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

Craftsmen at Work

What can modern businesses learn from the art of the craftsmen? That was the subject of an excellent episode of In Business on BBC Radio 4 that I heard yesterday.

It again brought to the fore an ongoing discussion on several discussion boards recently – the central role of business in society and what drives successful businesses. Sociologist Richard Sennett put forward his thesis that people who practice a craft know better than “business people” how organizations ought to be run.

Businesses are set up to meet genuine customer needs and they are typically driven by the passion of entrepreneurs who love making and delivering a product or service to their customers. Then the businesses grow. And they get “professionalized”. "Performance optimization” becomes the holy grail and very insidiously, the focus starts shifting – from the product or service to the company’s revenues and stock price.

Soon almost everybody forgets that goal is not making more money but celebrating the craft which gave birth to the business in the first place. Of course lip service is paid every now and then to the core of what the organization is about, but key strategic calls are made with an eye on the Street.

Also a dubious theory gets propounded that craftsmen are so involved with their craft that they don’t know how to run a business. Dubious because there is nothing to suggest that a person adept at a craft will not be able to collaborate with teams, will not be able to develop meaningful relationships with customers and employees and will be unable to command a fair price for his / her product or service. Most of the iconic brands and businesses we talk about reverentially today were created by such craftsmen, people who cared about the businesses rather than care about the money - whether it was a McDonald’s or Starbucks or Apple or Google or whatever. The bigger challenge for businesses in fact is to continue keeping their core craft at the centre of their business – note the classic memo written by Howard Schultz to his employees earlier this year. Even if it is not real, the memo became famous because it so truly seemed to reflect the passion of a founder-entrepreneur for a craft undermined at the altar of efficiency.

Finally going back to the BBC radio programme, the proposition of craftsmen as better businessmen was best articulated by Richard Taylor of the WETA workshop which produced the stunning special effects for movies such as Lord of the Rings and King Kong. Asked how they run such a stupendously successful creative business without any formal business training whatsoever, he said they did it by turning the accepted business model on its head and driving it from the heart of creativity. Instead of pursuing the last dollar, the bottom line, they looked at producing the most beautiful work creatively and in turn, good business will follow. Now how many businesses can say that hand on heart?