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...

How Not To Be A Digital Agency Part 1

Like many analog agencies ours too is trying to be digital. The process began early this year in the Temple city of Siam Reap in Cambodia. Then we had some very engaging digital sessions in Singapore...

These are still early days into Being Digital...Still have tried to collate the lessons learnt/ and observations from around in my first steps into digital!(Not in any particular order or hierarchy of thot).

1. The game's not just about technology, its still about human psychology! Far too many CEO's are shying away from digital because they feel scared/ numbed by the technology buzz around. It's a pity. It just slows the entire digital thinking in the agency.

2. It's not about learn and do. It's about do and learn.

3. It's not about strategy first, it's a lot about execution first as well.
Digital is a far complex strategy-execution inter-linked game anyways which analog
agencies have difficulty understanding...

4. Digital thinking cannot be brought about by forced collaboration between different departments. It's about genuine conversation between people who call the shots and people who get it.

5. It's not about top-down or bottom up. it's about both at the same time!!

6. The pit-fall is to make 'digital' the new epi-centre of creativity and snob
appeal within the agency.

Let's chew on these. The next installment should come soon...

Kitsch Kitsch Hota Hai

Bollywood's biggest marketing stunt triumphs...Saw OSO. The die-hard SRK fan that I am, enjoyed every moment of the first half and struggled doing the same for the second!!

Stray thoughts before they evaporate like the movie:-)

1. SRK is a bigger marketer than all the HUL marketing men pooled together...OSO is not a film. It's MDH masala right through...

2. OSO is the finest Bollywood Ketchup - Film narrative meets chat-show meets spoof meets filmfare award shows meets muhurat parties...

3. You can fool all the people all the time with fast pace editing and 'zero-audience-reaction' time LOL

4. Deepika Padukone is desirably attractive - found her a mash-up of Priyanka Chopra and Juhi Chawla. Kept the ketchup fresh and spicy...

5. Bollywood's new equation is 30% Amitabh, 50% King Khan, Rest 20%

6. I wish advertising would play with the 30 sec formats like Farah has played with the 3 hour one...

I don't think I would remember OSO tomorrow morning but it was one hell of a numbed-mind-colour-riot...

Kitsch kitsch hua mujhe bhi...

Life 2.0 - the new Game Box in town!

Have you installed the game box - Life 2.0 on your
biological hard disc:-) Chances are you already are an expert at Life 2.0 games…Am referring to the new(well for some of us)game culture that’s pervaded our lives.

And no, it’s no longer the game boys & geeks alone! It’s us ordinary un-gamers.
The other day, I spent a better part of the evening out-scoring my wife on her blackberry. Next morning, she spent a cool hour putting me back in second spot.

Games are as old as men. We have always loved competitive sport, the urge to set records and win prizes. But the big difference today is that our entire lives are the software for games!!

Till a few months back, monitoring(keeping score)of this blog's Technorati ranking was a game for me…Of course the allure faded when the scores started plummeting on a regular basis:-( A related game was to monitor the site visits on the home page!

People keep score of the number of Diwali sms they sent and received. Even the number of unopened e-mails!!

Many have developed a game even around cleaning their lotus notes mail systems. It’s a 100m dash against the lunch deadline.

Social networking provides many new competitive games. Try your skill at friend acquisitions at Facebook or even LinkedIn. Keep score of your growing community on couchsurfing.com LOL

Today, for a lot of youngsters and oldsters, dating resembles a gaming experience, with targets, life-lines and a score to keep!

Nach Baliye, Indian Idol, Jhalak Dikhla Ja are the new middle class games... The idiot box meets the mobile phone and lo a new national game is born! Cricket’s new poster boy - Twenty20 is all game, little sport!

As Wired magazine puts it, we are moving away from a society that creates goods to one that solves puzzles and plays games! So, what game are you playing this hour?

Caught In A Time Warp

Some time back our team received one of those invitations from a large PSU company inviting us to pitch...Now, over the years I have had a fair bit of experience pitching for many of these PSU entities. At one time I was a freelance expert at them...These pitches(which I did for a Jhandewalan based agency)funded the first few EMIs of my flat LOL

The memo brought back memories of the 'caught-in-a-time-warpness' of these companies...

A typical memo reads like this...

Dear Mr. So-and-so,

We are pleased to announce that we have finally woken up from habitual deep slumber and would like to share some yawns with you before a committee of disinterested but highly qualified members.

Please cancel all your prior meetings for us. Even though we are erratic in our advertising and we will call 30 agencies in alphabetical order!

Oh, by the way we have scheduled the meeting on a public holiday because our head of committee gets a kick out of parading the 30 odd agencies while he dunks his biscuit in Darjeeling tea!

And yes, we want 36degree, 180 degree, 360 degree ideas but all in 20 minutes!!

And please don't bother to show any creds, we don't look at them anyways!

Please be concise. As the bell-keeper is a trainee and the tea-breaks are more important than your presentation!

And yes please come early in the morning and keep the entire day free as our chairman gets a personal glee out of re-arranging the presentations at the last moment.

We are enclosing a brochure(which hasn't been updated in 4 years). It should answer most of your queries because things hardly change at our company over 4-5 years...

We assume, all you spineless agencies will participate. So, do not bother to confirm!For any other details, please call Mr. XYZ only between 330-415pm on Monday, Thursday and Fridays...Rest of the days, he is on planned casual leave.

Regards

Chief File Pusher

Enclosure : (i) Old data
(ii) Not so relevant creative units

Okay, I was at my sarcy best, but you do get the hang, don't you:-)

Silence of the Lambs

I only have a peripheral interest in the politics of the nation these days! Am happy selling soaps, shampoos and other ordinary artifacts of/ around daily life!

I pay the taxes on time, plan my holidays with cheap airlines and dote on my 4 year old son. Feel proud of being an Indian these days and admire lovingly the sensex's meteoric rise to 20K!!

But right here, in the most visible corner of our country and the backyard of our collective conscience, about 5 years back an organised genocide happened. Hundreds of innocent Muslims were killed after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was burnt down.

Then the major channels had covered the riots. But there were no major arrests. And the killers largely remained unpunished. Then the media moved on to other stories to report.

The Ash-Abhi wedding, the exploits of naags-and-nagins, the antics of Bollywood starlets. The Gujarat Genocide was happily forgotten by the media and the '300mn strong consuming class' - the cynosure of the world's attention, till the Tehelka Operation Kalank(Stigma) broke the story of the genocide!

If you are an educated, fair-minded Indian, whose heart beats not just for 'Nach Balliye' and the latest 'Off-Season Sale' please do read the latest issue of 'Tehelka' or visit tehelka.com

As a nation we have gleefully gathered to send mass sms to elect Indian Idols and lit candles at India Gate for 'Justice for a Pretty Model who was murdered'; is it possible for us to now step out of our collective slumber and 'back-slapping business achievements-mode' and raise our voice against this genocide.

I do not have the perspective nor the credibility to comment on this subject anymore.
But let me reproduce what Shoma Chaudhury, the features editor of Tehelka had to say in HT today in an edit piece.

"Silence of the Lambs"
Shoma Chaudhury

WE ARE all tempted to forget. Tempted to shake our heads at ‘mind-numbing' horror and get sucked back into the urgencies of our own day. Tempted to impute sinister motives or just look the other way. We are tempted, but we must not give in. Because what Tehelka's investigation last week showed is not just about Narendra Modi and some lumpen Hindus. It's about you and me and who we are as people.

It is true that ‘Operation Kalank' is about things we already knew: mass murder, rape and barbarous cruelty, all planned and executed by the unforgivable sanction of the State. But the unthinkable has happened. What was earlier allegation by victims and their defenders has now been corroborated by the perpetrators themselves. And what is our response? Nothing.

Operation Kalank cannot be dismissed as the empty bragging of anonymous men. The men caught in the eye of the camera range from the Advocate General of Gujarat to BJP MLAs, senior functionaries of the VHP and RSS, influential lawyers and the actual foot-soldiers of hate: not the bit players cheering from the outer circle, but the hacksaws themselves. And what the TV channels have shown is only the broadstrokes. Tehelka documents an even vaster and more detailed nightmare world of thwarted justice and failed institutions, including the fire on the Sabarmati Express.

Yet, in the face of all this, our story has only been met by empty counter-arguments and conspiracy theories. Why was the story timed for now? Is Tehelka a Congress front? And even more ludicrously, has Modi paid Tehelka to do the story to consolidate the Hindu vote ahead of elections?

As one of the founder members of Tehelka, these theories bring an exhausting sense of déjà vu. We have been here before. Six years ago, when Tehelka broke Operation Westend, the investigation about corruption in defence procurement, the same fantastic theories had greeted us, each contradicting the other. But the truth outlived it all.

Now it's happening again. Journalistic stories of this nature can never be timed. Operation Kalank began by sheer accident - we did not set out to do it - and it took six months to nail down. If it had taken three, we would have released it in August; if it had taken ten, we would have released it in January, post the election. Imagine what conspiracy theories that would have yielded.

Duck the truth and look for some new depravity to explain it away: that's become our habitual response as a people. We think it makes us worldly and knowing. We think it makes us sagacious. But in truth, it displays our fallen nature. It displays the bankruptcy of our emotions and the poverty of our conscience. We no longer believe anyone can do anything without a motive. The fact that cynical backroom games are more easy to believe in than purity of intention says something enormously disturbing about where we have reached as a society. We can be shown a man gloating over a foetus ripped out of a mother's womb, but we would rather embroider why we are being shown this than react with honest emotion to the fact.

But what is far worse is the unremorseful responses of the BJP and people who state that the genocide is no longer an issue because it is five years old and Modi has been voted back to power since then. As if a mere assertion of majority can nullify the fundamental cry for human justice.

What is far worse also are the people who are trapped in the suicidal dialectic of Godhra and Gujarat action and reaction: Muslim provocation and Hindu retribution. As if Death leaves its aching footprint in shades of green and saffron, one less painful than the other.

It seems so simple to understand - crime has no communal colour. The State should have identified and arrested the Muslims who were in the mob at Godhra and punished them instead of unleashing a pogrom against innocents. Why engineer a communal death embrace that neither community can ever loosen itself from?

But of all the responses, what is by far the worst is that everybody seems unperturbed by the fact that Gujarat is a failed state. Modi may have been re-elected post-2002, but Operation Kalank is proof that every fundamental institution that underpins the idea of a democratic and civil society has been subverted there: the police, the judiciary and the political establishment.

And yet we are all content to continue with the charade of treating Gujarat as a democratic state facing an on-coming election.

Nations are built by the words men use to describe it. Societies are shaped by the collective rules men agree to live by. The India we inherited, the India in which we all have a right to life, liberty, livelihood, expression and religion is not some self-perpetuating magic State. It's a State that was articulated by the heroic imagination of our founding fathers, a State we all have to struggle and fight to retain. If we are faced with something like Operation Kalank and do nothing, we will turn a dangerous corner as a nation. Our certitudes will slip away from us. We will become morally rudderless.

For me then, the most frightening thing about Tehelka's investigation is not Narendra Modi and his cold, unalloyed evil. It is not even the animal violence of his henchmen. It is the X-factor that seems to have paralysed everybody: the fear of the ‘Hindu vote'. This fear and the unquestioning acceptance that it will blow in Modi's favour if anybody speaks out against his depraved state has made a mockery of every check and balance that lies at the heart of a democracy.

It has made the media cautious. And it has made timid marionettes of the Congress. Neither the Prime Minister, nor the Home Minister, nor any senior minister has spoken out. Is Gujarat no longer a part of India? Doesn't the same Constitution apply? Are we doomed to have leaders whose heads are only trapped in the abacus of electoral numbers?

The real faultline in India today is not between Hindus and Muslims. It is between Hindus and Hindus. If the Hindus of Gujarat are going to re-elect Modi after being confronted with visual proof of what he stands for, we have to aggressively reclaim what being Hindu means.

The problem is too few people seem to have a stomach for that fight. It is not a fight that can be won by burning and slashing. Or ducking. It requires words and eloquence and conviction. The Hindu vote in Gujarat could swing both ways in the years to come because the curious thing about human beings is that they are always willing to thrum to a nobler note. Someone just has to have the courage to sound it.

Shoma Chaudhury is Editor, Features, Tehelka

I was tempted to forget and go back to my job, my blog and my family, but history will never forget or forgive any of us if we forget...

Facebook : Counterpoint

My online friend Satish at Naked NY commented on the Facebook Indigestion post...Said that my Facebook experience could be at dramatic variance with the teen sentiment/ relationship with Facebook!

So, I asked a young friend of mine to put her thoughts around the subject...Here's her take...

My virtual umbilical cord (and no, this is not about the progress in medical technology!)
"The age of the global citizen...half my childhood buddies are all over the world...i know at least one person in every continent(maybe even Antarctica..i wudn't be surprised) friendships made for life...with only a geographical barrier...bridged by something as technological as the internet."

"Technology and relationships don't mix, like cold steel and heartfelt warmth maybe? Well, I'd beg to differ."

"School friends, college friends, colleagues, friends' friends, a lot of alliances you would best forget but there are just as many that matter so much."

"My best friend in 6th grade who left for boarding school in Shimla. Or another bestie who moved home to Japan when i was 14. My first crush who has lived in Colombo since we were 12, but i got in touch with again 7 years later...all thanks to Facebook."

"With such fast paced lives and with everyone in a different part of the world it's difficult to catch up for even a cursory drink, making the Boozemail application one of the largest used on Facebook."

With newsfeeds giving you a play by play update on your friend's lives(which you can update the settings of to ignore lesser acquaintances, and bring your inner circle into the limelight) to building an entirely virtual social life for the simple reason that, having a real one that functions the same way, is plain impossible.

"Facebook is what binds me to my old friends and actually helps me get closer to people I never got a chance to bond with earlier. You may realise that you and a casual friend may have similar interests from the groups you join, the applications you prefer, and a million other things considering Facebook is so customised you can read a person's personality just by visiting their profile page. for eg. Leena and I studied in the same class for 6 years in school, casual friends, but she only realised i was a fellow fan of The Doors when she read my status message. It simply said, 'Bhavna is: stoned immaculate'"

"Friendships are born out of sticky situations, escapades, lurid stories brimful of laughter and tears. Getting caught for bunking maths class and playing basketball instead or talking about your dreams and your passion over a cup of coffee while watching a beautiful sunset cannot be recreated even with the best graphics."

"We bond through sharing good times and the not-so-good (rather horrible, horrendous and torturous) ones and this is not an emotion that transmits through an LCD screen. So when you think about it, Facebook is nothing close to the real thing, but it's one hell of a replacement when the real world is out of reach."

Thanks B for sharing your thoughts...

What have you Stumbled Upon Today?

Stumbled upon this nice post on StumbleUpon Vs Google by Muhammad Saleem!

Nice read...Note to myself - Use StumbleUpon as much as Google...Actually Yahoo. I don't know your experience, but Yahoo searches invariably throw up better results these days!!

StumbleUpon is becoming an essential part of my planner tool-kit!

Facebook Indigestion : Burp:-)

Like many of you, I have been poked by friends, acquaintances, distant friends, old friends, friends of friends, new friends, do-I-know you friends, once-a-year-Happy-New-Year friends and more(phew)...

I get flowers, and wine and nick-names & superlatives and messages on the wall/ upgraded wall, and in the process these drive me up the wall! Generally been twittered and jittered by all this thumb typing and social media.

I soldiered on because I felt if I protested, I would be deemed uncool or out of sync with facebook applications...Until Kajal sent me a mail with somewhat similar thots and sentiments...So, that makes it two of us. I am not the only one facing Facebook Indigestion...

As I surpass the Dunbar Limit/Number(=150) of meaningful relationships, wonder what happens when everyone is connected to everyone. And then we all twitter, skype and say similar things to each other and drive each other crazy!!

Maybe, it ain't that bad. Maybe it's just Ponting's hammering in the T20 match(going on now) that's affecting my thots:-). Or maybe all this is going a lil over-board...I am gonna spend more time with my real job:-), my offline family/community and real flowers and beer!!

Next post. Will touch upon Relationship Capital and the Asymmetric Value of relationships(in normal English, quantity affects the quality of relationships:-)

Disclaimer: I have gained awesomely through all this social networking and web 2.0. it's just that overdose of anything gets you diminishing returns!

Eno kahan hai:-)

Jab Gopinath Met Mallya

Am referring to yet another merger and brand name change. Good ole Air Deccan dons the new name of Simplifly Deccan. And here I had barely stomached the inane name change from Indian Airlines to Indian Airlines!

I love both the characters in the sky play - Vijay Mallya,love him for being the Indian Richard Branson(in flamboyance, attitude,business acumen, ambition and aspiration if a little less in business creativity). And Capt. Gopinath for making flying accessible to the common Indian( well the ET/TOI definition of the common Indian:-)

And likewise, their two airline brands are so very different. Air Deccan - simple, accessible, human(thanks to those lovely Orchard advertising), a lil earthy & maybe frugal and KF - reeking with flamboyance, class, excess, exclusivity, Yana Gupta and the dressed-in-red-air-hostesses..

Maybe Air Deccan had to change as Mallya no longer wants it to be a cheap-airline. Budget/ economy yes, cheap no! But why tamper with such a strong brand! Why merge its distinct identity into KF.

I feel the Deccan-KF design promiscuity might dilute the KF aura a bit...It's still early days, but I am not vey sure if this new Deccan nomenclature and 360 design synergy with KF was the best possible branding solution...

GreatWayToHaveAWebsite.com

Some days back, Rob (Mosley) from a small London creative agency Nonsense wrote a mail to me...

He and his team are putting together their web-site...High Time We Had A Website
In a bigger agency set-up, few suits would have gotten together and created a brief and then it would have been delegated to the IT department/ their vendor and periodic status reports...

I think hightimewehadawebsiteis an example of online presence meets agency POV/ creativity meets WOM meets wisdom of the crowd!

Mental note : Must do something on these lines in the next 6 months...In fact the learning would be really useful for a co-creation project that I am doing(for some reason I don't like the sound of this word Co-creation though, sounds too mechanistic)

And guys...Do visit this site and vote...There are just 14 days before voting closes!!

Tough Guy. Great Teacher. Now Gone

Had read this obituary article of James Michaels in HT Mint/ NYT. JM was the editor of Forbes magazine for almost 40 years, died in the first week of this month at 86!

Writer Gretchen Morgenson talks about JM in this obituary- "JM would care only about the Forbes reader. Writers' egos, famously large, concerned him not one bit. When editing, he would hammer his views directly into reporters' copy, often in capital letters. Flaccid writing and weak thinking brought out his bark and bite."

Here are some examples, culled from an aging file known internally at Forbes as the Abuse File. I've kept them because I treasure them"

''This is badly written and badly edited. It would be an insult to foist it on the reader.''

''This is a real snoozer, lacking in specifics. Why not just send them a nice lacy valentine and forget the prose.''

''I'm sending this one back because the character is deader than a dodo.'' Can't the writer ''inject a little life without adding 10,000 words?''

''A good story turned into oatmeal by bad organization.''

''Please fix this quickest. It lacks most of the ingredients of a Forbes story. The quotes are room emptiers.''

''This is the kind of sentence that drives readers to stop reading.''

''This is a paid advertisement. Did you forget to say he walks on water?''

As you can see, the comments were blistering. But they were also instructive. Any writer who heeded them became the better for it. Here are some more:

''If I can't stay awake editing this, how can a reader stay awake reading it? What's the point? If it has a point, maybe we can make a story of it.''

''I can't make head nor tail of this. There's a story buried in all this confusion, but I can't find it. Fix it or kill it.''

''This is a remarkable job of interviewing an interesting and colorful man and getting precisely one quote.''

Writers were not the only ones to feel the Michaels lash. ''Your initials are on this so I suppose you understand it,'' he wrote to one of his editors. ''I don't.'' Atop another article, he wrote: ''Replace or run white space.''

He regularly banned words and phrases he considered overused. ''Fast track,'' ''game plan,'' ''bottom line'' and ''superstar'' were some examples. ''Upscale'' was another: ''If I see this word again I'll upthrow,'' he wrote.

Why I am reproducing this article is because I feel, as a planner one has to go through a lot of crap as well - some copy-writer generated:-) much client generated, mostly other planner/ self generated!!

It pays to avoid the wind in strategic thinking and conversations. And one has to work mightiliy hard to expel it. The sharper the words, the better the thinking!

These JM nuggets(acerbic quotes)are really a tresure trove!! They give one a lot of direction if we are willing to learn.

Context is Everything

Spotted this little ad on the now ubiquitous Garbage Dumper on the streets of Bombay...

Translated it means - "Please don't litter or spread old jokes!!"
It's an ad for the show Great Indian Laughter Challenge III on Star One...

Another kick-ass 'contextual ad' was the towel I got as a freebie at the Goa Ad Fest earlier this year from Times Now. The message said - "Big or small, we cover them all":-)

One of the biggest ways to fight ad clutter in the media landscape would be to tell interesting stories in a context. The relentless pumping of advertising rupees without a context mostly irritates the consumer or is plain filtered...

The Consumer Is Clueless

My friend Benny mailed me this link a while ago...Have a dekko!

1. It proves yet again what I firmly believe, perhaps you might as well!!
That consumers can be mostly misleading when it comes to evaluating a half-cooked creative stimulus. They are clueless. But we can't entirely blame them!

2. Yet, clients(almost all) will hang on to every word of the 6-8 guys(who make the FGD group) who pop-analyse the creative thread-bare as if all of them were seasoned critics...Even though at the back of their mind they might know that the FGD guy is a 'frequent participant' from Amar Colony/ Lajpat Nagar(if you are doing the FGD in Delhi:-)

3. The often hurriedly assembled narrimatics, animatics or other aha-I-managed-to-kill-the-creative-matics are as different from the final creative as chalk and cheese. Yet, this fact is brazenly ignored by the research agency and the client.

4. With almost all the persuasiveness and memorability of the ad dependent on the final execution and the special effects of the finished product, I fail to understand what benefit do we gather by the rigorous analysis of the half-cooked creatives...

Finally, however unscientific it may sound, there is little substitute to creative judgement and trust between the client and the agency...

More than 20 years after this 1984 Apple TVC, the 'life of a creative campaign' around the globe is still hostage to the tyranny of the FGD - the pop-pontification of the 'career FGDist'!

Vodaphone Throws a Bouncer

On the back of a strategically sound ad campaign for the Hutch name change comes this unlikely bouncer from Ogilvy! Maybe there is more to follow, but the first burst leaves me cold...

1. Beats me. What does Vodaphone mean by make the most of now?? The consumer hardly knows the brand. Why should he/she listen to this rather patronizing tone...

2. Suddenly the warmth and the simplicity of Hutch is gone! Kaput! This is not the continuation of the 'brand switch-over'? And if Vodaphone had to do such a dramatically different campaign, why did it blow up crores of rupees on the 'pug campaign' till last week??

Maybe, I am suffering from 'premature enunciation', but this doesn't make sense as of now...

Little Drops of Joy. A Torrent of Money Wasted

The most lousy ads that I have come across this last month must be this Coca Cola corporate spiel!

In an environment of general upper middle class cola-apathy, this just is so out of place...

I guess there are other ways to highlight the good corporate citizen-ship work that the cola majors are doing. Good work. A bit underplayed by a cola-bashing media. Helping the government in some water-table/ irrigation related issues and else...

So why this terrible campaign? Why should anybody in their right mind believe this piece of manufacture statement - Little Drops of Joy!!!

In any case it looks like a rehash of the old Kinley tagline - Boond boond mein vishwas, which at that time made sense, was in a context and was a reasonably nice campaign...

I mean a good percentage of the country is/ was under floods. 70% of the Indian population lives off Rs.20 per day and here's this global brand telling us that its largely sugar-and-perhaps-not-so-pure-water, aerated drink gives us Indians joy in our daily lives..

I have not been able to figure out which is worse, the strategy or the creative campaign...

Visual Post Its : Ganpati Marketing

Every year, Ganpati is getting more and more immersed in marketing...Few samples from this year!!

And if you have better/ bizarre/ innovative examples do share...

Spatial Reach of Brands and Us

Have been down with an eye infection which has severely curtailed net-surfing or substantial reading...Bored I figured book-surfing a better way to kill time!

Was flipping through 'Revolutionary Wealth' - the Alvin & Heidi Toffler book...Stumbled upon the chapter on Spatial Reach(chapter 11, pp73-77)...Found it quite interesting and relevant.

Some quick mental notes before the eye starts hurting again:-(

1. The Tofflers talk about the increased geography of our travel reach. We travel between countries as our parents travelled between cities...

2. Then there is our new on-line/ virtual reach. What co-incidence...I just discovered(through Google Analytics) that this blog reached 23 countries over the space of last week. Of course the bulk of the visitors being from India...What an amazing Spatial Reach we have today. Toffler says in 12th century Europe, the average peasant in his entire life-time just travelled in an area of about 15 miles around his village...

3. The spatial reach at the workplace is also global these days. I often respond to a mail from Singapore in the morning, then check for updates on the 'Digital Sparks' Ning site(which has members from all our 14 offices across Asia. There might be a stray comment on the blog from another city. A chat with my brother during the day on Google Talk. Another with a quali researcher from Bangalore on a collaborative project.
Quick phone calls with my planners in Delhi and Bangalore...A mere click on the blogroll transports me to US/ UK/ parts of Europe...What a fascinating web this personal spatial reach has become. Unimaginable a few years back!!

4. And what about Brand Spatial Reach? Today, we have access to brands, it's marketing and marketer's POV across geographies...It's both a boon and a challenge. Because with the growing spatial access, people also communicate about their brand relationships as much as the brands can reach to different parts of the globe...

It would be really cool to draw my personal spatial reach...I hope a software exists somewhere to do this. Maybe Google can help:-)

Twenty20 : Observations of a Couch Potato

What a match!! What a befitting final for the twenty20 game...Wonder what the TRPs have shot to!

This is the raciest format of cricket on the planet, and as a couch potato, there is never a moment to slouch save for the ads, the best of which appear so repetitive and boring!

As I watched the matches up to the final, few thoughts passed my mind. In no particular order...

1. Multiple Creatives. I wish marketers and us agency types quickly root for multiple creatives. If our messages are repetitive, in the racy Twenty20 format, they would be all screened out by the viewer!! Even the SRK starrer Pepsi ad became a headache after a while(and that when I am a die-hard SRK fan)

2. Entertainment Quotient.. I guess we now need to rate all our ads on EQ and not just messaging objectives! Only the ones that have an EQ comparable to the twenty20 game ought to be aired:-) The rest will be noisy irritants, filtered by the couch potato! I ignored all of them!

Guys, at best we are creating branded interruptions. The public might just appreciate if we make them really entertaining.

3. Category fit.I feel certain categories are a total mis-fit with this racy, non-stop, edge-of-the-seat format of the game. I remember I saw an ad for Amity B-School. The message and the creative execution was clearly out of place with the twenty20 environment!

If your product category doesn't fit in this breezy format, one would better stay away and save some money!

4. Media Innovation. If you ask me the best media innovation would be to air shorter TVCs. If the overs have reduced from 50 to 20, shouldn't the TVC duration be reduced to 5 seconders or some such thing:-)

Twenty20 is transforming the game of cricket as the overs reduce from 50 to 20. It is less cricket and more like a 'Bollywood entertainer'. I think our humble ads need to change to fit in this new game...

Bang On, Big Bang But Very Expected!

Of course I didn't watch the Hutch(oops Vodaphone) TVCs on now the much hyped Star TV block. There are more interesting things like the Twenty20 on the tube!

Hyped as a major media innovation( although I fail to see why it's an innovation.)It's a big budget ROAD BLOCK rather than a Great Idea.

Well, finally Hutch - the country’s fourth-largest mobile service provider has changed it's identity yet again. And I think it has done it the right way. Almost too right I feel:-)

1. Retained the cute, lovable pug as well as the two animated characters (the girl and the boy)

2. Promises to retain the tagline - "Wherever you go, the network follows" especially for the network related ads.

3. “Hutch was a well-loved brand, and all the things which the customer found endearing will continue to be projected,” said Harit Nagpal, the company's marketing and new business director, on agencyfaqs.com. Well, that again is the most sensible thing to do. Indian marketers I feel are too trigger happy with change. Very often change for change sake!

4. The company insists, Vodaphone will be a more mass brand, offering value-added services, in all the existing 16 circles rather than maintaining an up-market brand imagery from it's international lineage...

5. It's among the most humongous brand name changes in Indian marketing, affecting the lives of almost 35 million customers across 400,000 shops! And looks like the client and the agency have done a great logistical job!

From the little that I have seen of the name-change, it's bang-on and correct but somewhere my expectations from Hutch( sorry Vodaphone:-) and the agency Ogilvy in particular were a bit higher...But it's still early days!

Ogilvy has a habit of surprising everyone with great advertising particularly towards the year end:-)

The Hidden Rules of Coolfacture 1

Read a very interesting and academic article on the subject of Cool in the Knowledge@Wharton series(also covered in the Brand Equity yesterday)...

Some gleanings from the same mashed-up with a couple of my own home grown observations on this very interesting area of 'Cool manufacture'...

1. New research(from the Wharton studies) provides insight into how consumers use products to signal membership in social groups, but swiftly abandon those same products when the original message is diluted as other groups co-opt the trend.

Most visible in fashion perhaps...

2. People make inferences about others based on the products they buy, and when lots of similar people adopt a product, it can gain meaning as a social signal.

3. The Internet with it's 24X7 connectivity makes the signaling process faster, product trends can explode across mass markets more rapidly than ever before. At the same time, the enormity of those markets can also turn off the original customer base quickly.

This has implications for youth brands. Every marketer wants to do a 'cool viral' these days. But we must understand that our product/ product category must be amenable to a 'cool' communication. Plus there is always the danger of over-doing it...

Coolfacture is an art which the likes of Steve Jobs have perfected. It does not follow mass market rules.

The recent Pepsi commercial with both SRK and John Abraham is a nice, entertaining ad. Better than the average stuff Pepsi generates these days. But it may not be cool for the edgy youth!!

4. 'Cool variants'. Today, cool may come in many variants. 'Desi cool' for the masses, 'Global cool' for the classes. 'Cross-over cool'. And each market may be substantially different from the other.

Going forward Indian and Asian brands need to re-interpret the definition of cool.
While 'Coolfacture' might never become an exact science, its good to generate some rules when dealing with the youth categories....These are interesting times. All old tight-definitions need to be re-looked and over-hauled!

iPology

I first came across this term - 'iPology' on Steve Chazin's web-site! Read the post on Marketingapple.com!

In Chazin's words - "All the Apple marketing gets dwarfed by Steve's apology for cutting the price and undercutting his early adopters - so much so that MarketWatch's Tom Bemis invents a term for it, sure to be taught in business schools everywhere - the iPology.

And all this does is ensure that Apple doesn't have to spend a dime on its traditional marketing when the popular press does it all for them, at much greater reach and value.

In fact, by my calculation the value of the free advertising Apple received (this blog included) is greater the cost of the $100 rebate times all the iPhone sold to date.

Folks, you are living through what has to be the Golden Age of marketing and Steve Jobs is its king."

In fact check out another iPology story on AdAge called - Steve Jobs, My Fruit Vendor and How to Keep Customers!

It's amazing what the power of a simple apology can be. Am puzzled why more marketers don't use it when things go wrong!

Thakur Ka Inteqam, Webchutney Ka Kaam

Yet another kewl viral video by Webchutney...Just when Ramgopal Varma has managed to get 'diminishing returns' on the Sholay meme, the guys at Webchutney have cracked another winner. Simple, loveable and pure viral fun!

Maa ki Tongue

A kewl video for the yahoo language chat...Check it out(if you haven't already)!

The Changed Face of the Angrezi Dawakhana

Was at Asian Chemist(Bandra)last week. Have often wondered how the once clinical interiors of the medicine shop now give competition to the grocery store...

At the muhalla level, the chemist shop shelf space has morphed beyond recognition.
Diapers jostle for space with Digene,
Gilette with Gelusil
and extra large packs of KS with Crocin!!

And the good ole 'Angrezi Dawakhana' has become 'Angrezi 7 Eleven'!!

The Bland(?) & the B E A U T I F U L

Among the better OOH communication this month! Although, I find it a trifle bland for outdoors...

The visuals and art could have been more lustrous, with more sheen and shine like the hair they are talking about...

But then again Dove is a mild brand in its essence, packaging and communication!
And who knows what women want:-)

Last Mile Stories 2

Kapil had shared this loo photograph of the Novotel Hotel in Bangkok...Smart LMI(Last Mile Idea:-)

On the subject of last-mile interaction, I feel the humble post-it can be put to great use. Many companies(especially the small retail stores) can gain immensely by using post-its at the Last Mile for instant feedback. Instead of giving those boring, lousy feedback forms...What say?

Of course. Agreed, you can't process the feedback quantitatively. But do we always need to process data quantitatively. Often I feel a combination of experience, gut feel and random but in-depth feedback from a few passionate shoppers serves the purpose just as well!