Mythos and Logos

My friend Rahul Kalia writes a very popular blog (www.coachrahul.com). His posts are lucid anecdotes about stuff that happens to him, delivering sharp insights into the business of everyday life. Besides his posts being better written than mine, there is a fundamental difference in the outlook of his blog and that of mine. Rahul's blog takes the "logos" view of life - "here and now", "what, where and how" while mine tends to take the "mythos" view - "past and future", "why and why not". The relationship between the "logos" and the "mythos" views of life is illustrated by the following anecdote. A husband when asked about who takes the decisions in his household replied "My wife takes all the decisions about the small things - for example on what to spend to money, the upbringing of our children, where we take our holidays et. etc. while I concentrate on the big decisions - for example whether Greece should quit the Euro Zone, when Sachin should retire, whether India should attempt a manned moon shot etc. etc."

My Father's Son. My Son's Father.

As yet another year of my life draws to a close, it is time for some self-contemplation. It has been a "comme si comme sa" kind of life in terms of fame and fortune. More "si" than "sa", to be honest. But in essence, I feel it had been a good journey thus far. Last evening as I sat ruminating, this side of substance abuse, it occurred to me that the journey has been good because it has been at a gradual reconciliation of my idea of my past and my future. Our concept of our past and our future, I believe, is a product of the culture we live in interacting with our personal growth. A culture's concept of the past and the future has deep, almost atavistic, roots. The Tuvan tribe that inhabits a region in the Siberian steppes at the edges of the Russian Federation have a unique way of looking at the future which is codified in their language. In the Tuvan language the word "songgaar" means both "the future" and "go back" and the word "burungaar" means both "the past" and "go forward". The Tuvans believe that while the past is ahead of them the future lies behind them!Did Spielberg know this when he titled his movie "Back To The Future" or was he just being kind of clever. But seriously the Tuvan's concept of time governs and produces a unique culture and world-view. To read more about it see the July 2012 issue of the National Geographic. So what does my own language and culture say about the past and the future. "Kal" is both the future (tomorrow) and the past (yesterday)! It has been taken me more than five decades to understand, absorb and,over the past couple of years,celebrate this concept of time. In the past Indian culture was signified to me by things outside me. Philosophy, religion, literature, music, dance, dress and so on. Over the past couple of years the true locus of the culture that I live in has shifted inside me. And that is a very happy place to be because it allows me a vantage point that submerges disappointments and triumphs, fears and hopes,into one encompassing sense of being. I can go on but blogs are not the best place for excessive navel gazing, so I will stop here. Perhaps I will indulge myself a a little bit more, same time next year and file a fresh report from the battleground.

The Big Bucks School of Advertising's Coming Big Test

A US Supreme Court judgement has opened the doors for Big Money to spend big on political advertising (albeit marginally disguised) leading up to November's election of the US President. Groups supporting Romney,the Republican nominee, are likely to outspend groups supporting Obama by a very large margin. I think of Romney as Retroactive Romney given his penchant to re-arrange everything in his past to suit the present and his notion of the future. And I am thunderstruck on how the Republicans are trying to sell a blatantly pro-rich agenda to the toiling masses. There is no guarantee that the groups supporting Romney will come up with good advertising but the bucks will definitely be big. This will put the Big Bucks school of advertising to real test. The Big Bucks school believes that advertising works mainly through media pressure. Whether or not the advertising is good matters only marginally. Even if the product is bad, high-pressure advertising can get a very large number of people to try the product. Therefore when movie studios feel that a movie is a dud they increase the pre-release advertising pressure. The Big Bucks school of advertising has come to dominate advertising circles. Does it work? The ones who know are not telling. Advertising and media people have, quite obviously, much invested in this school and will not admit to the inconvenient truth even if they know it. The marketing and corporate bosses will not own up to mistakes that have cost them big bucks. The US Presidential campaign grips me for various reasons. One among them is that it will be a very public, undeniable test of the Big Bucks School of Advertising. If Romney wins the Big Bucks school of advertising wins and we can all spend the next four years watching a really bad movie unfold. If he loses will marketing and advertising circles reconsider and re-evaluate? Let's wait and see.

Et Tu Mr. Rajan?

Mr. Raghuram Rajan, professor of finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, is a much admired man. He has a broad bandwidth and is known to speak his mind. Back in 2005 in a symposium held to honor the then Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the much lauded Alan Greenspan, he had put out the thesis that financial development had made the world a much riskier place. It is reported that scorn was poured on his thesis by the other worthies participating in the symposium. 2008 and its aftermath has seen Mr. Rajan's stock rise while the stock of almost everything in the world fell. Mr. Rajan remains as candid as ever. On the 14th of April this year, to a gathering in New Delhi of some of the most powerful people in India from the world's of business and politics, including the PM, Mr. Rajan said “India’s star has dimmed in the last few months, as our governance is besmirched by corruption scandals and our macroeconomic health has deteriorated. Alarm bells should sound when domestic industry no longer wants to invest in India, even while eagerly investing abroad.” Bravo. Mr. Rajan has been appointed to take over as the Chief Economic Advisor from Mr. Kaushik Basu. I for one look forward to more of Mr. Rajan's views on India and its economic policies. Which is not to say that everything he says is the gospel truth or even half-way there. For example, recently Mr. Rajan wrote an article (http://www.livemint.com/2012/08/08205612/What-money-can-buy.html?d=2) presenting his views on the book "What Money Can't Buy - The Moral Limits of Market" by Micheal J. Sandel, a Harvard philosopher(http://www.amazon.com/What-Money-Cant-Buy-Markets/dp/0374203032/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345111228&sr=8-1&keywords=what+money+can%27t+buy+sandel) which has me wondering. I haven't read the book yet but Mr. Rajan's summation of the book's thrust an the thrust of his article on it is as follows "Michael J. Sandel points to the range of things that money can buy in modern societies and gently tries to stoke our outrage at the market’s growing dominance. Is he right that we should be alarmed?." Mr. Rajan analyzes some interesting examples of the use of money from Sandel's book including the rather emotive of sale of human organs. The conclusion that Mr. Rajan comes to at the end of his article is that whatever that money buys is, by and large, fair and square as long as the guy who has the money has got it through hard work and deserves it. That is a point-of-view that I am sure many would disagree with but Mr. Rajan has the right to hold this ultra-conservative view. But worse follows. The concluding lines of Mr. Rajan's article are as follows: "But if people believe that the moneyed are primarily those who are well connected or crooked, their tolerance for monetary transactions falls. Rather than focusing on prohibiting monetary transactions, perhaps a more important lesson imparted by Sandel’s examples is that we should work continuously to improve the perceived legitimacy of money’s distribution." Does Mr. Rajan seriously believe that the view-point that a large share of money in the world is in the hands of the well-connected or the crooked is not a reality to be addressed but a perception to be corrected? If yes than Mr. Rajan is better off in the shaded offices of a Wall Street bank than teaching and influencing generations of students or for that matter helping governments take policy decisions affecting millions.

Proud To Be Indian

I was all of four years old when I first heard Mukesh sing "Jis Desh Me Ganga Behti Hai". Every time the song played I felt an unreasonable amount of joy. But then what is joy if not unreasonable. Since then much water has flown through the Ganges and both India and I have had our ups and downs. But even today when the song plays my spine straightens up and my eyes moisten.The love one feels for one's roots is atavistic and eternal. I celebrate India with all my heart. A note for my non-Indian readers: The song from a 1960 movie celebrates the Indian values of simplicity, open minds and welcoming hearts. As we celebrate our independence day,my thoughts turned to this beautiful, beautiful song. Listen to it. Whatever your language, it will sing to you.

Downshifting

I hereby pledge to slow my life down a gear, for the benefit of my health, my well being, my environment and for those around me whom I dearly love. —Tracy Smith, The Downshifting Manifesto The sixties had the hippies who were but a minority but whose lifestyle and values defined an entire generation. In the nineties and the noughts there was beginning to emerge in the affluent world "Downshifters" another minority whose appeal could have again defined a generation. Then came 2008 and the recession has pushed all other socio-economic and socio-cultural phenomenon firmly into the background as far as media and popular culture are concerned. However "downshifting" quietly continues to gain it adherents. The essential core of downshifting is when you shift to valuing making more time for yourself and your family than making more money. You get off the tread mill, quit the rat race and smell the roses not just the coffee. The necessary condition for one to downshift of course is to be successful in the first place. To give up making money, to paraphrase Swami Vivekananda, you must in the first place be making money. The downshifting culture in India is most evident among returning NRIs. With dollars salted away and an American citizenship to fall back on, they practice the art of downshifting in the heat of dust of India. Some combine it with efforts to reconnect their children with their roots before it is too late. Speaking of roots, the Vedas have recognized downshifting and its role in the evolution of an individual. The Vedas stipulate four asramas or stages of life - Brahmacharya, Grihastha, Vanaprastha and Sannyasa. Brahmaharya: It refers to an educational period of 14–20 years which starts before the age of puberty. It supposes the practice of celibacy Grihastha: Refers to the second phase of an individual's life It is often called 'the householders life' revolving as it does around the duties of maintaining a household and leading a family-centred life and is recommended to cover the age period of 25 to 49 years Vanaprastha: This is a stage when a person gradually withdraws from the world and gives up material desires. Ideally this covers the age period of 50 to 75 years Sannyasa: is the life stage of the renouncer within the scheme of āśramas. It is considered the topmost and final stage of the ashram systems and is traditionally taken by men or women over fifty or by young monks who wish to renounce worldly and materialistic pursuits and dedicate their lives to spiritual pursuits As an aside, why did the Vedas, formulated many thousand of years ago, contemplate life stages that examine a life lasting up to 75 years when life expectancy must have been sub-thirty? Just being visionary or was life expectancy much higher in certain circles in the ancient world than is generally supposed?

Coming back to downshifting, is it a life stage or is it a life style that one can adopt at any age? In an age when everything is on steroids and most boundaries are blurred, life stages can cross age boundaries and everything, even Vanprashta asrama, come early to one's life. According to some downshifting is not just an alternative lifestyle or a natural life stage but a phenomenon that heralds the coming of a new age. Deriving in part from the cult arising from James Redfield's nineties books "The Celestine Prophecy" and "The Tenth Insight", the theory is that more and more people will "downshift" to bring about a more peaceful, prosperous, ecologically sensitive era. Nobody,as far as I am aware, spoke of the hippies in the same vein.Or did Jack Keoruc have a similar theory about the hippies? Must re-read his "On The Road" one of these days.

The Lower Upper Class

An article in the latest Newsweek deftly chronicles the anxious times Americans across class and age barriers are going through (http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/05/david-frum-on-high-anxiety-america.html). The article articulates an insight that has been formulating in my mind for quite some time.

The rich are not one uniform economic block. Far from it. The very rich are in a very different place from the ordinary rich. The top 1 % of the top 1% are doing way way better than the rest. In 2010 the top 1% in the US saw their income in 2010 increase merely by 11.6% while for the gain for the top 1% of the 1% was 21.5% - twice as much. And the reasons for this rising "disparity" is that the ordinary rich has the same investment channels open to them as the rest of us do -real estate, stocks and bonds while the very rich have a whole range of very exclusives ones. Hedge Funds. Private Equity. Elections. Counter-revolutions. Arms Supply. To name a few. So here we are. One more sub-division to think about in a rapidly dividing world. The Lower Upper Class (LUC). Where is a man to go with only between US 1 to 10 million of investible surplus to live on? Hard luck old chap. Let me know if you want to join our protest dharna next week. A related point. The world seems to live in a glass house these days. And grinning and bearing it is better strategy that throwing stones at intense scrutiny. But wonder how this intense scrutiny of a smarter planet play out on the timeless stage of class warfare. Any views IBM? PS: Wonder some smart soul somewhere (probably from the top 1% of the 1%) is formulating one more hush-hush high-returns exclusive "investment" scheme for the LUCs. As they say every second for every 100,000 LUCs a Madoff is born.

The Calculus of Change

In most post-modern business, economic and social circles ‘growth’ is a holy cow. However consider what environmentalist Edward Abbey once said “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”. Could it be that an unconsidered chase after growth has been the cause of dysfunctionality in many of our social, economic and business systems and organizations? Technology has enabled accelerated growth in almost all fields of human endeavor but has this growth been all in the right direction? Take the growing ability to cover long distances with the minimal of physical effort. The direction this growth has taken has produced among other things a sharp spike in lifestyle diseases, road rage, pollution and the corrosive and distorting politics of oil. Let’s go a tad deeper into the realm of personal growth. Isn't the chase after more power, more fame, more money to the detriment of all other dimensions of growth a cancerous affliction of the human spirit? What we perhaps need to revisit is the calculus of growth. Our growth paradigm today is differentiation. The rate of change towards a mad hurtle towards the ‘more’. Shift to integration in the calculus of change and we get back to the gestalt: the complete view. And then we perceive that there is constant beyond change that sums up to health and happiness. Easier said than done. Nevertheless, good to remember and revisit, now and then.

Boredom - The Creativity Engine?

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more/ No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more/ Well, I try my best/ To be just like I am/ But everybody wants you/ To be just like them/ They say sing while you slave and I just get bored/ I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more - From the Bob Dylan song "Maggie's Farm" (album "Bringing It All Back Home") Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW4y-9RoMFU

Today I am bored out of my mind.Funnily in me stress that cannot be resolved triggers boredom. Almost as if I have a third option when faced with danger. Fight or Flight or Get Bored! I have promised myself to put out a blog post today and fighting hard with ennui I have decided to ruminate on the very topic that is preventing me from enjoying the process of writing a post today. The first meme that comes to me as I meditate on boredom is Bob Dylan singing about how he just got bored on the slave farm! So I decide to begin the post with it. I dig around a little more in the recesses of my mind and remember reading Bertrand Russel saying that boredom is a serious disease inflicting modern civilization. A google later I come upon the following Russel quote: Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it. Bertrand Russell Could Russel have got it somewhat wrong? Boredom on the streets of Harlem or Dharavi or in the penthouses of Beverly and Pali Hill might produce some rather painful results. But could not boredom also be productive? I started testing the hypothesis and lo and behold I hit pay dirt. Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher well known for his pessimism had an insightful and surprisingly sunny take on boredom. Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other. Arthur Schopenhauer Schopenhauer's view on boredom resonate well with Mark Applebaum's views on the power of boredom. Mark known as the mad scientist of music believes that boredom is the key to creativity. Reproduced below is Mark's recent Ted Talk that walks one through the interaction between boredom and creativity. Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_applebaum_the_mad_scientist_of_music.html I believe you will tend to agree with Mark's views if you are creative yourself or have worked extensively with creative people. From my days in advertising I can remember how my creative colleagues would be bored at the drop of a hat. And then they would most often go attack this boredom by behaving strangely or putting out the most outlandish propositions. And of course, once in a while, their attack on boredom would result in truly creative advertising. Would love to hear from my creative readers, who are legion, on their thoughts on this issue.

The Second Education Revolution

I believed the second education revolution will be a technological one. That is why I invested time and money in an e-learning technology start up. I was wrong. Technology does not make for revolutions, people do. The second education revolution is happening because the best teachers are making it happen. Yes they are using e-learning technology to hold massive online classes. But that is only a small part of the revolution. At the core of the revolution is the passion that the best teachers bring to their profession, their insights into the classical processes of education and learning and the skills that they bring to discovering and refining new processes of teaching and learning. To get a up close view of the passion, the insights and the skills take a look at this TED talk by Coursera (www.coursera.org) co-founder Daphne Koller. I visited Coursera. I found a whole lifetime worth of courses. It took me two minutes to register for one on Game Theory and now I await my taste of the second education revolution. See you there. . In case the embedded video does not play on your device here is a link to Daphne's talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education.html

A Tin Ear and The Clown Prince

What does it take to make a mess of one of the biggest mandates the world can give? Want a clue? Take a gander at the title of this post. My family have been ardent supporters of the Grand Old Party for three generations now and I have held on to the allegiance. But no longer. I have had enough and will not take it any longer. "Come on mother if that boy wants to go and play with other boys and girls in fields foreign, let him. Togging him out in whites to go out in the heat and dust and play games with men will only have him soiling his pyjamas and further besmirching a family reputation built over five generations. India has, over the centuries had enough of crown princes and clown princes. It can do without yet one more. Lady do you really need all this trouble? What? You say are doing what is good for the country? Which country? Okay that was below the belt. But really if you want to do some good, get rid of that tin ear and get yourself a pair that can really listen. To the quiet anguish of good men turned into puppets. To the groaning and guffawing of the people at the antics of your army of sycophants which is sadly what is mostly left of the Grand Old Party. We know your heart is in the right place. You want to give to the people. Information. Dole. Food. Education. But really the people do not need that from you. They can get all that and more for themselves. All they need from you or anyone of your ilk is to force the clowns and the thieves to keep their dirty hands off the till and do a decent day of work everyday. Earn their keep so to speak. The one saving grace is that you don't run a police state. Or do you? Why then have I taken care not mention any names in this post and just allude, allude. allude? Why?"

Beyond the Brand: The Meme?

Meme: (me~m) n biology an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means esp. imitation (The New Oxford American Dictionary) What does a brand that has done that, been there, go next? In these days of social media and viral communication it seems that becoming an “element of culture or system of behavior…passed on by one individual to another.. by non-genetic means” is well within the grasp of even relatively modest marketing budgets. The question is why would a brand want to become a meme? Well, simply because a meme is more powerful than a brand by many orders of magnitude. USA is a meme that still drives pop culture across the world. Milk is a meme, just ask any mom. India used to be a meme in the Middle Ages- fueling dreams of exotic mysteries and fabulous riches in many a buccaneer. Today the increasing soft power of India if husbanded well could give back to India the power of being a meme. So will brand marketing now move on to aiming for the power of the meme? Well while the use of viral media is on the increase and the marketing chaterrati is talking about changing paradigms etcetera, I don’t think anybody knows how to make a meme happen through marketing. Maybe we need a new to discipline to be invented. Will a new Kotler soon arise?

PS: To the normal consumer brands are a significant but small part of her existence. On the other hand to marketers and advertising people like me brands are the core of our discipline. So if you are one of my many readers who are from outside the marketing and advertising fraternity pleas bear with me when I, once in a while, indulge in shop talk.