Digging for Meaning

In advertising, we often come across this four legged spider called 'the perceptual map'. It is quite an interesting tool really. If done right, it is a very efficient visual representation of chosen facts (not the whole truth, but the part that helps win an argument. :P) The uglier mutations of this spider are the intuitive/ judgemental/ consensus maps. The difference is, while the prior is based on numbers, the later are approximate 'gut feelings' of people who sit often removed from reality.  Even then, these are useful, if only in finding new perspectives to see with. We planners tend to use it quite often for its efficiency in meaning making and sharing of perspective. But lately even the clients have wizened up to it. But not entirely. Recently, we were briefed with a perceptual map that had four categories of the product at the four legs of the graph. That makes no sense. I can't share the actual figure of-course, but here's something similar (differe...

Men in air-conditioned glass boxes often feel the need to powerpoint. This might be because what they want to say (or what their counterparts want to hear) is not well formed enough. And saying it simply will unravel the artifice. Powerpoint in that sense is a tool that holds together the artifice. The red ribbon on top of a decorated gift package which possibly holds junk inside. Or the shiny credit rating that hides the shitty credit quality of CDOs.  You might now say that - "No no, it is only a tool. It depends on who uses it for what purpose." Wrong. The medium is the message. And the message is 'suspension of disbelief'. Here the medium necessitates one speaker who often is standing to deliver the message and as such gets into an authoritative position and the listeners have to hold their horses and give their attention to the presenter for a period of time. It gives enough space and time for the con to take effect. The medium of powerpoint intrinsical...

Said A word , said, is like the air that carries it... there, but ever changing. You know it is there, but 'which' air? May be it was made of something else the moment it was said. But now the memory has mutated the word with memories and assumption. It dissolves into maybes and blank spaces. What were you saying? Sorry the word didn't reach my cognition. Maybe it crashed against my ear and fell down. Let me look for it, while you go on with utterly temporary utterances that die right after they are born. Without a keen ear, a spoken word is a still born child. Keen ears and intelligence are the oxygen for meaning making with words. Unless one writes them down.  A spoken word is seldom alone. It carries with it movements, loudness, intonation. They are made of worldviews and emotions... exceptionally unique worldviews and emotions. exceptionally untranslatable unique worldviews and emotions. The rational word is but a small actor in the grand theater of emotions an...

Context: Out from a deep slumber, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has gotten into a hyper active mode. It started with discovery of Maggi making us eat poison . Soon it turned out, half the products that we daily depend on for maintaining our lifestyle are fucking with us one way or another. Aftermath: Some people have stopped using some of these products. But the most visible and loud portion of Indian humanity - the upper middle class that is active on social media - has responded in a surprising fashion (and hence this blog). They feel cheated! They sense a rat - not in the product, but in the discovery. They have responded with a sense of loss. They see it as an an unjust act of aggression by the government. They see it as an attack on their way of life. See this idiotic video for instance. What does this reaction mean? 1. People trust companies more than government in India. Edelman's trust barometer had found out that earlier. But this episode...

(Bringing down the focus from the earlier thought process.) (Addressed to advertising guys) Bee Orchid - XKCD I. Agent to parasites Orchids fool bees into carrying their pollen by making the bee think that it is getting laid. Advertising works in a somewhat similar fashion. The difference is; instead of genes, it is in the business of propagating memes*. Advertisers needs agencies because, intrinsically, most commercial memes are not interesting enough. Deep down in our hearts and colons, we don't care about soaps and cars. we care about love and health and sex and our sense of self and so on. (just read Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. hence the hangover of 'and so on'.) So the parasitic commercial memes piggy back on emotional/ funny memes we really care about. Agencies in that sense are the piggie-safari-wallahs. Agencies help the fat advertiser climb onto the pig of ideas. (pig of ideas.. that doesn't make any sense. anyways.)   II. ...

An idea is. and we are its vehicles. (see the ted talk below) We are the replicants at the employ of ideas. An idea does its best to spread no matter what we want to do with it.  Tomorrow it will find a better replicant than us in machines. And right now, it is rewarding people who are doing the most to accelerate that shift. Hence the big payouts for apps,  .coms,  automations and all sorts of work that serves automation. Future of service economy Indian pundits have hedged their economic bets against agriculture and with service economy. Against creation and with impending obsolescence. Indian service economy is not cutting edge, it is largely a job shop for work that is too mind numbing for actual willing humans to do. So the industry hires smart young people to waste their time (not learning skills beyond the immediate task) on cleaning data/ writing reports/ analysing markets/ making numbers/ writing algorithms and so on. All these tasks are in the service on m...

Myntra is asking us to 'live for likes'. But should it? and should we? I will come to that in a bit, but first the ok enough parts. Imagery. The imagery seems alright for a fashion brand (myntra = fashion brand?). Beautiful young people shot in various circumstances. The operating insight for the imagery was 'selfies'. Sure the brand world has discovered that insight now.. at least 2 years late. Error #1. Missed the zeitgeist bus.   This is a lazy interpretation of a powerful insight. If it is late, it at least should be powerfully executed or reinterpreted in a new way.Why are people taking selfies? How does it relate to their self esteem? How can Myntra inspire consumers through selfies? ok. so it was just an ártistic device'. But why have divergence in device and tagline. Error #2. Misunderstanding the function of branding  I want to talk about the misplaced insight behind 'live for likes'. My assumption is fashion advertising is aspir...

askme's commercials here. There are 3 of those. Firstly, its an ad for an app that has a celebrity endorsement. Secondly, its also an ad for an app that apparently does many things. Thirdly, its a headon competitor to leading single purpose apps. But the real question that one is left asking askme is 'WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY DO?' Error 1: Lack of proposition in a fucking launch commercial. :O which makes me wonder why askme is burning cash with these ads. Why would someone posture, instead of actually communicating? Perhaps its a desperate dash to get the name out before the owners go out to woo investors. But which investors would put their money on such shallow proposition?  Error 2: wrong insight. The apparent insight around which this campaign is strung together seems to be - "people are fed up with having to manage so many apps on the phone". What utter bullshit. who in India is 'worried' about having to manage their cell phones. We,...

Its easy to criticize. It comes easy. But it is not so productive. All it does is fill you up with negative energy and criticizing someone else only spreads that negative energy. So I was trying not to do any of that on this blog for the longest time. But that self censorship meant drying up of my writing habit altogether (coupled with the fact that I have been busy with better things in life. :) ) So here's another positive perspective.. i can dig dirt objectively. This objective dirt digging can actually help me (and you) not repeat those mistakes, the mistake by others. (Its so much harder to see our own mistakes!) So I try to list out fundamental and grave mistakes of others. I have done that before with, ET's abysmal editorial that completely lacked integrity (and logic) . Sergey Brin's weak -ass reason to invent Google glasses . Issues with Indian advertising (badly written, but some useful stuff there). Hypocrisy of social media 'activists' Ford Fig...

Marketer's assault on our Language = MAOL What do you do to wash your behind in the washroom? Do you trust your hands to do the job with water, or do you use paper? One day in college, a Chinese professor talked about this pertinent question when talking about cultural differences. She talked about how people see tissue paper as an essential solution, while there is an ecologically better solution 'at hand!'. The students were surprised with her point of view. Most of the students hailing from Indian metros, saw the tissue as a better alternative, a logical next step to the 'primitive' practice of washing with hands. That was one of the easy ways to differentiate oneself from the lower classes. The upper class is the one that has access to western lifestyle, which in Indian imagination is a 'step up', a logical next step . But this was different. This was a Chinese lifestyle too. (which is fairly absent from Indian imagination and hence exotic). ...

Recently, an academic researcher asked me a few questions about the challenges and problems faced by agencies while working on Integrated marketing campaigns. Well, my reply was a rather long and unstructured list of complaints. So here's the disclaimer, I am not a pessimist. :) But i am good at comprehensive exploration of shit gone wrong. These lists are useful in making things better. I am sharing my reply here because it might be a good starting point to complete the picture. My reply choses the negatives - someone can add positive anecdotes, someone can add experiences from other geographies. I have largely written from experiences I have heard from fellow planners I know and my own experiences, which is not a good research design. :P So in a way.. here's the hypothesis and I am asking any planner out there to validate, improve upon or point out the bullshit. Title in bold were questions asked by the researcher. Text in italics are my hypothesis' which are large...