Out of Loop

Saw these very colourful, very un-connected - In the Loop- BPL mobile hoardings, print ads, kiosks and banners all over the city!

Obviously an attempt to contemporise, youth-ise the brand. But why did they have to play 'Holi' with the BPL brand beats me?(There are yellow, green, purple banners all over the neighbourhood!!)

I found the 'In the loop' teasers also very 'thanda'!! Personally I feel brand make-overs should mostly be continuous and not 'disruptive' like this one seems to be!

While BPL never really was as desirable a brand as say Hutch, I had always loved it's clean look...I feel the contemporisation should have happened within the broader design contours of the brand.

And if the service, product and customer programmes haven't changed along with the brand design/communication, then it just might be a case of all the money down the drain!

Different by Design

Over the last fortnight or so, saw these print ads. For some commercial-cum-residential property. Quite kewl...Done by an agency called SCION!

With the average quality of print ads in India being quite low, these really stood out!

Planner Tip of The Month

I first tasted McLuhan about a decade back. Most of him went over my head...Then about 3-4 years back laid my hands on a 'kunji/ key' of McLuhan at a Strand book SALE...

Whenever, I feel troubled by the sea of mediocre thoughts(both mine and around me), I delve into his...

Here's a tip for planners from the book.

McLuhan would bristle at the word "connection". He thought that connectivity just like theory, was hopelessly "visual", that is, a one-dimensional and outmoded strategy to understand anything. In McLuhan's opinion, seemingly un-related things could yield an insight once they were brought in vicinity of each other.

In his writing, he was fond of using the technique of collage and juxtaposition, sometimes including pictures and designs, not to illustrate a point but merely to bring out new ones from the reader...

Image sourced from Gettyimages...

Made for Shade and other Thots

About a week ago had visited the SALE at the kids apparel store 'Gini & Jony' at Linking Road!
Each of the junior mannequins was sporting cool sun-glasses!

I find these days the distinction between kid stores and the adult ones are gradually blurring. (Perhaps I over-react as a parent of a 4 year old.) Well the odd thots I had that day...

1. The world of marketed 'cool', 'attitude' and 'style' dominate the world of innocence, fun and colours.

2. The world of children's stories is being replaced by fast-paced animation and hi-tech effects...

3. Children today are getting exposed to a more homogenised global/US culture far more than the Indian/local/ regional one...
While I grew up on stories recounted to me by my Dadi and Nani, most of Neo's stories unfold on VCDs and DVDs with characters from different cultures. I knew where my roots were. Don't think Neo does. Maybe it's not such a bad thing after all!

4. Unfortunately, I find my son believes that 'English' is a cooler language than 'Hindi'. More fashionable. He never talks in Hindi in malls and in air-conditioned environments!!

5. Media exposure, 'mall culture' and time-poor-money-rich parents have made kids more fashion-conscious. They pester for colour co-ordinated dress. They have strong POV on their ward-robe and daily dress codes:-)

Mental logbook : Create a list of words that I would never use for a children's brand, product, medium. I would definitely avoid - cool, sexy, attitude, rebellion...Young Neo with his own shades!!

How far will you travel to catch my eye-ball?

Pic. The Garnier Fructis bookmarks kept at the cash counter at the Oxford-Statesman Book Store in CP, New Delhi. If only there was a nice quote(environment-relevance) or a beauty tip(category relevance), the brand effort would have been so much more meaningful.Garnier Fructis product and logo again on the Railway Reservation Chart on a AC-3 compartment at the Kurla Station!

I think, two equally annoying 360 executions!

While I like the crafted, youthful look of most of Garnier Fructis TVCs and am a medium user of its anti-wrinkle creams, found this surround sound communication quite out-of-place!

Is this what 360deg thinking has become?

Mass Man and the Electric Environment

Was chatting online with a friend about social media in the morning. At night caught up with Neil Postman's book - Disappearance of Childhood...

Let me share this excerpt pp 69-70 from the book...

It is alleged that upon being told that through the telegraph a man in Maine, could instantly send a message to a man in Texas, Thoreau asked, "But what do they have to say to each other?" :-)

In asking this question, to which no serious attention was paid, Thoreau was directing attention to the psychological and social meaning of the telegraph, and in particular to its capacity to change the character of information - from the personal and regional to the impersonal and global.

A hundred and twenty years later Marshall McLuhan tried to address the issue Thoreau raised. He wrote:

When man lives in an electric environment, his nature is transformed and his private identity is merged with the corporate whole. He becomes "Mass Man." Mass Man is a phenomenon of electric speed, not of physical quantity. Mass man was first noticed as a phenomenon in the age of radio, but he had come into existence, unnoticed, with the electric telegraph.

So, what have we become now? As many of us seamlessly connect to a global community, conversation, brain...As we think in bytes, live under the tyranny of 'perpetual immediacy' and twitter 24 X 7 X 365!!

(Picture sourced from Gettyimages!)

Chain Ki Neend

Was browsing through the fashion/ lifestyle mag 'M', when I cane across this photograph. It's from the book - King, Commoner, Citizen - a selection of photographs by Prashant Panjiar..

"It's a collection that blends the somewhat incongruous contemporary lives of erstwhile Indian princes with the incredibly diverse, layered, euphoric, despairing and paradoxical existence of the common Indian"

A welcome relief from the sanitised picturescape of the glossies and large sections of the dailies and the 'advertised India'!

Visual Post-Its

Since the time I got my Nokia E50, have switched to mobile life caching! My old faithful - the Nikon Cool Pix is lying mostly un-used. I guess it's the sheer convenience and a decent resolution that works in the favour of a camera phone!
Mayawati's fairly clear and ambitious vision statement on the road near Bandra Kurla Complex.
I hate both the term - 'Big B' and this senseless communication!
Neo's first digital painting! Little fingers fearlessly explore digital technology!The Lilavati Hospital lift-man and his ultra fancy cell-phone...Now what SEC is he?
Cell-phone ownership might be playing havoc with the traditional SEC classification in India! Looks like there is a decreasing/ un-predictable co-relation between the handset price and the MHI of the owner(at least in the metros)!

The table-top sticker at Barista. Simple and effective communication!

How to Read for Planning - Tips for future planners

Disclaimer.I am no expert on reading. Well nor an expert on (account)planning for that matter:-)

This post is in response to Kapil's query on how to read for work in a time-starved world.

Here are my rules. Basic, simple but if practiced with discipline hugely effective! At least they work for me:-)

1. Book-vesting. Invest in books. There are no short-cuts. Cut down on beer binges, branded apparel but never on books. And everything of use is still not available online.
My own collection started more than a decade back with second-hand ones, bought regularly and recklessly and at the expense of music and entertainment.

2. CrossWording. Of course you can't buy every book. But quick-flip you can and you must. Every week I go to the CrossWord at Bandra and at the price of a Coffee or Assam Tea or just plain water:-), flip through fat, expensive tomes. Make sure you take copious notes...

Speed read the book. First get a sense of the book quickly by looking at the content page. Then read the chapter summaries. Most 'management' type books have them these days...

3. Book-BumpingThis one's a Tom Peters tip I came across many years ago. He advises to bump into books. So place them in your office, at your study table, carry them for commute... Books are great fillers during waiting times. Upto half the time in an agency can be spent waiting if you are in servicing!!
And it's okay if you can't read cover-to-cover...There are more un-read books in my library than read ones...The trick is to get a sense/ feel of what can be found and where!

4. ReflectingIn these days of immense change, information-overload and CPA(continuous partial attention), it's very important to reflect what you think. So make copious notes while reading/ reflecting. Always carry a pencil with you...
Don't be embarrassed scribbling while commuting... I have gotten over stranger stares at the air-port or elsewhere...
Write your questions/doubts/thoughts in the margins of the book. Revisit them. You will be surprised how you can solve most of them on your own!

5. Out-ZoningEvery person has his/ her comfort zone areas. It's very important to frequently step out of that and read stuff that's difficult, that's not your area. Plan serendipitous discoveries LOL

6. Concepting A planner's world is about new concepts. While you are at it(reading), keep looking for new concepts for your brands. It may just spring up in the middle of an article in India Today, a novel or an old National Geographic issue.

7. Post-it-ingWhat started as an exercise at TBWA with Meraj and Pooja has now been perfected at Bates. Post-it every single idea, great line, interesting thought that you come across...Charge the Post-its to your agency:-)

8. Multi-datingIt's okay to read many books at a time. Try co-relating stuff from one book to the other. This mental yoga(sort of) helps thinking!

9. India-CentricIt's important to first know India, Indian culture, popular culture, Bollywood, mythology better rather than copying a global(US/ UK led) reading taste palette...Our communication needs to have an Indian flavour and for that we need to revisit our roots frequently...

10. Multi-laning Reading for planning/work is a multi-media activity. The book may lead to the blog or vice versa. The web-site might lead to a particular chapter or Google talk...We must learn to process information across many platforms...Don't worry, it may sound complicated, but actually it's quite fun and you may actually be doing it already!

Am sure many of you might have your own tips worth sharing! Do that...Kapil - hope this helps:-)

PS. Picture source : gettyimages.com

Addition By Subtraction

Read an excellent post by Neil today. Gotta re-read itd 'Deep Commute-Think' about it!!

Am always conscious of the fact that very few of my posts are on design or designers...Fact is very less of my time is spent in the company of designers or on design thinking!

Had gone to Chennai some time back and at Landmark picked up this book. Design Your Self by Karim Rashid.. Karim Rashid is a famous industrial designer whose clients include Prada, Umbra, Alessi among others...

Had no previous knowledge of him. But am finding the book quite inspirational and useful for planner thinking as well! His other books are Evolution and I Want to Change the World.

Buried among the chapters I found the one on Addition By Subtraction - Ways to have more with less.

Some real gems there are! So applicable to Planning and life in general.

1. Streamline your possessions.
Analyse each object in your home and ask yourself when was the last time I used that object? Why do I have it? Do I need it? Does it bring meaning, memory, love, function, experience. pleasure, humour or energy to my life?

Most brands can earn from this. Very often we carry sacred vestiges from the brand past. Holy brand cows that better be junked

2. Live with a real reflection of yourself.Remove anything that doesn't add to your experience.

3. Downsize your technology.
Beware of over-gadget-ization!!

For planners the equivalent would be getting lost in the tools and the templates. And the jargons that we keep inventing to say the same trite stuff!

4. Stay away from junk.
Junk briefs, junk creative, junk thinking, junk meetings/tele-cons:-)

This entire book is a visual treat and a how to manual to simplify stuff! While on the subject of simplicity, must share a quote of Freeman Thomas(one of the designers of the new VW Beetle) which I read in the morning- "If you distill Mickey Mouse, it's three circles. The Beetle is three arcs on the side".

Devdas, MMORPGs, Hentai and the Inter-generational Conversation

It was a Sunday spent in the hospital as Neo was down with a severe bacterial infection...Amongst the umpteen trips to Lilavati, two things caught my attention. A front page story in TOI on the gaming obsession amongst the young(The New Devdas is a Gamer) and the snatch of a conversation between a 6 year old girl and her grand-parents in the lift!

I know the world of gaming exists. I watch and wonder about it from a distance. Too old, too weary, too fascinated with it...

1. Had initiated a research few months back. With little supervision, didn't really get to the bottom of either gamers or gaming . Must do a ver 2.0 soon!

2. "Unable to face the realities of heart-break, outright rejection, and other humiliations of love, youngsters today are seeking refuge in addictive multi-user games, a whole parallel universe where life is boy-friendly." - Sunday TOI

3. Looks like these MMORPGs(Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games) are filling in for real life relationships, sexual fantasies and other fetish. And the legion of obsessive admirers is growing by the day!

4. There there is something called the Hentai(Japanese term) - these are cartoon games which involve sadomasochism and paedophilia!!

5. Amidst all this general knowledge I gleaned, I heard an exasperated 6 year old girl explain the Gameboy to her grand parents. Who kept on asking why the boys play gameboy and not the 'gamegirl?!@' LOL

In another few months, I can envisage a similar conversation between Neo and my father or worse still between Neo and me!!

Jeetey Raho

Some of the better ads on TV never get the due attention because many of us are busy debating the craft and the cleverness in our business! I have the ICICI Jeetey Raho TVC in mind...Maybe it's a little late in the day but let me finally park the whirling thoughts in the head...

Saw it 1-2 times on TV. Loved it for the following reasons.

1. The interplay between a modern day husband and wife is very nicely captured...I am tired of the old cliches that are no longer true! Ever so quickly there is a gender role shift happening in our towns and our lives...Accelerating every year!

The bread-winner, the decision maker, the influencer, the soft task and the hard task master, the dreamer and the doer are all roles which are getting re-defined, re-negotiated and re-packaged. Most TVCs once again lag LIFE!

2. Just the other day, was watching an old Sanjeev Kumar flick, where the heroine in a song sequence is touching the feet of SK. Fast forward to this defining imagery and the line 'Jeetey Raho' with the wife giving the 'token ashirvaad' to the husband.

3. Again it's hearting to see a girl child in the TVC. Looks like a nuclear family with one kid. And this time it's not Rahul or Karan or Ravi bete...
There is an underlying code in TV advertising which is mostly respected. When it's one child, show a boy, if it's two show a boy and a girl...

We mirror our society's fondness for boys...It might be a small thing in a 30sec commercial, but most of us fall prey to it. This ad doesn't and that's why I loved it!

Like with everything around us, ads with 'Batti Gul Ho Gayi', 'Hawa Nikal Gayi', 'Pant Khul Gayi' often end up being the most debated commercials with ad gurus voicing hoarse their coarse opinions, while its commercials like these which make the mark both in terms of sales and sense! May their tribe increase...

(Read Ankur Jain's nice analysis)as well!

P.S The hoarding near reclamation shot through the window pane of a moving cab on my mobile camera. Am ignoring my Nikon these days:-)

Being Digital

Many years ago, I was sitting in the engineering college library. Dejected. I had just flunked in a digital related subject. (By the way, I have a Computer Engineering degree:-)

I felt getting into engineering was the worst decision I had ever made...I was reasonably good at theory but when it came to practicals and problem solving, my brain never worked!

I had reached the conclusion that engineering, computers and any thing digital was not my cup of tea!

And then I remember I read an inspiring article about/ on Microsoft(Back then Google and Apple were not the heroes!!) And I decided to give digital one last shot. Put in some rigorous hours. Slogged my butt off.

The results were mixed. I still managed some very average marks but scraped a distinction in the last semester!

But at least I had gotten over my fears of computers/ digital. I wisely decided to do course correction. Did an MBA and then quietly plugged into the analog world of advertising. But gradually over the years I kept my interest alive in things new media and digital.

I still have more interest in human psychology than plain technology. But the persistence gradually paid off. Recently, I got some additional responsibility to look after new media and digital in the group...

Actually on Saturday picked up this Nicholas Negroponte classic - 'Being Digital'(a must read for anybody interested in digital) and got swamped by this flood of old memories amidst the swelling Mithi...

Some Negroponte nuggets from Being Digital and elsewhere...
1. Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living.
2. Incrementalism is innovation’s worst enemy
3. Learning to program is a way of thinking about thinking, and when young people get into it, that way of thinking about thinking can change their perspective.
4. “I’m not interesting in training. Training is what we do for dogs, I’m more interested in teaching people to learn”.

Re-reading 'Being Digital' is actually turning out to be far more interesting than I had thot:-) Even after 12 years( first published in '95), it's quite mind-bending and lays a friendly road-map for surviving and prospering in the digital present and future!

Kal Aaj Aur Taj

It's been there for quite some time now. This entire vote for Taj Mahal movement. I have had ambivalent views on this entire saga.

Increasingly, many of us have been exercising arm chair voting on various topical issues. Be it the NDTV initiated voting on the Jessica Lal trial or now this Taj Mahal(Top 10 wonders of the world) vote.

1. As an Indian, maybe I should feel proud about it. Somehow, I don't. I would rather not scribble messages on ASI protected monuments. Or litter on bandstand/ Juhu Chaupati, than indulge in littering but still sms to a short code for some global rating of ancient monuments...

2. Conspiracy theory - Maybe all voting patterns are initiated by mobile phone service providers:-)After all they are the biggest beneficiaries!!

3. Why does most voting happen for dead glamorous models and/or beautiful monuments. It rarely happens for road rage and drunken driving victims and poor farmers committing suicides!!

4. I feel more and more we are part of a larger matrix where bigger issues, real problems are sidelined by the topical TRP-hugging ones. Be it Prince, Buddhia, Shilpa Shetty, Chappell imbroglio...

5. More than a year ago, I had picked up a book on 'manipulation by media' by Noam Chomsky. It was quite a heavy read and I never got around to reading it much. Must dig into it for insights and answers now...

6. Well coming back to the 'Vote for Taj' ad. It actually worked. With all the ambivalence and cynicism in my head, I felt like finally voting for it:-)

Hindustan Ka Dil Dekho

I quite liked the print avatar of the MP Tourism film!

Folk song meets comic book strip meets print ad.
Wish they had done a full pager:-)