Dial S for Shellphone

The Next Big Web Thing?

David Gelernter did not invent the Web. But he might be the guy who re-invents it. This professor at Yale thinks the Internet is a mess and needs some radical restructuring. In 1991 he published "Mirror Worlds" which envisaged a future where all our activities will be mirrored on the Web. Over the past ten years he has spent in to restructure the Web to mirror this emerging reality. David had nothing to do with either Facebook or Twitter. However social media did give rise to a concept central to his mission -the timeline. David however is not very complimentary about Twitter or Facebook. He believes that both while being important to the evolution of the Web are essentially inelegant and will not exist in a decade. Wall Street better rethink the $100 billion dollar valuations (the moot point, some would say, is that whether Wall Street itself may not exist in 10 years). The news is now that David is now ready to launch his product among students at Yale just as Facebook was first launched among students at Harvard. The product is, as you would expect, shrouded in mystery as of now but David does talk about the Internet of the future becoming a instead of a network of static assets and each person having a Lifestream that feeds the Worldstream and is visible to others in part based on permission settings. Imagining David's product based on the above concepts could be an interesting exercise. Who knows, you might land yourself a complementary product that positions you downstream from David's putative game changer. One more point. David was a victim of the Unabomber. A letter bomb blew up in his face, leaving him severely handicapped. Give a Genius a handicap and the odds are he will flower. Wanna bet on David's idea? You know where to find me.

Oh Wow! Oh Wow! Oh Wow!

Oh Wow! Oh Wow! Oh Wow!
Those, according to Steve Jobs's sister, were his dying words.
And he said them as he stared beyond those gathered around his deathbed.
What was Jobs seeing?
My guess is that what this unmatched curator of great design saw was design perfection, some sort of design heaven.
It is my theory that if one has lived life passionately, on death one passes to that passion.
For those of us, and that would probably be the vast majority, death only leads to one more go at life, one more opportunity to find passion.
An interesting variation of this theme is the concept of the Half-Way House - a concept that I came across a Japanese book or movie, the details of which I do not remember.
The Half-Way House concept is that when we die we all go to a Half-Way House. At the Half-Way House we are asked to recall that moment in our life when we were the happiest. And as soon as an individual in a Half-Way House recalls that moment correctly, he/ she is transported away from the Half-Way House to Heaven.
Passionate Involvement = Intense Happiness = Heaven?
Oh Wow! Of Wow! Of Wow!
Go figure "Hey Ram".

The Chetan Bhagat Generation

Have you read a Chetan Bhagat book? I haven't.
The sales figures of his books are, I am told, through the roof.
Somewhat mystified I decided to talk to my friend the erudite Musty Bookwala, a third generation bookseller.
"Chetan Bhagat! That man is a genius I tell you"
Then spying the blank on my face.
." Are dikra, tame  khuch khabar nathu. His books are in what I call Fraille. Nathi samjhu?
Let me explain like Braille is for the blind, Fraille is for today's young"
" Musty are you saying the reading habits of today's young are kind of kinky?" 
"Oye Aggie what reading habit? Unless of course you mean Nike or somebody is going to market clothes to read in. Boss they buy Chetan Bhagat because they find they can read them, one SMS at a time. Also when you no longer buy a newspaper what do you think you can carry with you to the bogs?"
Next time I spied Chetan on a current affairs programme on TV I stopped surfing and paid attention. I saw the man in a new light. Was I beholding, I wondered, India's Steve.
Steve started with the iBook and went on to the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Having single handedly reviving the Indian publishing industry with iPulp, Chetan can perhaps re-invent the fashion industry in India with iKitsch and then perhaps take the film industry out of the hands of Idiots like Aamir Khan and Hirani with iMasala. 
Carry on Chetan. Keep reaping India's wonderful demographic dividend. Regardless.

Dennis Ritchie and the Dynamics of Fame

Dennis Ritchie died on the 12th of October, a week after Steve Jobs did.
While Steve Jobs's got about 210 million effusive eulogies across the world Dennis Ritchie passed away mostly unheralded.
Should it be any different, you may ask. After all Jobs is Jobs. Who by the way is Deniss Ritchie?
Ah! the self-referential circulairty of Fame.
Dennis Ritchie is the guy who created the C programming language and along with Ken Thompson created the UNIX operating system. As anyone who knows something about computing will tell you, C is at the heart of all computer programming.Even if a program today is written in some other language, that language itself is written in C.
But C apparently does not hold a candle to shiny little things with the prefix i when it comes to Fame. Is Fame fickle? Is it a lottery who gets to be Famous? Somebody someday will define the dynamics of Fame. Till then here are two photographs - one is of Dennis Ritchie and the other Steve Jobs. See if you can tell which one is which.

Writing Poetry at A Hundred and One

Read a review today about Dorthea Tanning’s second book of poems – “Coming to That”.
Among the many things that are extraordinary about Tanning is the fact that she is a hundred and one and still writing poetry.
One other extraordinary thing is that she is also a painter and sculptor of considerable repute. This while being as the reviewer points out “a woman of extraordinary personal power and seductiveness (everyone who meets her seems to agree)”.
Tanning’s self-effacing wit is evident in her description of herself as the “oldest living emerging poet”
Much of Tanning’s poetry in ‘Coming to That’ is retrospective; she has a lot of past to cover while living in “the long looked forward to, endlessly delayed future”.
Sample this excerpt from the poem titled “Never Mind”:

Never mind the pins/ And needles I am on./ Let all other instruments/ Of torture have their way./ While air-conditioners/ Freeze my coffee/ I watch the toaster/ Eating my toast./ Did I press the right/ Buttons on all these/ Buttonless surfaces/ Daring me to press them.

The reviewer finds this a happy mix of flustered sexuality (pressing the buttons of buttonless surfaces to turn them on!?) and technological cluelessness of the elderly. Some combination that. There is more. Sample this from the same poem:

Will the fellow I saw pedalling/ Across the bridge live long/ After losing his left leg, / His penis, and his bike/ To fearlessness? / Will his sad wife find/ Consolation with the/ Computer wizard called in/ Last year to deal with the glitches?

The reviewer asserts that this is the first poem he has read that “imagines a rent-a-geek as a potential Don Juan’. The modern day equivalent of the “Postman Rings Twice” imagined by someone from a generation which waited, sometimes eagerly, for the postman’s knocks?
Let me give this final extract that captures Tanning acute awareness of being burdened with too long a past:

Surely this everywhere present is real/ enough and eager, yet unable, to tell me/ what I am waiting for now.

Raymond Kurzweil, the author, inventor and futurist predicts that in the next decade the average life span of the affluent individual, because she could afford all the advances in medical science, would be close to one hundred and fifty years; most people with whom I have discussed this balk at the thought of living that long. Well if you are anything like Tanning that would not be so bad a deal.
However even Tanning knows the joys of mortality. In the late sixties she did a series of soft sculptures, reminding many of the female form, made mostly of tweeds and other fabrics. She said then that she wanted them, unlike sculptors in marble or plaster, to not outlast their makers. Well Tanning certainly seems to be made of sterner stuff than tweeds.
Can’t wait to download “Coming to That”.

(Sketch above is of Tanning as she is today, picture below is of a self-portrait painted when she was young)

Discontinuing Diseducation

Both the words 'continuing' and 'education' have become boring cliches. 'Continuing' has come to imply 'more of the same' instead of a dynamic flow. 'Education' has come to mean a gradual closing of the mind through an accretion of self-importance and dead knowledge rather the gradual illumination empowered by a seeker's humility. Put the two words together and they serve up a double whammy. Continuing Education has come to imply the communal gathering of professionals around yet another stagnant pool of knowledge, there more to meet. greet and preen rather than drink from the waters and you wouldn't blame them because truth be told they aren't thirsty. In a better world (round the corner as they tell me that 2012 will signal the end of things as they are - good bye human greed, stupidity and apathy) we will perhaps subscribe to Discontinuing Diseducation to undo the harm that a century of mass-market education has done to a couple of generation of practicing professionals. Get them to regularly attend sessions that take them faraway from their areas of domain expertise to lands of learning where they can be children again, curiosity multiplying discovery multiplying curiosity which is the natural attitude of children to learning until rote education overcomes it. And as the mind slowly opens again the trapped and stagnant pools of domain knowledge will begin to flow again cleansing themselves of detritus and gathering force and powering a world of good. Auden in a poem titled "Under Which Lyre" wrote these lines about the GI bill that enabled World War II veterans to attend college that capture the spirit of Discontinuing Diseducation: Encamped upon the college plain/Raw veterans already train/ As freshman forces...../ And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter/ Are shot to pieces by the shorter/ Poems of Donne

The Renaissance in Advertising and How You Can Be a Part of It

Transcript of a speech I gave to a conclave of marketing communication people:
The theme I address today is “The Renaissance in Advertising and How You Can Be a Part of It”.
Renaissance means rebirth. But did advertising ever die? Not really. But the thrill of advertising did fade away in the minds of many of its practioners. Creatively the 30 sec spot and the half-page campaign lost their allure as promo spots and discount sale announcements ate away at budgets. On the business side agency commissions started to drop until one day they ended in the retainer fee bin. A great campaign was no longer making money for the agency round-the-year, in some cases over years, and therefore of course there were far fewer great campaigns.
So what has changed some of you may ask? Isn’t it all just the same? Where is the renaissance?

A renaissance, ladies and gentlemen, always begins at the cutting edge. Today the best agencies and the best advertising people, and some of them are in this room, can feel the tide change.
Today I tell you the story of how this tide changed and how all of us can be a part of this turning around.
Of necessity I will talk in the broad outline, at the 30,000 feet level so to speak. To address the issue in full with people like you would require at least a half-day interactive workshop. Interactive because I am sure people of your seniority and talent would, at every stage, have a lot to say and contribute. Let me begin the story of the Renaissance by backtracking a bit.
Five decades ago as the US experienced the post- war boom; advertising was in the Era of the USP. This era, so winningly captured in the TV series Mad Men, was when consumerist trends were just beginning to shape society and there were no dearth of products with unique functional benefits. Advertising did a great job of selling USPs. The advertising people of those times of course all paid lip-service to brand-building but in essence it was all about USP projection. They didn’t need to do anything else in an era when USPs were plentiful and delivering a quality copycat was near impossible.
The era of the USP ended in the West in the eighties. In India it lived on to the nineties. Products in most categories, even in the newly invented ones, very quickly converged and USPs disappeared as with the coming of quality contract manufacturing, making quality copycats became easier and cheaper.

Marketing departments came under increasing pressure to find ways to move the goods and the Era of the Sales Promotion was born.
Cost-cutting became the norm. The share of BTL spends increased phenomenally and the thrill in advertising died.
Most TV and press campaign either became promo lead or were mindlessly “life-style” oriented shorthand for pushing either one or a combination of three related buttons – “Status”, “Sex Appeal” and “Fun”.
Even thick in the Era of Sales Promotion a few maverick brands like Nike and Apple had seen the light and genuinely built brands signalling the coming era. However most advertising and advertising people were stuck hopelessly in the Era of the Sales Promotion. The late Geoffrey Frost a legendary creative director and brand chief of Nike in his final days told me that he had research reports confirming his belief that the collective IQ and EQ of advertising people dropped more than 20% in this era!
Then came the revolution that is still in the making and therefore it is not surprising that some of you might not have noticed it.
It was lead most prominently by AG Lafley the legendary ex-Chairman of P&G, Procter and Gamble as a dear friend of mine in the Shiv Sena likes to call it.
P&G was before Lafley took over in a race to the bottom. Cutting price, cutting margins through sales promotion, fighting a losing fight with price warriors and private label.
Lafley took the bull by the horn. Lafley is a manager with an unusual history. He studied history and was well on his way to acquiring a PhD in Medieval and Renaissance Europe when he was drafted into the US Navy. In the US Navy he ran the retail operations of a 10000 strong Navy base in Japan. As he explains the assignment was a microcosm of the world of business and he loved it. When he got out of the Navy he got an MBA from Harvard and joined P&G. Thirty years later he was appointed Chairman. The rest as they say is history.
It is somewhat apt that a Renaissance scholar launched the Renaissance in P&G and thus primed the pump for a Renaissance in marketing and advertising.
The first thing Langley put into place is a culture of innovation. Every brand in every product category became a stream of innovation. Innovation that did not necessarily produce discontinuous change but in many quantum steps kept the product offering relevantly fresh and one step ahead of competition. In fact I am told that P&G has invested in design and innovation cells across offices on the lines of the iconic design & innovation agency IDEO.
The second step that Langley took was straight out of Marketing 101.
He put the consumer back at the centre of the P&G universe through three key seminal changes, one by a differentiated approach to consumer research, two by re-focussing brand strategy and three leveraging instead of lamenting the paradigm change in media consumption and leisure habits.
The results were astonishing. P&G was back on top of the charts. Before the revolution in 2000 P&G had 10 billion dollar brands, by 2007 it had 23 billion dollar brands.
With P&G’s stunning turnaround, six decades after the likes of Drucker, Kotler and Acker defined and pontificated about brands the era of brand-building had truly arrived.
And the fact is we have upon us the golden age of advertising and if you do not think so perhaps it is time you stuck your head out of the sand.
So what are those at the cutting edge in advertising doing to drive this Renaissance in Advertising?
I believe The Renaissance in Advertising is built on three inter-related commandments.
The first commandment is “KNOW THE CONSUMER BETTER THAN YOUR CLIENT DOES”
In the Era of the USP agencies armed with the 15% commission and flourishing business did invest to become better at consumer understanding than their clients.
David Ogilvy was a brilliant creative man. He was also an equally brilliant businessman. He was among the first to invest in consumer research and built himself a library of insights that won him many a pitch and more importantly help him create and sell great advertising. This library was called the Magic Lantern and created by a New York cell for global consumption. The Magic Lantern was a fairly simple exercise of factor analysis of advertising from across the world and its effectiveness massaged to produce dos and don’ts for a particular category. Fact is that clients did not have anything like it and they lapped up what the Magic Lantern had to say. In fact Ogilvy and his agency sold many a path- breaking not solely because they had great and persuasive personalities. The Magic Lantern played a crucial role. Other agencies also invested in creating unique trademarked strategic tools. J Walter Thompson worked out Bridge Positioning and the T-Plan. FCB had the FCB Grid and so on.
In the eighties and the nineties most agencies stopped investing in creating strategic tools. Not surprising at all in the Era of the Sales Promotion. The attitude to consumer research among agencies stuck in the era of the sales promotion, and there are quite a few of them still around, reminds me of an anecdote related by John Fowles, arguably the best writer of modern English that the language has ever seen.
Back in the 19th century a stable hand at an English country manor was infatuated by the comely daughter of the Lord of the Manor and would moan about how the girl would not even look at him. One such night, the stable master being a kindly man said that the first step in his quest should be to get the girl to at least talk to him. Next morning the stable hand was out in the front of the house with the girl’s horse waiting for her to come down for her daily ride. The girl came out bright and early, took a look at the horse and exclaimed, “Who painted my horse yellow”. The stable hand brightly proclaimed “ I did” and then promptly knelt down in the dust, took the girl’s hand and said “Now that you have looked at me and even spoken to me, can I take you out for a date” or whatever the 19th century equivalent of a date was.
In the era of the sales promotion, like the young stable hand, agencies sought to believe that a cursory understanding of the consumer was enough for them to get by.
However with the Renaissance that has begun in the second half of the last decade, the smart agencies are back investing heavily in consumer research and strategic tools. They know it is better to invest in creating these tools than in, for example, snazzy offices because all a snazzy office accomplishes besides an ego massage is have the client wondering whether he is paying you too much.
However consumer research today is not at all what consumer research was yesterday.
There has been a paradigm shift in both quantitative and qualitative research.
To explain the paradigm shift in qualitative research I will have to get a bit technical so bear with me. The last generation of quantitative research was all models based. Not the human kind but the mathematical kind. Data was collected and analyzed to either build models or validate them and once validated to use models to forecast etc. However two very basic things have changed in today’s world. Data streams have become humongous, numerous and readily available. Computing power is becoming cheaper by the day. The end result is cutting-edge quantitative research has moved beyond old-fashioned directed data collection and model-building. It has moved to what is loosely called ANN analysis short for Artificial Neural Network analysis. ANN analysis is much more robust than model-based analysis because in an increasingly complex world it analyzes complexity with complexity.
The great thing about ANN is it works with existing data streams and the analysis improves as the number and quality of data streams increase. Some clients practice ANN on the data streams available to them. Others don’t and some smart agency groups are putting together small ANN cells and offering ANN analysis at cost. The great advantage that these ANN cells offer these agencies is that working across clients and adding publicly available data streams to their analysis they provide cutting edge insights and prognosis much beyond what even the most advanced client has.
In India the level of available public and private data streams is not as numerous and humongous as it is in the West but it will, sooner or later, catch up and early investors in ANN will be at a great advantage.
Coming to the area of qualitative research the world has moved way beyond depth interviews and focus groups. The paradigm shift in qualitative research is again to do away with artificial forms of data collection and move to immersive insight gathering.
Consumer ethnography is the catch-all term for this form of consumer research. Ethnography gathers its raw material through participative observation of life within the culture or sub-culture being studied. Given the proliferation of communication and feedback avenues with the coming of the web, the mobile phone and the social media the opportunities for co-opting consumers into self-observation has also increased.
While the gathering exercise in consumer ethnography is eclectic, the analysis is rigorous using frameworks like semiotic analysis, NLP and even frameworks defined by theories from anthropology, sociology and history.
It is in the reporting that consumer ethnography is at its most exciting. The dominant output of consumer ethnography is the Narrative – an expertly crafted story or essay that describes a life situation, very often in the first person. The Narrative which in itself is a creative exercise quite often has the power to drive entire marketing and creative strategies. P&G under Lafley have become avid practioners of ethnography and the art of the narrative.
In fact ethnography cells and design and innovation cells on the lines of IDEO have a synergy in that both thrive in a multi-disciplinary environment.
The stories of consumer ethnography yielding powerful brand insights that drove strategy are legion within P&G. For a fabric wash brand for example the brand’s moment of truth was identified to be the point when the clothes come out of the washing machine and the consumer smells them. This new strategy started taking shape when the brand manager reading a narrative that was a first-person account in the day of a young woman and the woman relates how the smell of clothes freshly washed reminds her of her first boyfriend in school.
The smarter agencies have begun investing in consumer ethnography.
They are doing so by hiring ethnographers and building multi-disciplinary teams around them. They are doing so by running training programs for their key people. They are investing in ethnography because it gives them the most direct route to own a key business asset: a superior understanding of the consumer expressed through the unmatched richness of the narrative.
An agency, if it invests right in consumer ethnography will always be better at it than clients for three reasons. It will have a broader canvas in terms of cultures and sub-cultures addresses, two because ethnography is a creative art and agencies by definition foster the creative arts better and three because agencies are natural havens for multi-disciplinary teams.
The other form of qualitative research that is emerging is a cross of subtle promotion and insight gathering. Companies like Levers, P&G and Kraft Foods launch, maintain and promote websites that provide a paltform for consumers with common interests, like fashion-oriented teenage girls or diabetics, to interact with each other. Data from these sites are then mined for consumer insights. The sites are also used for subtle promotion.
Coming from the angle of research such sites are beginning to be known as Active Research and coming from the angle of promotion they are known as Self-owned Media
I know that a couple of global agency groups are looking at creating and maintaining such platforms. Coming to think of it such assets would be great for an agency group to own because of the wider canvas and the ability to generate and package better content. An agency would also be able to monetize the site much better.
So I have talked about over the past few minutes about how an agency can work towards UNDERSTANDING CONSUMERS BETTER THAN CLIENTS.
The second commandment for participants in the Advertising Renaissance is BUILD BRANDS AND BRAND COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE INSIDE OUT.
Before I speak about what are the implications of this commandment let me clarify that there is a rationale to the order of the three commandments. Action on the preceding commandment is a necessary pre-requisite for action on the subsequent. An agency cannot build brands and brand communications from the inside out unless it has a superior understanding of the consumer. In time of course inside out brand building will contribute back to a superior understanding of the consumer.
So what do we mean by building brands inside out?
Research has shown that the difference between a true brand and a wannabe brand is not name recall or even consistency in terms of quality and price of products. The difference between a true brand and a wannabe brand is Brand Authenticity.
The concept of authenticity has intuitive appeal. Think about the people you like and trust. What is the difference between these people and the people you don’t think much of? 99 out of 100 cases it will be because all the behaviour and attitude of people you like and trust springs from an inner well-defined core value or values while those you don’t like or trust, display a superficiality in behaviour and action that is engineered to suit different occasions. Sometimes you must have noticed that you develop a sneaking admiration for even a negative character in a movie because the character attitudes and behaviour have been scripted to spring from an authentic core. The opposite holds true for heroes and heroines who fail to win your admiration or sympathy.
So building a brand from the inside out is to define a core principle of the brand and then to make sure that every brand action and communication adheres to this core principle.
Let me give you example from two brands on which there is no debate on whether they are wannabes or whether in fact they are true brands: Nike and Apple
I have seen a brand mission document of Nike that clearly lays out this principle of authenticity not in those words but in the same spirit.
While I will refrain from stating the core principle of Nike in the exact words described in the document the spirit can be captured by the phrase “self-driven”. Now think back about every experience that you have had with Nike from two to three ago. Don’t you see how most of it sat well with the core principle of “self-driven”. Personally I think over the past couple of years there are signs in Nike’s marketing that indicates a slippage in this strategy of authenticity.
So what about Apple? The same Nike document that I spoke about took a shot at guessing the Apple core principle.
The phrase “self-sufficient” captures the essence of what the document has to say. With the brand Apple the principle source of brand communication lies in the design of the product and the experience of using them.
So do you think ‘self-sufficient” is the core principle that defines the Mac, the ipod, iTunes, the iphone or the ipad?
Or is it really not ‘self-sufficient’ but ‘self-fulfilled’? Believe it or not I have had an animated three way debate on that not very long go. But I am sure you get the point.
Brand Authenticity is all fine you say but how do I get into my brand communication strategy when the client has no such principle defined in his book?
I have thought about this and have three scenarios for which I have some advice to offer:
Scenario A: the clients understands brands, has a coherent brand strategy that they have communicated to you. Study that brand strategy closely and you will find in many cases a principle that may be termed something else but is very close to the brand authenticity principle. Adopt that principle and making the central governing principle of your work for that client
Scenario B: The client understands brand but his brand strategy has nothing resembling the brand authenticity principle. Bring out the big guns; use your superior understanding of the consumer and your global grasp of good advertising to impress upon the client the utility of the Brand Authenticity principle. 9 out of 10 times he will grasp it and became an adherent.
Scenario C: What do you do when you are facing a inscrutable Japanese or a beady eyed Marwari ( I am a Marwari but a notable exception I think) to whom the concept of brand is essentially alien whatever lip service they might pay to it. My advice is to stay away from any mention of the Brand Authenticity principle to the client but instead use it is a secret sauce to create what the brand needs in the guise of, as Bob Dylan says, what the client thinks he wants.
The subtle principle of Brand Authenticity leads on to the third and final commandment:
CELEBERATE FRAGMENTATION. KEEP SACRED INTEGRATION.
Over the decades media and leisure choices have proliferated. This fragmentation has been seen by many a marketer and advertising as an obstacle to be overcome. But as with the Renaissance the focus shifts to true brand-building, the fact that our consumer consumes many forms of media and that there exist media that are more and more tailor made for our customer is a big boon. Mass media cannot deliver brand-building. It can deliver propaganda and awareness build-up. Interacting with the consumer through multiple media forms – televisions, radio, press, web, social media, events, activation, in-entertainment gives a brand a platform to demonstrate authenticity while reaping the well documented media multiplier effect. Brand presence in a media that speaks at a more intimate level to our consumer – a gardening magazine or TV show to the green thumb, a culinary channel to gourmet – allow the brand’s authenticity to make the transition from being liked or admired to being a friend.
The fact therefore is that the much lamented scenario of media fragmentation is actually a never before opportunity to build brands.
However the cornerstone to doing so is the ability to integrate across all forms of media communication. To some extent this integration is delivered by how the effort across different forms of communication is organized. After nearly two decades of specialization it is no surprise that with the Renaissance in advertising and the dawning of the Era of True Brand-Building that integration is the new mantra among smart marketers and advertising groups. A couple of years ago P&G re-organized its outsourced marketing services under a brand agency. The brand agency had control over and was responsible for the output of all the other marketing services agencies. I do not have the details but my understanding was that the brand agency was chosen from among those who had grasped the brand’s core the best irrespective of the area of specialization and in this competition it were advertising agencies that emerged as winners in most cases again emphasizing that true integration comes from being lead by superior consumer understanding and a firm grip on the core principle of the brand.
That completes the triangle that leads to the resurgence and renaissance in advertising.
Build a superior understanding of the consumer, grasp the core brand principle and lead the propagation of the brand with authenticity intact across platforms.
Let me conclude with an anecdote. The anecdote is about the soldier and the old woman. Many of you would be familiar with it but it bears repeating in this context.
After a long, lonely walk in the dead of winter the young soldier spied a farmhouse in the distance. Very hungry, the soldier knocked on the door anticipating a warm welcome and some food. The door was opened by a bent old woman. She gave the soldier a suspicious look and refused his request for food and shelter. The desperate soldier asked her is he could spend the night in the courtyard and build a fire there to keep him warm. The old woman reluctantly agreed. After some time the soldier knocked and asked the woman if the woman would lend him a saucepan and a bucket of water. The woman was intrigued because the soldier said he wanted them to make some soup out of stones. Intrigued the woman consented. The soldier cleaned some stones, put them into the saucepan along with some water and after heating it for sometime tasted the water and smacked his lips. The woman who was looking from behind her door asked him how the soup was. The soldier said it was alright but would be better with some salt. She returned with some salt. The sequence was repeated until the soldier had added salt, some shredded onions and tomatoes and even some butter to his soup of stones. Finally he shared the delicious soup of stones with the client. In the years to come the woman became famous for her soup of stones and she would willingly share it with anyone who would listen to her story.
For all of us who have been in advertising for many years, the long lonely march in the winter is over, the farm house is in sight and the old woman is waiting to convince her about the miraculous soup made of stone.
Seriously I believe that there has been no better time to be in advertising than now. It is one reason why I wish I was three decades younger. Not the only reason but the only reason I can talk about in public. Thank you for being a great audience.

Waiting for the Barbarians

The Outsider as a personality type has fascinated me.
The angst-ridden disfranchised individual always on the outside of whatever side there is, has been the protagonist of many a great book and movie.
Dostoyevsky made the Outsider an angry young man, Tennessee Williams explored the social politics of the world of the Outsider and Woody Allen has made tons of money in portraying the Outsider as a yuppie.
But when it come to drawing deep and consistently from the Outsider meme,J.M.Coetzee takes the Noble Prize. His 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature citation states that Coetzee "in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider".
Last month I read "Waiting for the Barbarians" in which a middle-aged magistrate of an insignificant outpost of a unnamed empire slowly disintegrates under the weight of his 'outsiderness". Coetzee's magistrate is a master of self-rumination. The exploration of every nuance of thought, attitude, belief or action is as deep as it is pithy. In the book the magistrate goes from being a master of his realm to being a much-reviled outcast. The self-rumination however seems to emanate from an inner core that nothing can change, that nothing can reduce. This even tone is a portrayal of the concept of the eternal soul and ever-changing Maya without ever once using those cliched terms. Got me thinking that perhaps being the consummate Outsider is being the consummate philosopher. I have now started reading Coetzee's "Slow Man", eager to engage with yet another masterful exposition of the Outsider gestalt.

Piazza Vittorio Veneto

This evening the world came to Piazza Vittorio Veneto.

Suddenly on a stunning summer's evening the piazza became a stage.

First a couple of police cars moved to herald the arrival of a gay pride parade. The parade was substantial. About 10 floats and 400-500 young and presumably gay activists.

As I watched, the thought came to me that these people were not parading their essential humanity but their surface oddity.

It was a love fest with themselves as half-naked, they danced with and huggged each other, while aging transvestites mingled in full regalia, unsuccessfully seeking attention.Some of the floats sold beer and sandwiches, admittedly at prices lower than those offered by the cafes that dot the plazza.

Was it a coming out party? Or was it just whistling in the dark by people who at the core are seeking acceptance by the establishment?

The establishment is run by over-sexed alpha males whose rules are loaded not just against gays but everyone else who is not them - women, intellectuals, the ordinary Joe. Parades don't get under the establishment's skin, parody does.

As the parade cleared the piazza to move along the banks of the river Po into the setting sun, at one corner of the Piazza another group of young people started a performance of contemprory dance.

There was no self-love here. No beer, no sandwiches. Just razor-sharp minds painting with athletic bodies a chiaroscuro that interpret as you may, at it's core mocked the system.

This was no whistling in the dark. It was muscular and the message was clear. This is our time, this is our world and we will change it. From the inside. This generation needs no Woodstock. They are not opting out. They are claiming what is theirs to keep.

This evening the world came to Piazza Vittorio Veneto, in a city that is in a state of renaissance, in a world that definately will not be anywhere near the same five years from now.

This evening I walked back to the hotel with hope in my heart.

The Rich and the Rest

If the US were a person it would be a mollycoddled CEO who has lost his job, has no savings leftover from a couple of lifetimes of binge spending and is now finding it frighteningly hard to adjust to a life without salary or perks.
This spectacle has thrown up a rather piquant stand-off that illuminates the human condition well.
A week ago a Republican called Paul Ryan produced a financial strategy. The punditocracy of the right went into raptures over it.
The Economist the erudite standard-bearer of the conservative rich, praised it in last week's issue in a leader titled "Praising Paul Ryan. At last somebody is trying to grapple with America's fiscal trouble".
Sample the piece:
"He also outlines a simplification of America’s mad tax code, bringing the top rate for both individuals and businesses down to 25% by eliminating loopholes"
This would force them(them being broadly the old, the poor and the profligate sate and local governments that hands out dole to these blood-sucking sections of society)to manage their budgets more responsibly than they have needed to when they have been able to send much of the tab to Washington.
So now you have the salient points of Ryan's strategy.
President Obama last evening tore into Ryan's proposal.
The Wall Street Journal, that rabble-rousing poodle of the rich, jumped into the fray this evening.
"The Presidential Divider. Obama's toxic speech and even worse plan".
No need to quote this Murdochian paragon of virtue. It just fulminated against Obama.
The pundits of the left have of course joined the fray.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate in economics, wrote an opinion piece in today's New York Times titled "Who's Serious Now?".
Krugman deserves quoting:
"Then people who actually understand budget numbers went to work, and it became clear that the (Ryan's)proposal wasn’t serious at all. In fact, it was a sick joke. The only real things in it were savage cuts in aid to the needy and the uninsured, huge tax cuts for corporations and the rich, and Medicare privatization. All the alleged cost savings were pure fantasy."
This battle is pure black and white. The reason why I follow the US so closely is that it is that one country that highlights all of humankind's myriad drama's which are in other places lost in the detail (like the wag said "to me Hollywood is not an American product.To me America is a Hollywood product").
What's happening in the US highlights that class struggle as a defining socioeconomic and cultural theme is back after hibernating for close to a century. It is now Rich versus the Rest all over the world. It is on the streets of the Middle-East. It is in Delhi's cocktail chatter about a hungry man on a podium. It is in the euro-crisis. It is behind the uneasiness of China's rulers.
World War 3 is among us. The Rich versus the Rest. Decide where you belong. I have.

Stripping to The Core

As yesterday's summer sun dappled through my window, I found myself unreasonably happy.

Over the last month as I went about my quotidian tasks, I had begun a process of spring-cleaning on the inside. No heavy duty retreat or meditation, just a quiet second attention to the self. The result is a lightness of being. No weight of what ought to be or what should be. Just being. Every moment it's own master. Independent and unique. All encompassing of nothingness.

Yesterday as the sun dappled my happiness, Steve Winwood was on the stereo with Low Sparks of the High Heeled Boys singing:

If I gave you everything that I owned
And asked for nothing in return
Would you do the same for me as I would for you
Or take me for a ride
And strip me of everything, including my pride
But spirit is something that no one destroys

And the sound that I'm hearing is only the sound
Of the low spark of high-heeled boys

It struck me then, as Steve crooned on, that stripping ourselves back to our core is our greatest source of happiness.
Let go of the heaviness and you will rise to happiness.

What time is the 3'0 clock parade?

I ain't looking for praise or pity
I ain't coming round searching for a crutch
I just want someone to talk to
And a little of that human touch
Just a little of that human touch
- Lyrics for Bruce Springsteen's Human Touch
Freudian analysis has faded away as a valid way of studying the human psyche because it paid too much attention to the dark motivations of the human "id" and too little to the simple yearnings of the human soul.
Avoiding loneliness and seeking human warmth is the central motivating tenet of human civilization. Cavemen huddled besides the fire not just because of economies of scale. Being childlike is when you express this need without guile. Childishness is when you let it make you a page three neurotic. To us ordinary mortals it is the seeking and nurturing of friends and families. The evolved answer this need at the highest level- by being one with the world and thus banishing loneliness, root and branch.
In Disney's amusement parks the question that visitor's most frequently ask of park personnel is "What time is the 3'0 clock parade?". The park personnel recognize the question for what it is - yet another tendril looking for human contact and warmth and are trained to answer to engage with civility: "It is best if you take your position by 2 30pm near Jo's for the best view of the parade"

Unsquaring Corruption

The corruption around us and the constant exposition and sensationalizing of corruption by an ubiquitous, always on, intrusive media has an insidious and deep effect on all of us.
We start with decrying the state our country and our society is in. But we know we are as much part of this country and society as anybody else. As a result, the constant decrying of the state around us, in time, sub-consciously manifests itself as self-hate. And in the final analysis it is self-hate that is the root cause of corruption.
I call this phenomenon Corruption Squared.
The uncovering of this phenomenon in my mind has led to a realization.
The way to fight corruption is not to constantly focus on it and constantly decry it. It is to more intensely look at the good that is in our society, our country and in us. This increased scrutiny of the good will unsquare corruption and empower us to strike at the root causes of corruption besides eradicating its most virulent symptoms.
The media would do, I think, a great service to our society and our country if it follows the above recipe.
To begin with however, as an individual, I am going try and unsquare corruption
in my own mind.
Jai India !

Sleepless in Mumbai

Three in the night
The metronome rings empty
At dawn I will be asleep
Now barren, so barren, awake
Faith sleeps. Sleeps besides me.
Shall I mouth a prayer now?
Now when darkness reigns?
I turn. Turn away.
The metronome rings empty, so empty

The power of your future

The past is deadwood.
Yet often it overwhelms.
Consider the guy in Danny Boyle's 127 hours. Trapped under a rock with no help on hand, he flails about and then, giving up, prepares to die in the narcotic companionship of his past- a deadly cocktail of fond reminisces and deadly regrets.
It is only a glimpse of a possible future - in the form of a currently non-existent son - quietly egging him to live that gifts him the courage to brutally cut away the hand that traps him and flee to his future.
That's why I guess the sages ask us to live in the now.
Because our now closes the door to the past and opens a window to the future.
The truth sets you free. Your future fuels that hard-won freedom.

In conclusion here is a ditty I would like to share with you:

Creation

Cold suns light up dawn skies
The heat of the night dissipates
My left shoe bites
The heart's arryhtmia ticks
What's the time?
What's time !?
Poles apart meet
The world collapses
Into the everyday, commomplace
Here, now, everywhere, for eternity