The Icon and the Idol

The great shehnai maestro, Ustad Bismillah Khan passed away quietly in his adopted city of Benaras a few days ago.

Yet, the Bharat Ratna holder, a true 'Indian Icon' did not get the coverage that he deserved from our TRP hungry 4X6 news channels( as they largely have 4 hours of content looped 6 times!).

News coverage of Ustad's passing away pales in comparison to the attention given by National TV to over-blown events in the past.

Whether it's the fate of the child marathoner Budhia Singh or the media created event of the Prince of the Ditch in Haryana. Or even the drama orchestrated around the muslim woman Gudia's marriage, talaak and remarriage!

When it comes to a man who devotes a lifetime to Indian music, we do not see the same sincerity of coverage. Even Shakti Kapoor's indecent proposal got more News TV time than Ustad Bismillah.

I guess Indian News TV has succeeded in creating a world where largely inane, inconsequential events but with 'eye-ball potential get preference. Real news, significant events with impact and fading icons can wait.

Sadly, we are living in an age where Abhijit Sawant, winner of the Sony 'Indian Idol' gets a crore in corporate sponsorship while the Bharat Ratna holder and his family live in poverty in the absence of any support and away from the attention of 'eyeballs-aged-28'.

French Trotters & Surprise Branding

There is a store in Paris called the French Trotters. And the guys have put a new spin on retail. Retail shops as we have known them are about fixed menu of brands and standardised fare. You know what to expect from a Shoppers Stop or a Lifestyle. You know what sort of books would be available at Crossword.

But these gentlemen source the hottest goods from different cities around the world. Each season, a different city’s most cutting edge brands, labels and artists’ works are stocked – giving the style and aspiration seeker a chance to “travel” and discover something new and relatively unknown without having to actually get on a plane, scour the streets, and spend a lot of moolah and time along the way!

I found this whole retail business approach quite new age! In a recent interview Chuck Porter(of ad agency CP+B) had said that brands today need more surprise than consistency! And the store brand 'French Trotters' I feel is a step in that direction! Maybe a lot of lifestyle, leisure and luxury brands can take a 'surprise approach to branding'in the future. If you know of examples of 'Surprise Branding' in any category do post them... Cheers

A Strategy Named Design

For much of the time that I have grown up as a planner, the planning thinking unfortunately has largely been in a silo.

There is a definite and critical role of planning/ strategy in new business and in the early formative stages of the creative idea. But then, depending upon the agency culture, the individual rapport of the planner in the team and the workload on the planner, the role of strategy gets diminished in the final stages of the finished creative work! What a pity! Because I feel the planner's role is more critical in cooking than in chopping off the vegetables.

Sadly the much-needed new team of creative-planner has not found mainstream acceptance in India as much as the copy-art team.

But as we move into the future, the traditional walls of advertising are crumbling. The 30 sec commercial has got new peers. The 20 sec MMS, the 1 sec sms, the 2 min e-mail forward, the 15 sec interactive kiosk, the 1 min video on www.youtube.com.

Internationally there are even more novel concepts. The 10 min vertical soccer for Adidas done in Tokyo and Osaka by John Merrifield, the Hershey billboard-cum-cultural icon-cum-virtual store at Times Square, and not to forget the oft-repeated capture of the world by the design led strategy of Steve Jobs iPod.

Many of the world's foremost agencies have realised the design friendliness of strategy. CP+ B has bought a stake in Yves Behar's design company; Ogilvy in New York has a separate design-strategy consultancy called BIG. Maybe the big agencies are eyeing Elephant design in India!

These are therefore good times for account planners as they would now be able to do both- 'Think to Create' and 'Create to Think'.... Create a new medium, create a viral/ meme, create content, create buzz, spin, hype, news, influence...

And hopefully the wall between creative and strategy would be broken in India as well...What say folks?

And do let me know if there is a good online design course available somewhere? Need to be ready when the design era of strategy is upon us!

Viruses of the mind

Was going through wikipedia. And once again stumbled upon the subject of 'memes' . I think Richard Dawkins was among the early advocators of 'memes' - the virus of the mind.

Just like genes are the unit of biological information, memes it is said are the unit of cultural information.

The examples of memes would be advertising tag lines, concepts, new beliefs, and other forms of viral concepts.

In India, Bollywood is the original font of great memes and 'Sholay would be the biggest 'meme centre' of our times!

31 years after its release, Gabbar, Sambha, Jai Veeru, Basanti-Dhanno as 'memetic concepts' have survived the test of time.

Nothing official about it, Yeh Dil Maange , Lagey Raho are examples of memes from advertising . Long after the brand no longer uses them they exist in popular culture. Lagey Raho started life as a candy tag-line, ruled the air-waves during cricket matches and will now be the banner of 'Munna Bhai 2 '.

In the info-inundated world that we live, memes are an important unit to understand and use. Memes might help brands to stand apart in the brand crowd! Any thoughts , views on the subject. Do bounce .....