Big Idea : CauseCast

Yesterday received this RSS feed from TrendCentral.com It's about social media meeting cause. A site named Causecast.org!!

Trendcentral says 85% of youth today think it's important to make the world a better place (The Cassandra Report, May 2008), and Causecast is looking to reach these socially conscious consumers by acting as a powerful online social medium that connects nonprofits, leaders, brands, and individuals to those who want to make a positive impact on the world.

Boasting a roster of well-recognized celebrity activists and leaders, and 30 nonprofit organizations, Causecast is a one-stop-shop for philanthropy, including a social network, news outlet, and entertainment source.

In an effort to increase popular interest in social causes, the site makes it easy for users to give back and do good on their own. Users can highlight their favorite causes by adding a widget to their own personal sites and profiles. Additionally, cause-related news from around the world is available at Causecast, as well as a weekly news show, with shorter segments available on the site's YouTube channel...

Need to create something like this closer home!!

Teach India : Wish I Had Thot Of It

There often comes an idea you wish you had done it/ thought about it. The Teach India campaign from TOI is one suck kick-ass idea!

Brutally simple, yet immensely powerful and so sorely needed for India.

"Teach India" is an initiative by 'The Times of India' to help provide an equal opportunity for education to underprivileged children.

The aim of "Teach India" is to provide a platform to educated Indians to provide assistance in basic education to the unprivileged children.

"Teach India" will connect educated individuals with the specialist education providers.

'The Times of India' has tied up with select NGOs in the field of education in multiple cities across India.

Participants have to devote just 2 hours a day to teach underprivileged children, either in a formal environment or even informal teaching like story telling.

There were mote than 10K responses on day one. Some companies are volunteering batches of 50 employees for this...I just signed up!

Twitter. Thwitter. Reflection Time

A variation on twitter. Thwitter will ask one question - what are you thinking now?. You gotta answer in no more than 140 characters.

I guess there is a tremendous need for a thwitter in our creative/ knowledge economy.

1. Between two blog posts I have 10 other ideas which I fritter away...Now I will thwitter away:-)

2. Thwitter might force us to step back and reflect more often than merely do stuff...I have to remind myself to think hard, to step back and thwitter on any given day!

3. Maybe the underlying search-and-match software can help put me in touch with all the people who are thwittering on the same topic at the same time...

4. One can look at the thread of weekly/ monthly thwitters and see what one's mind was upto at the thweet level...

5. Maybe I will use less post-its with thwitter by-my-side...

Any thwitters on thwitter:-)

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!

Small Big Idea

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

Day 4 - Boot Camp Bytes

And today, finally the meat of the boot camp. The often mis-understood, mis-managed, and 'black-box' subject of digital creatives...

Just came back meeting my college friend and his cute 3 year old son Yash. He reminded me of Neo!!My friend's adorable son - Yash. High-point of the day- Yash's squeal of delight upon seeing his new toy car...

Back to the workshop...Some of the key observations/ learnings of the day, in no particular order...

1. Digital creative, UGC, content in general forces us to ask the question - what business are we really in? Or more specifically what business do we want to be into...

These convergence days are exciting times. Bollywood meets MTV meets advertising meets Web 2.0 meets mobile content meets UGC meets PR meets something new every day! So, where do we want to go today:-)Paul and Brian from RightClicka, the social media experimental lab epicentred on music!!

2. As an industry and as my specific discipline(account planning), we have always been obsessed with the study of popular culture. But now with digital technology and democratisation of creativity, there is this huge opportunity of inventing popular culture...But are we ready as an industry to harness it. Don't think so:-(

3. The digital creative companies of the future need to be open-sourced. Their structures must be more collaborative and experimentative. And they must model themselves on software companies - projects, teams, constant learning and open to out-sourcing!

4. Digital Creative also demands that many of us wear multiple hats. Strategy and creative hats, project management and IT hats, strategy, creative and tech guru hats, project management and story telling hats. Successful models will have to burn their silo walls is what I feel.Our two Chinese interpreters for the day(at the back). I am liking the multi-culturalness of this boot camp...

5. We need 'cool scouts' - guys who are constantly on the look-out for 'cool content' & 'Cool Inventors'. And many of our current agency creatives may not be the guys who can invent 'cool'. These guys are scattered in music, movie, gaming industries...We need to hire/ work closely with them on digital projects.

6. I also strongly feel that 'the One Line proposition' led thinking has to give way to 'Multiple line/ context conversation' led briefing...Small ideas will coalesce to form the Big Idea! Digital Creative might also be of a 'Shoot-then-aim' mould!

This is the most complex topic as any real change demands structural changes in our business without disrupting the regular work and revenue streams. Balancing deep change with quarterly revenue targets:-) Tough task because as an industry, with all the back-slapping and PR around new tools, our fundamental structure( am restricting myself to mainstream agencies/ networks) hasn't changed in decades...

But if we need to change our core/ DNA to digital then we will have to disrupt our work, thought and administrative structures...Else the smaller, nimbler, smarter 1st generation digital shops will always enjoy a lead over the agency...

Of course much of this change might be messy, evolutionary, revolutionary...or forced upon by business imperatives...

But whatever be the outcome, digital content/ creativity/ market/ business model is an exciting playground. I am loving it!!

The New Creative

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

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

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

The Great Idea Myth - Simon Solves It For Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You may want to read a related post...

Big Idea : Management meets Marxism

27 year old Chepuri Srikrishna from IIM A has created history of sorts by volunteering to intern at the CPI(M) office. He is the first guy in IIMs 46-year history to opt for this experience...

When I read about him in ET, I instantly loved his guts and 'thinking outside the box'. Says he - "The CPI(M) is not against reforms. They are against the pace of reforms. It is trying for industrialisation in West Bengal. The party stands for a certain section of people. It is not anti-people" He added that - " the IIMs are not anti-Left either".

Srikrishna had been impressed by Sitaram Yechury's speech and then set his mind on doing his intern at the CPI(M).

A self-proclaimed "left-of-centre" individual Srikrishna sees no alternative to economic reforms. "How to control the pace of reforms to allow the under-privileged sections to cope with change" is the challenge he hopes to meet partly through his internship at the CPI(M).

Maybe its time to do the reveres as well. Get some fire-brand young party workers from the heartland into advertising to shake up things a little:-)

Big Idea : Finishing Schools for Rural Youth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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