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Thursday, November 30

Brands as Conversations









There is I guess a lot of literature on the importance of conversations in today's participative media! However, I generally find Indian advertising professionals lacking in this skill. Perhaps years of schooling in
one-way communication(top down, manufacturer to consumer) has led to a gradual attenuation of conversational skills!

So when I came across this brilliant book Fierce Conversations, by Susan Scott, thought must share some of the learnings!

Here they are in no particular order...

1. Remove the word but from your vocabulary and substitute the word and. Most people are shocked to discover how many times they use the word but during the course of a day.

Ad agencies are places with lots and lots of conversations. Endless cups of coffee, endless bouts of conversations. They are also the stuff that lead to maximum learning. Conversations - between creatives and planners, between clients and account handlers, between mainstream and 360, etc. Therefore replacing the buts with ands becomes quite significant.
Many a time I am not listening to others POV. Need to substitute more of my buts with ands...
!!

2. We may succeed in hearing every word yet miss the message altogether.Often I find that in the hurriedly convened FGDs and meetings, we are more intent in hearing the words and often fail to listen to the underlying message...

3. Come into the conversation with empty hands. Bring nothing but yourself.
A fundamental rule which we so often forget!

4. Sometimes we put so many pillows around a message that the message gets lost forever.
In our bid to please the client, we put so many pillows, we end up not saying what we would want to. What is right for the brand/ client!

5. There are things our gut knows long before our intellect catches on.
However, in real life most times we try to force our intellect on our gut!

6. A careful conversation is a failed conversation.
Aren't all brand conversations carefully crafted. Are they largely failures? How many fierce conversations do you have in a month/ quarter/ year?
When was the last time? With whom?


7. Never mistake talking for conversations.
Are most brands just talking?
In love with their own voice...
Not bothering to hear what the consumer wants to say, wants to hear!
Have you noticed how most of the ad copy is full of stuff like - "We make your dreams come true", "We take you places", "We help you get faster, higher".
There are far fewer examples of "Lets make things better"

8. Do not begin your comments with "Truthfully..." or "Frankly..." or "Honestly..."
That sometimes gives the impression that you were not truthful, frank or honest before...
The same holds true everytime a brand says 'New Improved', 'Trust me', 'With you all the way'.

9. The conversation is not about the relationship. The conversation is the relationship!
Reminds me of the 'Reliance' bill reminders for payments which read - Dear Subscriber, please pay your bill on time to avoid disconnection. Your relationship is valuable to us. :-)

10. Companies and marriages derail because people don't say what they are really thinking.
Same is true of brands as well...

What role can a planner have in crafting conversations when he/she doesn't write the final copy? It's just words...and if the words and the tone don't match between the brief and the final copy...all the conversational nuances are lost...

Which brings me back to my favourite topic. The new partnership must be between the planner and the creative/ copywriter. It's not necessary. But this is an easier, more effective, more rewarding way(at least for the planner) to craft brand conversations.

There is a UK coffee brand(forget the name) that has a highly conversational tone and ethos! Let me dig its name...

Which/ who is the most conversational brand in India? MTV? Karan Johar? Blogger.com? Sony TV? Bigg Boss?...

Do write your own experiences with planning, crafting brand conversations. Can you call them conversations? Or are they still monologues? Largely...

Wednesday, November 29

Utterly Cute - Where do we go now?

While hunting for Aamir Khan's blog on the net, stumbled upon this Amul hoarding...Had somehow missed this one...utterly cute!

Now, here's a brand that can take it's iconic advertising a step ahead using the net and the new technologies...and some participatory communication!

Some thoughts!
1. How about 'Make your own Billboard' contest? I think it could be quite a hit!
2. Or post 'The topical message of the day with the familiar twist' contest.
3. Amul - School of creativity for street children. Kya pata we may end up spotting the next Hussain?
4. How about Amul Humour blog?

I feel just about 10% of this great Indian brand has been explored by mass media till now! Now that Amul is the biggest Asian milk brand...it needs to Think Really Big and even Bolder than in the past...Would love to work on a new media strategy project for Amul!

Any more ideas guys?

Tuesday, November 28

Blogging in India - Facts and Future

Looks like blogging is spreading like wild wire in India. Read the first blogging India survey done by MSN and Windows Live - an online survey of more than 1,000 MSN portal visitors in India!

Was trying to read into the numbers...and look ahead! The future looks promising and nothing like the past:-)

1.The numbers . Some 14% of India’s netizens actively blog! And a total of 39% are aware of blogs.
I think that's a very healthy number...Also, I suspect from now on they will grow exponentially.

Almost 90% of bloggers spent up to five hours per week reading blogs or updating their own blogs.
My personal average would be somewhere around 10-15 hours! What about you guys?

2. Male skew . Not surprisingly, the Indian blogosphere is heavily dominated by men(74:26). In the asia-pacific, blogging is fairly evenly matched between the sexes.

3. Youth skew. 54% of bloggers are between the ages of 25-34 years;
32% under 25 years and 15% over 35 years.

4. Trust factor. Close to 45% of the respondents believed that blog content was as trustworthy as traditional media!
I would fall in this category as well! Not just trust, I mostly find blog content to be 'more intelligent', more POV than facts. I also love the personal flavour and the interactive, dialogue nature of blogs!

5. Key drivers. (a) Fervour for self-improvement and personal development.
(b) A large majority of online users read blogs to stay informed about world events
The split between topics - Technology (32%), followed closely by news and education (24%). This is in contrast with the region where technology was ranked by only 19 % as the most interesting, with travel being second most popular ranked by 17%.

(c) Celebrity obsession of Indians continues in the blogosphere as well!
The Report revealed that majority of India’s online users found reading blogs to be an excellent source of entertainment, with those written by actors, popular music artists, and sports personalities rated as the most popular at a combined 77%.

I personally have only come across Shekhar Kapur's blog which I just visited once...
Which are the better celeb blogs? Meraj told me yesterday the bollywood director Anurag Kashyap has a nice blog. Must check it tomorrow!


I think celeb blogs could be the next killer app...I am sure Karan Johar will convince Shah Rukh to blog for his next movie...Kabhi Blog Kar Lena:-)
The making of the movie will not just be a DVD item but actually a director's blog during the scripting and shooting!
There can be a virtual 'Koffee with Karan' in the blogosphere!


(d) Having a platform for self-expression factored heavily into the motivation to blog in India with 58% of bloggers starting a blog because they wanted to express passionate views and commenting on the world around them .
But this I guess is the fundamental reaosn why anybody, anywhere would blog.

(e) Some 40% of India’s bloggers do so to entertain others through their writing.
Don't know what this really means!

6. Favourite blogs . Blogs written by business leaders were found by half of all online users in India to be the most enjoyable to read. This is in contrast to the region where the blogs by business leaders and politicians were far less popular.

In my case, apart from Rajeev Karwal's(if you can call him a business leader) blog I haven't read any other's!

24% of respondents found blogs by politicians to be of regular interest :-)
Who are they? Does a Murli Deora, Sachin Pilot, Rahul Gandhi have one of their own?

7. Other Learnings . Aesthetics play a huge role in attracting and retaining an audience in the blogosphere.

Respondents indicated that a good blog should, firstly, be updated regularly and secondly, be well-written with eye catching pictures.

Amongst the most annoying aspects of blogging, India’s netizens listed badly written entries (42%), self-centered blogs (36%), and not knowing when a blog is updated (34%) as things that turned them away from blog sites.

For me the following are equally important.
- The 'newness of the ideas' discussed in a blog.
- Element of surprise and interesting-ness
- Honesty of writing
- A conversational tone
- Great conversation threads( perhaps even more important than the actual post)


Guys, any other observations on Blogs R Us? Shoot, share...

Monday, November 27

Greenpeace and Guerrilla Marketing




Mumbai has been witness to the guerrilla tactics of Greenpeace last fortnight! The Greenpeace pirates as they are called went to the Churchgate Mocha, MMK college(Bandra) and elsewhere changing filament bulbs with CFL ones...The cause - cut down on electricity consumption in the city! This guerrilla tactic is the most creative campaign I have seen this month!

My own encounter was a brief 5 min chat with a Greenpeace volunteer some days back!

The cause - Greenpeace struggle to convince BMC to change all the filament bulbs with CFL. CFL consumes some 5 times less power and lasts 10 times longer!
No hype, no hard-sell. The commitment Rs. 150 per month.

Greenpeace exists because our fragile Earth deserves a voice. It needs solutions. It needs change. It needs action.

Saturday, November 25

Got Journalism of Courage. Need Brave Marketing!

A newspaper that's not on the radar of most media planners, marketing and advertising junta because it doesn't give the reach and the absolute numbers is Indian Express.

But I love the paper because it is true to its DNA - the Journalism of Courage!
Of course I read it only on the week-ends as it doesn't have the ads and is a bit short on business and marketing stories!

Just wanted to share this IE story on the Mumbai train blast victims. Guys IE has been carrying out individual stories on all the blast victims on its front page since the day of the blast!(long after the other papers have forgotten the blast and gone to cover other 'Dhoom' stories or the Branjolina stories...

Every single day since the Mumbai blast, IE has been cataloguing the torn apart lives of the families of the blast victims. With sensitivity and painstaking resaerch. Francis Lewis in the picture above is the 127th victim out of a total of 187 victims who have been written about...

For Indian Express, they are real people. Who need the respect and individual attention which mass media is capable of giving but often shies away from!

For IE, the victims are not just statistics, TRPs, breaking news masala, opinion poll fodder, headline ingredients, chat show inputs!

Well, there were a lot many papers and channels who made a lot of noise over Jessica Lal, Nitish Katara and Priyadarshini Mattoo. But one can see they were largely TRP driven. I feel, for them there is no difference between a 'Rahul Mahajan' and a 'Mumbai Blast' story...But IE clearly is different!

I wish more people read the IE...And I wish the marketing guys made it more reader friendly!

I have a few suggestions though...(although I am not in the know of who IE considers it's core TG)

1. Guys, please cut down on politics a little. It won't get you readership...
2. Cover more news - in an attention starved society, readers often prefer width over depth!
3. Market yourself well...few uninspiring hoardings won't get you new readers...It's a tough world and you have aggressive competitors...You need 'Brave Imaginative Marketing' as well...
Think like a David!:-)
4. Use 'guerrilla marketing' tactics to reach out to readers who believe in 'Journalism of Courage'.
Will offer my POV on Monday on the need for 'Guerrilla Tactics'!
5. I think new media is a great way to market IE. Blogs, videos on youtube, WOM, sms/ MMS...
6. And yes, I am willing to 'crowdcast' for the IE marketing team:-) I am sure many of us will be...

Any other examples of highly principled but underdog brands?

The Changing Landscape of Outdoor

In a linearly laid out city like Mumbai, where a bulk of the population passes along a straight road cutting through the heart of the city, outdoor assumes greater importance. No wonder the real estate of OOH advertising is sky high!

However, the medium is exploited to its hilt by new innovations every single day. This beautifully constructed model of Ginger Hotels near the Mahim causeway - the experimental lab for most OOH innovations in Mumbai is the latest example of stretching the outdoor definition!

I even saw a guy at the work station in this model the day before!

I feel as a medium outdoor(OOH) still has a lot of untapped 360 potential...
It can be made ever more engaging, memorable and magnificent!
Do mail me any examples of innovative OOH that you have come across recently( any city)!

Friday, November 24

T3 and Early Adopters

I have been reading about early adopters, power-pointing about them, suspect I know just a handful of them personally! So, when I saw T3, the new(at least to me) gadget magazine for the early adopters was tempted to read it!

In fact, I realised most of my media consumption is driven by habit and status quo. As a planner, don't think am experimenting enough. Need to step out of my comfort zone more often...The net and blogosphere is bogging/ slowing me down...

Must pick T3 and other non-mainstream, fringe magazines, new media regularly...

Any recommendations! Have a nice week-end guys...

Thursday, November 23

Mumbai Musings II

Another common sight in many metros and Indian cities today! The water-tank-retro-looks is a perfect 'Out-Of-Home' media. It just needs a little bit of added design touch to make it retro-cool and you invent another medium to show-case brands from apparel to lifestyle to Bollywood movies:-)

Just like in creative plots, media needs to bring in more surprise...In an attention starved world, the zagged canvas of creativity, landscape gets noticed!

Mumbai Musings I

What you see in the picture is one of the many Shiv Sena/ BJP sponsored reading corners/ shelters/ chaupals in Mumbai. Where the common man comes and reads the morning newspaper. Community reading over chai! This one happens to be quite close to Kamla Mills under the flyover near my agency.

Right now in shambles, but imagine a Crossword or Landmark taking it over and designing the right reading experience with heightened aesthetics and branding...

That would be an example of Branding 2.0! Whay say?

Wednesday, November 22

Lessons from the Chinese Novel

I find Sacred Space in TOI(the quotable quotes, anecdotes and more section) to be a good idea cyclotron! Day before yesterday, there was a very nice speech on the Chinese novel by the nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck delivered almost 70 years back on December 12, 1938 at the Stockholm Concert Hall...

Google led me to the original speech at Gifts of Speech. Do read the full speech! It's brilliant!

The speech triggered a train of thoughts. So, here's the excerpt from the speech interspersed with some of my thoughts!

In China art and the novel have always been widely separated. There, literature as an art was the exclusive property of the scholars, an art they made and made for each other according to their own rules, and they found no place in it for the novel!
Lets play a substitution game! In the above statement, replace 'China' by 'India', 'Art' by the 'Creative department', 'novel' by 'non-creatives/planning' and 'scholars' by 'creatives' and a few other minor changes!

So the statment now reads - "In India the creative department and the non-creatives have always been widely separated. Here, advertising as an art is the exclusive property of the creatives, an art they make and make for each other according to their own rules, and they find no place in it for the non-creatives!"

And they held a powerful place, those Chinese scholars. Philosophy and religion and letters and literature, by arbitrary classical rules, they possessed them all, for they alone possessed the means of learning, since they alone knew how to read and write.

They were powerful enough to be feared even by emperors, so that emperors devised a way of keeping them enslaved by their own learning, and made the official examinations the only means to political advancement, those incredibly difficult examinations which ate up a man's whole life and thought in preparing for them, and kept him too busy with memorizing and copying the dead and classical past to see the present and its wrongs.

In that past the scholars found their rules of art. But the novel was not there, and they did not see it being created before their eyes, for the people created the novel, and what living people were doing did not interest those who thought of literature as an art. If scholars ignored the people, however, the people, in turn, laughed at the scholars.
And today the creative department holds a powerful place. The prima donnas, their self-indulgence and big egos! Archaic craft rules. And D&AD(of which India hasn't won a single award) and Cannes-n-Abby-focussed-existence, obsessed with narrow definitions of creativity, turf-protection, politics and silly awards.

For they alone possess the Macs,have access to the code to photo-shop,illustrators and corel draw and the right to 'be creative'!


And the creative class is powerful enough to be feared even by the new emperors(the CEO and the Board!) But many of the creatives today are enslaved by their own creativity. The D&AD, Cannes and Clios - the incredibly difficult exams which eat up their whole life and thoughts preparing for them, and keep them busy with doing arcane stuff to be appreciated by a non-appreciative-western-audience.

Copying the styles of the West and too dead to hear the sounds of their own back-alley and hinter-land! If creatives ignore the consumer and reality, the new consumer and ground reality, in turn, ignores the tradional creative! Because the youth and the new consumers are plugged more into Bollywood than advertising, laughter shows than clever body-copy and gaming( albeit on a very niche base) rather than self-indulgent many-a-time non-relevant creative!


In China the scholar was a class. Here he was. A pursed mouth, a nose at once snub and pointed, a high pedantic voice, always announcing rules that do not matter to anyone but himself, a boundless self-conceit, a complete scorn not only of the common people but of all other scholars, a figure in long shabby robes, moving with a swaying haughty walk, when he moved at all.

He was not to be seen except at literary gatherings, for most of the time he spent reading dead literature and trying to write more like it. He hated anything fresh or original, for he could not catalogue it into any of the styles he knew.

If he could not catalogue it, he was sure it was not great, and he was confident that only he was right. If he said, "Here is art", he was convinced it was not to be found anywhere else, for what he did not recognize did not exist. And as he could never catalogue the novel into what he called literature, so for him it did not exist as literature.
The Chinese scholar and the typical average Indian creative( run-of-th-mill, 90% of the creative class) share some common traits - supercilliousness, ignorance of reality, boundless self-conceit, a complete scorn not just of account management but of all other inhabitants of the agency including the planner( although grudingly they do make small concessions and friendly gestures) and a haughty sway as a shield to any new idea, radical thought or counter-intuitive suggestion!

Spotted in huge gatherings at self-congratulatory award shows. Most of his time is spent in studying 'Archives' and trying to copy some of it without revealing the source. Hating any new thought, leave alone copy/story which comes from the non-creatives!

Not recognising anything which is not in 30 seconds or 100cc. Everything else must follow into the deceit of the 360 - expedient extensions of the primary idea with total disregard for the TG, the client's problems/ needs, cultural sensitivity or any logic!


But, happily for the Chinese novel, it was not considered by the scholars as literature. Happily, too, for the novelist! Man and book, they were free from the criticisms of those scholars and their requirements of art.

Their techniques of expression and their talk of literary significances and all that discussion of what is and is not art, as if art were an absolute and not the changing thing it is, fluctuating even within decades!

The Chinese novel was free. It grew as it liked out of its own soil, the common people, nurtured by that heartiest of sunshine, popular approval, and untouched by the cold and frosty winds of the scholar's art.
Replace the 'novel' now by 'non-advertising'. Look at the way in which the internet, search engines, blogs, social networking sites, youtube.com, PR, WOM, design, retail experience, in-film advertising, Bollywood is growing! They are growing out of the wishes and desires of the common people, nurtured by the hearty sun-shine, popular approval and a little less controlled by the cold and frosty winds of the 'creative class'. At one point advertsing led the creative cause. Today, barring a few odd players/ people, I feel the industry is lagging!

No wonder, when in the morning I read Martin Sorrell say at the HSBC summit that 50% of all WPP earnings come from non-advertising and that shortly 2/3rds of it will come from non-advertsing...I knew the novel was thriving...

And yes, if agencies don't gear for the new environment where there is a 'democracy of creativity' we are doomed earlier that we think!

Tuesday, November 21

A Teen Girl's Rant on PDA

My Oct 30th post was on 'The Indian Youth and PDA'. Of course the observation lens was that of a 30+ guy! After the post, I had asked a teen friend of mine to pen her thoughts on the subject( hey crowdcasting in action:-) which she did beautifully. So sharing her note with the blogizens with her permission of course!

Here we go!

Love and affection are, according to me, the most private of emotions, a moment between two individuals that means more than the world to them, not exactly the kind of stuff you flaunt to the world. It's not supposed to be a fashion statement, it's not supposed to be "cool", there aren't supposed to be any ulterior motives here, but I guess that's what it's come to now.

I know there are those moments when ur wid that special someone and you can't help but give them a hug or a brief kiss but don't turn it into a full-on A rated flick. Believe me, your audience will NOT appreciate it(even if they ARE your best pals).
P.D.A. is rampant in the younger sect, I mean real young. Think teeny boppers, high school and junior college kids, I guess puberty hits hard. I'll admit my friends and I weren't exactly discrete(some of us still aren't), but we've pretty much grown up now.

Then again there's the thrill factor. I know of a chick who likes getting it on in public just to see the heads turn. Not quite my idea of fun, but to each his own I guess. It's fun to let go sometimes but choose your spectators carefully, you don't want to end up grounded or, even worse, in the slammer.

P.D.A. can also be perceived as territorial and people may see it as a silent warning saying,"Back off, or else!" You would might as well make like a dog and bare your teeth and growl. Another perception of the overt affection you're showering is that of a facade to hide your insecurities regarding your significant other.

And when it comes to being intimate with friends, I've noticed women usually share a closer bond, but now in the age of the "metrosexual man", guys are getting increasingly comfortable with the idea of gettin mushy with their pals. But you don't just go and force a bear hug on someone you barely(pun not intended) know. it depends on how comfortable you are with the person and the kind of equation you share with them.

But yes, the youth is definitely more physical in expressing their affection for friends. Come to think of it if kids of the previous generation were ever sighted hugging their peers, it would be majorly speculated and probably turn into a bit of juicy gossip. But even this evolution, I think, is limited to a minority of the urbane stratum.

So, although i agree that P.D.A. should not be banned(I believe in Freedom of Expression- Article 19), I think using P.D.A. as a tool to get attention or to make a statement is just wrong. You're ruining the sanctity of the relationship. And on a cheekier note, a piece of advice to all the ladies out their, lavishing their love on their worse halves in the eye of the public, "Don't fake it too often girl, he just might catch on!"(pun definitely intended).

In the last few months while interacting with younger minds, I have realised that their language, their canvas and their voice is so refreshingly different that often research done on youth by older guys loses the flavour as well as insights!

Someday when any of you drops in at David, I will take you through a teen girl research which two of my trainees had done this summer. A hand-crafted piece of 'Research as Art' not a power-pointed document. It reverberates with 'teen spirit'! I think it's the best research done on the young teen girl that I have seen in India!

Monday, November 20

India's Fastest Growing Brand



My college friend Ram who runs a boutique travel agency - soulitudes, often helps me step out of my routine, regimented life/ comfort zone. Ram, thanks for it! I have always come back from those experiences richer, humbler with the mind having expanded just that little bit extra!

So, yesterday morning when he called me to attend an 'Art of Living'(AOL) gathering with the added bait of 'Shanker Mahadevan', I fell for it.

It was worth the effort. I always had this feeling of AOL being a fast growing new-age spiritual brand. But first-hand experience is a different ball game.

The event was held at BKC grounds. It had about 30-40K believers, and few odd interested by-standers like me! The event itself resembled a spiritual loan mela:-) With the usual bells and whistles and pestering spiritual salesmen/women!

While I was there, just jotted some pointers on AOL. It's based on a very limited understanding of the organisation. So, don't pin me down if my analysis is wide off the mark:-)

Branded Spirituality
1. AOL is a new age brand. An example of Capitalism with a Conscience
/Cause Marketing . Evangelism is an integral part of their marketing communication...

AOL practices 'Believer gets believer' instead of Member-Get-Member':-). The brand bond is 'the art of living'. A brand which is dedicated to serving society by strengthening the individual.

So while most marketers choose to stay away/ pay lip-service to the larger issues concerning society/India, AOL is busy raising money for the dying farmers in Vidarbha!

2. Global Indian Brand . It's more Indian and more global than Mr. Mittal's steel empire! AOL is one of the largest volunteer based NGOs active in over 140 countries.

It is claimed that AOL is the fastest growing organisation after the UN! There are millions of believers, thousands of active, passionate ones(called teachers in their lingo).

AOL is one of the most multi-faceted organizations in the world and works in special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations.

3. Crossover Brand.. Try slotting AOL into the narrow silo of a product category and it would be impossible. True, they have a flag-ship product/ killer-app called Sudarshan Kriya, sundry other products and services. But AOL is a much larger crossover concept. A remix of 'social/cause marketing' and 'network marketing'. A remix of culture and cause!

4. Amway Model . To my knowledge, AOL is the best Indian adaptation of the in-(famous) Amway network marketing model. At the top of the pyramid is of course Sri Sri! Then there are layers of 'teachers'selling spirituality instead of soaps, cause instead of cosmetics!

5. AOL has the DNA of a 'New Age Brand'. It is collaborative instead of competitive, participative instead of producer-consumer archetype, it uses more of WOM than mass media and the brand is built through communities of belief rather than customer acquisition.

AOL - the organisation has an Al-Qaeda like cell structure rather than a rigid hierarchy. Event marketing is not a BTL activity, its almost the entire marketing!
(A stray comment - Politics is not a bad word for the AOL brand. In fact, AOL actively seeks and gets political patronage. Vilas Rao Deshmukh was present at the ceremony last night!)

6. Brand Communication . And how does the fastest growing Indian brand communicate with its audience! Not the conventional way!

It hasn't needed a 30 sec commercial till date! Instead it has used the CEO as 'Spiritual Guru'. Forget celebrity Endorsement- 'AOL' uses half of Bollywood as endorsers( that too for free) ...

It is quite in-tune with the times when it comes to 'co-branded activities' and collaborative Marketing( sample the Tata Indicom promo leaflet in the pix).

It's more into youth marketing and on a wider plane than many youth brands in the country. Sample this. AOL is organising India's largest youth marketing festival - with over 100,000 students on 24th Dec in Mumbai. Check the details at http://yuvaratri-night.blogspot.com!

After last evening's brief encounter/ interface with AOL, I feel there is much for us agency people and marketers to learn from this alternate brand. It is using all the strategies and tactics of marketing 2.0. In fact AOL is ahead in thinking than most of us, while we may blissfully slot it as a subaltern marketer/ organisation!

Looking forward to comments, suggestions, barbs et al!

Friday, November 17

Crowdcasting - The Wisdom Of Crowds


In the latest issue of Business 2.0, came across this new concept - Crowdcasting! Actually, a while ago in his best-selling book, The Wisdom of Crowds James Surowiecki had explored a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications - 'Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant/ better the elite are at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future! 'Crowdcasting' is the real life application of the wisdom of crowds!

Companies like Amex, Whirlpool, GE Money and Mars are now occasionaly turning to B-School students to come up with innovative products and services by solving real world problems.

I think for a talent starved industry like advertising, 'Crowdcasting' is an excellent tool to plug into some of the youngest and brightest minds of India!

Even if we can't afford the IIM grads, maybe we can get some of them to solve our brand/ strategy/ agency problems.

In fact, for smaller agencies, it's a very effective and cheap alternative to say a large sized planning department, without sacrificing the quality of strategic thought. What say?

As we go into the future, we do not just need 30 sec TVCs and print ideas. We need a whole host of ideas - big and small across the internet. mobile and other emerging media space!

And bright minds who also are early adopters of the products and services would make great idea-founts.

At David, I have been using 'Crowdcasting' in a minor way! Ocassionaly I dip into the intelligence of young students. They have helped me mine insights, helped in new business pitches, served as virtual-planners, jointly built content which I have used in new business pitches...

And quite often, even the agency employees cannot match the content as well as the energy levels of these 'crowdcasters'.

Lets be ready for the future. As Business 2.0 said - "Turning one's business problems over to outsiders scares the shit out of most business leaders because it challenges the power base of individuals within the company. But that's exactly what needs to happen for a company/ industry to grow and change with the times".

If ideas had a valence level I would give 'Crowdcasting' 10 points! Same as this year's Grand Effie(India) winner Lifebuoy Little Gandhi campaign!

Thursday, November 16

A Bank Full of Surprises



This morning as I stepped into the Bandra branch of HSBC to pay my monthly home loan EMI, the sight of a huge teddy bear sitting on a chair greeted me. I thought it must be part of the extended children's day celebrations!

But a closer look made me realise that this teddy was on IV drip!!

Actually the cute teddy-on-drips was a display for an HSBC and Tata AIG critical care insurance plan...Generally one would not even look at the in-bank hard/ soft sell...
But the teddy surprise made me click a snap and snap a leaflet as well as pose a query to the personal banker!

And this was not the first time that HSBC has done some memorable 'last-mile' stuff!
Around the time when Hanuman( the movie) was released, they were giving free Hanuman-pencil-sharpeners to the kids who came to the bank. My son, Neo was thrilled with this gift!

Again on Diwali, the bank was decked up with 'diyas', festoons, etc. They again gave a small Diwali gift to Neo who was tagging along with me.There was a stall selling small festive items (arranged by an NGO) - bank-that-reaches-out-to-the-needy-space!

The staff was wearing ethnic attire. And these are not one-off gimmicks. Even in the past, HSBC has celebrated other local festivals as well...
HSBC through its ATL and BTL communication has been really making an honest enough effort to connect locally.

HSBC communication( the World's Local Bank) has been quite clear, consistent and one can actually perceive the localization( increasingly even the models used in the print ads and posters are Indians).

On the other hand you have Standard Chartered, a brand that I know(or claim to know) a lil better as I used to handle it at TBWA. SCB makes great pompous sounding statements on the bill-boards and in print ads. But the in-bank-experience is quite the opposite!
Of course my sliver of experience is based again on the Bandra branch and my credit card transactions( have a 9 year old card with them)...

To give SCB credit, while they do invest heavily and consistently in the Mumbai Marathon, I suspect the act has now become a part of their annual corporate communication check-list...

And while the tag-line to the Mumbai Marathon says 'Feel the Spirit'. Unfortunately it is sorely missing in the in-bank environment.

One of the problems with a financial brand I feel is that it is heavily transaction driven. Therefore, every touch point every-time enhances or takes away from the brand experience. And while you may need the umbrella of great-canvas-thematic-ads, the excitement and the passion shown in brand initiatives at the last mile count a lot!

And HSBC clearly knows how to deliver those small touches. Oh, I forgot to mention, everytime I go to check my home loan status, I feast upon the Re 1 candy!
I feel even the most sophisticated and demanding of customers can be delighted with a small dollop of surprise. Check out the related Oct 12 post on Hedonistic Treadmill and Customer Service . And yes, mail me your own surprise stories!

Wednesday, November 15

Mother Knows Best





Today's Brand Equity carried(once again) a write-up on Omnicom's India strategy...It almost read like a cheap thriller!

Tucked away on pg 5 was also the entry plans of W+K, Mother, Fallon and BBH. Now Mother is again an agency that I have heard much about but know little of!

So after the John Hegarty Speakpost, here's the second in the series.

This interview I chanced upon at ideasfactory.comIt's a nice site. Check it out! And here's the interview.

Mother Knows Best
'What's the worst that can happen?' This TVC for Dr Pepper was one of Mothers'. So were the ones for Orange, Coca-Cola, Egg, Cup-a-Soup and Super Noodles. If there's one pulse that agency Mother has their finger on its ads.

And they don't just do ads, either. Mother has produced music videos (art director Thomas Hilland has made promos for Röyksopp) and published a book of photography, Places to go people to see.

Brand of Humour. The Cup-a-Soup and Dr Pepper ads are examples of campaigns that take Mother's typically and unusually honest approach in its ads, jettisoning the 'buy this and your life will be perfect' tone that campaigns usually adopt.

So, the Dr Pepper ads acknowledge that 'What's the worst that can happen' might well be many people's motivation for trying it.

Adding a twist of irony, Mother's campaigns show people who buy the product ending up in a variety of nightmare scenarios, like one teenager who picks a bottle from a chiller unit that shatters, burying him under a mountain of supermarket goods.

He has to be cut free (also of his trousers and underwear) by firefighters and is carried to hospital under the gaze of international film crews who broadcast the story of 'Butt Naked Boy' around the world.

Mother created a series of cinema ads for Orange in which legends of the movie industry like Carrie 'Princess Leia' Fisher pitch to a panel of execs who try to make mobiles a key element, no matter how historically inappropriate (Fisher's movie is set at the end of the 19th century).

The final line reads, 'Don't let a mobile phone ruin your movie. Please switch it off'.

Different set-up . The ads aren't exactly standard, but then Mother isn't. Founders Robert Saville(Jt. CD), Mark Waites( Jt. CD) and Stef Calcraft, who set up Mother in 1996 to launch Channel 5, wanted to create a different kind of agency.

Most agencies have a group of people called account executives who are responsible for liaising between the client and the agency staff who work on the account. Mother does not.

"People assume we've stripped out a layer," partner and strategist Andy Bellass says. "We haven't. We just don't have a group of people that are called account handlers."

"Whenever a creative person picks up the phone and talks to a client about the size of an end frame or what director they can use, they're being an account manager."

"The client doesn't just have one relationship with one person called an account man or whatever - they have they have relationships with everybody."

Send us your problems. The agency is not afraid to turn its unconventional thinking on its own industry: "The worst thing in advertising is when clients assume that advertising is the answer to their problems," Bellass comments.

"More often than not, it's not. Holsten Pils assumed for years that advertising was the tool that would get it ahead of its competitors. It's not. The problem lies with the product."

So at Mother, they work out what the problem is and solve that, instead of working to a traditional 'brief' that a client sets and which the agency is required to carry out rather than question.

"We always say, we don't answer briefs we answer problems," Bellass continues. "It works best when clients come in, sit down and say, 'this is what's happening in my business.'"

"That's not to say when they come in with a brief that it's wrong. It's easier for us to work with a problem."

Something old something new...
Many traditional agencies are large companies that employ hundreds of people. So the agency's own staff may not come into contact with each other very often, and less often with its clients.

Mother currently has 90 staff and everyone works in the same open-plan office, a former fire station in east London. (The agency was also an early pioneer of hot-desking.)

But that's not to say that all traditions have been abandoned. Mother approaches every campaign by tried-and-tested methods:

"There are no new ways, there are only old ways," Bellass explains. "And the old ways are the simple ways. You pick the people you want to work with, you sit them around the table and you talk to them."

"The fundamental question to ask is: how are brands understanding their consumers, finding the right way to touch them?"

The science bit... Advertising is not an exact science, though. The much-quoted Lord Leverhulme (his company is now part of Unilever) famously observed that half of the money he spent on advertising was wasted, but he could never be sure which half.

Some advertising and marketing techniques even baffle the professionals: "People like Amazon still amaze me," Bellass says. "I go onto Amazon and buy a book and a CD and it tells me the other books and CDs I should be buying."

"I look at those books and those CDs and think, you know what? I would want to read and buy those - and usually I do. Isn't that the most sophisticated marketing out there? It's a brand you have a relationship with."

"But at McDonalds you buy a Big Mac and they say, would you like a large fries, and you think, if I wanted large fries I would have asked for it."

"But here is Amazon doing exactly the same thing - they're trying to get you to buy more products from their store. But they're doing it by understanding exactly what you want."

Comin' to get you . The next stop for the agency is New York. Mother has opened an office in the US during the new year and four of America's top admen, including a former head of advertising for Nike, have joined the team.

It's difficult to know who is in for the biggest surprise, Mother operating in a new market or the US being on the receiving end of Mother's unique brand of humour.

But Mark Waites knows the New York ad scene from personal experience. And is the market in the US so very different?

"People say it is," Bellass says, "but I'm a huge believer that whatever market you're in, people still drive cars, people buy soap powder, people still watch television." America, watch out.

Whatever the Goliaths might think, I firmly believe that these slightly left-of-centre players will sex up the Indian market and hopefully they will have lots of jobs for Indian planners:-)

Tuesday, November 14

Big and Stupid


The Goliaths rule the world today. Well almost!

They control the networks and the software platforms. And even the template of this blog. They control our thoughts and search engines as well!

But some brands/ marketers/ companies are smart enough to successfully camouflage the ugliness of their monstrous size with attitude, rampant PR and clever brand speak. And then there are the 'Big and Stupid' brands. The 'Big Moose' archetype! Looks like the newly launched 'Big FM' is one of them.

The 'Big Noise' that the ADA group Radio Channel is making suffers from a surplus of media budgets and a deficit of ideas!
Yes, they are going to be 'Big'. A 45 station pan-India foot-print. By early next year, Big FM will be present across India from Srinagar to Trivandrum and Surat to Guwahati.

That's good! The channel is also going to invest upto Rs.40 million for transmission equipment, infrastructure and licensing!!

But, dear Tarun(Katial-the COO of Big FM) please invest in better creatives and brand strategy as well!

One couldn't have missed the splash across most newspapers today. Haven't seen the TVCs if any. It triggered some thoughts...

1. As I said, there is a fat media budget without an idea. I think 'Radio' is a very personal medium. Almost like a close friend. Don't know how 'Bigness' as a virtue enhances personal experience/ the brand.

2. Whats the role of a tired looking Abhishek in the print ad? It's not even the best looking Abhishek wall-paper! Maybe if they had taken Amitabh, it would have made some sense as 'Big FM' would have been brought to us by the 'Big B':-)

3. Jigar(my colleague at David) pointed out that the campaign breaks with the headline - 'Bachpana Chhodo, Aa Gaya Big FM. Ironical that they had to break this on Children's Day:-) Maybe, this small fact just escaped their collective 'Big Minds'.

4. Radio is not 'chai'. So, the tired-sounding tag-line 'Suno Sunao, Life Banao' actually has no real insight/ meaning/ even slogan value!

5. I can understand 'Big' being a virtue if the offering is a mart like Big Bazaar. The promise could stand for the 'economies of scale passed on to the customer' or the big convenience of finding everything under one roof!

But in a personal medium like radio, 'Being Big' is just an irritating and irrelevant way to announce your arrival.

Tarun, I know you have a 'Big Budget', but what you really need is a 'Big Idea' to make your brand sexy! And perhaps a small agency:-)

Monday, November 13

Confessions of a DTH Viewer










Around 3 weeks back, the much talked about and debated DTH was there in my bed-room! Seems like I have been an early(relatively) adopter! Actually, my society secretary Mr. Gurnani is the real innovator:-) A circular landed in my flat one fine evening and I had three forced options to choose from - (1) Tata Sky, (2) Dish or (3) my existing unscrupulous cable guy(charging me 350 bucks for an ever dwindling set of channels!)

1.Brand Choice. The lousy Rediffusion advertising had nothing to do with my brand selection. The 'Tata' name did the trick, even though Dish( from Zee)was a parity offering,a lil cheaper and with an identical bouquet of channels!

2.Better Mouse-Trap. Now all the DTH promises made on Mumbai's skyline ring true. The picture quality is really DVD like. So is the sound even though I can't really differentiate on my old LG. And now I wonder how I was putting up with my cable wala for all this time!

I simply adore the convenience of a digital menu...

3.The 'Tyranny of Top 10'In the pre-DTH era I was a prisoner of the analog remote. I used to watch a disproportionate amount of content on the top 10 pre-fixed channels on my remote! And therefore Travel & Living at channel number 55 never got it's fair due!

DTH is more democratic w.r.t watching content.

4.Early adopters and laggards.I love the new DTH remote. My tech-unfriendly wife hates it and my father has ignored it till now. He still prefers to watch his daily dose of Zee soaps on the cable!

My wife says the remote is too complicated. Though it's not! I guess initially the kids and the men folk might take to DTH more easily than the women...

I also sense few behaviourial changes.

5. The DTH remote is playing the role of my TV organiser. I am a more active watcher now than I was in pre-DTH days. I feel more in control of the content that I consume daily.

6. Today. for a majority of the men-folk, news is the base genre. Even I used to passively watch endless loops of the same mediocre content. But with the DTH I have been watching more entertainment and lifestyle simply because I know where it's happening at any given point of time.

7. My hunch is 'Appointment Viewing' will be back in a big way. The guys that really must watch out should be the hype laden news channels which served as a base station for male viewers! And relied on attention arrest through gimmicks like breaking news!

In the near future, the DTH might lead to anti-dumbing/ smartening of content in a small way. There might be space for serious and intelligent channels like the BBC in the niche areas.

8. Bad days for advertisers. My guess is more advertising will be skipped than before as the DTH remote allows one to explore content across channels without changing one's current channel.

It's still early days. But I can see subtle changes in my TV viewing habits. Would love to hear from other DTH viewers elsewhere...Lets compare notes and stay aware.

Friday, November 10

What makes the Global Indian Manager Tick?





Offline or online, India seems to be the flavour of the year/ decade! At least the select media that I manage to consume suggests so! As always there is lots of genuine interest as also loads of hype about the not-so-large consumerist India which gets equated to the entire nation!

And in this 'India Shining' story are regularly covered the talented Indian managers - globally in hot demand! In fact today's CD(Corporate Dossier with the ET) once again talks about this breed/ brand.

Since I have nursed a desire like many of us to work in a global/ regional set-up, I found it interesting to probe what makes these successful Indian managers tick!

There are the poster boys - Rajat Gupta of McKinsey, Rana Talwar(ex Standard Chartered Bank) and the latest entrant Indra Nooyi of Pepsico!

The new kids to the club are the likes of Bharat Puri(former CEO of Cadbury India) now in Singapore with regional responsibilities, Siddharth Verma(former Reebok CEO) heading the company's ops in Japan. The list keeps on ballooning...Well even in advertising, with the likes of Asit Mehra( ex-Lowe now Omnicom) making headlines from time to time!

As we move into the future, it will increasingly be very important to have skills that work on a global scale.

Some reasons why Indian managers tick.

1. "Knowledge, expertise, analytical flair and cultural adaptability set the Indian managers apart" - Sanjay Nayyar, CEO - Citigroup India

2. "The ability to take on a lot of responsibility early in their careers, willingness to quickly adapt to new businesses and cultures and highly flexible in their career and location choices are the key attributes that set them apart" - Mohit Nayyar, Associate Director HR, P&G India.

3. The Indian education system emphasises learning the basics and on the left side of the brain rather than the right side which leads to greater analytical skills.

4. The other ace up his sleeve is his single minded drive to achieve success at any cost. Middle class ethos of a large number of these managers is reponsible for this hunger for both knowledge and success!

There is a down-side to the Indian manager as well.
For example the natural inclination of the Indian manager to over-intellectualise and his tendency towards too much debate at the expense of action sometimes is a deterrent to his rise.

Every management guru worth his salt is predicting that in the future all industries will be creative industries. And that's where an over dependence on the analytical skills will not be advantage 'Indian' anymore...

I also have some stray personal observations from my work environment - current and past. Word of caution.(Sweeping generalisations are never totally correct.) And of course the experience would be limited to the narrow silo of advertising that I am familiar with! Nevertheless...

1. Indians are still lousy when replying, attending to communication from strangers, people not known to them.

2. We are relatively speaking more 'hierarchy conscious'

3. We are quite uncomfortable discussing/ debating/ formalising/ learning about the softer side of our business. I often hear in training programmes the total cynicism to such issues. 'Yeh sab fluff/ faff/ gas hai'

4. Over the years we have become quite 'jugaadu' in our mentality. I see little desire to be 'original' in our thoughts and POV.

5. We might be efficient and effective managers. But our tribe sorely lacks in leadership.

6. We are also quite self-obsessed. Profit and personal goals and ambitions are the over-riding drivers. Social and environmental causes are generally not on the radar. Again my experience is the narrow domain of advertising.

In the future what might help us succeed globally is more right-brained thinking. Let's not forget that we would all be expected to be creative - creative servicing, creative planning, creative finance management, creative team management, creative leadership. Being creative will be our biggest skill/ asset.

Increased globalisation will also demand more collaborative thinking, more flexibility, more leadership and more visionary thinking!

Thursday, November 9

Marine Plaza, D&AD and Creative Lessons





I had made myself a promise last year to attend more industry fora, at least the ones in Mumbai. Have been quite regular. And would urge all of us to do the same.
With an industry already reeling under a talent problem and the fractious industry bodies getting impeded, we must do our own little bit!

There is no point blogging our rants. Even the smallest of changes need one action step!

Anyways, it was a thinly attended gathering. Actually, this was just a front to market D&AD( the UK based creative and design excellence award guys). Two half drunk, not-so-young, Brit women marketing the D&AD brochure, bad beer and peanuts and some chicken kebabs(which weren't bad!)

However, I have decided to be positive and get something out of every contact/ experience.
So, at night I breezed through the hand-made paper brochure and here are some nuggets I gleaned! Some questions, some observations, some pointers!

1. Is the left side of your brain always right? Think about all the instances when it wasn't. When it was.

2. Writing for advertising requires a warm feeling for words. You also have to look outside books, you look in unusual places and you encourage words to work on you; to surprise you, intrigue you, move you.

Then you experiment, bending and stretching language to find you own voice. It takes a while!

I find this particular bit of advice is relevant for planners and account management people as well! None of us need to draft boring, uninspiring briefs or memos!

3. Writing for design. Words give design a personality that engages the ear as well as the eye. They give the work a voice. But will others recognise it when they hear it?

It's important to sharpen our sensitivity to language. Rummage around it, strip it down, get opinionated about it. Track down our own writing voice.

Art directors must not be word blind. They must think beyond the pictures and learn to love the words too!

4. Talking Digital. Walking Digital.. The digital audience aren't consumers anymore: they are users. They are inhabitants of new worlds. They are adventures, story-makers, shape shifters, voyeurs. They are hands on and they are waiting to see what we are going to give them next.

Working in digital needs everything that we are already good at - and then some.

In the digital domain we must learn to create a dialogue with the user.

We must know how to build virtual space.

We must know how to transfom ideas into experiences.

And the surprising thing is that it's possible to explore all that without turning on a sigle computer. Digital needs to be demystified!

5. Interaction - the people formerly known as audience.
These days audiences do not sit quietly and watch and listen. Now they want to lay hands on our work. They want involvement. They want control.
Interaction is beyond 100cc ads and 30sec TVCs. They are making bus stops sing, park benches walk, dust bins emote and make 'chaddi' brands work of art!

No piece of communication is merely an object anymore. It's a relationship!So what are we going to do next?

Well, there were other thoughts whirling after bad beer went to my head...

6. Execution is 200% more important than the idea itself( most of the time)
7. Don't blame planners for a bad brief. Collaborate with them to explore the boundaries of a creative idea. I don't particularly find Honda's 'The Power of Dreams' original or greatly inspiring. Yet the creative leap is world class!

Of course planners must focus on making inspiring stuff like the book of dreams!
(visit Russell's site)

8. The answers are not necessarily locked in insights. They are more in the media landscape and in the interactivity of our ideas!

For 400 bucks, this learning was not a bad deal! Harshal/ Roop - recommend some good design books to read over the week-end...cheers

Wednesday, November 8

India in Numbers



Mera Number Aayega
Numbers give a perspective to life around us. While I am not really quant-obsessed, I love relevant statistics. It helps close arguments. Vaidate hypotheses in new business pitches, etc.

Numbers help plug the gaps in thoughts. Hypotheses. And everywhere else!

Some India, Chindia and India Vs US numbers:

1. The median age for Indians is 24.9 years, compared to 32.7 years for the Chinese.
2. There are 17,189 colleges and universities in India, while the US has 4182.
Of course hundreds of them may have dubious infrastructure...

3. 23 mn Indians watch movies daily, against an impressive 20 mn in the US.
4. 86% Indians have access to clean water, in comparison to 77% in China. I am surprised!!

5. India has 32 Internet subscribers per 1000 people, China has 73
6. It takes a company 264 hrs to file taxes in India, compared to 325 hrs in the US.

7. 125 Fortune 500 companies have research bases in India, while China has a whopping 400 of them!
8. 300 TV channels in India in 2005 compared to 112 in 2000.

9. 12,500 single screens in India compared to just 1629 in the US. India has 250 multiplexes while the US has 1523!
10. 108 mn homes with TV sets in India. It's the same as in the US. But while India has only 51% TV penetration, the US has 100% TV coverage!

11. Among the English newspaper reading audience the men to women ratio is 65:35.
12. 7000 homes with people meters in India vs 20,000 in the US.

13.18.57 cr people listen to the radio at least once a week. Each person listens to an average of 90 minutes per week.
14. Indians spend 2 hrs watching the TV every week compared to 6hrs in the US.

15. Rs. 13,200 cr advertising revenues in India('05) which is 0.34% of the GDP while the global average is 0.98% of the GDP.
16. $30mn is the annual market for gaming in India('05 figures, the category is growing exponentially) compared to an enormous $10bn in the US.

17. 1050 movies produced in India. The US figure was 250 in 2005.
18. 11,000 visitors go to the Red Fort everyday compared to 16,000 visitors who troop daily to the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

19. The size of the Indian animation market is $285 mn. The global animation market $25 bn in 2005.
20. Rs. 920 cr gross expenditure on R&D for every citizen. China spends 3 times more and the US 50 times more than us!!

Maybe its a good idea to compile them together...Chindia is a good turf to be experts at!

Do send me interesting stats if you are hoarding them on your server/ hard disk/ CD!

Source : India Today

Tuesday, November 7

How to be even more interesting





Guys, this post is an example of plagiarism in real time.Lol. Or maybe it's collaboration in real time across geographies:-) Must read this post of Russell Davies on 'How to Be Interesting'. In fact it's a must before you read this addendum to the post! And let me slot this post under the active planning series!

I restate the two assumptions that Russell makes.

1. The way to be interesting is to be interested
2. Interesting people are good at sharing.
and have added a third. 3. Talking doesn't cook rice(Doing is more interesting than thinking.)

And then 14 more things to do to be even more interesting...Many of them are experiential. I feel us planners(in India) need to loosen up a lot more.

1. Once a quarter watch a Bollywood movie in a theatre you don't generally frequent.
I watched Farhan's Don in a theatre in Patna( of course by default). And believe me the experience is a rich reward.

From the white kurta clad local crony with his two similar attired side-kicks, to the interiors that hadn't changed in two decades, to the system of allowing women and 'Family' inside the heavily grilled theatre before the show began, to the heavy gender skew of the audience. It was return to a decade back...Two India's and all that...

Don II will stay in my mind. So has Don I which I saw in Benaras some 25 years back...

2. In my post 'Do You Zoom' I had said to experiment with a new restaurant, cuisine every month...
Am a laggard myself when it comes to experimenting food. But I did visit Thai Ban in Bandra on Sunday and tried some new stuff...And the taste lingers...

3. Talk to strangers in the park, in the parking lot, while on the metro, with the taxi driver, with the barber, parlour wali!
I once chatted up with a guy in the line to an STD booth in Delhi. That guy turned out to be a 'hot air ballooning'and 'para-sailing' expert. And me and my wife had our first and only para-sailing experience!

4. E-mail to strangers in different categories. But beware. For every 10 e-mails that you send, you might get just one response! But it pays to be persistent.
Now I can bounce off stuff from a quali researcher in New York and a senior copy-writer in Indore...I even got an article( well actually a comment) in Hindi published in Nai Duniya!!

5. Make friends with creative people if you don't already have a couple of them ....drink a lot of beer with them.

Believe me they need planners more than the planners need creative people. LOL.
Make sure they pay for the beer...

6. Goto the raddi wala, buy a lot of magazines( okay this point Russell has already made) and read them on at least one week-end of the month.

Practice pattern recognition...If you don't get it e-mail me...

7. Talk to kids, observe toddlers play. Chat with the young. On-line, off-line...
My three year old son Neo teaches me to be a wonderful negotiator:-)

Talk to your father, mother,aunt. They have interesting perspectives, fears, take on the whirlwind changes happening in our world! Theirs!

8. Take a cab and generally idle in a Bazaar/ not necessarily a mall. Smartly bill it to the office(under R&D)...

9. Check out the wine bar in Worli, Hard Rock Cafe and any new hang-out/ pub/ cafe in the city!
Immerse in the sight and sound of the new places. Blog them...

10. Read interviews, biographies, watch shows on interesting people. Meet interesting people. I had managed to meet/ converse/ watch 'Suraj Ka Saatwan Ghoda' with Shyam Benegal and his family at Bandhav Garh(in Madhya Pradesh) at a camp organised by my friend Ram(he runs a small boutique travel agency called Soulitudes.

We had long morning conversations on culture, politics, society, Bollywood...It was the best planning training I have had ever...

11. Hit the lonely planet. Learn about interesting places. The quaint corners of the world! For starters around the edges of Mumbai. Then pack your bags and hit the road...Roop you are bang on target...Maybe we all need to learn from you...

12. Chat a lot( about movies/ planning/ music/ books/ trends/ everyday life/ what you saw while driving to work).... Sometimes even at the expense of the deadline.
Be careful...

13. Learn a new word everyday. Use it ....You can keep a check on the vocab scores of our copy-writers eh!

14. Give back something to less privileged people/ to a cause....Interesting people help others....Till a few years back, I was a very selfish bastard. I am reforming a lil at a time LOL...I am engaged in a very small way with i-Volunteer and yesterday I became a Greenpeace member...

Hey, do I do everything on the list...No, think I get a 9/14 on my list and 6/10 on Russel's...

But yes maybe I am a lil bit more interesting than what I was last year...And that's what counts...

Monday, November 6

We were like that only

In my September 11 post, I had analysed Technology vs Psychology in the backdrop of online match making sites!

Recently, a spate of investments in the bride sites has made me curious about this space once again. In September, Yahoo! Inc. and the Silicon Valley VC firm Canaan Partners paid about $8.5 mn for a 10% stake in BharatMatrimony.com. Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers has plowed in $4.6 mn into Jeevansathi.com. And even the mighty Google is said to be prospecting for a partner in this space!

I think/ sense some fundamental tectonic shifts are taking place w.r.t Indians and their approach/ attitude towards marriage portals!

1. Online match-making in India is reaching tipping point. What was till very recently a medium that respectable middle class families used as the last resort has suddenly become the preffered option for many urban youth/ families!
Some 7.5mn people use the marriage sites, up from 4 mn in 2004.(Source : IAMAI)

2. The offline match making industry is worth $500mn. The online revenues today are less than 5% of that. But the shift to online is happening at an exponential pace!

3. The internet beats the search capabilities of traditional contacts. Busy professionals seek the speed of the net. The ease of finding many profiles under one roof is leading to their popularity. Also in an arranged marriage, till very recently the search for the partner was the responsibility of the parents and the extended joint family.

But the internet has transferred the search option to the boy/ girl in some cases. So its a case of compatibility first followed by the rituals of an arranged marriage.

4. Today, the emphasis has shifted from merely seekig a 'good family' and 'physical features' to 'compatibility issues' and 'seeking a professional'. Something which the internet lets one test in a much better way.

5. Online match-making offers another advantage. In India, there is a sort of stigma attached to turning down a marriage proposal. The Internet allows users to disengage easily and discreetly.

6. Middle class India is taking onto these sites with a vengeance. Let me share this incident of a close friend who's sister got a match through the net. The relatively net-unawares father was aided by my friend and his sister! The profile was actually penned by the bride to be, edited by the brother and the e-mail signed off in the father's name!

7. I suspect the barrier of inter-caste( if not inter-religion) marriages among the urban and rural middle class will be finally broken by these net sites...
The speed, accessibility and the sheer omnipresence and connectivity of these marriage portals will penetrate the last resistance of the caste based marriage system.

8. The Indian marriage accessory and lifestyle market which already is among the biggest in the world will get more organised. A lot of the services and brands will move onto the net.

Do share with me any other insights, observations and personal stories that you may have on the subject and in this space!

Saturday, November 4

Indian Youth and Technology


This is well second in the series...The first one was Indian Youth and PDA. Once again carried by a very enthu planner(virtual)!

Though the sample was very select and skewed towards the upper strata, the findings are interesting and the fringe is where the action is!

1.The young uns do not consider a walkman, disc man a gadget anymore, even though its their first gadget. The ubiquitous mobile, their PC, iPod, etc. are the new gadgets.

Every generation takes the generic low-tech stuff for granted. The 'Gadget' tag is then reserved for the lil hi-techy stuff!

2. This is interesting - the non-earning youth change their mobile phones more often than the earning ones( baap ka maal, gaddhe mein daal, as my class X maths teacher Mr. Fernandez would say). They buy a new one every year( sometimes within a year). The shelf life of a mobile phone is reducing every day. Remember, it's a fashion accessory for them and not just a phone!

3. Mobile is a requirement at 16. Most parents have promised their kids a mobile for their 16th birthday!

4. On a 4 GB ipod, one only listens to about 50 songs max and the 2500 songs in it are not replaced for over a year sometimes. Chris Anderson's The Long Tail in operation. BTW, Harshal have you bought the book? I am planning to do so over the weekend...

5. The 'Gamer' has arrived. I think he is getting mainstreamed( what say?).He seems to live in a completely virtual world, he is not interested in anything close to real world. Not interested in current news updates, stereotype movies etc. Only a Matrix will excite him. He will only shop swanky watches, bikes, and live as closely to the virtual world he indulges in through the PS2 or the X Box.

Even on television 'the Gamer' watches only animated movies and Cartoon channels.

Meraj, do some of your IIT friends, fall in the geek/ gamer archetype...I personally don't know any of them!

6. Orkuting has a very high frequency, but does not seem to have depth. i.e the youth log onto to it EVER SO often … but do not have lengthy conversations. It fulfills the need to stay in touch with everybody.

They find friends on orkut and call for a chat in a messenger; coz chatting on Orkut looses privacy!

7. Online shopping - Lack of a credit card seems to be the obstacle. Immense scope for product innovation in credit cards here!
Most people, who claim to dislike online shopping, have never tried at all.

8. Good ole TV in death throes. The thrill of catching up with your fav serial seems to have vanished. Good time for DTH entry and TiVO!

9. Androgyny seems to be the trend. Like in shopping habits, in acquisition of gadgets and that hitherto male bastion -Gaming( though in India it might take a while).

Even the mobile handsets seem to be morphing towards a rounded edges, feminine feel and yet a masculine core. Guys what would be the most androgynous handset in the market?

10. The collapse of age. The kids are displaying adult like behaviour. The adults wanna play. My father is a case in point!

Have you noticed other trends. Do share...

It would be great if all of us could append our own changing media/ gadget acquisition habits. Love to compile and analyse the direction we are moving! Although this does give some sense!

Friday, November 3

Buyers Shoppers You and Me

Some days ago, there was an article in agencyfaqs by the CEO of MASH, the new shopper marketing division of Sam Balsara's Madison!

I can understand that the article was his way of PRing the new entity, but the hard-sell on the 'shopper' as being a totally new animal was a bit difficult to stomach!

The trouble with American style retail science is that it heavily jargonises common sense and is largely scientification of the obvious...And the MASH CEO appears to be a sucker for it!

My rant on some of the points raised in the article:

1. With the growth in organised retails, there has been a shift from 'consumption' to 'purchase'.
Frankly, I don't know what he meant by this...At any point of time, all of us desire some stuff, buy many stuff, consume the stuff that can be consumed, shop for self and others. It's just that the pace, the place and the range and array of brands available have changed dramatically in the last few years!

And more new categories are now becoming impulse categories.But that's about it!

2. We need to figure out if the 'shopper' is shopping for self-improvement, reward, adventure, relaxation, socialising or just replenishment?
Again, this is a meaningless question. We are all shoppers at different times and for all the above motives at some time.

And these motives have existed from the time of the earliest bazaar and haat! They are not generated by the likes of Big Bazaar or Wal Mart!

3. At some point the question is raised that - How is the retailer going to ‘Attract-Arrest-Acquire’ the 'shopper' from the point she enters the store to when she is moving around and checking stuff out to when she actually picks up and puts the product in her basket?

All I can say is that I find it increasingly difficult to convince even my 3 year old son to do anything against his wishes...then how the hell is it possible to 'Attract-Arrest-Acquire' the shopper...

Having said that it is possible to suggest, influence, excite, engage, encourage the person into trying, buying, experimenting, coming again, etc.

Minus the hype, retail 2.0 is not much different from the way we have always bought stuff...Of course there are differences.

1. Shopping is no longer for needs. It's for wants. And even JLT. For no particluar reasons.

2. With lack of open spaces and our tropical climate, the big AC malls are the new play-ground for the urban middle class.

3. With the break-down of joint families and the drop in the large social circuits of nuclear families, malls are the new social outing.

4. When kids pester, we mall; to fight week-end boredom we mall; when our diasporic extended familes arrive, we mall and so on...

5. Shopping is the new stress reliever, not just for women but for busy rich executives, for DINK couples, for single men/ women, for the elderly with heavy wallets and kids in the USA and others.

6. And as I said earlier, the boundaries between impulse and durable goods, between monthly necessities and luxury brands are blurring!

7. Design - of the mall, the brand experience and packaging, architecture, and sensorial marketing/ branding is on the rise...

8. However, expectation levels of the consumer will always rise to surge ahead of the latest service and product offerings.( Read a related post - Hedonistic Treadmill and Customer Service)

9. Having said that, the fundamentals haven't changed. People will find the stuff they want, stock up in a sale, avoid unpleasant mall/ brand/ service experiences, and generally stay a step ahead of the marketer...

The Buyer is the Shopper is the 50%-Discount-sale-Gate-Crasher is the VFM-Seeker is the Luxury-Brand-Buyer is you and is me!

But that's under 5% of India to put things in perspective...

Thursday, November 2

John Hegarty Speak

BBH is among the agencies that I admire more than I know about. It's more in the mindspace as it's India entry is the staple scoop of Brand Equity:-)

So, when my friend Gopal sent me this article, I was tempted to share with the wider world. Don't know if it's copyright infringement!

The article reproduced in entirety from Irelands Marketing Monthly...

Man of ideas - Interview by Michael Cullen

Mention the name John Hegarty and some of the best known TV campaigns ever spring to mind. He is the man who gave Levi's gravitas from the time Nick Kamen shocked onlookers in the launderette and a young Brad Pitt photographing with a curvacious brunette in the desert. Mention Audi and Hegarty's line Vorsprung durch technik follows.

For Hegarty, the business of advertising is simple, straightforward. It is about talented people coming together and having great ideas. Whether agency staff sit together or in separate rooms, whether they hang upside down from the ceiling or do away with desks and have bean bags, it is largely irrelevant. Great ideas, great ads maketh.

Relaxed, pragmatic and remarkably demure for a man who has scaled enviable creative heights, Hegarty knows adland intimately and appears content in himself. Diplomatic too. Speaking to him, one suspects that should the UN look towards Europe rather than the Far East for a replacement for Kofi Annan, Hegarty could be in with a shout.

John Bartle, Nigel Bogle and himself first got together in 1973 at TBWA. When asked what for him was the most important element in their 23-year partnership, Hegarty said: "Respect… respect for each others' skills. I think all three of us had that. No one tried to do somebody else's job." Bartle retired in 1999 but still keeps in contact.

'None of us is as good as all of us' became the BBH mantra. It came out of the fact that the three agency founders had differing skills; Bartle's was in planning, Bogle account management and Hegarty creative. While all three may have been handy at what they did, by combining their talents, they felt they could achieve something special.

"It was a genuine belief that this is a business that no one person is the ultimate boss," Hegarty said, "it's about a combination of skills working together. By constantly referring to that, you make everyone understand that's how they've got to do things."

Hegarty avoids using the word 'originality', leaving that feat to God alone.

'Original' prompts unease. He refers to a line he heard which says that 'originality is determined by the obscurity of your sources', a credo not unlike the one used to define plagiarism: 'There's not such thing as plagiarism, you only improve'. Anyway, freshness is the word Hegarty prefers to call on when describing something new and true in ads.

"There's a huge danger with lots of new technology around," Hegarty said. "There's fragmenting of media, the change of how people are consuming media and how they are more in control. They are going to determine when and what they're going to watch. That means advertisers have really got to think how they're going to communicate.

"But if do great things, people will watch them." While Hegarty hesitates to describe British advertising as the best there is anywhere, but "it is pretty good". The UK is lucky in having a perfect population size - not too big, 60 million people - and the market benefits hugely from having the non-advertising BBC, which sets standards.

"Anybody who says to me the market is the great leveller and the great decider, I kind of go, well… if you didn't have a public-funded broadcasting system, commercial TV in the UK would be even worse. One only to go to countries like the US to see the alterative and the way they've had to go to finance TV in a completely different manner.

"In the UK, there's a sense of irony. Humour's important as it's the enemy of authority and it's a great way of getting people to listen. Of course, it's subjective but as a creative person in advertising you either can do humour it or you can't."

BBH have always had a policy of not working for either a political party or a tobacco company. Hegarty believes that if you subscribe to one political ethos and it conflicts with another, it is hard, if not impossible, to work on such an account. But the agency has had approaches over the years, including when John Major became Conservative leader.

BBH was asked to meet with Chris Patten - a Tory Hegarty admires - but they chose not to do business. BBH does handle public information accounts, such as Barnardo's and anti-smoking campaigns. They are on the Central Office of Information (COI) roster.

While relatively conservative in his style of play, Hegarty admires Trevor Beattie, ex-TBWA and co-founder of Beattie McGuinness Bungay. Beattie has built reputations for clients and himself with clever PR stunts for the likes of fcuk. "Yeah," Hegarty said, "I think Beattie is a very talented guy. Do I like all his work? No."

"But he's good for our business. He's a fantastic spokesman. A lot of people didn't like fcuk but it wasn't talking to them. It was intended to annoy them. That's partly what made it successful. They got annoyed and other people went 'yeah!' It's a bit like drugs. The reason drugs are so popular is because they're banned. That's part of their allure."

BBH limits the agency showreel to current work. So when potential clients come knocking on their door, they get to see only ten commercials and a number of print campaigns. Despite having a collection of brilliant work in their archives, Hegarty does not believe in presenting golden oldies in new business pitches.

Why did BBH do the media deal with Leo Burnett? "We realised we needed more than one office," Hegarty said, "that everything could no longer be done out of London. That's a thing to learn, you don't get everything right straight off. To make it work, without having a global network, we knew we had to do a deal on media."

So they signed up with Starcom, giving Leo Burnett a 49 per cent share. BBH now has six agencies in all. Singapore was the first shop outside the UK and then came New York, Tokyo, Shanghai and Sao Paolo. While Hegarty tries not to do too much travelling, duty calls. Luckily, BBH is now the global agency for the £60m British Airways account.

"I don't like being one of those creative directors who comes in, looks at the work and says 'it's all shit' and flies out. Whatever you do, it's important you carry on working on actual pieces of business. It keeps you in touch with the reality of being an agency and running an account - you stay fresh, alert and alive to the problems out there."

Pressing matters on the BA account meant Hegarty had to leave Kinsale on the Saturday morning, thereby missing out on the festival banquet and winners show. "We were ready to press the button on certain things," he said. "The big idea was that passengers upgrade to BA, but things have to be in place and the airline has to be able to deliver on that."

The work is there, ready to go. But BBH has not concentrated more on giving them business advice rather than just ads. Security concerns at airports with queus a mile long and restrictions on what passengers are allowed to bring through in their hand luggage has also had a negative effect on getting plans off the ground.

Hegarty explains how Audi's Vorsprung durch Technik (Lead through Technology) came about. He was on a tour of the Audi plant in Germany and he noticed a sign on the wall with the infamous words. He noted them and put them to use. Since then, the phrase has found its way into pop culture and was used in the U2 song Zooropa and Blur's Parklife.

What type of career might Hegarty have pursued had he not become involved in advertising? "When I went to art school, I wanted to be a painter," he said. "But I was undoubtedly a rotten painter, which came as a shock. I love architecture and the idea of managing an environment and experience for people… a bit like advertising."

Having said that, he agrees with his colleague, Nigel Bogle, who recently suggested that advertising has become less influential. "Our business isn't good at promoting itself," he said. "It doesn't have a clear view of what it needs to do and it's very short-term in its vision. As far as clients are concerned, advertising isn't an industry which has stature."

WHIFF OF EXCITEMENT John Hegarty's agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, has created some magical campaigns for Lynx deodorant, like the 'Click' commercial with actor Ben Affleck.

Was advertising still paying the price for when there was a lot shysters in the business? "I think they still are and they always will be," Hegarty said. "One of the big problems with advertising is that you don't need any qualifications to be in it. Anybody can set up an agency tomorrow and spout all sorts of nonsense and get all sorts of headlines.

"That's one of the problems. It's one of the advantages too. Years ago, I was at a talk on new agencies. Geoff Howard-Spink was on the panel and a client in the audience asked him did he think it was appalling how much agencies earned, to which he replied: 'Listen, there are no barriers in this business, why don't you start an agency?'

Hegarty has harsh words for the trade press in the UK. "The suck up the nonsense which some people come out with," he said. "They don't really question it. No other industry would put up with. If architects, for example, were to do it, they'd be laughed at. But in our industry they are given column inches as they go about the way it's going to be…

"The trade press should expose them, not glorify them. It's like economists who make predictions and they review them at the end of the year as to what they said and what actually happened. But there's no accounting in advertising. They come out with absurd statements and the media don't come back and question them why it didn't work."

Aside from BBH, Hegarty is a great fan of the work done by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO for The Economist. He says that every lesson anyone would want to understand about advertising is contained in that first ad, '"I never read The Economist" - Management Trainee, aged 42.' For him, that line by David Abbott is pure brilliance.

As far as some of the BBH accounts that have given him most satisfaction, one would be Phileas Fogg, the gourmet snacks brand sold to United Biscuits. Due to the fact that the ads centred on the Phileas Fogg factory up in Consett, Co Durham, UB could not close the plant and so the advertising had helped in keeping people in their jobs.

Some critics of BBH around Soho have suggested that the agency has allowed the creative standards slip at the expense of winning new business. Hegarty agrees that such remarks are not entirely unfair. The agency was obsessed with having great work and it is essential that they should always strive towards that, but it would be stupid for him to deny that they are altogether happy with where the work is just now.

"We've been very disappointed with some of the work over the last 18 months," he replied candidly. "But you get that playing at such a high level. A campaign comes to an end. Look at Sony Bravia… Fallon had that business for about four years before they created a great piece of work. It takes a long time and it's much more complicated.

"We're now working on Omo and Persil. You can't move it instantly. We've always said 'play the long game'. We've got some brilliant work coming through at the moment." While BBH is not a process-driven agency, neither do they believe in creative chaos. They are very buttoned down and work to a micro network globally.

Hegarty takes some satisfaction out of the fact that the agency was laughed at by rivals but now many people see the micro model as the way forward. BBH does not entertain speculative pitches but Hegarty is less committed when asked about whether or not clients should be charged for new business presentations.

"Agencies should do what they believe in doing," he said. "Personally, I think it would be better if we were paid but it would never work. There are too many people chasing too much work." On industry awards, Hegarty is not surprisingly broadly in favour of gongs. But he also concedes that they can be over-indulgent and there are far too many of them.

Agencies feel they have to enter a certain number of awards because if they don't, people start saying 'oh well, they're not entering awards any more'. So agencies are sort of forced into entering, whether they really choose to or not.

Hegarty believes it has always difficult to convince people generally of the value of advertising. Clients who understand advertising and use it to its best effect are the successful companies. The media marketplace is overcrowded, as it every market. Audi will not stop making cars just because the car market gets more competitive.

Getting back to the Audi slogan, Vorsprung durch Technik, again, research said they should not go with it as it would not work in the UK. But the client said "but we are German" and Audi (pronounced 'ow-dy' as in 'howdy') went with it.

BBH was in the news earlier this year for a dispute the agency got involved in with production houses over paying directors direct. It became about as BBH tried to explain to the production houses that agencies were under pressure from clients on cutting costs.

BBH felt they were better at negotiating than the production houses.

Hegarty puts the row down, which became a stand-off for a while, as "just one those things", where someone wakes up one morning feeling a bit miffed. The matter was resolved and it was agreed that BBH would negotiate with editors and they would work with the production houses to find editors which best suited the given project.

Was the action by BBH necessary? "No, it was completely out of hand. The issue wasn't really about editors, it was about agencies continually doing more of the work production houses do. My belief is that increasingly we will because we'll have to control it more. We're better at buying. Our agency is better at it than most production companies."

Advertising is not strictly speaking an art in Hegarty's mind. Rather it is where art meets commerce. Hundred of years from now anthropologists will look at commercials like the one for Heineken 'Water in Majorca' where you have a toffee-nosed public school type female woman being changed into a Cockney lass and dissecting it in so many ways.

That commercial reflected the British obsession with class. Nowadays, the emphasis in advertising is in sport, often dubbed 'the new religion' and advertising measures that. Hegarty recalls a scene from Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters where the aliens came down to earth and Francois Truffaut said: "I think they want these people to come."

They sought fun, to play. We are moving towards a culture that wants to play and advertising is part of the entertainment industry. On media speculation that Levi's and BBH may about to part company after 24 years, Hegarty said that the client was upset by the rumours that were put about and denied they had any currency whatsoever.

One client which did exit BBH during the summer was the £50m Sony Ericsson global account. The split followed a decision by Sony Ericsson to buy a brand strategy from Wolff Olins with which BBH fundamentally disagreed. They told the client that they could not possibly execute it. Saatchi & Saatchi has since won the global business.

The Wolff Olins strategy, which was presented to BBH by the mobile phone marketer as a fait accompli, was based on the 'I Love New York' idea, but with the Sony Ericsson logo replacing the heart shape, which, of course, itself was originally substituted for the word 'Love'. Instead of New York, words like 'music' and 'photography' will feature.

While these days are among the more difficult times to be in advertising, they are also one of the most exciting periods Hegarty has yet encountered. After all the hype and misplaced promises, the internet stands as a strong force in communications in the future.

Hegarty has a lot of friends in adland, but he has also developed new ties by investing in a vineyard in France. Having been born and bred in London, his friends suggested that he should buy somewhere in the country. He had no interest in somewhere temporary where you visit for a few weeks, lock up again and return home, so he bought a vineyard.

How does Hegarty think he is perceived in advertising? "I think they wonder why I still go on," he said with a wry smile. Andy Berlin on Red Cell referred to him as "a creative entrepreneur". Somewhat unsure about its meaning, Hegarty just says he believes he has an understanding of client needs and he likes to makes "businesses better".

Now 62, Hegarty still enjoys going to work each day. Advertising is like a drug in that it is enjoyable. He quotes the line by Jerry de Femina, who said "advertising is the best fun you can have with your clothes on". The long, liquid lunch may happen less often now but that matters a jot to Hegarty. Fun means using great ideas to become great ads.

Guys, if you find interesting articles on the advertising stalwarts, do send it to me. Occasionally, I would love posting them on IndiAdRant...

Cheerios