Memes and the Coming General Elections

Brand gurus, mostly, do not make good election strategists as simply as a good man. mostly, does not make for a great politician. Building brands and winning elections work on two entirely different communication paradigms. Elections are won when the evoked memes favor one party more than the other and not because one brand is stronger than the other (I had written a post last year that contrast brands and memes: Beyond the Brand: The Meme?. It is reproduced at the end of this post). When voters vote they are going much beyond making a brand choice. They are acting on the deepest and complex set of human needs and instincts. Election campaigns work when they are based, overtly and covertly, on "shorthand" that crystallizes these deep and complex needs. This "shorthand" is both pervasive and simple as it is magical. Magical because it manages to invoke and infer to a rich structure of perceptions and self-image within an individual.For many decades now the memes that have have distinguished the winners from the losers in Indian politics have come from the area of identity. Muslim and Hindu. Lower Caste and Upper Caste. Rich and Poor. Over the past two decades another powerful meme has been added to Indian politics: Local and National. The Local and National meme has added a whole new set of winners in Indian politics and ushered in the era of coalition politics. In the past few years another powerful identity based meme has made it's appearance: the Youth meme. This meme is the most powerful dimension of the demographic dividend that promises to change Indian politics and Indian society. Election strategists that deeply understand and invoke the Youth meme could tap into a winning vein that, given India's demographics, could hold them in good stead for the next 2 to 3 decades. On the other hand strategies based on a superficial understanding of the Youth meme can dump one into the loser's bin for a long time. The Youth meme is not necessarily evoked by "babalog" politicians. In fact fronting entitled members of the "lucky sperm" club might be a way to evoke the Youth meme not for your party's campaign but for the opposition. The election strategist needs to go deeper in his examination of the Youth meme. How does it interact with the still powerful memes from past elections - Religion,Caste, Class and Ethnicity. Is the best way to invoke the Youth meme not by direct appeal but to invoke a set of powerful ancillary memes? What are they? Jobs? Freedom? Quality of Life? Education? Health?. These are the questions that the election strategists who will win in 2014 are pondering over and getting answers to right now. And if no one is, well it could then well be that there is no winner in 2014. It will then be time to prepare for some more years of the doldrums of the limbo my friends. 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.

The High Art of Literary Fiction

Fiction, the pundits tell me, comes in two kinds - literary fiction and commercial fiction. Commercial fiction is the kind that helps you while away a few hours suitably entertained. On the other hand, literary fiction is as Kafka famously stated "an axe to break the frozen sea inside us" In these days of ardent quantifying - page ranks, neurobiological metrics and mining of personal data - the question is asked about what use is the "breaking of the frozen sea inside us". Two recent studies by social psychologists ( http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/i-know-how-youre-feeling-i-read-chekhov/?_r=0, and http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0055341) have proved that the reading of literary fiction, at least in in its immediate penumbra, increases emotional intelligence or empathy. These findings, like all findings of studies in the soft sciences can easily be questioned) but that to, my mind, is besides the point. "Breaking the frozen sea inside us" is in itself an affirmation of life and increases the intensity of all that you feel. If it is private grief that you are battling with, it can find you a resonance that relieves the painful edge of grief suffered alone. If it is failure that is depressing you or success that is blinding you, it can help you laugh at both. The utility of literary fiction is, to my mind in the realm of the personal rather than in the lately-much-to-emphasized realm of the social. I read a lot. At any point of time,I have multiple books on my "being read" list - fiction/non-fiction, prose/poetry, literary/commercial (You can find my reading list and share yours on Goodreads - the "Facebook" for book readers). However my pace of reading goes up and down and recently I find myself returning to the voracious mode. Also,after a couple of years of favoring non-fiction, I find myself returning to fiction. In the past 6 weeks I have finished reading six books - The Lowlands by Jhumpa Lahri, Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon, Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil, Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel, Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe and The Flamethowers by Rachel Kushner and 80% through with a seventh - The Goldfinch by Donna Trott. That is way beyond my average pace of reading and in these six weeks the four non-fiction books on my "being read" list have listlessly languished there. Everyone of the seven books have been a joy to read. They are of varying merit. I would put Goldfinch right on top,followed by Bring Up The Bodies, followed by Back to Blood, followed by The Lowlands, followed by the Flamethrowers, followed by Bleeding Edge and trailing last would be Narcopolis (For those of you interested in such things, I plan to write brief reviews of each book on Goodreads). But everyone of them, in it's own way, helped me attain an angle of repose after a period of high emotional and physical discomfort. In fact I believe that this torrent of reading has been my sub-conscious coping mechanism. In fact my top-of-the-list book ,The Goldfinch is a masterpiece that,I believe,will find its place among the best of the decade. However I suspect it is on top of my list not just because it is extremely well written, has masterly character sketches or an unflagging narrative intensity but because it finds great emotional resonance with me. The book is set in circumstances and locales that are foreign to me and nobody would catch a glimpse of me in any of the main characters in the book. So where does the resonance come from? I think it comes from the depths of the sub-conscious where empathy goes beyond the apparent and where our deepest self and therefore Kafka's "frozen self" lurks. I am quite aware that literary fiction is not everybody' cup of tea. There are many of us who find other means of unfreezing our deeper selves. For some its treks into nature. For some others it is hobbies like playing an instrument or singing or acting or dancing or cooking or, writing or, apparently with a large section of humanity, talking/ socializing. For the lucky few among us who have found an vocation it is working. The one difference you will notice is nearly all other means of "unfreezing your self" are when you are in an "active" mode - you are doing something- while the claim of this post is that an apparently passive activity like reading good literary fiction can match the intensity an benefit of doing something active. That, I believe, is because in reading each one of us creates the context and is therefore are in an active "creative" mode. And when you are reading a good work of literary fiction you are creating at the deepest level of emotional intensity s and therein lies it power. “It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.” ― Oscar Wilde And now for some lighter moments with and about readers courtesy of the New Yorker's Cartoon Bank:

The Eleventh Man

The game of cricket did not fade away from the world. It went up in flames in a matter of months. It all started on a November evening under lights at Mumbai's Wankhade Stadium. India was playing England in a one day international. Harsha B, a ripe 65 year old on the verge of retirement was holding forth on TV in his patented faux mix of Cardus and Arlott. Suddenly the producer's voice broke in "Hey Harsha count the English team on the field. I think there are only on ten". Jolted out of his reverie Harsha got back to the job of describing the action on the field. As the bowler got ready to deliver the next ball, Harsha started describing the field setting while bringing up the graphic showing the field positions occupied. The producer was right. There will be 10 Englishmen on the field including the wicket-keeper and the bowler. Harsha started ticking of the names in his head to locate the missing eleventh man. That was the start of the worldwide befuddlement that ensued. Try as hard as he may, Harsha just could not figure out who was the missing eleventh man. His mind would identify a player and the next moment, lo and behold, the guy would be there lurking at third man or patrolling long on. Besides the producer and now Harsha nobody else seemed to have yet noticed the missing eleventh man. The match halted for the drinks break and Harsha alerted his fellow commentators to the mystery. Over the next one hour, each one of the team of six tried to identify the missing eleventh man and failed to. As strange to everyone of them was that neither the players on the field, the umpires, the players and officials in the pavilion, or any of the 16,433 spectators or the millions watching on TV had noticed the anomaly! The commentary team decided to keep the mystery to themselves and let the match finish. As the players started trudging back to the pavilion and the spectators started vacating the stands, Harsha ran down to the ground and caught hold of the English manager and asked him whether any of his players were missing. The manager was befuddled by the question but since it came from a man he both liked and respected he went around counting his boys. Since England had lost the match, the counting job was easy as all the players huddled around inside the dressing room. There were sixteen in the squad and the manager could count only 15. He brought out a list started ticking down the names. There it was. There was one person missing. It was James Gray, the stocky spinner. But Gray was in the playing eleven and would have been on the field just moments ago. Where was James Gray? The question haunted everybody left on the ground for the next hour so and then the question started reverberating across the world. Mumbai was being searched with a tooth comb 30 minutes after it was noticed that John Gray was missing with all exits from Mumbai blocked. "John Gray had to be somewhere in Mumbai wouldn't he?" "Where else could he be? He just did not have the time to get to anywhere else, did he?" "And any way why would he run away? So what if he got hammered for 45 in 5 overs, it had been done to him and worse before". However the biggest mystery and befuddlement and mystery of all was unfolding in the TV studio. The footage of the match was being examined in the minutest details. Footage from twelve high-definition cameras focused unblinkingly on that less than 2 acres of turf, examined and re-examined. And what happened to Harsha, happened to a team of 30 highly alter individuals over the next 4 hours. In the last 90 minutes of playing time, there were only 14 people, including the two batsmen and the two umpires on the ground, instead of the 15 that should have been there. And the biggest puzzle was no amount of list checking could identify who was the missing eleventh person. Every time a count was taken, James Gray was lurking somewhere on the field. Every time one of the other 10 was assumed was missing, there he was lurking somewhere on the field. Nobody was missing yet the count added up to one missing. Over the next 3 days the hunt for James Gray was expanded worldwide. John Gray was nowhere to be found. The world media was agog even while the mystery of the TV footage was kept from the world.But that was the least of the questions bothering world governments and intelligence agencies. The rationalist were called in but no fraud or trick in the TV footage was exposed. The scientists and the strategist tried to construct explanatory scenarios but none could be created that did not cross the outer boundaries of humanity knowledge. And then on the sixth day it happened again. This time it was in the West Indies during a West Indies versus Australia Test Match. In broad daylight!. This time the world governments and the intelligence agencies were ready. The incident was kept under wraps. The missing player, a Trinidadian fast bowler, disappeared from the face of the world without a whimper in the media. A tightly controlled 230 people knew about the incident. The others were paid-off or intimated or both to keep quiet. And when it happened the sixth time within nine months of the Wankhade incident, the world governments got together and banned international cricket. In a scenario created by a brilliant strategist from British intelligence, rumours about a worldwide betting syndicate that regularly fixed international matches was started soon after the Wankhade Incident and fanned. The formidable propaganda machinery of the Western powers revved up after the second incident and the decision by cricket boards and governments across the world, soon after the sixth incident,to ban international cricket for the foreseeable future was, with the exception of peaceful protests in cities like Mumbai. Kolkata, Sydney and London, accepted by the people and media of the world. And without the fuel of international cricket, in a few years, all cricket died. The world now had 230 more football stadiums. It was nearly two centuries, before the world officially recognized the Wankhade Incident as the first of several botched attempts by the super-computers of the sixth planet around the distant sun Alpha Nova to contact the human race. By then it was much too late to revive the lovely game of cricket.

Fear The Dumb!

You must have heard the story about the king and his favorite retainer: the smartest monkey in his entire kingdom? Yes? Then you know what happened when he asked the worthy to guard him and his sword while he took a nap and a fly buzzed in and settled on the king's nose. To fear dumb people is the best kind of smarts. In fact fearing the dumb is a sure shot success formula. Fear the dumb and renounce a world full of them and you will attain nirvana. Fear the dumb and cater to their tastes and wishes and you will be rich. Witness the popular filmmakers, musicians and marketers. The saying "Fools tread where angels fear to go" is a lament dedicated to those among us who practice our talents and trades in service of high ideals. Arre baba! don't aim higher, aim larger - the larger slice of the pie so to say. After all God in his infinite wisdom decided to make many, much more than many, among us dumb rather than smart. Let me conclude with an extract from the song "Idiot Wind" by Bob Dylan - the guy you listen to when you put up your feet and try to put behind you your working day of fearing the dumb. "Idiot wind blowing through the buttons of our coats Blowing through the letters that we wrote Idiot wind blowing through the dust upon our shelves We're idiots babe It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves." - Idiot Winds, Bob Dylan

Kleptocracy

The Karnataka election is a sampler of the big national show coming up next year (or later this year, if some overexcited pundits are to be believed). I have roots in Karnataka. So I get news about the elections that go somewhat deeper than what we get the daily gargles and the 24x7 vituperation of the Indian news media. Well they are it again. Bigger, better and more shameless. So what one or two mining barons are in jail. So what most of the iron mining sector in Bellary is under lock down. There are always plenty of others who want to play the game and it does not stop at Indian money bags. No I am not talking about the Indian money in Swiss banks (or some such dank corners). India is now truly on the global map if the global military-industrial complex thinks it worth their while to raise stakes in a regional election. And the goons? Well thank the demographic dividend there is no shortage of young, muscle-bound yes men. Make no mistake. The political class in India loves elections. Think of it as the ritual that renews their lease. Their lease to untrammeled loot. Does not matter which individual or political party wins or loses, the political class wins. I have been in the drawing rooms of drunk politicians with their guards down."These xxxxx,xxxxx jholawalas, judges, anchors, bureaucrats, policewallahs think they can tell us what to do or not to do? Can they ever fight an election let alone win? We will rule because we are elected to rule" Democracy? Of the people, by the people for the people? Really? Raise 10 crores of black money,feed and tolerate hundreds of goons before you can be "of the people". Like this friend of mine rather pithily put it - "More like kleptocracy"

Bonfire of the Vanities - Revisited

I have smiled at shallow triumphs

And long mourned the loss of what I did not own

I have dwelt long in the shadow of my desires

I have constructed an ego built of my senses

And with foolish bravado fought the chimera of misery

I have looked for God in vain meditations

And reserved action for the pursuit of Mammon

I have sought love in the cravings of flesh

When love was within and all around manifest

I have played to weakness when strength beckoned

And belittled myself to myself

Enough say I, enough this night

This Holi night, as I go back millennia

People hunched around an ancient hearth

A primeval force, pure and cleansing

This bonfire of the vanities

Enlightenment and Arnab Goswami

Immanuel Kant in his monograph "An Answer to The Question : What is Enlightenment" argues that maturity - the ability to use one's own understanding of the world to lead one's life - is the key to enlightenment. He then goes further to make a distinction between the private and public use of reason. The private use of reason is when we as individuals perform our given function in a society. In that context we must obey the rules and framework of reason that govern our function as a teacher, manager etc. The public use of reason is when we are exercising reason to question the verities and foundations of everything around us including our profession. In this public use of reason we must explore without hindrance and let. I have often wondered about the sphere of reasoning that the daily spectacle of talking heads on our 24x7 news channels belong to. Listen to CNN, BBC World or even the lately minted AlJazeera and you will probably get the impression that these international news channels seem to believe that what they put out as news and analysis belongs to the private reasoning sphere, in that there are discernible rules of engagement and analysis proscribed by a sense of responsibility. Can one say that about the mushrooming horde of Indian news channels? Are the daily vituperation of Arnab Goswami and his ilk governed by any rules of engagement with the news and the talking heads they harangue? Is there any discernible sense of responsibility except to the compulsions of TRPs? I have nothing against Arnab Goswami. He is a brilliant man, courageous and glib. And on the occasions I watch his show, I must confess, I quite enjoy it. However it is clear to me that Arnab is not playing by any rules. He is not engaging in a private use of reason, as defined by Kant. Then perhaps he is engaging, day in and day out, in the high flight of public reasoning as defined by Kant? Decades from now will Arnab be recognized as an enlightened, free thinker who contributed copiously and well to the public discourse in India? That is some food for thought. However as I chew on this delectable morsel, a quiet voice in the corner of my mind raises an alternative viewpoint - "On the other hand, is Arnab beyond all reason?"

Follow up on "The Big Bucks School of Advertising's Coming Big Test"

In August I wrote in a post about how the US Presidential elections are going to be a test of how the power of advertising is correlated to advertising budgets (reproduced below for easy reference). Well the results are now out and happily the right man, in my opinion, is once again in the White House. Mitt Romney and friends (the super PACs) out spent Obama and friends roughly 3.5 to 2 in terms of television advertising. Every post-election analysis has attributed Obama's success to two factors. Obama's appeal to key demographics - women, younger people, Hispanics and Asians- and Obama campaign's "ground game" - a micro-analytics driven micro-marketing effort to get out the vote. The lessons for marketers are clear. Ensure your product answers felt consumer needs and get out there and get in touch with the consumer where the consumer lives, works and shops. Yes advertising works but not beyond a threshold. Too much advertising, in today's world,is the sign of a lazy marketer caught up in yesterday's paradigm.

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.