Politics and The Art of Being Left of Self-Interest

Shekhar Gupta, a rare combination of consummate insider and trenchant observer, writing in the latest issue of India Today says that while agriculture is 15% of India’s economic GDP, it is 60% of the political GDP.

How true! Look at the shenanigans of our political class over the past few weeks. Rahul Gandhi has discovered the plight of the farmer after nearly sixty years of his family ruling on the basis of keeping the farmer poor and therefore open to the lure of dole.

Even Derek O’Brien having long forgotten that his 15 minutes of fame came from asking the right questions and appreciating the right answers, has suddenly discovered the leftist in himself while opining on the Land bill.

Even Narendra Modi seems to be somewhat shaken and willing to yield ground.

Is the fear of failure beginning to fray his nerves?

A year ago when he declared that he was not frightened of loosing because he had nothing much to loose – he could always go back to being a humble pracharak – I thought this lack of fear would enable him to topple the debilitating shibboleths of Indian politics. 

Has the weight of being India’s most powerful PM since Nehru started chipping away at the strong foundation of self-abnegation that brought him to power in the first place?

Self-abnegation and Modi? I can hear his numerous critics hoot. According to them Modi is probably the biggest egotist that Indian politics has seen. Bigger than Indira Gandhi, they say, as they warn against consequences more disastrous than the Emergency.

But look at the man dispassionately. He is perhaps a little vain. Likes to dress, sometimes even overdress, well. He sees himself as a man chosen by destiny to accomplish great things for his people. But the feeling I get is that he does not let that perception weigh him down. Tomorrow if destiny decides otherwise he strikes me to be the kind that will ride away whistling into the sunset.  That was last year, now I am not quite so sure. 

Self-interest seems to be threatening to elbow out self-abnegation. 

Watch out Mr. Modi. The only thing you have to fear is fear itself. If you fear losing the next election you will.

Stand up to the politics of self-interest. Do the radical because the calculus of incremental reforms is self-defeating. Do what we voted you in to do.

 

Garden

Come lets stroll a bit in this garden

I have seen it sprout, 

Ever since I was born and

Crawled, staggered, run, strode

And now shuffle

Around it

Look here at this grove

Here is where are buried my 

Disappointments

Some grown into thorny shrubs

Some still saplings

Others never sprouted, dead and buried

Ah! Here, let's step closer here

Can you smell the flowers?

These are my expectations

They flower a day or two

And then wilt mostly without a trace

But not all, some pollinate and continue to live on..transfigured

Come here lets sit  a while in the shade

Of this yonder tree

This oak tree, this tree

Around which I have watched

This garden sprout, under this tree

I rest and contemplate my expectations

And disappointments

And wonder whether another garden

Awaits to sprout around me

Some other place, 

Some other lifetime, 

Around some other shade-giving

Perennial tree

Narrative Coherence: The Emerging Measure of Brand Equity?

Over the past decades technology has wrought many changes around us.

The most important change has been is the way we communicate with and relate to the world around us and thus, at the deepest level, perceive our external and internal reality.

What has remained unchanged is that consumption continues to be the building block of our economies and also the building block of the self-image of the average individual (some may ask if not consumption than what - to my mind in a different world it could have been learning, self-discovery, exploration - a host of other “higher-order” things where consumption of goods and service would be relegated to the basic and the trivial).  

Brands are an important part of the consumerist society. They are an important part of the productivity of a consumption-based economy. It is my thesis that the number of viable brands can be, in a circular fashion, both the cause and the result of economic growth (I have toyed with the idea of applying for doctoral research on such a thesis).

Brands are also an important part of the self-image of the average individual. This is because with the average individual, his or her perception and actions as a consumer, constitute an important part of self-image.

In advertising planning and creative development, at the simplest level, brands are defined by drawing a picture of the consumer who is or would be loyal to them.

In my personal toolbox as a brand strategy planner I have taken this a bit further. I have added a dimension that maps the individual as a composite of brands that he is loyal to. Such a composite picture leads to fresh insights of brand dynamics that can be useful in devising effective strategy.

While brands remain, as they have over the past eight decades, an important part of the self-image of consumers, the process by which brands become important is changing rapidly over the past decade or so.

Traditionally building a relationship with a consumer was a one-way ascending ladder captured so succinctly by the self-explanatory Awareness–Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA) model.

Under this model brand communication is one way and the brand, in the minds of its managers, has a singular goal – to get the consumer to act (buy) and then keep toggling between desire and action - while they got busy with getting more and more consumers up the AIDA ladder.

However, I believe that the AIDA model of brand building (there are many other, more complex, models of brand-building extant but all them reflect the core linear, one-way structure of the AIDA model) is fast loosing its touch with the reality of how consumers relate to brands.

The process of brand perception formation, in this age of the Internet and the mobile phone, is a negotiated, two-way process. It is a process in which the first step happens when an individual shares her views on and experiences with a brand with her peers.

While this might also have been happening in previous decades, there are two tectonic changes. Today the peer group is an ever-growing and amorphous cohort instead of a steady group of “meat space” friends. And the sharing is instantaneous and 24x7.

The content of this humongous river of 24x7 sharing almost inevitably has a substantial stream of views and stories about brands. Brands are ubiquitous and this incessant sharing has a voracious appetite for all kinds of issues and topics. If a brand does not have substantial number of views and stories floating about it in social media feeds and the blogosphere than, simply put, in this day and age, it is not a brand.

The views and stories extant in the interaction of consumers among themselves –chiefly on social media, the chat rooms, the messenger apps and the blogosphere – form a stream that can be termed as “Brand Narrative”.

The study and modeling of this “Brand Narrative” is going to be key to the next generation of brand-building theory and practice.

To my mind there are two key dimensions to Brand Narrative – Strength and Coherence.

Strength is a measure of the sheer quantum of brand mentions in the universe of consumer interactions.

It is to be noted that this measure of strength has little to do with the traditional measures instituted by the AIDA model.  It’s a Big Data measure and not a measure resulting out of traditional sample-based consumer research – an early indicator perhaps of the rise of Big Data and the fall of traditional market research in the domain of marketing and brands.

It is my hypothesis that the strength of a brand’s Brand Narrative is more strongly correlated with interactions with a brand that are actively sought by an individual – the pulling up of a video on You Tube or Vine, the browsing of a shop or a shop window, the voluntary participation in a category or brand related activity – than with brand activity that is intrusive which includes all kind of advertising including digital advertising and that current darling of below-the-line warriors – brand activation and event sponsorships.

In my hypothesis the second important measure of  “Brand Narrative” is Coherence. A brand might have a great amount of mentions, views and stories floating about in the consumer interaction universe but is this content cohering around a few themes? In fact these themes around which consumer views cohere are to my mind the brand’s ruling narrative.

Let me exemplify the above hypothesis by a hypothesized illustration. Take the case of Samsung and Apple.

The strength of Samsung’s brand narrative is probably fast catching up with that of Apple. But the coherence of the brand narrative of Apple is much greater than that of Samsung.

Apple’s brand narrative coheres around themes like Steve Job’s genius and American arrogance (reflected in the price of Apple products) and at a more stratified level the role of design as reflected in the relationship between form and function.

My hypothesis is that the strength of Samsung’s brand narrative does not cohere and that is one of the key reasons why Samsung’s brand equity -as reflected in the anticipation of products from the brand and the price premium they command- has plateaued.

What are the themes that Samsung’s brand narrative could have cohered around? Which brings us to the question – can brand management- decide and promote the themes around which brand narratives cohere?

Can Samsung decide and promote the themes around which the brand narrative will cohere – say  “innovation the Asian way”?  My hypothesis is decidedly not.

Can Apple after the death of Steve Jobs decide that their narrative will now have a theme centered on the genius of Jonathan Ive – their design guru?

Apple seems to be trying, going by the high-decibel PR around Ive reflected in stories about him in high profile media outlets.  I am not sure whether currently one of the themes that the ongoing brand narrative of Apple is cohering around is Ive but if that is the case, the hypothesis is, that it would not be directly co-related to the intensity of the PR effort around Ive.

So what is the role that brand management needs to play with respect to their brand’s narrative?

My view is that they must Listen and Synchronize in the case of positive themes and Listen, Source and Counter in the case of negative themes.

Listen by putting into place the right Big Data and Analytics streams.

Synchronise by harmonising the brand’s controlled messaging with the positive themes around which their brand’s narrative is cohering.

In the case of negative themes – themes that hurt a brand’s equity - brand management need to run a “detective” operation to trace back to the source of the theme. The source could be a feature of the brand’s product feature or marketing strategy. The source could be a negative experience of an individual or group with a high Klout score (a measure of the influence as an opinion former). Once the source is determined the brand management can run a counter measure that could be as easy as modifying a product feature and as tough as trying to subtly influence an overly sensitive, opinionated and thorny individual or group of individuals.

Let me end with a commercial plug.

At Aqumena (www.aqumena.com) , a strategy consulting outfit that I founded with two of my college mates Vinay Hegde and ND Badrinath, we are putting in place an interactive asynchronous consumer probe platform and one of the first uses that we will put this platform is to further explore the issues that have been stated in this piece.

You are welcome to send suggestions in this regard and, if you are in the business of brand management, participate in the research. 

    

    

       

Humanity's Daughter

While the comments of the rapist as documented in “India’s Daughter” are appalling, even more appalling are the comments of the two lawyers who are representing the rapists. Does education really enlighten? Apparently not. Who is to say that in the corridors of power & pelf we do not have hundreds and thousands who under the veneer that education and/or affluence provides have views that are as ludicrous and appalling as these rapists and their lawyers. And I do not think this a particular Indian problem. It exists, I believe, in all societies because somehow power in human societies seems to flow, like water, to those of us who have baser instincts. Can anything change that? Perhaps we will have to wait for the evolution of a higher species than us humans. 

Schadenfreude and the Pursuit of Happiness

For an idiot I have had a good life!
In that thought is the recipe for happiness.
For one it cuts the ego to size.
The ego that, oh so frequently, says I deserve better. Perish that thought. Crush that snake before it raises its ugly head.
The other secret ingredient is the realisation of the utility of mostly looking down instead of mostly looking up.

Looking up results in not just a crick in the neck but could be the proximate cause for a fall that hurts much more than any crick.
Looking down gives you much more robust measures of the good life than looking up does.
Look around and down and you will get a good idea of what the average life is in this vale of tears. Ruing that you have not yet made it to the Beemer owing class? Taking a ride on a Mumbai local is your ticket to feeling happy about your rickety Honda City.
Looking up is mostly joyless. Long stretches of envy and jealousy with the occasional empty frisson of schadenfreude - that unique German word for an emotion that roughly translates to the pleasure derived from some other person's misfortune.

The second-rung heiress who feels a pang of happiness as she sees the reigning queen wipe a tear on the death of her favourite poodle will have to momentarily go back to the endless ennui of envy as the reigning casanova hugs the queen tight in apparent commiseration.
Once in a while when life does not feel so good to me and unhappiness is circling around the edges of my consciosuness, I find myself listening to the tuneful masters of pop psychology, Eagles singing Desperado. The song somehow takes me back to that comforting thought with which I began this post.
For an idiot I have had a good life!
Given below is the song and its lyrics.
Cheers!

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
You been out ridin' fences for so long now
Oh, you're a hard one
I know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasin' you
Can hurt you somehow

Don't you draw the queen of diamonds, boy
She'll beat you if she's able
You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet

Now it seems to me, some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can't get

Desperado, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home
And freedom, oh freedom well, that's just some people talkin'
Your prison is walking through this world all alone

Don't your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won't snow and the sun won't shine
It's hard to tell the night time from the day
You're losin' all your highs and lows
Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you 

                                 You better let somebody love you, before it's too late

Memes and the Emergence of Crips

Memes have been a favourite topic with me, evident from the fact that of the 151 of the published posts on this blog fully four have had memes as an integral part of the rumination.

For those of you inclined to take a deep dive into memes and how this blog has addressed them till date, links to the four posts are given below:

http://www.hardrainindia.com/2012/08/beyond-brand-meme.html

http://www.hardrainindia.com/2008/09/coming-of-emotion-age.htm

http://www.hardrainindia.com/2013/11/memes-and-coming-general-elections.html

http://www.hardrainindia.com/2014/05/modi-meme.html

Meme: (me~m) n biology an element of a culture or system of behaviour that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means esp. imitation (The New Oxford American Dictionary) 

Before the advent of modern communication and travel technology, memes strengthened existing cultural and behavioural modes within geographical/ tribal boundaries contributing largely to the development of a wide variety largely insular civilizations and became the driving force in the creation of nation states. 

In the past six or seven decades, modern communications and travel have allowed memes to carry far and wide much like modern epidemics, leading to the emergence of cultural and affinity groups that cut across geographical boundaries. The global youth culture that pervaded in the sixties right up to the nineties is a vibrant example. A side-effect of the emergence of such affinity groups was the emergence of global brands and a global grammar for advertising. 

It also lead to the emergence of transnational diaspora identities with major geo-political consequences. Being Muslim or being Jewish became powerful memes with global implications largely due to the epidemiological implications of modern technology.

The past decades have been marked by not one but two major discontinuities on how people interact with each other. 

One is that the power of mass media as a broadcaster of ideas and "news" is being transferred to the individual. 21st century technology gives the individual instantaneous and almost free access to broadcast or target-cast (with increasing ability to define targets)  information and emotion rich communication at very low production costs, limited only by the individual's cognitive and creative abilities (this blog is an example).              

The second discontinuity is in the dramatic reduction of attention spans. The reasons behind this reduction are manifold. One of them could be the unchecked proliferation of messages and media that impinge on and seek attention from the individual. The other is perhaps an increase in the cognitive and emotional bandwidth that allows faster absorption of incoming communication.

A result of the above discontinuities has been the transfer of the power of memes into smaller entities called crips.  

Crips is originally the name given, in the late sixties, to African-American gangs in Los Angeles. However it was the sub-culture of jazz musicians in Chicago that gave it the context in which it has gained currency as an idea driving cultural assimilation in the today's world. For jazz musicians crips are momentary, very brief interludes of music which a jazz musician plays around with in the process of improvisation that is the soul of jazz.

In the world of ideas while memes were fully formed, metaphorically akin to say a fully formed jazz composition, crepes are "idea strands" much like strands of DNA that can latch on to other collections of strands around a base structure to form an complete DNA helix. A crip is imminently suited for transmission/ absorption/ re-transmission by the typical low-attention span, digitally empowered, young citizen from the privileged classes of the  modern world. 

An example of a crip that propagated a decade or so ago was the phrase "whatever". It was a crip which in some cases attached itself to a DNA that defined a linguistic sub-culture while on the other hand was part of a cult of indifference if not outright rejection of the mores of fashion trends. So at one extreme this particular crip became part of a linguistic fashion and at the other extreme it attached itself to a sub-culture formed around the rejection of fashion.

Crips are abundant and multiplying in the modern world allowing an individual to define a cultural profile all her own. She can be a part of a unique cultural tribe of a few and even one with access to powerful communication tools, that were just a decade ago were available only to mass media, to express and sustain her culture. 

This is deep-set change that is destroying decades if not centuries old more of whole swathes of society and business. 

It's effect on the worlds of marketing and advertising are profound and are still in the process of playing out even as the traditional practitioners deny the need for any seminal change.

I can already see one more post on crips and their effect on the world of brands. 

Looks like crips will be fertile ground for this blog to sow over the coming months.

                 

Our Vedic Future

God knows we Indians have a chequered past. An immediate past that we need to overcome and a distant past that we can justifiably be proud of.

It is my belief that the misery of our recent past, our colonisation and our inability, over the past 60 odd years to make our independence work to give large masses of our people a better life, is because we have failed to use the greatness of our distant past, as a lesson and a lever to help us build a great future for ourselves and the world.

Our Vedic past needs no feverish projections of mythical scientific achievements to establish its greatness. The greatness of our Vedic past lies in ideas that are as potent today as they were for millenniums stretching back into pre-history.

Consider the power of this idea, as articulated in the words of Swami Vivekananda, “The Vedanta recognises no sin it only recognises error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that”.

As a wonderful inspiring assertion of human possibility how different and from the fear-instilling restrictions of quotidian religion. How can you believe in God if you don’t believe in yourself?

Isn’t the above viewpoint not a guidepost to great achievements -  breakthrough science, world-altering social revolutions? Not achievements in the distant past but achievements of an urgent future that draws closer by the day?

The above is just one of the many ideas of  timeless utility and inspiration that the Vedas offer us.

So why do we need Vedic airplanes to get high on the glories of our past? Why don’t we instead ride on persistent hard work guided by these precious Vedic insights and prescriptions to a golden future.

Our future can be and should be both our homage and our goodbye to our distant and recent past.

Look to this day,

for it is life, the very breath of life.

In its brief course lie

all the realities of your existence;

the bliss of growth,

the glory of action,

the splendor of beauty.

For yesterday is only a dream,

and tomorrow is but a vision.

But today, well lived,

makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,

and every tomorrow

a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day.

(Ancient Sanskrit)