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:-)

The World of Adike and More 2

This of course is a manufactured image...Little Neo was fascinated with this making of Adike2 LOL...

8. Every few years/ now months new types of brands enter our worlds which weren't there till some time back. Hi-Technology brands, Knowledge/information brands, Concept brands, Cause brands, the sub-set Green brands, Social media brands, DIY brands, Experience brands, the proliferation of Luxury brands...

And almost all of them play by rules that are fundamentally different from FMCG brand rules of the past.

9. Real, authentic(often contrived-authenticity) conversations are replacing the copy of our advertised messages...It really doesn't matter who starts this conversation. It could be the CEO, the guy-on-the-net, the copy-writer, the planner, the passionate marketer...It's about a collaborative project.

10. It's very difficult for the brand to hide anymore. So little scope for bull-shiting, no hype, consistency in all markets, brands gotta 'walk the talk' or refrain from taking the high ground.

11. Brands got to be all human...have a character and not a laundry list of all 'virtuosity'. Have flaws. Admit to them...Have a sense of humour and play.

12. And lastly, I feel we must somehow devise methods to measure the quality of consumer-brand relationships, not just contact points, eye-balls, awareness scores, foot-falls...
We never measure our personal relationships through eye-balls, foot-falls, awareness scores...Why should brand thinking be any different?
That's all I can collate for the moment...Maybe some-time later will do Adike 3!!

The New Creative

I was having a meeting with a senior colleague of mine from the region. We were sharing notes on what constitutes the new creative!

Here's what I had to say...I guess the mashed up potatoes say it all:-)
But don't think many of the creatives in India get it...They dread the open-source, formless, digital shape of creative age that's upon us! Often they discover they can't solve the communication problem by saying - "the film opens on..."

Thot of the week - In an era of people generated content Are creatives the new suits!!

Flash Promos Ki Khareed Mein Samajhdaari Hai?

When Flash Brands/ branding is here, would flash promos be far behind.

Flash promos are single day promotional(invariably price-off) offers. Often they might last for just a few hours!

I guess they stoke the growing acquisitive and impulse-led buying patterns in much of urban India.

Shopping for a small part of cash-rich urban India is now an acquisitive sport. However, under intense time constraints, there is no stamina to do a 'Lalitaji' kind of detailed 'samajhdari' purchase.

Instead, there is just enough time for a quick McPuchase. Enter the flash promos. When they are from trusted brands. They reassure quality. They entice with their slashed prices. And their 'buy-now-or-regret-later' proposition gives it the veneer of 'samajhdaari'.

Last month, I was almost pulled into one such offer from HP. A heavily discounted flash offer from HP on a Laptop + Printer combo. Even though I had no real need for the printer!

But for the lack of a convenient physical demo of the product, I would have been a victim of the Rs. 39,999/- flash offer!

It's just as I flipped the Mumbai Mirror today, I once again saw the HP flash offer -'Hurry, offer valid between 8am and 8pm today only':-)

But I am becoming 'Flash Smart'!!

Let me be a train. No logo please!

I am sure many of you must have read about the decision by South Western Railways to auction the rights to have a train named after brands!! So guys, brace yourself for Kurkure Mail, Pepsi Express, LG Rajdhani, Ujala Local and more...

The initiative, called Brand Train, basically entails the use of a train as an advertising space, where the brand name would feature in all of that particular train’s announcements, reserved tickets, reservation charts and so on. As of now the deal is limited to certain summer specials, but if successful the experiment could be enlarged to embrace more trains.

In fact there was a debate in the TOI on this...It's one of those stupid marketing ideas that have no concern for environment sensitivity. Yes, It may earn the railways some money but at the immense cost of 'aesthetic, visual and cultural pollution'.

1. Argues an emotionally charged Kautilya Kumar( don't know who he is, as TOI doesn't believe in sharing details about its writers and contributors)- What’s in a name? A lot, particularly if the name invokes an imaginary space rich in culture and geography.

Imagine the Netravati Express being renamed after a soap or a sari? Or Rupasi Bangla being prefixed with the brand name of a coffee or a condom?

Netravati and Rupasi Bangla stimulate our imagination. The former, a river that cuts through the Konkan, invokes a world that is lush, green and fertile.

The name captures the sound and the silence of a river that links the Sahyadri to the Arabian Sea. Rupasi Bangla celebrates the memory of a great poet; it captures the landscape of Jibanananda Das’s evocative poetry. A train thus becomes a bridge connecting a traveller to the cultural memory of a people and the natural wealth of a place.

2. Train names reflect geography, culture; make us realise our diversity...I don't think there is any space or sense for marketing/ advertising to enter anywhere near a train.

It's an utterly ill-thought, idiotic idea that must be protested against and nipped in the bud.

Also, with the laws of diminishing returns having already set in the over-stimulated out-door landscape, we need more surprise and sensitivity in the creative expression of commercial messages.

Mere plastering the logo won't sell more soap, sandals or saris!

The Great Idea Myth - Simon Solves It For Me

I have always believed it to be true. At least for the last 10 years. Ideas are easy to produce. A dime a dozen. But I don't think anybody would have agreed with me. Least of all some 'creative types'(in an agency). Who routinely hide behind plumes of smoke, frequent breaks, large egos, being rude to servicing, being undisciplined, etc.

After all these years, I read Simon talking a similar language. What a relief! My hypothesis has been verified by this sample of one:-)

Buy why this myth that ideas are difficult to produce, in the first place?
Great ideas are. But then they are rare anyways! And most of them happen outside of advertising!

1. Our industry has an abundance of mediocre minds/ idiots who just have a creative designation/ swipe card. They are actually young and old farts who wouldn't get a job anywhere else. Their idea productivity is sub-optimal. And I suspect they are present in decent numbers in every agency in India today!

2. If you say ideas are easy to produce, you take away the glamour/ the black-box syndrome!

3. Maintain that ideas come with great difficulty and you can buy a ton of time and even manage to waste most of it.

4. Perpetrate and protect the myth that only the 'creative badge wearers' can get those elusive ideas. And you protect your job and the fat salaries.

And I love what Simon says next in his post - "Ideas might be difficult. But not the coming up with ideas part. The truly tough part is knowing what to sacrifice and what not to when protecting the idea, coming up with more ideas to help 'sell in' the idea, having the tenacity to constantly tweak and shape and develop the idea (crafting). being sure enough to know your idea is strong enough to be done on a smaller budget, being mature enough to be able to see beyond awards, being generous enough to know that the idea isn't yours at all, but is owned by many."

5. By rubbishing every idea that doesn't originate in the 'creative department(gawd, how I hate this department word), the creative types have succeeded in breaking the confidence of young minds(in servicing or planning or traffic, wherever it is applicable).

So guys, lets write, create, paint, draw, post-it, posterize it, art direct it.
Believe that good ideas are simple to get.
That everybody is creative.
And that with practice ideas are even more easy to get.
It's the creative apartheid within an agency that's the difficult part.

But walls are fast crumbling. In the digital era, there may be little room for 'mediocre minds/ idiots' or over-the-hill prima donnas! Neither is there any time to fret on the differences and 'the ideas are difficult to get' story!

Thanks Simon for bringing the topic up! While on the subject, do read Russell's post that sparked Simon's post!

You may want to read a related post...

What holds Bollywood scripts together?

Kapil mailed me this Fevicol ad which is a good example of a hand-painted Bollywood poster. Thanks Kapil!

Will Street Meet Strategy?

Was speaking to David, our regional training head in the morning. Predictably like most non-Indians he too was struck by the vibrant colour and diversity of our country.

Later, on board the flight to Delhi, came across a feature on street art in the in-flight magazine JetWings!

There is so much ingenuity in the street. Something which we must capture while we tell our brand stories. The 'Street' is far more original, colourful, messy and alive than the manufactured images in most of our ads...Picture from Jetwings : Paining on a house wall in Calcutta by the popular local artist, Ajay Kar
Picture : Paintings on the bodies of trucks
This is a really unusual cross-over of ethnic cultural motifs and practical messages. A medium which has barely been tapped into by big brands.
The format is very Indian, very street and the content 'very native Indian wisdom'!Picture : A mural at Bandra Reclamation
Any form of street art not only produces a gallery of colourful images but also provides a platform to explore regional variations.

Will commercial communication tap into street art or will we just allow homogenised electronic-age images to smoothen all our diversity into a blander, uniform landscape...

Big Idea : Finishing Schools for Rural Youth

Often I find advertising ideas to be quite small. Mostly, that's a limitation of our trade...But many-a-time a reflection of the size of our thoughts. Shackled as many industry minds are by a 30sec structure and generally inflated egos!

Therefore, I loved this 'finishing schools for rural youth to curb attrition' idea of Azim Premji!(read it in ET).

Wipro has set up finishing schools in Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh on an experimental basis. Under this, students from interior parts are selected and given training in English and IT skills for 6 months.

These rural students are barely 10th/ 12th pass. Not typically eligible for any IT job. The 6 month training readies them for a proper job in the IT industry.

Wipro and Premji believe that apart from creating newer employment opportunities, the students from these rural finishing schools would be loyal, determined to prove themselves and a definite value-addition to the company.

Wipro, under another education programme imparts training to primary teachers and students. Till date, it has engaged in training 2.5mn children from the interior parts of 16 Indian states.

Both the efforts are great,laudable examples of the corporates giving back to society instead of merely creating islands of excellence...

Wish the communication industry too had the bandwidth, the vision and the money to do something similar...

Being David - A Spirit Rarer than Tanzanite

It's a special day and a sad one...As I write this post, there are packers all around me, wrapping the last remains of a small agency called David.

It's funny how much I have got attached to this agency in just over 12 months!

Are we the creative hot-shop that the world(well, part of it at least) calls us?
Maybe we are not.
Are we radical in the way the edgier agencies in the western hemisphere have adopted new media?
No again...

But, I can say with certainty that Brand David as it stood and shone is/ was culturally the richest agency brand in India!

Before it was decided to merge it with Bates Asia. Because it makes sense to have a stronger mid-sized network in the region...

But in life and in business what makes sense may not always be right!
Cultures are about shared dreams. They need more nurture and less merger!

After my initial anger and resilienece, the planner in me has bought into the merger.
David hasn't.

You may ask, if we aren't edge-ily creative or new media mavericks...what makes us so special...

My list wud include the following.

1. Josy Paul - the maverick guy who along with Madhukar Sabnavis and now Kumar started it all.

2. I don't know about the other 5 years but in the last one year while I have been a David, Josy has helped create a culture of creative strategists...

Creative in the new millennium is not about 'silo thinking'! The best work comes from a seamless integration of creativity and thinking! And we have here in our play-rooms and on the WallOfDavid.

We have done brave thinking...The results may not match to our efforts...But in our thinking and culture, we may be as edgy as W+K, Mother, Naked, et al...

3. David's model of senior guys hands-on everything and lots of energetic young Davids worked for us!

4. We have possibly the best training program in the country...It was called endless converstaions between youthful energy and passionate experience...
No closed doors, just windows of opportunity for everyone...

And our open-source training programme 'SchoolOfDavid' was amongst the most 'fun-and-play' modules possible in our industry.

5. A while ago I read in BusinessWeek that the metal Tanzanite is rarer than even diamond. As it is mined in just one small dusty town of Tanzania...I may sound utterly soppy and nostalgic, but the spirit of David is a rarer metal than even Tanzanite...

I think I was a David before joining David and believe that all of us(Davids) will retain a part of it where we go next...

It's very easy in today's world to buy technology, sometimes even market shares but it's next to impossible to buy or create BELIEF...

I feel David was a network/ agency with a great belief and energy eco-system...

It's unfortunate that it had an abrupt end. But what is important is that we lived the life of Davids...And hopefully will always retain it...

Where's the Glue around here?

I have often ranted at the lack of disruptive systemic level changes in the Indian advertising business...Be it a culture of open-source creativity or the subject of a creative-planner formalised partnership, Agency 2.0 and more...

Between Prasoon, Balki or Piyush - I have rarely heard them speak about the agencies/ creatives/ creative products of the future...In fact of the trinity, only Prasoon appears to be wired into the new world/ new media space. At least that's what I get from his heavily PRed thoughts...

However, a flat world ensures that one at least knows of the disruptive business models emerging in other parts of the globe. The Glue Society is one of the agencies/ creative fraternity that is at the fore-front of systemic changes in the way they approach the advertising business...

Came across this interview of co-founder Jonathan Kneebone at this website.

Capturing the essence of his thots peppered with a few of my own.

1. The Glue Society is a creative collective based in Sydney and New York comprising of writers, designers, art directors and film directors. Founded in Sydney in 1998 by Jonathan Kneebone and Gary Freedman.

2. "Rather than become an agency with permanent clients, we decided to work project by project. That way we would be able to ensure all the projects we worked on were those we were suited to and interested in".

I feel the planning fraternity in India could possibly adopt this project/ free-lance approach. Not all clients are worth the jet-miles:-) or the long hours...I would be happier building a domain expertise in my interest area rather than head a geographically demarcated client base.

3. "Rather than just come up with ideas then outsource them to other people to make, we decided to combine concept and execution into the same four walls".

Advertising is amongst the only industries where the central product(still the 30 cc commercial) is out-sourced to the producers...I guess its high time the concept and execution be combined together. It will be a viable, nimbler, happier model.

4. "Our catalogue of work tends to attract clients who are similarly interested in breaking down walls and being brave to new opportunities".


This piece of glue society creative is actually a sculpture(installation) at a beach. It depicts melting ice-cream!!

5. "Bad advertising agencies have a tendency to copy the latest fads or mimic other popular things. This simply won't wash anymore. Why would someone spend time with a fake piece of entertainment, when they can spend time with the original. The industry is being forced to change by the realisation that everyone is creative (something we've long believed)."

6. Advertising is like art in some respects - in that there's a hell of a lot of crap and some things that resonate. The difference for me between the two is at the conceptual level. Advertising tends to be where we solve other people's problems. Art tends to be where you get to solve your own.

I wish we had more thinkers like Jon Kneebone & Gary Freedman closer home...

This is the famous Chicken Sandwich world championship work conceptualised by CP+B and directed by the Glue Society!

Happy Holi

Had a great Holi today! Few thots before I hit bed...

1. It's the best Indian festival for a 3.5 year old...As you can see, my son Neo freaked out!

2. Increasingly the diyas for Diwali, the small Ganesha idols for Ganesh Chaturthi and now 100% of the pichkaris for Holi are made in the factories of Guangzhou...
BTW, the ecosystem of colours, pichkaris, etc. around Holi could be a possible candidate for a 'flash brand'.
So, flash meets a flat world:-)

3. My father, a late adopter of new technology(not because he was slow, but because technology was slow when he was younger) but a 'fast-and-furious' learner sent this 'Holi Game' though SantaBanta.com:-) And Neo had the best of the physical Holi and a taste of the digital-Holi.
End of day best scores...Baba(255), Neo 310 and me(410):-)


4. Many of us are life-caching our experiences with a vengeance. This post, the e-mail I just sent to my parents are part of my digital auto-biography...Even 5 years back, it would have been beyond my radar or reach!!
Hope all of you had a great time...

How T-Shaped Are You?

I discovered Paul Isakson's blog today...He is a planner at a small agency in Denver, US. A click at his blog-roll led me to Giles(Rhys Jones)'s blog who happens to be a director at Ogilvy London! Giles has this very interesting blog on interactive marketing trends, a subject that I am very keen to explore and have 0.5 people around me to talk to!!

That's the thing I like the most about the blogosphere. I can escape the tyranny of 'proximity'. I can operate like a department of one. More about it sometime next week...

Now Giles has this interesting post on Mr.T-shaped People! A small search on wordspy.com led me to this ...

"T-shaped" communications planners, with a background in media, have a deep understanding of media, and a broad understanding of the other disciplines within the marketing spectrum. They might not have a deep understanding of the minutiae of direct marketing, but they would broadly understand the repercussions of its inclusion in a through-the-line campaign.

To continue the alphabetical analogy, if the ideal communications planner is "T-shaped", then a classic media agency employee is "I-shaped" — with a deep understanding of their discipline, but not necessarily of any other — and a classic client-side employee "hyphen-shaped", their role requiring a broad understanding of many disciplines rather than specific knowledge of one.

"The worry is that media agencies are trying to do a "T" job with "I" people." - Angus Bannerman, in Marketing Week, October 2, 2003

The earliest citation on T-shaped people is by David Guest in "The hunt is on for the Renaissance Man of computing," (The Independent (London), September 17, 1991)
*This type of rounded personality is also sought in other branches of science which prize individuals known as T-shaped People. These are a variation on Renaissance Man, equally comfortable with information systems, modern management techniques with an unusual set of interests."

After the unbundling of media in India and elsewhere, I suspect, the creative and media agency systems have promoted the I-shaped guys...Many of the planners of the last decade I suspect are also more 'I' than 'T'!

At least that's my experience being a planner in a small agency! And now how do I cross my 'I' every day?:-) Any suggestions? Giles?

Luxury Jeans - A Cross Over Canvas

They sound like two ends of the scale! Therefore, I was curious to read this India Today article(Feb 19 issue) under Society & Arts fashion.

Like elsewhere in the world, India is ready for designer jeans. Looks like the days of jeans-as-only-workwear is fast getting over! Even though, most people still care less about the label and more about the fit!

Even Indian designers are fast catching the luxury jeans band-wagon.

Rocky S, the Mumbai designer was the first to launch a jeans label Rocky S in 2002.
Designer Arjun Khanna's - 'Rockstar in Morocco' was a success!
Though even now, only a very small section of the buyers can afford to shell out 8K or more for luxury jeans.

Levis has its own Diva line endorsed by Sushmita Sen and the Redwire DLX jeans that are iPod compatible. There are also talks of a Levis-Manish Arora collection...

Wrangler has it's own 'John Abrahan by Wrangler' collection at the top end.

Designer Narendra Kumar Ahmed is set to showcase his signature jeans at the Lakme Fashion Week in March.

Then there is the Sevens brand detailed in Swarovski and the Jap-gone-global brand Evisu's hand painted jeans and stuff from Diesel!

I guess 'Luxury Jeans' would be yet another example of 'Massclusivity' - the marriage of 'mass' and 'exclusivity'!
I also feel jeans is the perfect canvas for cross-over adventures in India where...
East meets West
Denim meets Designer
Casual meets Party-wear
Blue/ Mostly White-collar meets Pink/No-collar
Ubiquity meets Fashion/style statement

Luxury jeans(and its various mutants/ avatars) would see an increasing rise in popularity as it would also in a way fall in the category of 'personalised' stuff. The growing digital, connected and participative world loves 'personalised' themes - be it a $20,000 car or a blog or a 'personalised' jeans!

And therefore I think the timeless blue denim has once again re-invented itself for the next decade!

Or am I reading too much:-)

PS. Images sourced from gettyimages.com & India Today

Flash Brands. Flash Thoughts

Like most of us, I have been privy to the out-of-work Bollywood actor Shilpi Shetty's bizarre turn-around in fortunes through the British reality show Big Brother! It's been a 100m sprint towards famedom for Shilpa...

From 'nowhere' to 'everywhere'
From relative joblessness to a flood of Bollywood offers(a report said 74!!)
From a 2nd rung Bollywood star to an 'overnight diva'
From an ill-dressed actor to an icon of 'fusion clothing'
From a 'dumb bimbette' to an 'Indian Icon'(of course debatable and with large dollops of media frenzy!)

Over the last 12 months, I have viewed few such Flash Brands, built solely by media who rise to prominence and share of mind and then fade away. But while they last they are a brand no less!

Some other flash brands( if I can say so) would be 'Prince'(the Haryana boy who fell in a hole and shot to national recognition, Budhia, the Orissa marathon kid who generated TRPs for close to a month for all the Indian news channels and of course Laxmi Niwas Mittal...

Unlike Shilpa, of course, Prince and Budhia did not generate commercial opportunities(at least I am not aware of). Was wondering if there could be a science/ art of the flash brand. In our attention-deficit world, can we create them...Or do flash brands happen only by chance?

I think flash brands might have the following traits...
1. They have a strong topical core. In the case of Shilpa it was 'Resurgent Indian Pride'. More about it here. Budhia = Super Kid Archetype...

2. Built by PR and media reportage and not by advertising.

3. Largely unpredictable. But the flash-timing has to be right. The media must be relatively free to build stories and feed the public. So. flash brands are unlikely to be created in the week preceding KBC's launch or the Union Budget week:-)

4. Indian Flash brands(Shilpa, Budhia, Prince, LN Mittal...) in the recent past have mostly been human. As opposed to the Western/ Japanese ones - Harry Potter(a fictional character), Rubiks Cube, Pokemon, Sudoku!!

5. Flash brands generally follow a story, a quick trajectory of facts, fiction and spice...They ride on a wave of media frenzy and 360 merchandise(Harry Potter, Sudoku)

6. While the origin of a flash brand might be serendipitous, it needs sustained interest by media to keep it going through its relatively short shelf-life...


7. Flash brands might happen with greater frequency today. In the digital age, with the democratisation of technology tools and creative expression, if a flash brand core has an appeal, it encourages an active participation from the masses rather than a passive, push-only communication strategy of most conventional brands...

Would love to hear of more examples, counter-views, other flash brand traits...

Shubh Vivaah : Media Planning & Account Planning

Today's Brand Equity carries an article by Ravi Balakrishnan on CCP(Consumer Context Planning) which looks like an attempted arranged marriage between Media Planning and Account Planning.

Media unbundling happened over the last decade in India. As somebody who has worked in the pre and post bundling era, I feel after the initial efficiencies of scale and cost benefits, the unbundling has pinched us all.

- The creative agency/ people lacks the much needed media perspective!

- The media agency has over the years often exhibited a trading house behaviour. The unit of creativity is traded like a commodity. Of course in the recent past, things are taking a positive turn...

- The clients have saved big money in the short run but now are gasping for a better engagement model.

Ravi Kiran(can't trace his blog), the diminutive but utterly dynamic CEO of Starcom South Asia elaborated on CCP:

1. An obsessive focus on rarely asked questions(by whom:-)

2. Partnering with academia in the fields of social sciences, psychology and anthropology.

3. Consumer panels which track not just brand choice, but also give insights into nascent trends.

4. 'Living with People' - an ethnographic study that has the CCP team spend time in people's home...being an unobtrusive observer of behaviour...

5. CCP aims to make the different disciplines work in a more seamless manner.
and the boldest of them all 6. CCP plans to work with parts of the creative industry that are more open to collaborations - be it in editorial content and programming!

Thanks Ravi, we need more guys like you...How about writing a post on this subject on your blog!

SchoolOfDavid : Open Source Learning

About six months back, at our small agency we started a learning program called SchoolOfDavid. We/I haven't been very regular but yesterday managed the 4th such session.

As always it was fun! This time it was different in two refreshing ways.
(a) It happened outside the agency, at my place and Candies - the quiet little eatery in Bandra! and (b) It had a truly diverse gene/talent pool...

One of the structural changes I have been passionate about in the agency is the formal partnership between the creative and the other guys(planner/ servicing). As against the norm of a department-led-silo-thinking/working! The topic of this session was 'Dinking' and was about the need to do 'boundaryless-thinking-n-action!

After a short gyan session by me, we got down to a role playing exercise loosely based on Edward De Bono's role playing exercises...

We had 3 teams. Each took on the role of a new company - M&M and Google(X2) and then went on creating a new agency...

I wasn't at all surprised at the strategic-n-creative spark of the young turks in my agency. I have tapped into it many-a-time this last one year! What they may lack in experience, they more than make up in sheer 'fresh-n-bold thinking'!

Some other musings:
1. We must tap into the 'talent pool' at the bottom of the pyramid more often...Fresh pairs of eyes is stupid to ignore!

2. Open-source problem solving can work wonders. In the past month, I have used it to create a campaign for a major client of ours! If the people at the top are committed, open-source-working is not very difficult to DO.

3. Informal sessions create culture. Formal ones don't.

4. To quote Yogi Berra - "You can observe a lot, just by watching."

5. I find in the digital age that we live in, 'worldviews'/ 'experience' is not directly proportional to age...

6. A remarkable way forward might be to create a 'shadow board' of young guys to get in the freshest ideas on board.

7. How you do the learning sessions is as important as what you do in them.

In case anybody is interested in conducting informal work-shops to create a 'creative play-ground' in their organisations, please feel free to get in touch with me!

cheers
M\
P.S. A special thanks to Russell(without whom SOD4 would have been highly unlikely)for baby-sitting young Neo!!

Wiki Woman, if that's the way it must be, okay...

Read a small article in HT some days back about the new boss at Wikipedia - Florence Devouard...Everything about her company and her job is pretty new-age!!

1. She runs her office not from NY, London, Hongkong or Shanghai but from a village in central France.

2. Her company - the Wikimedia Foundation in it's present avatar came into being as recently as June 20, 2003! Yet in a crazily short span of 4 years, last month it was voted among the world's 5 most influential brands!! No ads. Pure sampling and co-creation brand!

3. Florence's corporate climb(if we can call it corporate or climb) is equally fascinating...
Her first contact with Wikipedia was in 2001, when it was still a fledgling org.!

She started editing entries on genetically modified organisms and was gradually drawn into the community of volunteer editors...

Pretty soon, she started focussing on internal organisation rather than writing/ editing articles. 3 years later, she was elected to the Wikimedia Foundation board.

And last summer it was agreed that she would step into the shoes of the founder Jimmy Wales, as Chairperson!

4. She is a woman with 3 kids, who works from home in a village and heads among the world's most influential brands. All in 6 short years!

This is a really different world. A world my father can't even dream about. A world my MBA never cautioned me about!! But a world that gets bloody exciting every single day:-)

A world shaped by technology, possibility, serendipity and collaboration...

Organisations like Wikimedia are...

More concepts than companies
More collaboration than hierarchy
More content-driven than products/ services driven
More open-source than closed looped
More virtual than physical
More about volunteers than about employees
More hyborg(hybrid organisations) than anything we have previously known

But if that's the way, it must be okay...

Image sourced from Pixelache

15% More Insights on Love Marketing. Hurry!

Yet another 'diary-page' from a young(er) friend of mine!

Super Duper Hype.. but its become a huge marketing endeavour every year.. specially since last few years...from greeting card companies to cell phone companies, to even banks use this occasion!

i came across this while i was googling - HDFC is offering a new variant of Gold Bar - an attractively priced 2.5 gm Heart-shaped Gold Bar.
HDFC Bank Credit Card holders would enjoy one per cent cash back on every 2.5 gm Heart shaped Gold Bar, bought by swiping their credit card!

Valentines day till a few years back, i didn't even know, but by the time i was passing out of school which was about 8 years back... it had started catching up big time at the archies and hallmark level.. now i think it has crossed all boundaries...

i saw the hutch hoarding at bandra with pink heart shaped balloons all over - i think was for downloading lovey ring tones or something for valentines.. i personally wanted to puke..

valentines is not just about lovers.. its about LOVE across genders across age and across relationships but unfortunately the marketing has stuck to focussing on lovey couples and it begins and ends at that.. hotels have special dinner meal offers and parties.. its anywhere and everywhere and u just cant miss it...

personally valentine is just another day in the year and it is bloody annoying wen people have to find a day to make it gooey and say things to their girlfriends or boyfriends.. in anycase in a city like bombay u mite tend to feel left out because the hype is so bloody much and people are so for it that u cant avoid it..

the reason why valentines so big here i think is solely because of the mad marketing because and the media hype around it within the country because otherwise its not such a mad thing abroad.. its big but people don't treat it stupidly.. i remember going out and catching a movie with my girlfriends (all of us single and no boyfriends to go out with he he)..this year i think will be going out for dinner with my girlfriends again.. ha ha.. lol!

thats about it.. i guess the media exposure and wanting to ape the western culture bit has gotten the people down to following such days including fathers day motherdays and blah blah.. these are undoubtedly great cashing days for various companies without doubt..

chalo nothing more that is coming to my mind..

Picture courtesy a colleague who was kind enough to model for indiadrant:-)

Gift Wrapped Love with 25% extra Romance!

The new India that the world loves to talk about is not just young. It's madly in love!
Or so the $65-90 mn that were spent around Valentine Day last year suggest. (The figure might be puny compared to global 'mush-market-index' but then our Valentine market is in nascency)...

Well, the decibel levels of v-marketing have risen dramatically this year. The day that stretched a week is now a full month. Pretty soon, we may have the Year of the Valentine!

There are more hearts per person in Bombay today. There are red-n-pink hearts everywhere and love messages on sms and buildings/ bill-boards wrapped with heart-shaped-balloons.

Of course, there is much money to be made from mush. But what nauseates me is the 'lowest-common-denominator' of love-communication. Looks like marketers and ad agencies are catering only to age 16, starry eyed kids. It's the dumbing down/ in-your-faceness of the Valentine communication and the cluttered shelf space of love that sucks!

Commerce > Romance.

Being on the other side of 30, I asked few of my young friends to pen down their feelings on V-Day marketing...for a better/ balanced perspective!

Here is a page from the diary of a young friend...She is young, very bright, very blunt. Definitely not a silent consumer(as they say, not me:-) of 'mush marketing'!

Love sells. It's as simple as that. If it didn't we wouldn't have so many jewelers selling diamonds on the anniversary gift concept. And guess what, it works! I mean I would never imagine a practical man like my father could buy my mom diamond earrings for their anniversary, but then again it was their 25th year and they love each other…so see what I mean, love sells because everyone seems to be so smitten by, well, love!

And now coming to Valentine's Day, that fateful day in the middle of the shortest month, it can also be identified as the biggest brand for love, its byproducts being cards, gifts, and other moronic lil pink n red objects floating about like chaos (ref. to ancient Greece where it was believed that chaos was the mixed matter the Universe was made up of before the Big Bang).

Wait a minute, I hope you don't think I'm another political party with an anti-love agenda, actually I'm quite mushy in my own right. What makes me queasy is the desperate search for a Valentine a week before Feb 14th.

This has now resulted in a phenomenon known as "the friendly Valentine". It starts with a Valentine'less' guy who just can't seem to find a chick no matter how much Axe he sprays all day long. He then uses his devious mind to come up with a plan to save face- ask one of your best friends! They'll never let you down. And even if they try to you can always say "yehi dosti, yehi pyaar???" Cheesy, I know, but works like a charm. Said best friend gets emotionally blackmailed and desperado has a date.

Another nauseating symptom of Valentine fever is overt displays of affection, a frantic search for the perfect gift with "to our eternal love" on the card. By the way, Webster's just called, they're changing the definition of eternal to "a time period equivalent to a month or in rare cases, a few more".

Let's get this straight, I don't mean don't celebrate your love or your "beautiful journey together". All I mean is that when the axe falls on it, we shouldn't find that the glue that held it all together was made of gift wrap paper and greeting cards.

Valentine's Day is not a competition for the best gift or the biggest bouquet. It's a day to celebrate the fact that every time your special someone calls and that assigned ring tone rings, you feel that tingly feeling waking every part of you, or every time you walk together in the rain, you feel your senses coming alive. No corporate firm can package that and sell it to you in a box. The same way, you can't buy love. So when are we going to stop trying?