How Transparent is your Brand

For all the discussions about how digital space is going to change the landscape of brand communications, there is precious little tangible evidence of that, at least in India.

One of the fundamental issues when it comes to meaningful use of digital space is the discomfort with a new way of engaging with people. Typically we have a bias against dialogue, used as we are to playing out our monologues about our brands. And that doesn’t work any more. People aren’t very interested in knowing more about how our enriched products help their health / skin / career whatever. They see through the spiel.

One of the necessities for rich dialogue is transparency. How much of ourselves are we willing to show to people; how honest are we with them; how much we do we seek to cede and how much do we want to control. Conversations are not about control. In such an environment, even when we want to sell, we need to do so with honesty, empathy and the right sensibilities. As brand controllers, most of us are not prepared to handle this role. We aren’t used to individuals creating havoc for our brands (Google “Dell Hell” to see a more celebrated example of the power of the individual)

The challenge before us is to embrace the landscape (not that we have much of a choice, anyway); to use these new opportunities to talk and form relationships with more people; to be authentic without being banal.

Some new, younger and smaller brands and individuals are already showing the way. There are scores of small musicians and soloists who conduct business primarily online. They have strong online presence, they create a fan base using communities and blogs, they perform to smallish audiences in off-beat places and even record and sell their music on iTunes. And people pay what they believe is fair. For the skeptics among you, consider the case of Jane Siberry, a Canadian folk-pop singer who has a very interesting payment system for people who download her songs. She has a “pay what you can” policy, so fans can download the songs for free. But her site also shows the average price other people have paid for a track. This creates a “generally accepted” standard of what the song is worth. As a result, the average price her customers paid is $1.30 a track, much more than what iTunes charges. Chew on that.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

“I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

That’s the blurb on the back a book on the English language, I am reading now. A wonderful take on punctuations, and why they matter. Try to lay your hands on it. You won’t regret it.

Making Bharat

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech at CII’s Annual Session on May 24, has created a bit of furore in media. I am sure, most of the reactions to it – and I’ve seen a lot on TV over the weekend – have been voiced without hearing / reading the full text. What he said about doing a reality check on CEO compensation has received a lot of attention and comments. Probably the media played it up because it was a suitably provocative section and allowed for interesting sound bytes; except Mahesh Bhatt I saw almost all the usual suspects on TV holding forth their POV on the issue.

But the speech itself was exemplary – sharp content and very graciously delivered. The issue of what he termed excessive remuneration to promoters and senior executives was just one of the many things he said. And in all fairness, there is ample merit to it. Without mandating things, he urged corporates to show more sensitivity in rewarding themselves and temper the display of those rewards. And that’s a very edifying thought.

One can debate the specifics of how this can be done, but in principle, it is a very good thought. And not just for altruistic reasons. It may seem pedantic, but the more inclusive and equitable the growth story is, the more self-perpetuating it is. I am not sure of the ratios of CEO salaries to lower level worker salaries in the US or Europe, but I guess those comparisons are slightly redundant – not when our poor are as wretched as they are and not when farmer suicides are more regular than monsoon harvests.

The media makes these differences starker by showcasing them as trophies – the multi-crore weddings and parties and the vulgar triumphalism of economically successful celebrities.

In light of all this, some sanity and circumspection does help and all the good doctor has done is ask the most illustrious of our corporate chieftains to lead the way. As he said, “India has made us. We must make Bharat”.

Kiel vi fartas?

That’s Esperanto for how are you. I was introduced to this new, first artificially created language today. It was developed around 1880 by a gentleman from Poland.

I find the idea of creating a language from scratch interesting. Though I am sure it would borrow from a lot of different languages and sources, it will obviously be bereft of all trappings of history and etymology. This of course, would be boon and a bane.


How can language be developed from logic and algorithms – unless it is a computer language. It has to live and evolve from cultures; it has to create its own feel which in turn would be rooted in the place where it lives. A language divorced from culture will be insipid, dry and will eventually wither away. Considering that Esperanto in its 125 plus years of existence has less than a couple of million speakers, that’s what is happening to it. Notwithstanding a full length movie produced in the language starring William “Star Trek” Shatner.

Life in a Metro

If the movie “Life in a Metro” were 20 minutes shorter, if the story about Dharmendra and Nafisa Ali were chopped off, if the director hadn’t tried so hard to connect the three different stories, the movie could have been much better.

It’s a movie about people in search of an idea of perfect happiness. A wife’s search for the Utopian marital bliss, a husband’s search for the lost spontaneity of youth, a young struggling actor searching for acceptance and rewards, a young call centre worker in a hurry. Not exactly new, but still has promise – especially when these lives intersect in a city which envelops them in a life-sapping embrace.

But well begun is only won. The stories go forward in spurts; whole banal sections and suddenly, a surprisingly insightful gem hidden inside it. Whole parts which are forced and overly dramatic change the otherwise smooth momentum.

But all those niggles I would have accepted if the movie had brought to life the smell of the city which itself is in a constant search mode. The noise, the spontaneity, the irritants that can sometimes be overwhelming. But I was left searching for it in the movie. The panorama just didn't fall in place.

It’s easy to appreciate the movie for attempting to be different – showing the grimier part of Mumbai, showing actual singers belting out tracks while the city and the protagonists move on around them etc. But that is being unfair and condescending. As movie accomplishments go, Life in a Metro flattered to deceive.

The ensemble cast was more than competent – with the exception of Shilpa Shetty. Special mentions – Irrfan (is that how his name is spelt, nowadays) and Shiny Ahuja.

A LIL guideline

Mumbai (and possibly most other Indian cities’) airwaves are a cacophony of sounds as private FM radio takes off.

But the tyranny of “that’s what the market wants” ends up making almost all the stations sound the same. Young jocks trying hard to sound upbeat, playing the same kind of music, similar interstitials, gags and branded properties. I counted the song from the movie Metro play thrice (on two different stations) in a span of 40 minutes today morning.

Here is a guideline I used, during the time I spent working with a radio station – to make content more relevant. I liked to call the LIL rule:

Live – As much of content was as live as possible. That’s what differentiates the medium from most others. That means the only chat / talk you have on the station should be relevant then and there. It’s surprising how many shows on radio aren’t. The more packaged stuff you have, the more I will want to listen to songs on my CD or iPod. The Live bit is one thing that makes a radio station relevant.

Interactive – The oldest electronic media is also the most interactive. Unfortunately, exploiting the participative nature of the media calls for special skill development – how to engage with listeners (most of whom are pretty inarticulate), when to interact, how not to make the engagement boring to other listeners etc.

Local – How local can we get; in language, content and other packaging. I’ve noticed this is more easily done in Mumbai, but during my visits to other cities I have heard most jocks trying to sound (in accent and content) more Mumbai than the city they were in.

The attempt was always to ensure the station delivered on at least two of these three attributes.

Microsoft oPhone

Check this spoof on Redmond's answer to the iPhone.

Supermarket 2.0

New language?

India Connected

Just read this article in Tehelka about how the internet is affecting lives in small towns of Bihar. As has probably been the case elsewhere, it starts with young men surfing porn sites; hopefully it will move on to other more enriching (?) discoveries for these people soon.

But I do think the full impact of the online space will be seen only when the language barrier gets broken. Currently, the net is far too English to make a deeper social difference. Possibly that may change in times to come, but I reckon mobile platforms are more potent than PC based systems, which are still seen as “computerji” or “Compaq-da” at best.

On building a robust nest

How much care do we take to present our companies and brands in a thought through manner in our day to day interactions.

I thought of this a couple of days back at a supermarket. While walking through food products aisle with my wife, I completely dismissed a brand which is heavily advertised as a healthy add-on to rotis made at home. The brand is well respected, it spends a large amount of money marketing itself and in recent times it’s done a very good job of riding a wave of health consciousness.

There were three, at first glance unconnected reasons for my dismissing the brand:

1. Over 10 years back, I had a short interaction with that company when my client was conducting a joint promotion with one of their brands. During the course of the promotion, the then Marketing Manager of this company showed himself to be quite inept. He kept changing his mind ever so often (which happens with many clients) and lied brazenly (less common). In the process he botched up the promo we were running and shoved the responsibility on my client and on everybody else in his own company. To top it all, the company delayed our payments by over six months.
2. Separately, about two years back, during my interactions with some other well respected experts in the food business I was told how the company short-changed its products and relied on advertising hyperbole which they found easy to get away with given the lax regulatory standards.
3. Last month, one of my colleagues was talking about her experience with an “innovative” product in a different category that the same company had launched. Her experience was terrible; the product didn’t work, it leaked and the retailer refused to take it back.

It was Jeremy Bullmore I think, who said many years back that people build brands the way birds build nests, from scraps and straws we chance upon. If that is true, the scraps and straws I picked up about this company were very fragile.

I wonder if we leave behind similar impressions, maybe unknowingly on people we come in contact with. And 10 years later, will we have one more unfavourable ambassador for our company or brand who will go about undoing the conversions we painfully tot up on presentations. After all in today’s multi-avatar world, each of us plays the role of a consumer, a marketer and an evangelist, often all together.

The Confused Fundamentalist

Just finished reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. A book that tries to understand and give meaning to some extremely complex emotions in confusing times.

It’s the story of Changez, a Pakistani man educated in Princeton who starts work with an elite Valuation company. Success at work and money quickly follows and soon, entry into the hallowed upper echelons of New York society through a budding liaison with Erica, a young, eligible girl of the Manhattan privileged class. How the September 11 attacks change Changez’s life and priorities form the story of the book.

I liked the book for its attempt to address this issue, for being true to the situation it is set in, for trying to give voice to regular people in strange times. But though the attempt is laudable, the output isn’t.

The story comes out maudlin, and the story technique of Changez narrating the whole story to an American he meets at a bazaar in Lahore, though novel in the beginning soon becomes too trying. This techniques forces Hamid to be stilted.

Occasional sparks in the conversation between Changez and his American guest notwithstanding, the book falls between telling a simple human story and addressing the deeper issues underlying the context against which the story is set. Symbolisms like Erica (did you notice, AmErica) and Changez (notice, Change) just make the work that much more tiresome.

Net, as was said of some other worthy in the past, on the surface this book is very profound, but deep down it’s quite superficial.

The Greatest Innovations

Just read an article on the Greatest Innovations of all time. The list (compiled by innovation consultants) includes all kinds of very unlikely ideas like Weapons (at no.1) or Property Ownership (at no. 7) or Participatory Democracy (at no. 9). The interesting thing is that the list has no products – the closest you have are Vaccines and Antibiotics (at no. 11) and Semiconductors (at no. 12).

The point the writer makes is that the most important innovations come from platforms which go beyond product categories and markets.

A very interesting article; I wonder if some of the following should have been there too.

1. Writing (or writing tools – papyrus or whatever)

2. Electricity
3. Wheels
4. Religion
5. Army (or police – basically organized fighters)

What else?

Hondamentalism

Saw the new "Hondamentalism" spot by Wieden, London. And liked it. My thoughts on the ad:

1. It must have been a very brave client indeed to approve this script.

2. So much of the ad is just a "feel" rather than "said" message. The best of audio visual media - movies or advertising is more about creating a feel. A feel which says much more than any overtly stated messages.

3. To me, the visual metaphors in the ad said more about Honda's commitment to engineering than the old-fashioned propositions about the benefits of the engineering.

4. It also underscores my belief that the tyranny of the 30-second duration doesn't allow for creation of any "feel" etc. You barely have time to race through your spiel without pausing for breath. The Honda spot had the luxury of 60 seconds to create pure visual drama without baggage.

It Works.

Why am I blogging

My attempts to keep this blog updated have been sporadic. But this is a first step to be more regular; to put down in writing what I generally like to talk about.

It calls for more discipline, to spend those extra couple of minutes trying to articulate random thoughts. I still believe in the sanctity of the written word. Talk is free, talk is cheap. Written words hold more weight. I don't want to write something today that I myself will scoff at some months later.

Yes, this is more difficult. But here is a promise to myself; to be more regular and keep this blog updated.