Hip Hop Grannies and Generational Mash-up

One of the entities under The Futures Company is Yankelovich - a leading consumer research company that has helped marketers understand consumer values and behavior since 1958. It has also done pioneering work in 'generational marketing'!

It's pretty cool that I am now working on projects with the Yankelovich dudes and getting a hang of 'generational marketing'.

Now one of the concepts on which we are currently working has to do with generational mash-ups. The grey zone where generational values, attitudes and behaviours seem to be cohabiting.

The 'Hip Hop Grannies' from China are a good example...

Generational Mash-ups. Maybe marketers for Lifestyle brands, travel, well-being should study this space of 'generational mash-ups' to unlock new spaces!

Cool Grey/ Silver.There also is a market for cool stuff for the elderly. From spectacles and watches, to hi-end fashion, the wallet-rich elderly are good targets not just for expensive but 'expensive and cool' stuff. It's just that we seldom look at them in a mashed up way! My 65 year old father has started wearing 'shorts', is now comfortable wearing the colour 'red'(no longer just greys and khaki for him) and I think sometimes uses the word 'cool' when he speaks to Neo!!

Baba Ramdev & AOLCloser home Baba Ramdev, Shri Shri Ravi Shanker and others are already transforming the lives of the elderly. And while they aren't exactly hip-hopping, there is a sea change in their attitudes and aspirations which mainstream brands may not be tapping into.

The kapal-bhaati and anulom-vilom have energised the minds of the elderly. They might be willing to experiment more than we imagine. Mascots - Zohra Sehgal. Amitabh!

Power of TV. While one of the most powerful media of our times - TV has been chained to saas-bahu and now the reality trash, there could be a welcome space for subjects around generational mash-ups...

Every time somebody or something crosses a neat boundary or silo, interesting/ provocative things happen/ can happen...

Fake IPL Player, Real Conversations

Spent the last 30 minutes browsing through the Fake IPL Player's blog. It's incriminating, it's salacious, it's bawdy gossip at it's best/ worst!

Now whether it's a (a)real fake guy, or (b)a marketing ploy(I hope) or (c)an actual player blogger(rarefied chance), this guy/team knows how to create smutty buzz and generate conversation! Aren't you amazed at his site traffic and the thousands of comments from visitors and followers!

For quite some time, I have been arguing the case for conversation as brand content. But it mostly goes over the head of body-copy-only guys. Well the fake IPL player comes to my rescue.

Here are a few random thoughts which are floating in my little sleepy mind post lunch...

1. Context is Everything. The fake IPL player's blog gives a lot of inspiration to creating engaging alternatives to vapid 'Hilaa Denge', 'Dhikha Denge', 'Bataa Denge' ads on TV. He/she shows how gossip, locker room talk, the management vs. the player jibes can be engaging content as well. Maybe brands like Sprite, Levis, Axe can do more niche social media stuff which can draw lessons from this guy!

2. Don't Control the Conversation.Most Indian brands try to control/ avoid the conversation in the blogosphere/ social media and read too much into the controlled conversation(read FGD). This guy's posts have a thousand plus comments!! Comments by readers, visitors are part of the conversation. They add flavour/ spice to the conversation(even though here it degenerates into uncontrolled bitching:-)

Maybe brands like Mentos, Sprite(again), some of the bike brands(Pulsar for instance) could encourage a more intimate conversation with their niche audiences instead of merely pummeling the great looking, expensive ads. (Okay, I love the Tarsem(?) made Pulsar ad, but after the 13th viewing I now reach out for the remote/ or better still close my eyes. Instead guide me to the making of the ad web-site or the making of the bike(to the more engineering inclined DTSi variety)

3. Celebrity is One Of usWe knew(for some time now)that celebrities are not always on a pedestal. They lost some of their halo when they signed their 10th brand contract:-) But didn't know really that he/she is merely one of us.

The celeb can be reviled(SRK is called Badshah Dildo on this guy's blog- now how worse can it get from here). In contrast,the big brands largely treat celebs in an anachronistically sugar-coated way replete with a fake smile, fake swagger and fake talk!!

And the funny thing I feel is that all this bad talk and gossip from blogs like these won't really harm the celebs. But they will just make the Dish TV, Hyundai and sundry other badly made fake-talk-fake-smile ads even more boring for some of us!!

Celeb bashing might be more interesting than celeb grovelling!!

Well hats off to the fake IPL player and his blog!. You are giving us all real-time lessons in generating conversation(even though it's smutty). We need more brave brands and a mutant strain of journo-copy-writer-gossip-columnist to perfect this art for Indian brands.

Aamir - the blogger Khan

There is a sliver of a chance that I may get to meet Aamir(Khan) for my book. One of my close friends has promised. Maybe post the release of Ghajini...

So, while I keep my fingers crossed, I also decided to google all his interviews and other facts and trivia. He is a meticulous man I gather and I better be prepared.

And so I spent about an hour on his blog yesterday. I had stayed away from these celeb blogs earlier because in my own mind I just couldn't reconcile the Bollywood stars(so used to fame and manipulating mass media) with the simple, democratic and conversational act of blogging.

But alas I was wrong as far as Aamir's blog is concerned. This khan gets it. I mean he really gets blogging!! While many of my clients and few of my digital savvy colleagues(from past and present)still don't get it:-)

1. The posts are written exactly in the manner one would imagine Aamir to talk in say an interview.

2. The posts sound real. He talks about his anger and helplessness at the Mumbai blasts. How he felt screening TZP in Seattle for the IDA (International Dyslexia Association). Even the fact that he couldn't sleep one night because of ants in his bed:-)

Now this isn't rocket science. The being real part. But brands and brand managers seldom get it right.

3. It's okay to make mistakes.Blog posts are never meant to be perfectly crafted messages. Often they are random thoughts. They are the first opinions. They are amateurish. They might reveal mistakes and flaws. They can have spelling errors. Aamir's posts have spellos. He even spells the movie Memento as Momento and later acknowledges the error:-) Brands too must learn and adopt this degree of humanness when they want to converse through the medium of social media. It is more important to be human and share honest feelings than to be correct and share dessicated facts...

4. Inviting feedback. Bollywood stars or any stars for that matter have largely communicated from a pedestal. That's part of their mystique. Yet when one blogs one has to be receptive to feedback. From the commoner. The audience of One. Aamir does. Even the micro-feedback of giving indents in his paragraphs for better readability:-)

5. Contextual. Again brands arrogantly assume their primacy all the time. That they are the centre of the universe/ conversation. Whereas when you blog(the general sort of blog), context is everything. The content is a variegated play of life, your work, the important and the trivial thoughts...Again, I have found it difficult for clients and their brands to appreciate the context when it comes to any form of social media.

So, if nothing else, star bloggers like Aamir can teach marketers how to converse with their audience. One on one...

However, on the content front, I was largely disappointed. I don't think he has articulated his thoughts as well as he acts in his movies:-)( on the basis of the 4-5 posts that I read randomly...)

You may want to read a few of his posts - 'Sleepless in Seattle', 'It's a bird, it's a plane' - by Abbas Tyrewala, 'Ghajini'...Ah, you will will have to register and then log on...a bit annoying!

Bhagwan Aaye Bluetooth Se

We are currently doing this blue-tooth enabled promo on bus shelters for our client Cycle Agarbatti in Bombay. Essentially one can download ring-tones, Ganapati wall-paper, the cute Cycle Agarbatti radio spot(it's got a non-commercial ring to it) on the mobile phone...The bus-shelter also plays the aarti tune twice everyday.

Grateful to Suresh, the CEO of Telibrahma and his team for being the technology partner on this...

In isolation, it's not a big deal/ promo but it's good learning to play with technology ...Next is what:-)

P.S. More about this promo here

Monday + Meraj + Mission + Marketing

As I opened my inbox, there was yet another of those weekly mails that Meraj sends me. Some link to his post or some article on NYT. This time it was the story of James Harley - the marketing evangelist at struggling Ford who was a star at Toyota.

Ford - the brand is special to me as well. I started my career servicing it in Chennai. I was the happy owner of an Ikon till last April! And among the brand logos that I admire, I love the blue oval:-)

You can read the entire story here...

It's the best piece of copy/ the best story I read in a long time. Maybe it's good PR. Maybe, its well crafted corporate spiel. But it is still a story of a man's courage, values, belief, rooting for a cause in the market-place.

And what a coincidence Meraj, just last night I was reading about James efforts and the website Ford BoldMoves...

Marketing needn't be full of B.S or hype or all marketers needed be liars(as Seth Godin insists). Marketing and communication can be intense and meaningful. And evangelised like James Farley is doing for Ford. The new CEO could actually be the CMO!!

The story also reminds me of Robyn Putter( the creative head of WPP) exhorting us all at the Bates Cambodia conference last year of putting our energies behind aBig Ideal and not just about a Big Idea!

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?

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:-)

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!

New Age Brands Have a Different Ning!

A little late in the day(48 hours back to be precise), I discovered the online social networking brand Ning introduced to me by my new digital partner and co-conspirator(John Lambie)!

Okay, back to Ning. After 48 hours I try to discover more about it. Google for the site but find that it's down for repairs. However, I still end up liking it. Because it's got a sense of humour and a message that's warm and human. It's also got a cute little bear trying to repair the site...

Ning like a person apologises for the technical snafu and directs me to the Ning blog and enthusiastically gives me an approx. timing when it would be up and running...

In fact this is what the message reads - At midnight tonight, we're going to take Ning offline to add a few new features. We'll be back in action by the time the bars in California close and you'll be free to resume your late night social networking.

Guys my 10 year old credit card company, 7 years old mobile service provider company, my 8 year old bank none talk to me like this - in a normal voice that's full of life, zest and quirkiness!

I like the brand feel of Ning...Here's the post in 48 hours for Ning...Never wrote one for my bank or the credit card, etc.

I guess as we step into this new age/ digital lifestyle era, brands even while they ride mass media vehicles need to have a human voice. Stuffiness of the analog, hierarchy driven marketing era won't get brands love marks from customers!!

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'!!

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...

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

P2P, Friemily, UnI. Call me anything but Consumer

Imagine if your visiting card said - Senior Producer. Or National Producer. Or Chief Producing Officer. Or Creative Producer. Or Art Producer. Or Market Research Producer.

The very thought is appalling!! And yet in the marketing/communication game of us vs them,we call the people who buy stuff/ experiences/ grocery/ dreams from us - 'consumers'.

I hate this term. Its so inhuman. So degrading. So wrong. So incomplete!

Then is an entire lexicon which we have created- consumer insight, consumer behaviour, consumer research, consumer loyalty...And the edifice of our thoughts, strategies and communication is built on it!

I feel nomenclatures shape our world/ worldview. Seemingly innocuous labelling affects perceptions, thoughts and behaviours...But stereotyping simplifies. And therefore as marketers and communicators, its easy to maintain the divide. Us and them. Producers( of products and communication) and consumers.

Implicit are the rules...
1. They are a target audience
2. We make the rules.
3. We are smarter than them
4. They are stationary targets
5. They are waiting for our products and communication
6. We learn about them. They do not learn about us.
7. They can be loyal to us, if only we tried harder.
8. They can always be grouped in clusters to suit our mass media weaponry.
9. We can change the packaging of our products. And they will fall for them.
10. They have an insatiable appetite for hype, half-truths and bull-shit.
11. If you pray hard. The remote will disappear! Or at least they won't use them that often
12. They love the sound of our voice...

But everyone knows...The rules have long changed.
1. We are the new target. Of disloyalty. Of cynicism. Of derision.
2. They are making most of the rules.
3. They are much smarter than us. They didn't even give us time to realise this:-)
4. They are moving fast. We are the targets
5. They are having fun with change and technology. And are saying to us - "Get a life".
6. They have learnt all our tricks. They can now even make a super bowl ad for $12!!
7. Hype and half-truths never gets loyalty. They are loyal to their families and communities and passions not to bars of soap and toilet paper! Not even to their companies(most of the time)
8. They are as fragmented as shards of broken glass
9. They are saying to us - "When will you change the packaging of your thoughts?"
10. They say to us - "Boy, when will you ever get it. Why are you guys so dumb?"
11. Who needs the remote to escape your ads...We don't watch TV. We watch TiVO.We get RSS feeds
12. They don't give a f*** to what we have to say(mostly)!!

In this open source bazaar of conversations, of people-generated-content, a world with zero tolerance for hype and falsehood, we must find a new word for 'Consumer'. They are exactly like us. They are Us. We are them. People who work during the day and surf at night:-) People with families and stress, kids and budgets.

They are not on this earth to consume. They want authenticity. They want trust. They want to protect the earth and keep it green. They want to laugh and joke. Their loyalties can never be bought with a card. Yes they want discounts;they want 'beautiful images' but that doesn't define them.

They read many of the articles on 'how to capture eye-balls', how to capture a share of the target audience. And then they trust us even less. They shrug their shoulders. Because we don't get it! Even now.

So if they are us. Should we call this bazaar conversation P2P(people-to-people), Friemily(Friend and Family), UnI(You and I)...They aren't the best nomenclature. But at least they are better than 'Consumers'!

2007 resolution. As far as possible, avoid the use of this word/ mind-set:-)

Picture courtesy: Gettyimages

Friends on the Rise, Brand Friendship on the Wane(?)

Read this interesting piece on 'Survival of Friendship' on the Edge.org site!

It led me thinking!

1. Friendship isn't dying out: it's just changing, adapting to the changes in the world. As a boy and as a young man or even 5 years back, there were not too many friends I had. I was a relatively quiet kind of guy. Self/work obsessed and quite boring. But the internet and the blogosphere is gradually changing that.

There are many more people that I open upto now. Hey, I feel I am reasonably extrovert in my virtual skin. It appears that the medium is changing my persona. After more than 3 decades, my buddy list is finally growing:-)

2. I today have friends whom I know only through e-mail/ chats who are as dear to me as my school friends; friends from my first job! And the funny thing is that geography and physical contact are not as important as I thought they would be!

3. This Edge piece also talks about - Throughout our lives we collect and store information about specific individuals, so that — just in case we ever run into them again — we will know how to act. We even store information about people we have never met and whose faces we have never seen.

However, when it comes to brands, I feel marketers and advertisers devote far too much time on consistency and repeating the boring facts everyone already knows. Whereas, if we want the friendship of people/ consumers, we must tell them, engage them with small tidbit about the brands. No coincidence that the best brands have a rich heritage and lots of small stories!

4. Many mobile service brands/ many brands(in general) in India talk about customer friendliness. But when they send their bill statements or the bill alerts or even supposedly personlised communication, the tone and voice are not that of a friend.
It's that of a self-obsessed manufacturer, an aggressive marketer or just a stiff uncaring voice!

Quite a few Indian brands have an impersonal voice(if they have a distinct one at all!!). I feel, they quickly need to loosen up in this new brand world! Because the eyeballs are:-)

5. Till the time we don't give up our obsession with war terms - target/ captive audience, capturing market share, etc., we will have a tough time making brand friends.

So it is ironical that while people are opening upto total strangers and making friends, brand friendship(at least in India) appears to be on the wane...Brand relationships are increasingly transaction-oriented despite the hype created by ads.

P.S. One notable exception in 2006 - the new age brand/concept 'Couchsurfing.com'

The Net Effect

John(Grant) is doing a workshop on 'How has/will the internet transform marketing and retailing?'. On his blog he is looking for thoughts, POVs, foresights...

Here's my 'chawanni' of thoughts...
1. With increase in internet penetration, will the www become one giant Superstore?

2. Will there be a global homogenisation of wants? Like everyone wants an iphone at the same time. Then a neo-moto...Essentially global fads...Glocal fads...

3. Since the sellers connect with buyers, would we need marketing at all?
Does marketing need to be obsessed now with only authenticity, how to make the sale interesting, tone of voice and ensuring that technology keeps its complexities out of the way!!

4. Will all shop facades have the signage www.allshops.com?
www.bademian.com, www.ruddalsamosa.com(my school canteen), www.fabindia.com...

5. Will parking rates at malls drop(incentive schemes) and real estate become cheaper?

6. Will payment gateways be the next giants?

7. Will RSS mean ‘really simple shopping’?

8. Will mobile internet > internet through PC

9. Will Google sense my needs(though my search/ click prints), take intelligent orders and do home delivery.

10. Will ideas be traded? Will more services like Yahoo Answers come up on the internet?

11. Will it be cool/ a lifestyle statement to be off the 'net' for small/ long periods? LOL

Its fascinating to think about the future today. Since all of it may come true sooner than we think. It may not have the same shape though:-)

Ads Everywhere

Had read some interesting pointers onJohn Dodds post - Madison Avenue RIP, few days back. He had commented on this NYT article. Essentially the article talked about this craze among marketers to sell ads on any/ all new space - be it a video screen in a taxi, a turnstile, the examining table in a doctor’s office or eggs!!

With all this globalisation and the consequent shortening of time lag in any marketing adoption, I feel India is not very far behind in this sensorial assault by marketers/ advertisers.

Was in Bangalore yesterday for a meeting. Between the airport ride and the time spent in Cafe Coffee day and even the bus ride to the aircraft parking, it was difficult to dodge ads. They were everywhere. In your face between the amusing to the annoying!

Here's a small sample!
There was this little boy dressed up as a Dalmatian in front of a retail store!! Ostensibly trying to attract traffic/ foot-fall/ buyers/ whatever.
I found it appalling. At par with the inhuman bill-boards at Mahim creek.Next was this 'message for Tata Indicom's Internet service' on the napkin holder in the restaurant at the airport.
Quite apt(since the airport and most parts of Bangalore support wi-fi connectivity), done subtly and therefore low on AQ(annoying quotient)

Then, there were these 360 units for the Bollywood movie 'Salaame Ishq'(a simple film based quiz on the table coaster and as an insert with the coffee bill) which I thought were quite interesting. However, since I am biased against this movie itself, there was little connect. However, the medium itself is quite good/ intrusive for very-short-shelf-life products like a Bollywood film.

And then there was this Bajaj Allianz insurance ad on the luggage tag. Absolutely the worst place to put an ad. It's not at eye-level. Once you put it, there is no apparent reason to look it over. It's too frivolous a medium to advertise a concept like 'insurance'.I guess in this game of 'ads everywhere' we need to keep in mind some basic rules.

My take - 1. Be the first to use a new medium but avoid duplicating. Step out before it is clutter.
2. Try never to annoy folks. They are leading busy and streeful lives.
3. Be authentic, not pushy
4. Appeal to the intelligence of the consumer and not treat them only as eyeballs
5. Always respect who the brand is and what the context is. What worked for Adidas did not work for that Bank in the NYT article...Be sensitive.
6. Avoid information/ communication overload.

We must remember Simplexity > Simplicity > Complexity...

Video Police

Read in the TOI today that the Canadian police posted a nightclub surveillance video on YouTube, hoping to generate leads in the murder of a 22 year old concert-goer. 13 days and 17000 hits later, the police nabbed the suspect.

Both the Canadian and the US police have actually been using the YouTube for this purpose consistently. And in more than one case the suspects have turned in!

With upto 35mn visitors a month, the YouTube video travels far and wide. An ad on TV will have a frequency of 3-4, but on YouTube, the video stays as long as as one wants it to!!

So, while many youth brand marketers in India are still nervously waiting on the edge of new technology/ new culture, examples such as these from the other side of the planet teach us how to tap into popular youth culture to serve our needs!