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!

Ad Agency Thinking

Disclaimer : This aerial snap-shot is not entirely true for all the ad agencies except the ones that are dying from the inside...LOL

Small Big Idea

The soon to be launched in Mumbai - the all woman Taxi service!!This woman's brain child!!

Nostalgia Brand

Neo went to a birthday party...And got these Camlin Flora pencils in his 'khoi bag'- the goody bag which kids get(I hope I got the name right...)

Hey Meraj, these Camlin Flora pencils haven't changed since I was a kid and that guys was almost BC LOL

I tried stealing some of the pencils...Neo kept thwarting my efforts...

Just a thought - it's such an un-explored area in India - the creation of Nostalgia brands...Is there a big enough market for them?

Cars, music systems(Imagine launching a really retro-cool Murphy radio with the calendar FREE!!) or Binaca toothpaste with the plastic small toys only for 30+ guys...LOL

Guess age is catching up with me...sigh

Last Mile Stories

These days many agency conversations are about the last mile...Many theories, some obvious stuff power-pointed as 'gyan' by last mile experts and lots of CRM and technology...

But in the end last mile in retail is left to the store managers, the sales staff, the durbaan and the stink-quotient of the store loo:-)

Some last mile experiences I had in the last one month.The first was this message in the loo of a home decorations store in Andheri...A small detail but it lifted the last mile score(LMS)to near 100!!Next was this 'saunf' and 'chat-pati goli' tray at Papa Panchos. After an otherwise very ordinary lunch, I was willing to give an LMS of 70! As a culture, I have experienced Indians to be quite forgiving whenever bad service meets genuinine apology.(Lesson- you can get away with bad food, as long as the saunf/ pan/ meethi goli is great!!)And this was an LCD screen at a bar in Singapore(Pink Elephant or some such name...) which kept on displaying sexually loaded jokes( some good, some PJs)a brilliant idea but since the number of looped jokes were limited, it became a blind spot and an irritant after some time. LMS = 35!!

Mental note: Keep collecting these last mile samples...Will come handy one day:-)
Anyone, any last mile experience to share??

The Rules of Mallvertising

Was at the Inorbit mall, Malad the other day...Saw one of those increasingly ubiquitous LCD screens - some in-your-face locations, others tucked in corners...

Had some thoughts and observations on the increasingly relevant subject of Mallvertising!

1. Treat them as more electronic hoardings than TVCs.Which means LARGE FONTS, clutter free, very less copy and visually engaging....Lets not forget the LCD screen is nestled in a Mall environ with many more distractions!

2. From WIIFM to WIIFMN. That's What's in it for me NOW? Saw couple of TVCs playing on the LCD screen . Would have preferred to see where the SALE is, which store on which floor has a new range, any contests, promotions, trial offers...
Last mile communication must be about WIIFMNOW...

3. Mute Check. Another test that we could subject our messages to, is to see if they are comprehensible on 'mute'. The Mall has it's own decibel level and the LCD messaging might get lost unless it is 'Mute-Checked'.

4. It may make more sense to model the last mile communication on Cinema Slides.. Focussed, fast and 3-sec long(not 30sec).

5. Think catchment not catch-phrase.Related to points 1 & 2 above.
Slogans, what's the big idea, brand propositions could be suspended at the mall. It's a different buyer mind-set that we are looking at. In a hurry, the mood being part-indulgent-part-VFM.

Although I hate the word - eye-balls, Mallvertising is made more difficult as we are addressing travelling eye-balls! And the last thing people need is some esoteric brand advertising...

As mobile, digital screens, sensors, blue-tooth, RFID technologies develop, I am sure the science of Mallvertising will be more focussed and engaging for the customers...

McTV with McMUJRA

Was at McDonalds Linking Road last evening. Saw this McTV sprout over the steps to the first floor. Playing McMUJRA(fully faltu item number on one of the SONY channels).

While the marketer/ agency/ OOH house was right in placing this LCD to get all the 'climbing kid eye-balls', it's a dangerous place to put a screen(the paranoid father in me thinks...)

Any McThots...

The City In A Loop

BPL's now not so new 'In the Loop' campaign grows from strength to strength. It's grown from the teasers to a multi-media(print, radio, OOH; haven't checked the net for any sound bytes though...)

1. It's very colourful and loads of gettyimages but what's the point!!

2. Don't think the young TG that it's meant to woo are really buying it. Had a chat with a couple of them. Small sample, but they think it just isn't true of BPL. All this loop hype...

3. The other funny thing is that brand BPL is completely lost. All the ads promote is Loop. Unless they want to kill BPL and construct LOOP. Then it works:-)

Must talk to more BPL consumers and figure out how they view the campaign. I might be a bit too biased. Although, I like the art direction. It's fresh. But still a lot out of loop if you ask me!

Indiadrant is 1 year old 2day

Hey guys...Indiadrant is a year old today! It's been a journey of 223 posts!! Not a bad statistic at all:-) (Back-slapping) Long, fun-filled, at the expense of a lot of family-time and some work time...

But been good. Much of my learning in web 2.0 has been thru Indiadrant. Many contacts, friends, a hire, few spam, many many useful comments and learning/interactions...

Was planning to write an anniversary post with bells and whistles and multiple thank yous, but feeling drained out. Five days of boot camp and a 6th of the strategy council day-long meet has left me blissfully empty!

Am catching up on all the lost sleep...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

P.S. Here's the Aug 18th post from 2006 on Memes in case you don't believe me:-)

Last Bytes from the Boot Camp

And finally the Boot Camp ended today amidst a lot of last day excitement, business card swapping and photoclick sessions!The day's summary:
1. When it comes to spends on the net, there is a marketing confidence gap that exists...

2. Chris - our guest speaker from Microsoft reiterated that people increasingly wanna watch video content which they want and at their chosen time...Many of them in advanced markets are saying - We don't want advertising to interrupt us anymore.

3. Important figures to remember : Global software mkt = $135bn;Ad market = $570bn...But the geeks are meeting the creative!

4. Another very interesting comment by Chris: Reason leads to conclusions, emotions lead to action.

The day ended with all of us singing a rap song - penned by Desiree and yours truly...Goes something like this...

Slog thru da week, enjoy da WEEK-END
If u don’t make in this life, der will always be a SECOND

U don’t need Java or any other SCRIPT
Just b urself in the digital world to be a real HIT

Friendster, myspace, facebook, ORKUT
All guaranteed to get you real HOOK’T

And there is youtube, blogger , flickr, ETC.
When you chatter, gossip, twitter, they call it UGC

Upload, download, search, tag and SHARE
Be wer your consumers are, listen what they CARE

Sms, mobile, QR codes, CONVERGENCE
Being digital is learning with a VENGEANCE

And for all of us in the AGENCY
Digital opens POSSIBILITY!!

The video soon coming to a youtube near you:-)Sangkyu in the making of the videoDavid in the video shoot!