Right to Information

I spent an extremely engaging couple of hours yesterday hearing Shailesh Gandhi talk about the Right to Information Act and the impact that single act could have on governance and civic issues. What impressed me most, other than Gandhi’s enthusiasm and energy was the fact that we have, for once, a system in place that forces the faceless, big-brotherly bureaucracy to listen and respond to each of us as individuals.
Though it may be Pol Science 101, I found it extremely interesting to think of the system of elective democracy as an exchange between the state and the individual – the individual giving up a part of his / her sovereignty for services rendered by the government.
The RTI is a simple and very powerful tool to put pressure on the system by individuals seeking public information which otherwise gets obfuscated by the vast tangle that passes for bureaucracy. And it’s so simple that I still am trying to figure out if there’s a catch; after all I too am a part of generation that has grown up learning to fear ability of the mai-baap system to run circles around me. I haven’t yet been able to find that catch. The more important thing, I guess if for us to use the tool to participate and engage with the state. Check out the site Satyamevajayate.info for simple information on how.

Economics of Marriage

"So what drives modern marriage? We believe that the answer lies in a shift from the family as a forum for shared production, to shared consumption...the key today is consumption complementarities . . .Today, it is more important that we share similar values, enjoy similar activities, and find each other intellectually stimulating" - contentious (some may say simplistic), but an interesting idea on the new economics of marriage. The writers go on to say it's no longer about the old adage of "opposites attract" because of which it made sense for the husband and wife to have different interests in different spheres of life.

Check the full piece here (Link via Marginal Revolution).

And the Winner is . . .

Who is the NDTV Indian of the Year? Who is the CNN-IBN Person of the Year? Which will be the CNBC Car of the Year? What about the BS Motoring Car of the Year? Which will be the AutoCar Magazine’s 2-Wheeler of the Year? The Filmfare Actor of the Year? The Screen Awards Movie of the Year? Which programme will be the Telly Awards Soap of the Year? The PC-World Magazine’s Gadget of the Year? Pets & More Magazine’s Pet Cat of the Year? Ok, I just made that one up. But, what a conundrum!

The Brave New World

Somebody once said that all new ideas are first dismissed as laughable, then spurned as impossible and finally accepted as obvious. Two days before Tata Motors unveils what is being popularly dubbed the People’s Car, I sense the transition already happening from the second to the third state. In that context, read this interview with Rajiv Bajaj on making affordable cars- coherent and extremely sharp. Without being jingoistic, it really makes me feel good about our industry and the companies leading the charge towards a new order.

Shame!!

I wonder which is worse. This incident at Juhu, Mumbai; or the Police Commissioner saying that everybody is making a “mountain of a molehill”.

Of Rights and Wrongs

A couple of years back, I remember one of our American Creative Directors being aghast at my defending the pirated books sold on our streets. My point was (and is) that trying to curb piracy by cracking down on the peddlers and printers is simply not practical – and more importantly goes against the grain of free business.

Firstly, the principle of copyrights itself is a recent phenomena ushered in by agents and publishers. Neither Mozart not Shakespeare copyrighted their works. And for a good reason; there is an argument that the more a piece of work gets transmitted to more people, the greater the respect for the author which in turn leads to more lucrative assignments. This argument gets even more pronounced in the age of instant sharing of ideas. Not only are restrictions difficult to administer, they are also barriers to new mash ups. As Seth Godin says, he could possibly earn some money by getting people to pay to read his blog; but he gets much more by seeding his ideas in the public domain, getting people to talk about it and growing his reputation as a thinker / speaker.

The notion of copyrights is also a lawyers’ delight – for instance, am I violating laws if I lend my book to a friend? What if I lend it to 10 friends? 1000 friends? What if I write the text of a book, post it on my blog and send the link to those friends? David Pogue illustrates how gray this subject is on his post here where he quizzes students about the ethics of digital piracy. Their responses are telling.

But I read the best one on this topic by Suketu Mehta some months back. While traveling in a Mumbai cab, he was accosted by a street kid selling a pirated of “Maximum City”. When told he was the author of the book, the kid offered him a discount. A bit like Mario the postman in “Il Postino”, who having read Pablo Neruda’s romantic poetry narrates it to a village girl as his own – he insists that having read and internalised it, the poetry is no longer Neruda’s but his own. How can you argue against that?
UPDATE: This post by Chris Anderson adds one more interesting perspective to this subject.

News - Important and Interesting

“Brand Managers are . . . congenitally incapable of understanding the nature and purpose of journalism” writes Vinod Mehta, one of my favourite journalists in a heartfelt guest article in Agencyfaqs. He says Brand Managers can never understand that content is more, much more, than what readers want. A similar thought was echoed a couple of years back by a senior BBC journalist who compared journalism that only reflects what a majority of people want to read, to a politician who spouts inflammatory rhetoric in front of an angry mob of rioters under the pretext that’s what people want to hear.

Coincidentally, Michael Hirschorn has an even more nuanced perspective on the subject in this month’s Atlantic Monthly. He recommends newspapers to “stop being important and start being interesting”, saying “news” in the classical sense of the word is a commodity today. What is more relevant to people are “non-commodifiable virtues” like deep reporting, distinctive point of view and sharp analysis. All of which actually often get reflected in the “most popular / e-mailed” boxes on the websites of newspapers. And “the most–e-mailed lists suggest that readers will consume meaningful, interesting (and maybe even “important”) journalism if they feel compelled, beguiled, seduced”.

What is interesting to me is how the solution to Vinod Mehta’s plea to give readers more than what they want, give them the unexpected can lie in the online space. And he’ll surely find it gratifying that online lists suggest that people don’t always want to read about Britney Spears. Friedman and Maureen Dowd routinely turn up on the NYT’s most popular lists. There’s hope still.

PYTs and Rich, Old Fools

Last year a billboard for the newspaper DNA quizzed us on where pretty young girls would find rich, old fools if the dance bars of Mumbai shut down. Steven Levitt answers on his post The Economics of Gold-Digging !!

A Better Mousetrap

The greater the barrage of ads that people are exposed to, the more adept they get at filtering out what they aren’t interested in. Strangely, we in the advertising and marketing business continue to do more of the same. The latest ad may be more creative than last year’s, but viewer’s ennui with our collective output still outstrips the incremental creativity.

Over the last few years it’s become commonplace to take product parity for granted and hence depend on created communication to be the differentiator. This in turn makes the advertising try harder than ever to stretch the metaphors, sometimes leading to the ridiculous; I mean, a soap will not exactly make India a better place. This trend reminds me of the consumer who once said when you sell a shoe, sell a shoe and don’t sing the national anthem while you are at it. Given all this I wonder if sooner rather than later, we will we go back to the times when companies actually attempted to deliver superior products vis-à-vis competition? Will be very long before a marketer actually decides to reduce investments in communication and invest more in simply designing better products – from delivery to packaging to experiences. We see a lot of that already in technology brands, some of whom have become cult. So why not shoes or soap?

Of Civic Campaigns and Talent Searches

Two leading newspapers are currently in the middle of initiatives that seek to encourage public debate and participation in civic issues. The Times of India is doing the Lead India campaign and the Mumbai Project is Hindustan Times’ attempt at raising, debating and engaging stakeholders on civic issues plaguing the city (and god knows we have many).

While both are public campaigns, the differences are very telling. The TOI campaign takes a top-down approach – it invited SMS votes to select a candidate who may actually participate in the country’s electoral politics. The HT initiative is a completely bottom-up approach. Over two weeks, there were a lot of facts and some very good debates that were stirred and the newspaper simply served as a platform raising civic raising issues.

The TOI’s Lead India campaign was a marketing initiative complete with televised debates and celebrity moderators (they even asked a candidate’s wife to sing his favourite song on the TV show). They also roped in Shah Rukh Khan, Abhishek Bachchan and the likes to promote the initiative with a huge television and outdoor campaign. Not that marketing the campaign by itself is wrong (in fact some of the TV ads are very nice). But at some point, it became a campaign highlighting the personalities rather than the issues they represented. And while I am willing to accept drama being a surrogate for singing in shows like the Indian Idol; issues like governance, education, infrastructure etc. are far too important to be decided through SMS campaigns.

The HT’s Mumbai Project on the contrary was primarily a journalist-driven initiative. It had a lot of meaningful content, in-depth analysis and a platform to debate those issues. The content was obviously put together with a lot of assiduous effort and hence there was enough material to have a serious engagement with.

In fact spending 15 minutes on each of the campaign websites highlights the stark differences between the two initiatives. One filled with relevant content and the other, a slickly packaged show. I don’t know about the larger world, but I would any day take the content.

A judge in New York state lost his job because he ordered 46 people in his courtroom to be taken in custody after they refused to admit whose mobile phone had rung while his court was in session. I feel he was doing what many of us fervently desire when the woman sitting behind in a cinema theatre instructs her son to look for the dal in the top row of the refrigerator. Hope somebody starts an online petition to reinstate the honourable judge.

Outside of a dog, a Kindle is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read – Groucho Marx, c. 2007

How's the Market Today?

Yesterday I was reminded me of a comment made by a financial analyst during the last stock market boom – when your grandmother starts looking at the stock prices in newspapers, it’s time to move out. The cabbie who was driving me home from office had a “bhav copy” (a two-sheeter with closing stock prices, printed every trading day) tucked behind his steering wheel. So, there.

On Creativity and Education

I just heard this outstanding speech by Sir Ken Robinson on creativity and the role of our education system in nurturing it. It’s simple, inspiring, witty and profound – everything the current education system isn’t. He delivered it over a year ago at the TED conference. What a pity it took me this long to stumble across it. Listen to it, if you haven’t already. Actually listen to again even if you have. It’s beautiful.

Update: Got a couple of mails saying the download was somewhat patchy. So I've uploaded the mp3 version here. Hopefully this should be easier.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit

Today is my birthday. Not relevant for anybody but me.

But the text messages I’ve been receiving is indicative of the pressure a lot of friends are under. Most of the people don’t seem to be happy just wishing a happy birthday. There is almost a compulsion say something more interesting / smart / witty. So all sorts of contorted witticisms find their way to my inbox.

There was a time when greeting cards took away that pressure by being witty. So one just had to spend twenty bucks and bask in somebody else’s wit. Alas, e-greetings have taken that pleasure away. Most of the e-greetings are too busy serving up gif files of cartoons to have anything smart to say. Ditto for mobiles and their dry emoticons. Hence most people are left in the lurch trying to be smart while messaging their friends. Which leads to me believe that people may be willing to pay money to be able to easily access smart quotes for birthdays, anniversaries etc. It saves them the time and trouble of thinking too much and makes them feel good. So what if they aren’t able to conjure it themselves, at least they’ll be seen as having the right sensibilities to choose and appreciate the smart lines; the way I've headlined this post by borrowing a quote from Oscar Wilde. Am I not smart?!!

The Reluctant Politician

“Politicians instead must revel in the political process. They must adore people, jump into crowds, pump hands, kiss babies, travel by train to remotest corners, walk where there are no roads, speak a language that touches hearts, causes tears to flow and raises a million cheers.” . . . Sagarika Ghose writes in today’s Hindustan Times about Dr. Manmohan Singh as the accidental politician. Worth a read.

Reviewing Ads

Like any true blue advertising person, I had a good time venting spleen at an ad that I think stinks. Got the opportunity when I reviewed the Emami Fair & Handsome television commercial in The Mint and had great fun panning it. Some would say it is poetic justice that my acerbic review was trimmed of most vitriol by the 400 word limit that commerce imposed on it.

Media and Creativity

Adage reports that Domino’s Pizza has handed its media planning duties to – Crispin Porter. This is landmark as it puts “creativity” back in the centre. According to Domino’s Chief Marketing Officer, "Crispin Porter & Bogusky is known for creative, and that passion for doing things differently also extends to media."

This move also indicates that despite talks of creative media planning, media agencies derive their primary strength from scale. In today’s environment, media planning actually involves managing the context in which messages get delivered. By that yardstick, an agency which can provide the most creativity in developing the communication content should also be able to provide similar creativity in identifying the right contexts to place that content. I hope this leads to a Domino effect and will we see more large clients working with similar models.

A Matter of Livelihood

I was talking with Sharmila today about the new found passion of our government for SEZs and the public protests against them by local residents in various parts of our country. And the discussion got me really confused. She claims she’s got research papers (she’s working for a not-for-profit organization now) that show how SEZs in particular and most such large schemes in general often end up harming the local people.

I disagreed and felt that development is not a zero-sum game and in the long run, everybody gets pulled up. The problem is that in the short-term a lot of people actually suffer – take for instance the Nandigram issue where a lot of people have been farming the land for generations but don’t have papers to prove the land is theirs. Most such people will not get adequately compensated. They’ll also need to be re-skilled in new jobs; not the easiest of things for people who’re mostly illiterate and lack any soft skills. So what does one do? Do we let them continue with what is undoubtedly subsistence farming and living or should the government encourage industry and try to manage the collateral hurt caused to a lot of the local population?

So many questions. Such limited knowledge. Maybe we should just have a television debate with Mahesh Bhat and Ashok Singhal.

In Rainbows

Radiohead have experimented with business path which few marketers dare tread. Their new album In Rainbows has just been released in digital MP3 format online on their own site inrainbows.com. And here’s the thing - for a single download, it’s priced at whatever you wish to pay for it. You may even choose to download it for free, if you wish to.

The website also sells a discbox which contains the album on a CD, on two LP records plus the lyrics booklet and a specially designed artwork by Stanley Donwood. That’s priced at ₤40.

Radiohead is obviously betting on people paying something for the download – and given the digital format and the direct to consumer approach their costs are likely to be more modest allowing them to get better returns even on smaller amounts that people may pay. There may also be a fair number of people willing to pay ₤40 to hear the music in superior CD format with specially designed artworks etc.

There will also be other benefits – like more people hearing the album because it’s not expensive and thus better turnouts at concerts which are substantial money spinners.

Whether the whole thing turns out to be viable remains to be seen (it’s been reported that on the day of the release, 1.2 million copies on In Rainbows were sold as digital downloads). But trust the artists to try new business models even as established record labels watch transfixed like a deer in headlights.

Update: Social Networking news site Mashable reports that the Radiohead got an average of $8 per album. Just under $10 million within the first week is not bad revenues at all. Concerts and other paraphernalia not included