The Obsessive Sacrifice of Innocence

Four things that the Indian media industry should watch out for

I have always believed that for an industry that claims that it’s about people, advertising and media industry is appallingly indifferent about people when it comes to putting its mouth where its money should be.

That’s why when IMPACT asked me to write a piece about the four things Indian media industry should watch out for, I thought of writing all four things in the context of people and what organizations should be doing about them.

It is my belief that while each person has her own talent, how people use their talent is guided by the context in which they operate and expectations set on them by their environment. This is why some people good at opening locks help us get into our house when we lose our key, while others try to break in when we are not around.

Over the last few years, I have seen organizations give up the common sensical focus on people and their nurturing, that I and several of my peers benefited from when we were at the early stages of our careers. As a result, four things that are so important in today’s exciting world are all but lost.

Curiosity

I remember that in the first few years of my career, all I had for people around me, my seniors, my clients and peers, was questions. Many things around me intrigued me. Much as the Economic Times on the surface felt like a boring paper, it was full of stuff I knew nothing about, things I had avoided in the macro economics class in my business school. Once I saw a book on direct marketing lying on someone’s table and I could not sleep properly, until I had read that book cover to cover. There was this print processing studio in Delhi called Ajanta, where I often hung around asking all sorts of questions to the technicians about their equipment, just for ‘time pass’. Going on market visits, observing housewives buy things at the kirana store and asking them a few impromptu questions, were things we ended up doing without thinking much about it.

Where did we drive curiosity away? I find youngsters today mouthing platitudes about marketing, making sales pitches, using PowerPoint and other tools effortlessly, but I don’t find them curious enough about business and marketing and communication. That worries me a lot.

Conviction

Conviction is different from loose opinion, which I find in abundance these days. Every time I read a book about an inspiring business leader or watch a movie I really like, I see conviction. I see people standing up for things they believe in. Early in my career, I met copywriters who would actually want to quit if you didn’t buy an idea they believed in. I had met film producers who would spend hours trying to persuade you about a frame in a commercial. Conviction comes from principle. I see too much of expedience in young people today. I have heard seniors teach things like ‘if the client wants to waste his money, I would rather he wasted it through me’. A lot of people today have an opinion; but who wants an opinion from you on a subject you don’t know? Conviction is not rigidity; it’s about true heartfelt belief. We need to encourage people to have conviction, rather than lose patience with them.

Conversation

This may actually seem to contradict with what I said before, but the truth is conversation is more important than ever in our life and in business. People are conversational on social networking sites, at hang outs, but why not in the work place? Conversation leads to participation, lack of it results in submission. At workplace, we need our people to question the way we have always done things, and take charge rather than passively accept board room dictates. When people become conversational at work place, they will respect conversations between brands and consumers, something that is crucial to building connections today.

Collaboration

A hyper competitive world has somehow misled us to believe that we can win the war on our own. No one wins the war on her own. We need to relearn and re-teach the value of collaboration. This is not just theory; it is an absolute necessity today. Collaboration works directly against ego clashes, land grabbing and turf battles, just the kind of things that come in the way of prosperity. It produces value for customers, companies and our own people.

We need to teach our people how to be innocent again and let common sense guide us as much as acquired knowledge. In my view, if we can create a culture of curiosity, conviction, conversation and collaboration, we would be channelling so much of young people’s energy for meaningful purpose.

[Published in IMPACT Annual Issue July 2008]

How do you wake up?

We all sleep differently. Some sleep tight, like a baby. Some sleep light, like the mother of a newborn. No matter how we sleep, most of us wake up with a start - some so mild in fact that we don’t recognize them, while some hard enough to bring our whole body and mind to sudden consciousness in a milli second.

Some times we are either too tired or too lazy to give up our sleep, and that’s when someone has to shake us up and give us a wake up call. It happened the night before the examination, during a rather chilly night, when the quilt seemed like a long lost friend, it happens many times now in hotel rooms in some distant city.

The wake up call is rarely likeable, but it’s meaningful and important nevertheless, because something really significant often waits for us on the other side.

As I look back at 2007, it appears to me to be a year of wake up calls. There were many major events than happened this year, that shook us out of our slumber, or they should have. There are other things that appeared to be minor sleep breakers, but meaningful nevertheless, perhaps because of their regularity of occurrence. Major or minor, these were not just events, for they will have an impact on our thought and action in 2008 and beyond.

I recount seven of my favorites here, in random order.

Wake Up Call 1: T20

T20 was not about India getting world cup glory back. It was not about defeating an arch rival. In a way, it wasn’t even about cricket. From a marketing viewpoint, it finally brought to life what we at Starcom have been forcefully claiming for a while – that today’s consumers are time starved, choice flattered and attention challenged. For the same reason the ODI cricket got popular decades ago, T20 became an overnight rage in 2007. The message is clear: in marketing anything, do not try the consumer’s patience, do not assume she is sitting there waiting for your message. Respect her time, respect the complexity of her life, and talk to her not just talk at her. The spirit of T20, applied to marketing is this: don’t just count your consumers, connect with them.

Wake Up Call 2: Input Cost Surcharge & the October stand off

The memory of the passionate October is too fresh for all of us, for me to revive it, but as with many things, there were two sides to the backdrop to the impasse. The October debate was not really about who is right and who is not. It was about perspectives and a willingness to achieve common goals. I believe that for a month we all forgot that the fundamental relationship between media owners and marketers has always been collaborative, even if at the negotiation table, it often looked to be adversarial. I have said this before and I will say this again. If we do not find ways to collaborate, today’s hypercompetitive world will find ways of decimating us.

Wake Up Call 3: Digital Signage

Place based media, point of purchase media, in-store media – whatever name you call it by, this is a medium whose birth 2007 will be remembered by. I was fortunate to attend a conference in November in Mumbai, where a lot of stake holders spoke very passionately about digital signage networks, why and how they work and about highly advanced technology driving it. Unfortunately, there were not many creative or media agency folks attending that conference, to receive the wake up call, although I remember meeting some people from ICICI, Levers and ITC. I understand that there are close to five thousand LCD screens that have been installed in stores, at workplaces and in lift lobbies across the country and hundreds more are going live every month. Mark my word, very few media will generate as much curiosity and excitement in the next two to three years as this one.

Wake Up Call 4: The Vanishing Line

As many of us started putting the tag Experience Society on ourselves, the already thin line between above-the-line and below-the-line became even thinner in 2007. Call it IMC, 360 degree marketing, through-the-line marketing or holistic marketing, no marketing practitioner worth her Kotler and Levitt can today ignore the necessity to connect with the consumers using all the cards in our box. This was particularly heart warming for us at Starcom MediaVest Group, as we have invested significant managerial energy and other resources building new competencies over the last four years and today quite proudly claims to be the media network with the biggest competency portfolio in India. Today, many of us are learning to activate one idea through multiple media and platforms, rather than plan one medium ate a time. It is my strong belief that anyone, marketer or communication practitioner, who does not upskill herself rapidly in how to think and activate holistic, runs the risk of being left behind.

Wake Up Call 5: Digitisation of Life

After years of wondering and imagining, more marketers than ever embraced the digital way in 2007, recognising that you cannot forever hide behind meek arguments of ‘too few internet connections’ and other such. Unfortunately, many are still stuck in the early 2000’s model of generating leads by burning a billion banners. This will change, with or without another wake up call. In 2008, I believe, we will see many genuine attempts by marketers to use digital as a platform, rather than a medium, to deliver an enriching experience to their consumers.


Wake Up Call 6: Using a New Body Part

To call the mobile phone a technological device would today be an error. It’s something we sleep with, take to the bathroom and cannot truly imagine our life without. The irony is the contrast between consumers’ alacrity to adopt everything mobile and the marketers’ hesitation in using the platform as a communication and enablement platform. Companies like Affle, One-to-One Technologies, and Sixty Nine mm are creating highly interesting mobile marketing platforms that can allow marketers connect well with consumers, particularly young consumers. Many of our clients are more curious than ever and we have to move to the next level of converting the excitement into application.

Wake Up Call 7: TV isn’t dying anytime soon

In the last few years, particularly with the growth of non-classical media and experiential marketing disciplines, it became fashionable to talk about the reducing effectiveness of TV and many of us were challenged to divert budgets to other media. At Starcom, we have a contrarian’s view. We believe that if anything, TV will become even more important in future. We call that future an era of visual engagement. The way consumers watch TV will change, and they way we will use TV both in its traditional box format as well as through other screens, will change.

The fight in the traditional TV front is getting interesting, with Zee TV slowly but certainly narrowing the gap with Star Plus, but the debate on TV is more than just a Star Plus versus Zee TV debate. It’s not even about dozens of new stations springing up. It’s about innovativeness of programming, about audience engagement and freshness of thought. The broadcast industry need to stop for a breather and take a long hard look at what it has been doing and how it wants to do that future. It won’t be easy. Waking up rarely is.

Have an exciting 2008. I will.

[Published on indiantelevision.com on Jan 2, 2008]