Knock Knock

My friend, Ram forwarded me this new ebook by Seth Godin on making websites more effective. It’s a succinct, commonsense-filled approach; made me wonder why more online outfits didn’t think of it – especially the ones I interacted with during my mobile phone purchase. Read it for yourself by downloading it from here.

Googled

Business Week has stirred up a debate by carrying a piece questioning if Google was killing intellect.

The article went on to talk about how the mammoth engine who promised to “never be evil” delivers facts, information and nowadays, even references– check scholar.google.com –makes us intellectually lazy. Who will wade through arcane sources trying to know about Virgil, when Google does that for you in flat 0.28 seconds (and by the way, also tells you about Virgil’s Root Beer, brewed in the north of England)

I have personally witnessed people digging out reams of information and data on all kinds of subjects without much corresponding insights or understanding. So I have some sympathy for the view that very often collation of information becomes a surrogate for intellectual rigour; that making so much available so easily results in reducing knowledge to the trivial. In the process, it reduces our respect for knowledge. It also, so goes a point of view, turns users away from more considered sources of learning and knowledge like books, classes etc.

But in today’s context, this perspective seems dated. It also seems rooted in a certain kind of misplaced class consciousness. It smacks of arguments that were put forth in feudal times for not translating works of classics in the commoners’ language. The argument went that making the work more accessible makes it less of a classic and reduces the “gravitas” of the work.

Like it or not, Google and its Wiki cousins have democratized information.
They have become the language of today’s commoner. They are as much of tools as pen or paper. (By the way I just realized that I have been forgetting my pen at home for a couple of days and have not missed it at all – can’t say the same about my computer or mobile). Today, and more so in the future, just giving somebody information will make him / her as smart as giving them a pen. They’ll have a useful tool but that’s pretty much it. What they do with that information, how well they internalise it, play with it and give it new dimensions; that’s what will make will them winners. And that puts a greater onus on the rest of society; to evaluate the quality of ideas and concepts a person comes up with based on all the freely available information. Tougher on all of us? Yes. But eventually it’s also a step towards creating a richer, more evolved bunch of people.

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.

Bhiku Ban Gaya Socialite

Returned to Mumbai after three weeks. Among other things, the society pages inform me that Manoj Bajpai is the latest addition to the Page 3 regulars lists.

Whose Space is it Anyway

Cities, like people need to breathe. Cities, like people need space to be fallow. Some societies allow these to their cities.
Some people believe in maximizing returns from an urban place – which means building up every square metre, inhabit it with people and generate more taxes. Others believe in optimizing returns from urban space – which means giving the city dwellers space to love and grow with the place they stay in and hence draw better people and better industries thus generating greater tax revenues.
Some people believe that a piece of open space in an urban area is a hallowed place that allows the people to loosen up and take time outs. Hence there are a lot of these spaces spread out over a large area. The spaces are hospitable and they have facilities which make it an attractive breather for people in between their urban madness. In turn, people who use it are expected to keep it that way. It sure beats taking a breather at Phoenix Mills.

Some societies are also very particular about not letting these public spaces be used for private purposes – even if earns a lot of money by way of rentals or taxes. Because by definition, a public space is meant for everybody and not a select few.

Some civil societies go to great lengths to maintain the sanctity of these public spaces. Maybe it’s a matter of affluence. When you are busy trying to figure out where you are going to be sleeping tonight, sunlight shimmering off a pond in a park may not exactly catch your fancy. But somehow, I believe that’s not the case. You don’t have to particularly well-off to carry your empty bag of Lays chips back with you. I think it finally boils down to this – some people believe a public space belongs to everybody; some believe it belongs to nobody. What do you think we believe?

My Films

User generated content has been experimented with for quite some time now. Here's a big promotion that is currently on here in the US for Heinz ketchup inviting consumers to make their own TV films for Heinz and submit it online. The winners would get to see their films on national TV and also win over $50,000.

So will the next metal winner be John Doe from Suburbanville, or will Geeta from Gorakhpur beat him to it.

Those Long Lines

Saw an interview with Bill Aitkinson, Apple employee 51 who was standing in a line outside an Apple store in Cupertino, California last Friday evening to buy his iPhone. He believes an year from now the number of people on the internet would double because they’ll be logging in through the iPhone.

I agree. At some point, I think exponential growth in internet penetration in less developed countries like India will come about because of mobile phone devices which are more intuitive and less dependant on “literacy”. Though I doubt iPhone will be that phone – they’ll simply not be able to deliver a value proposition to the mass even in the US, let alone a less developed country like India.

I also had an opportunity to try out the iPhone. Though the phone felt robust, sleek and everything one expected it to be, surfing was Stone-Age due to the slow network speed. I waited for three minutes for agencyfaqs page to open up and then gave up. But the phone itself deserves two thumbs up.

BTW, Steve Jobs was the first in that line outside the Apple store. Talk about great marketing. We in advertising have a lot to learn from him.