Person of the Year : Ashish Khetan

I want to dedicate the last post of the year to the gutsy, ballsy Tehelka reporter, Ashish Khetanwho exposed the men behind the Gujarat pogrom of 2002!!

Of course, now with the election results and Modi back in the saddle, the landscape of debate has changed. Mass media(with few exceptions) is singing hymns of the man's iron-will, economic savviness, political ideology and more...Modi masks are doing brisk business & the Moditva TRPs have over-taken saas-bahu soaps...Judging by the history of judicial probes into riots and government excesses, I don't think the rioters, rapists and murderers will ever get punished!!

But hats off to Tehelka, Tarun Tejpal & his editorial team and in particular Ashish Khetan, who carried this audacious sting operation over a 6 month period, risked his life to bring the gory facts to light.

You can read the cover-story(Tehelka Nov 03,'07 issue)here...

You may like to read another thought provoking write-up by Tarun Tejpal(To Kill A Party, Tehelka, Jan 12 issue)...

From the column "Do we wish to travel on the miraculous road the founding fathers forged: democratic, liberal, inclusive, modern?

Or are we going to careen off into jingoism, bigotry, retrograde religion, and the powermongering of political-corporate cabals?

As a people do we look to becoming modern or merely prosperous?

As a people do we understand that a free society, a democracy, is not just about winning elections but about creating and sustaining institutions that strive for equality, justice and fairplay?

Might is not right. Majority is not right. Money is not right. In the good society, only right is right. And we all know, at all times, the difference between right and wrong.

The Future of Entertainment

Just read my blog friend Neil Perkins's detailed post on the 'Future of Entertainment. Since many of the trends 2008 pieces in the Indian media-sphere have been quite vapid and vacuous, catching up on this post was quite a relief...

Neil, allow me to quote from your post and salt & pepper it with my India-centric thots.

1. Entertainment is becoming more fluid and flexible, interactive and active, individually defined, networked, varied in time, location and place...

2. Growing affluence underpins higher expectations. Even children have increasingly sophisticated demands. They are not confined by traditional constructs of consumption!

Just this morning, my 4 yr old son, Neo asked his Nani for a 'real mobile'. He was specific & assertive - 'Khilona nahin chahiye. Baat karna hai'!! Our own expectations from customer service, vacations, lifestyle, fashion & technology brands have grown exponentially and continue to do so...

We are all on a hedonistic consumer treadmill. We need better experiences to give us the same or less kick!

3. There is a powerful role for the shared collective experience (seen currently in the growth in live music, and strong demand for sports viewing).

This is one area where we cud spend some time in 2008. Brand conversations, activities and planned actions largely happen with a one-to-one marketer mind-set.

4. Networks of communication are already ubiquitous but our understanding of their full potential and operation is still pubescent. But huge potential exists beyond the blogging phenomenon and current popular networking sites for evolving forms of creativity and expression.

Ad agencies will take a while understanding the potential of community communication here in India. My guess is that media agencies, digital out-fits and new web based entrepreneurial companies, small and mid size will show the path. Then maybe the large networks will wake up and shake up!

5. A growing proportion of the population is and will be consistently multitasking. According to this research, people are currently fitting in more than 7.2 hours of additional activities into the average day!!

- How do I calculate how many more hours did I pack in my day in 2007??
- So do we do MGFs(Multi Tasking Group Discussions) now to elicit new behavioural patterns?
- And how do we measure attentive eye-balls!:-)
- How does it impact the 30 sec commercial, or the viral video.
- Do we need a new guy, say called the Media Landscapist to do the thinking around this subject...

6. The ‘new meaning of luxury’ is about time oases and getting away from it all. And reinforces the long term demand for the ‘bring it on’ realm of media-delivered entertainment on TV and magazines, as well as creating interesting links to the ‘cult of the home’ with home as primary site for downtime, in our busy, choice-overloaded daily lives...

- Hey, this trend I had predicted in 2002-03( pre blogging days). Had written a piece called the 'Division Economy' back then. Maybe it was ahead of its time. LOL
- Will this new time oasis be age dependent?
- Is it a big enough business to leave my planner job and jump into? LOL

Thanks Neil for getting me thinking as always and Happy New Year buddy!

Change Story - Letterman

G. P. Sawant, 61, estimates that he has written more than 10,000 letters for people who were unable to do so.

The frenetic pace of change in India has been captured and replayed to us to death by planner power-points:-) and research dockets.

But Change I feel is best captured in stories...

So here's a nice story of a man who made a living by writing letters(what are they??:-) for the unlettered before the communication/mobile revolution took India by storm.

The story was forwarded by Meraj. It appeared in NYT.

A Legend Hangs His Boots

Friday was the official farewell of Mohammed Khan - our out-going Chairman and creative honcho. Pity, I never got to know him well/actually at all. Last couple of months, he had mostly been on leave or on baton-passing-role...

Mohammed has been involved in setting-up of some of India’s best-known creative agencies today. He was one of the co-founders of Rediffusion in 1973, came on board to start Contract in 1978 and finally in 1983, started Enterprise.

He has been involved with/ built iconic brands like Raymond, Charms, Lakme and most brands that had their origins in the 70s and 80s.

Mohammed modestly says: “Half the credit should go the clients, we had excellent relationships.” “In fact, that’s one thing that’s missing today –– agency relationships with suppliers, photographers, directors etc, which made them give that little extra. That was what made the difference between good and great.” (ET)

Most of the advertising honchos were there - Ranjan Kapur, Piyush, Prasoon, Balki, ...along with the Bates team with Sonal and Subhash!

The high-point of the evening was Tom Alter(a close friend of Mohammed) reciting Ghalib with lot of passion & feeling to a youngish crowd, who listened impatiently with little understanding of the Urdu language or the nuances of Ghalib...

Though I was a bit inebriated on Sula red wine, managed to take some pix and catch snippets of eulogising speech and random spice:-)

1. Lets start with Mohammed. A legend. He thanked three people in particular in his warm, avuncular(though have heard stories of his temper) style. Subhash Ghoshal for rehabilitating him at Contract. His client Sunny Pillai of VST industries for writing a cheque of 10 lacs that enabled him and Rajeev Aggrawal(also present at the party) to start 'Enterprise' and Raghu - a soulmate and co-worker of many years!

Mohammed also said that he had two big worries. Both of which seem to have been resolved. The first being what would he do after retirement. But then he recently saw Alyque with a smashing babe and thought that life after advertising might not be so bad after all LOL. And after Sonal taking over the creative leadership at Bates, his second worry has also been taken care of...

And his friendly poke at Ogilvy while introducing Sonal was - "Piyush, watch out your ass!!:-)"

2. Ranjan recalled the famous Khan remarks during the heydays of Enterprise- "Ogilvy is just a middle of the road agency" and "the reason that Ogilvy claps so hard at award shows is that they have little else to cheer about"!

3. The streaky haired Sonal had this to say - "Mohammad saab, aapke itne bade jootey aur hamare itne chhote pair, kam se kam hamare pairon ka size toh dekh liya hota"...

All in all a nice warm party, a sentimental send-off with a good blend of veterans from the past and the present.Tom Alter, Juhi Babbar & Rajeev RajaRanjan & MohammedSonal & Mohammed

You can read a Mohd. Khan interview at Nita's blog here...

The Future of Futures

Around this time last year, I was busy trying to predict(in my little, limited way) the possible trends for 2007. Have a look here(2007 - 50 Drifts)...

This time around, I have had the benefit of staying connected with online networks and the global wisdom for over a year and I find the world more complex and chaotic than ever before...

I don't feel the courage or the necessary talent/ wherewithal to even attempt a look into possible futures:-)

However, I came across this nice read on economist.com on 'The Future of Futurology'.

The message is simple : Think Small. Think Short.(SHUT UP)and Listen!

Image : Courtesy - gettyimages.com

Vinod Mehta Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai

Just read a good speech by Vinod Mehta(editor-in-chief, Outlook group of publications) on afaqs. Since it's getting harder and harder these days to read/ view good content in the Indian media-sphere, any good content must be re-purposed and circulated:-) May the tribes of men/ women like Mehta increase...

You can read the full article on agencyfaqs here...

Snack bytes
1. He touched upon the media’s myopia regarding how its credibility is being eroded. To the extent that journalism today is often confused with being part of the entertainment industry.

2. Once you treat the media as if it is no different from running an ice-cream parlour, journalism loses out to commerce.

3. As journalists we need to remember that a newspaper’s credibility is like the virginity of a woman. You can lose it only once.

4. "I say this with much humility, but brand managers, with honourable exceptions, are congenitally incapable of understanding the nature and purpose of journalism. They simply cannot understand it by virtue of their background: which is sales in order to maximise profits. They can never understand that content is more, much more, than what readers want. It also has a social dimension. Thus, content is a mix of what the reader wants and what he does not want. The trick is to marry the two and make money."

5. Ladies and gentlemen, in my nearly 30 years as editor, I have heard a lot of nonsense talked about journalism and its role in India, but this piece of nonsense - 'The reader is King and give him what he demands' - is outrageously and self-evidently absurd and dangerous.

To demolish it is urgent. To let it become the benchmark of our profession is to put in peril everything we have worked for in 60 years.

6. We must lead readers, not be led by them. Really great journalism must do more than merely give people what they want. There has to be room for the unexpected, for stories the public has no idea it wants until it sees them.

What Mr. Mehta rants about is not a phenomena restricted to print or TV media. This senseless and gut-less pandering to 'this is what the consumer wants' ails advertising as well. Read a related post here...

The Diminishing Return On Taglines

After more than two weeks of 'Zero TV'(just a few DVDs), switched on the tube. With little Neo around, watched Tom & Jerry, Mr. Bean and Ben10(hope I remember the name right!!).

Then switched between the half a dozen(lesser) barely sane News Channels and loads of ads...Some ad tagline triggered this train of thot...

1. The one-word-creative-brief and the creative leap has resulted in a whole factory of brand taglines of the 'xyz de' format...

Hilaa de, Pilaa de, Ghumaa de, Jalaa de, Dhikhaa de, Bataa de, Jeeta de

2. At first these 'xyz de' ads were genuinely funny, then there were occasional bright sparks, then they became a Big Bazaar commodity product and now they are mostly pakao spam ads on TV. At least they appear to me:-) Disagreements invited.

3. The thing about these 'xyz de' taglines is that one mostly attributes the tagline to the wrong brand, or even the wrong category and mostly never remembers the message(if there is one)...

4. Fleeting thot - This 'xyz de' tagline hype is in such sharp contrast to the general conversational tone of the web, blogs and the tweets...

5. I feel the 'xyz ads' have mostly diminishing returns today. With the odd exception of say a Mentos where 'Aam Zindagi vs Mentos Zindagi' is a clearly differentiated brand turf, the rest are largely creative indulgences at the expense of the client's money!!

6. So what's the solution? I think it's time we looked at ads sans taglines. There are simply too many of them. We don't need them. Because I suspect people don't register and definitely can't keep track of them anyways. Tagline Overload - especially if you are the 25th candy brand in a cluttered market.

7. So what's the solution? Focus on creating enduring/ endearing symbols/ icons(Mc Donalds), memetic concepts(Wah Sunil Babu, Badhia Hai variety), sticky concepts that can be built into a brand world-view(yes even for a candy brand), a micro-site to engage, develop the thot. Maybe a combo solution. But definitely not a 'xyz de' tagline...

8. There ain't no easy solution. Especially with a generation of creatives in India raised on the belief that 1-word briefs and 3 word taglines will Sab problem solve kara de!!:-)

There is no "Chutki Mein Suljha de" solution here...LOL

No Entry To Brands

I hate the term social media. I feel it lowers the value of both 'media' and the concept of being social. The term is just a convenient envelope to help brands/ commercial media trespass into the private space of people more indiscreetly than ever before!!

Some time back had stumbled upon this post by Richard Huntington which splendidly captures my sentiment. Do read the post.

By trespassing on spheres of conversations between real people, brands reveal their fake selves even more quickly than before.

Social media must not end up being a 'Selling Ground' for brands...The sooner marketers realise this, the better. Because the people out here are smarter, with more IQ, more EQ, more creativity, more environmental sensitiveness than what mass market brands would have ever come across!!

The cost of a backlash to an intrusive brand sales pitch could be quite high in the long term!!

C2B2 + OSO

I saw the movie(musical) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang(C2B2) with little Neo in Munnar some days back...Loved it.

From wikipedia - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a 1968 feature film with a script by Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes, and songs by the Sherman Brothers, based on Ian Fleming's book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which he wrote for his son, Caspar!!

It's the enchanting story of a Magical Car. The film was directed by Ken Hughes and produced by Albert R. Broccoli, of the James Bond films fame!!

Back home was flipping through the TOI and the weekly column by Santosh(Desai) called City City Bang Bang written in his inimitable style and the trademark command over the language...

With C2B2 fresh in the mind as a different back-drop:-) couldn't resist capturing my stray thoughts on the subject of OSO and nostalgia entwined with Santosh's observations.

1. SD - "At a time when there is so much talk about the future, why are we looking(through films like Om Shanti Om) so much to the past? Shouldn't this be a time to reimagine the future in new terms rather than sigh nostalgically about dog collared shirts and polka -dotted trousers?"

My own hypothesis about OSO is that it's amongst the most successfully marketed 'remix/pastiche' Bollywood products of recent times.(see post on OSO) There is a huge charm of the re-mix. We have now lived through a re-mix decade as far as songs are concerned. Here comes the first re-mixed movie.

And it's different from a remake. Farhan's Don was a remake...OSO is a remix. Where the story, the structure, the context are all remixed to give a pastiche product!

2. SD - "We take the reality of the 70s and paint on it a coating of the hyperseventies. The seventies we remember are all electrons and sound rather than flesh and blood... An actual 70s movie is not aware of its temporal displacement and takes itself seriously. In doing so, it becomes fodder for retrospective irony. What we like most about the 70s movie is that it's behind us safely enough for us to enjoy it. It exaggerates our bumbling inadequacy and now that we are perched atop some affluence, now that our vantage point is lofty, we can chuckle with affection at who we were then."

But what of the generation who don't remember the 70s. Or who are born in the 90's or like little Neo( all of 4 years) who adores SRK and dotes on Shanti:-)what product have they consumed in OSO. Obviously, it's not nostalgia. It's slick, entertaining paisa wasool low brow remix.

That's the product and that's it's allure...It just has a veneer of the 70s. For that matter Farah could have chosen a veneer of the 60s or the 50s. My guess is the final product could still have been the same!

3. SD - "But the question is whether nostalgia is at all a form of memory. We have no desire to remember the past in most other arenas. Memory when intact seems to be inadequate. It is only when it is reconceived that it interests us. And that is perhaps key to the nostalgia we are seeing today.

OSO celebrates our present by going back and irrigating our past."

Finely argued and eloquently expressed. But the remixed OSO I maintain has just a veneer of nostalgia. In a frenziedly active and globalising Bollywood, remake and remixes are a quick way to capitalise on old successful block-busters - be it a Don, Devdas, or OSO!! More commercial interests than a conscious attempt to celebrate the present by going back and irrigating our past.

4. SD - "The images of the past when examined closely reveal themselves to be pixelated with the sensibilities of today. We look back as a way of looking ahead. In that, perhaps, OSO is set in the future."

I totally agree that the movie has the sensibility of today. But OSO is definitely not set in the future. It is perhaps set in the past and definitely set in commerce and marketing!!

As a movie and as a cultural signpost OSO is low-brow, maybe even retrograde like the Ekta Kapoor serials. Of course a zillion times more slick and entertaining than the saas-bahu soaps!!!

How Not To Be A Digital Agency Part 2

I had promised myself to stay away from the screen, the web and most things that connect back to work:-)...Am away on leave in Kerala(today in Munnar). Just came on the web for a while...

Okay lemme just post the second part of the 'How Not To Be...' thots...

7. It's not about the digital department or wing or cell. It's about the
digital projects. Before you do the department and cell, get the projects. Somehow/ anyhow.

8. It's not only about learning. It's an equal dose of unlearning everyday. And believe me, the un-learning part is tougher!!

9. It's not about geography & branch turfs anymore...The digital agency must function across geography as a seamless talent hot group connected by technology. It's about structural tweaking. Get the CEO on your side...

10. It's not about creative and strategy and digital dudes. It's about 'problem
solving and creation using digital tools and platforms...Sounds obvious, but one hell of a tough task within the agency!

11. It's not about telling. It's an equal measure about selling. Internally, with clients. Digital Evangelism needed. And as many teachers as students:-)

12. Digital is not a technology or a platform or the debate about organic and
inorganic growth.

Digital is our business. The short term and the long term of it. Period.
P.S. Okay back to my holidays. Indiadrant will be back in full force around Dec 17!
Cheers
(Tried to add some lovely Kerala pix but failed 6 times. I give up!!) Later...