God of Small Things

I bought a new mobile phone over the weekend. Here are a few random observations about the purchase:

1. I spent over four hours searching the net and comparing different handsets, features, price etc. Not once did I get a relevant banner telling me anything relevant about the models or anything exciting to make the purchase more enticing. Wonder why mobile manufacturers or their dealers can’t make better use of the much vaunted “digital space”.

2. There are a lot of blogs and community sites which rave and rant about various phone models (they are very democratic – all major brands are berated equally). Unfortunately, none of the big brands participate or engage with these blogs. Could there be an opportunity for brands to play a constructive role.

3. Nokia Europe hosts a community site for comments about their products. But they don’t seem to have any constructive things to offer about product problems that users post on the site. The moderator simply directs irate users to a corporate site which in turn has fancy flash videos but doesn’t solve consumers’ problems with the phones. But at least it’s a start – maybe they’ll upgrade to being more specific soon.

4. Even now the most impressive part of the purchase was an old fashioned store at which a young Sardar answered questions, came across as more or less transparent and assured me he was always around if I had problems – the old neighbourhood “Hum Hain Na" retailer who finally sold me the phone. So much for online marketing.

If all this seems too small or trivial, maybe that’s what marketing in the digital space will be about. It’s not about one big bang piece of communication but many small things which aggregate into something big and meaningful. That could be the new nature of things and it fits in perfectly with the nature of “online”. So I wonder if we are ready to be the God of Small Things; to focus on doing all the seemingly "trivial" stuff because they make a difference while selling; to talk to the masses, one person at a time.