had grown up with it. It was that landscape that lent the note of hysteria to my mother’s voice when she drilled me for my examinations; it was to those slopes she pointed out when she told me that if I didn’t study hard I would end up over there, that the only weapon people like us had was our brains and if we didn’t use them like claws to cling to what we’d got, that was where we’d end up, marooned in that landscape: I knew perfectly well that all it would take was a couple of failed examinations to put me where our relative was, in permanent proximity to that blackness: that landscape was the quicksand that seethed beneath the polished floors of our house; it was that sludge which gave our genteel decorum its fine edge of frenzy.

And this context is what probably led a generation of the more fortunate urban, middle class kids to slog their backsides off in schools and colleges all over the country. And that in turn helped them do well enough to buy their homes on mortgage, marry, have children and make those poor kids go through a similar rigmarole so that they in turn don’t fall into that ‘sludge’. While the thoughtless scramble to conform and make the kids mug their way through school is not very edifying, it’s important to understand the background against which this happens. And while we all decry this method of education by rote – which has been given a strong collective voice by 3 Idiots – we must also remember that it’s the same education system that has at least given us the perspective to understand this issue and hopefully address it. I dare say, it has also helped us to become better engineers, managers and contributed in no small measure to a new, more enviable Hindu rate of growth.

What Matters Now

2009-12-23T05:50:00.000-08:00

Seth Godin has a very interesting and provocative e-book, ‘What matters now’ (free to download - scribd version here). It’s a collaborative effort involving a lot of people from different fields who share what occupies their minds as they move into the New Year.

I particularly liked Seth’s thought of Generosity; as he says ‘in the digital world, the gift I give you almost always benefits me more than it costs’. Another one I liked a lot was Tim O’Reilly’s idea of Government 2.0
One thought that I missed (at least overtly, though many have touched upon it) is the idea of ‘personal’. I believe we are moving towards a time when we will increasingly be communicating one-to-one or one-to-few rather than the one-to-many that we have become so used to.

This is of course partly driven by more personal means of communicating and touching people; but more fundamentally it harks back to one of our very primal need to connect with individuals as much as with larger systems. This could mean many people and marketers may have to re-set their
expectations from their marketing initiatives. It may mean being happy with a handful of very strong connections rather than thousands of weak connections.

Very similar to the game of oneupmanship played out in the early days of social networks where the race was to have more friends in your networks. And now as we know, people are rushing to de-friend inane, long friend lists.

Salesman in my friend feed

2009-12-10T02:52:00.000-08:00

Social media and how to make meaningful use of it in marketing terms is a subject of extensive debate. Like with anything new, there are constant experiments in this space and the blogosphere is filled with practices, observations and learnings.

Manish Mehta of Dell brings an extremely valuable perspective to this subject in this post which appeared in today's HuffPost. He makes the fundamental point that trying to use social media to further business strategy is approaching the issue from the wrong side of the stick. Social media, he says is a mean to determine the business strategy rather than furthering it. Like any good insight, what a simple and elegant thought.

Brands often approach this space salivating at the prospect of engaging with a more evolved, involved and (possibly) articulate bunch of people. But the moment we enter the midst of this crowd we start marketing ourselves, frequently in a crass manner, occasionally with some panache. The problem is, nobody likes an in-your-face sales pitch in a social space. Nobody likes the time-share people who pulverize them with two hours of spiel.

This social space can be infinitely more useful if it's seen as a forum to hear as much as to talk; to engage more than to sell. Finally it's about relating to people in this space at a 'human' level. Not exactly rocket science. As Manish says in his post, that's basically what the Mom and Pop shop of the old days did.

Move me, dude

2009-12-01T04:47:00.000-08:00

Just came across this talk by Dan Wieden on advertising, ideas and the future. Seems about a year old, but very interesting and straight from the heart - I especially like the part where he talks about passion. It's fashionable in our business (or any business I guess) to talk about passion for what we do, but sometimes the frequent parroting of the phrase reduces it to a cliche. I like his term for it . . .

What's the good word

2009-11-27T02:28:00.000-08:00

Steve Reubel recently blogged on words or phrases which may soon become history. Set me thinking of a few more and here's what I thought of:

1. Postcard

2. Carbon paper

3. Cassette player

4. Wall calendar

And the one I'll miss the most if it does become history - Novels.

Gita Stores weekend promotion

2009-11-23T04:21:00.000-08:00

Just read an interesting article about marketers using bloggers and Twitterers to spread the word about their brands and offers. And some potentially interesting platforms are shaping up to help brands connect with their customers through celebrity bloggers and influencers. In light of Twitter COO Dick Costollo saying they'll soon be launching a 'fascinating, non-traditional' advertising business, social media space is all set to see a lot of controversy and experiments with monetizing audiences.

Right to Information

2008-02-04T02:03:00.000-08:00

I spent an extremely engaging couple of hours yesterday hearing Shailesh Gandhi talk about the Right to Information Act and the impact that single act could have on governance and civic issues. What impressed me most, other than Gandhi’s enthusiasm and energy was the fact that we have, for once, a system in place that forces the faceless, big-brotherly bureaucracy to listen and respond to each of us as individuals.
Though it may be Pol Science 101, I found it extremely interesting to think of the system of elective democracy as an exchange between the state and the individual – the individual giving up a part of his / her sovereignty for services rendered by the government.
The RTI is a simple and very powerful tool to put pressure on the system by individuals seeking public information which otherwise gets obfuscated by the vast tangle that passes for bureaucracy. And it’s so simple that I still am trying to figure out if there’s a catch; after all I too am a part of generation that has grown up learning to fear ability of the mai-baap system to run circles around me. I haven’t yet been able to find that catch. The more important thing, I guess if for us to use the tool to participate and engage with the state. Check out the site Satyamevajayate.info for simple information on how.

Economics of Marriage

2008-01-23T05:36:00.000-08:00

"So what drives modern marriage? We believe that the answer lies in a shift from the family as a forum for shared production, to shared consumption...the key today is consumption complementarities . . .Today, it is more important that we share similar values, enjoy similar activities, and find each other intellectually stimulating" - contentious (some may say simplistic), but an interesting idea on the new economics of marriage. The writers go on to say it's no longer about the old adage of "opposites attract" because of which it made sense for the husband and wife to have different interests in different spheres of life.

Check the full piece here (Link via Marginal Revolution).

And the Winner is . . .

2008-01-18T04:32:00.000-08:00

Who is the NDTV Indian of the Year? Who is the CNN-IBN Person of the Year? Which will be the CNBC Car of the Year? What about the BS Motoring Car of the Year? Which will be the AutoCar Magazine’s 2-Wheeler of the Year? The Filmfare Actor of the Year? The Screen Awards Movie of the Year? Which programme will be the Telly Awards Soap of the Year? The PC-World Magazine’s Gadget of the Year? Pets & More Magazine’s Pet Cat of the Year? Ok, I just made that one up. But, what a conundrum!

The Brave New World

2008-01-08T07:10:00.000-08:00

Somebody once said that all new ideas are first dismissed as laughable, then spurned as impossible and finally accepted as obvious. Two days before Tata Motors unveils what is being popularly dubbed the People’s Car, I sense the transition already happening from the second to the third state. In that context, read this interview with Rajiv Bajaj on making affordable cars- coherent and extremely sharp. Without being jingoistic, it really makes me feel good about our industry and the companies leading the charge towards a new order.

Shame!!

2008-01-02T07:32:00.000-08:00

I wonder which is worse. This incident at Juhu, Mumbai; or the Police Commissioner saying that everybody is making a “mountain of a molehill”.

Of Rights and Wrongs

2008-01-02T04:47:00.000-08:00

A couple of years back, I remember one of our American Creative Directors being aghast at my defending the pirated books sold on our streets. My point was (and is) that trying to curb piracy by cracking down on the peddlers and printers is simply not practical – and more importantly goes against the grain of free business.

Firstly, the principle of copyrights itself is a recent phenomena ushered in by agents and publishers. Neither Mozart not Shakespeare copyrighted their works. And for a good reason; there is an argument that the more a piece of work gets transmitted to more people, the greater the respect for the author which in turn leads to more lucrative assignments. This argument gets even more pronounced in the age of instant sharing of ideas. Not only are restrictions difficult to administer, they are also barriers to new mash ups. As Seth Godin says, he could possibly earn some money by getting people to pay to read his blog; but he gets much more by seeding his ideas in the public domain, getting people to talk about it and growing his reputation as a thinker / speaker.

The notion of copyrights is also a lawyers’ delight – for instance, am I violating laws if I lend my book to a friend? What if I lend it to 10 friends? 1000 friends? What if I write the text of a book, post it on my blog and send the link to those friends? David Pogue illustrates how gray this subject is on his post here where he quizzes students about the ethics of digital piracy. Their responses are telling.

But I read the best one on this topic by Suketu Mehta some months back. While traveling in a Mumbai cab, he was accosted by a street kid selling a pirated of “Maximum City”. When told he was the author of the book, the kid offered him a discount. A bit like Mario the postman in “Il Postino”, who having read Pablo Neruda’s romantic poetry narrates it to a village girl as his own – he insists that having read and internalised it, the poetry is no longer Neruda’s but his own. How can you argue against that?
UPDATE: This post by Chris Anderson adds one more interesting perspective to this subject.

News - Important and Interesting

2007-12-21T02:13:00.000-08:00

“Brand Managers are . . . congenitally incapable of understanding the nature and purpose of journalism” writes Vinod Mehta, one of my favourite journalists in a heartfelt guest article in Agencyfaqs. He says Brand Managers can never understand that content is more, much more, than what readers want. A similar thought was echoed a couple of years back by a senior BBC journalist who compared journalism that only reflects what a majority of people want to read, to a politician who spouts inflammatory rhetoric in front of an angry mob of rioters under the pretext that’s what people want to hear.

Coincidentally, Michael Hirschorn has an even more nuanced perspective on the subject in this month’s Atlantic Monthly. He recommends newspapers to “stop being important and start being interesting”, saying “news” in the classical sense of the word is a commodity today. What is more relevant to people are “non-commodifiable virtues” like deep reporting, distinctive point of view and sharp analysis. All of which actually often get reflected in the “most popular / e-mailed” boxes on the websites of newspapers. And “the most–e-mailed lists suggest that readers will consume meaningful, interesting (and maybe even “important”) journalism if they feel compelled, beguiled, seduced”.

What is interesting to me is how the solution to Vinod Mehta’s plea to give readers more than what they want, give them the unexpected can lie in the online space. And he’ll surely find it gratifying that online lists suggest that people don’t always want to read about Britney Spears. Friedman and Maureen Dowd routinely turn up on the NYT’s most popular lists. There’s hope still.

PYTs and Rich, Old Fools

2007-12-21T02:02:00.000-08:00

Last year a billboard for the newspaper DNA quizzed us on where pretty young girls would find rich, old fools if the dance bars of Mumbai shut down. Steven Levitt answers on his post The Economics of Gold-Digging !!

A Better Mousetrap

2007-12-20T04:21:00.000-08:00

The greater the barrage of ads that people are exposed to, the more adept they get at filtering out what they aren’t interested in. Strangely, we in the advertising and marketing business continue to do more of the same. The latest ad may be more creative than last year’s, but viewer’s ennui with our collective output still outstrips the incremental creativity.

Over the last few years it’s become commonplace to take product parity for granted and hence depend on created communication to be the differentiator. This in turn makes the advertising try harder than ever to stretch the metaphors, sometimes leading to the ridiculous; I mean, a soap will not exactly make India a better place. This trend reminds me of the consumer who once said when you sell a shoe, sell a shoe and don’t sing the national anthem while you are at it. Given all this I wonder if sooner rather than later, we will we go back to the times when companies actually attempted to deliver superior products vis-à-vis competition? Will be very long before a marketer actually decides to reduce investments in communication and invest more in simply designing better products – from delivery to packaging to experiences. We see a lot of that already in technology brands, some of whom have become cult. So why not shoes or soap?

Of Civic Campaigns and Talent Searches

2007-12-13T06:09:00.000-08:00

Two leading newspapers are currently in the middle of initiatives that seek to encourage public debate and participation in civic issues. The Times of India is doing the Lead India campaign and the Mumbai Project is Hindustan Times’ attempt at raising, debating and engaging stakeholders on civic issues plaguing the city (and god knows we have many).

While both are public campaigns, the differences are very telling. The TOI campaign takes a top-down approach – it invited SMS votes to select a candidate who may actually participate in the country’s electoral politics. The HT initiative is a completely bottom-up approach. Over two weeks, there were a lot of facts and some very good debates that were stirred and the newspaper simply served as a platform raising civic raising issues.

The TOI’s Lead India campaign was a marketing initiative complete with televised debates and celebrity moderators (they even asked a candidate’s wife to sing his favourite song on the TV show). They also roped in Shah Rukh Khan, Abhishek Bachchan and the likes to promote the initiative with a huge television and outdoor campaign. Not that marketing the campaign by itself is wrong (in fact some of the TV ads are very nice). But at some point, it became a campaign highlighting the personalities rather than the issues they represented. And while I am willing to accept drama being a surrogate for singing in shows like the Indian Idol; issues like governance, education, infrastructure etc. are far too important to be decided through SMS campaigns.

The HT’s Mumbai Project on the contrary was primarily a journalist-driven initiative. It had a lot of meaningful content, in-depth analysis and a platform to debate those issues. The content was obviously put together with a lot of assiduous effort and hence there was enough material to have a serious engagement with.

In fact spending 15 minutes on each of the campaign websites highlights the stark differences between the two initiatives. One filled with relevant content and the other, a slickly packaged show. I don’t know about the larger world, but I would any day take the content.

2007-12-03T05:43:00.000-08:00

A judge in New York state lost his job because he ordered 46 people in his courtroom to be taken in custody after they refused to admit whose mobile phone had rung while his court was in session. I feel he was doing what many of us fervently desire when the woman sitting behind in a cinema theatre instructs her son to look for the dal in the top row of the refrigerator. Hope somebody starts an online petition to reinstate the honourable judge.

2007-11-21T03:37:00.000-08:00

Outside of a dog, a Kindle is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read – Groucho Marx, c. 2007

How's the Market Today?

2007-11-14T01:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was reminded me of a comment made by a financial analyst during the last stock market boom – when your grandmother starts looking at the stock prices in newspapers, it’s time to move out. The cabbie who was driving me home from office had a “bhav copy” (a two-sheeter with closing stock prices, printed every trading day) tucked behind his steering wheel. So, there.

On Creativity and Education

2007-11-07T03:55:00.000-08:00

I just heard this outstanding speech by Sir Ken Robinson on creativity and the role of our education system in nurturing it. It’s simple, inspiring, witty and profound – everything the current education system isn’t. He delivered it over a year ago at the TED conference. What a pity it took me this long to stumble across it. Listen to it, if you haven’t already. Actually listen to again even if you have. It’s beautiful.

Update: Got a couple of mails saying the download was somewhat patchy. So I've uploaded the mp3 version here. Hopefully this should be easier.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit

2007-11-01T00:54:00.000-07:00

Today is my birthday. Not relevant for anybody but me.

But the text messages I’ve been receiving is indicative of the pressure a lot of friends are under. Most of the people don’t seem to be happy just wishing a happy birthday. There is almost a compulsion say something more interesting / smart / witty. So all sorts of contorted witticisms find their way to my inbox.

There was a time when greeting cards took away that pressure by being witty. So one just had to spend twenty bucks and bask in somebody else’s wit. Alas, e-greetings have taken that pleasure away. Most of the e-greetings are too busy serving up gif files of cartoons to have anything smart to say. Ditto for mobiles and their dry emoticons. Hence most people are left in the lurch trying to be smart while messaging their friends. Which leads to me believe that people may be willing to pay money to be able to easily access smart quotes for birthdays, anniversaries etc. It saves them the time and trouble of thinking too much and makes them feel good. So what if they aren’t able to conjure it themselves, at least they’ll be seen as having the right sensibilities to choose and appreciate the smart lines; the way I've headlined this post by borrowing a quote from Oscar Wilde. Am I not smart?!!

The Reluctant Politician

2007-10-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

“Politicians instead must revel in the political process. They must adore people, jump into crowds, pump hands, kiss babies, travel by train to remotest corners, walk where there are no roads, speak a language that touches hearts, causes tears to flow and raises a million cheers.” . . . Sagarika Ghose writes in today’s Hindustan Times about Dr. Manmohan Singh as the accidental politician. Worth a read.

Reviewing Ads

2007-10-25T06:35:00.000-07:00

Like any true blue advertising person, I had a good time venting spleen at an ad that I think stinks. Got the opportunity when I reviewed the Emami Fair & Handsome television commercial in The Mint and had great fun panning it. Some would say it is poetic justice that my acerbic review was trimmed of most vitriol by the 400 word limit that commerce imposed on it.

Media and Creativity

2007-10-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

Adage reports that Domino’s Pizza has handed its media planning duties to – Crispin Porter. This is landmark as it puts “creativity” back in the centre. According to Domino’s Chief Marketing Officer, "Crispin Porter & Bogusky is known for creative, and that passion for doing things differently also extends to media."

This move also indicates that despite talks of creative media planning, media agencies derive their primary strength from scale. In today’s environment, media planning actually involves managing the context in which messages get delivered. By that yardstick, an agency which can provide the most creativity in developing the communication content should also be able to provide similar creativity in identifying the right contexts to place that content. I hope this leads to a Domino effect and will we see more large clients working with similar models.