Inhuman Billboards

Today was not the first time that I had noticed them - the men squatting/standing on the sides of streets sporting hand held cloth/ vinyl banners. In the past they have launched newspaper brands and waged mobile wars in the city. Today, it was for a car brand.

Often they are smartly dressed under-paid teenagers with brightly coloured caps. Today, they were the Dharavi poor. Perhaps, it was a quick job with impossible deadline for the agency. For a petty sum of money, these bill-boards would stand still under the hot sun and high humidity.

Their unshaven face, hungry looks, and near bed-raggled clothes were in stark contrast to the bright artwork of the banner. The logo was big and clear. The brand is among India's most admired ones. That's what the JD Power study had shown. The message/ copy was readable from inside the air-conditioned car!

Something was very amiss. It was this 'inhuman bill-board'.
Like life in Mumbai, it had two faces. The shining and the dark.
One riding on the other. Blissfully unconcerned. Long live the brand!

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

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...