e-cinema

I think I saw the future of cinema yesterday.
A few years from now our neighbourhood cinema will have pods instead of seats and instead of cinema we will have e-cinema (experience cinema). Imagine a future Gravity with you point-of-view shifting from within the frame, sometime's that of Sandra, sometimes facing her, sometimes right behind her. And being buffeted as the debris fly by or hit the spacecraft. Maybe even experience fleetingly weightlessness or even extreme cold. Now imagine a Bollywood potboiler in e-cinema. Would the Prevention of Torture Act apply?
But seriously they will have to reimagine both the technology and grammar of cinema if e-cinema is to happen and flourish. Once when Avatar released I thought it will happen with 3D cinema but it has not happened but because the technology and grammar did not move beyond the rudimentary.
From what I saw at the Universal Studio theme park yesterday I think e-cinema stands a much higher chance. I was visiting Universal after a gap of 17 years and the difference was mind-blowing. The Fast and Furious and the King Kong ride wrapped you in a 270 degree screen with resolutions that withstood you being only 20 feet or so from the screen and 3D that caused no dimming of the screen and kept the proportions across depth flawlessly. And boy did one sweat out the action. The Simpsons and Minions ride accomplished more or less the same effect with a 180 degree screen and a pod.
E-cinema is already a reality at Universal albeit in 10-20 minute clips with a stupendous amount of expense.
Will the cinema industry invest enough to make feature length e-cinema films common and as critically invest the humongous amount of money that would be involved in creating a network of e-cinema theatres. With home theatre technology improving by the minute and prices falling at a rate that will have every mildly affluent home install a good one, neighbourhood parlours and bars outbidding pricey multiplexes and TV series leaping in quality to provide the emotional resonance that once cinema solely provided what choice will the industry have?
If they want to continue getting millions to buy pricey tickets for 90 minutes or so of entertainment I don't think 3D and IMAX will be enough. Perhaps e-cinema is the answer.

Dad

I am older now than you ever were.

You will always be for me the young strong man who looked the world straight in the eye.

Not because you were combative, simply because you were happily truthful.

You had your share of troubles. As old BB King sang, you paid your dues.

Like many sons I never quote you to other people. Never elucidate the lessons you taught me.

Because you taught me to learn for myself.

Taught me to stare my troubles in the eye and pay my dues.

Dad.

Becoming

Is there a more beautiful word in the English language?
So full of promise. So laden with virtue.
When we live in the now we embrace the power of becoming.
Because every moment is pregnant with possibility and by living fully in the moment we give birth to the delta that drives the calculus of life forward.
Energy and time, those most fundamental entities of the universe, come together to animate matter Life into an endless series of becomings called Life.
Very often when we age we lock away becoming.
Inhabit a stasis that accepts finality. A cessation.
When perhaps even death is one more becoming in the endless chain.
And now I present a series of becomings that perhaps will bring the beginning of a smile to your now:

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.