Being inspired.

About a fortnight ago, I met Captain G R Gopinath, an ex Client of Starcom in Bangalore, in his office for 20 minutes. During that short meeting, he told me a little story about Christopher Columbus and the Ocean. Frankly, it was not even a story, it was more like the Captain’s perspective on what Columbus might be thinking before he gathered his fellow explorers and set sail on his fist voyage. Now, I have not studied Columbus and his life thoroughly enough, but there was something in the way the good Captain gave me his perspective.

Earlier this week, on the way from the Delhi airport to the hotel fairly late at night, my taxi driver Kamal told me his story of how he fled his home town Lalitpur in Nepal twelve years ago, to avoid being drafted by either the Maoists, or the Nepalese Army and to avoid being tortured by the Police on suspicion of being a Maoist rebel. He came to the unknown place called Delhi, when he could not speak Hindi, he didn’t have any relatives here, and started his career by washing cars by the day and sleeping in places vacated by them at night.

I find both the stories – of Columbus of Genoa, Italy and of Kamal of Lalitpur, Nepal – very inspiring.

In fact as I write the only farewell note of my 20 years of working career, I am thinking not of memories but of inspirations I am taking away with me.

I have always taken pride in the people who have chosen to work in our organisation and I have said many times that we have been so fortunate that people have chosen to work with us when they could have gone anywhere else. Today, I am reflecting on what an amazing and inspired 12 years, I have lived in this organisation. My inspirations have come from many people in our client companies and media owner partners, but they have mostly come from my co-workers – people like you.

From some, I have learnt how to treat the workplace as my second home, from others how to stand unperturbed on a bad hair day. Some have inspired me to be aggressive, some others to be patient. The analytical approach in some has got me excited, while I have learnt to be creative from some others. Some taught me how to deal with ambiguity, while some others encouraged me to provide clarity.

Many of you have inspired me without even knowing about it – through your thoughts, actions, and responses.

Today, I am not leaving SMG with a heavy heart and sadness. I am doing so with pride, relief, a sense of accomplishment. I have many good memories from SMG and I will always cherish them. But as I said before, it is the inspirations I am carrying, which I hope will hold me better stead.

Today, I am thinking of all the people I have interacted with – in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Colombo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Chicago and many other beautiful cities where we have offices and where I have met some of the smartest people in my working life.

Today I am thinking of Cheryl, Niyati, Maria, Marilyn, Amith, Rafiah, Malli, Chetan, Pravin, Andrey, Sriram, Gan, Ranga, Dr Ravi Moorthy, Ravi Bhaya, Chee Weng, Bonita, Jeffrey, Melissa, Jean, Robin, Pushkar, Sanjay Barkataki, Santonu, Hemang, Dinkar, Angela, Preeyada, Atipol, Triluj, Madhavan, Shashi, Asokan, Praveen, Dupi, Madan, Nikhil, Sandeep, Sandip, KC, Tarun, Sanjay Shah, Raj Jha, Srikanth, Manish, Manjunath, Puneet, Gautam, Pranay, Mahesh Motwani, Mahesh Ranka, Anjana, Vikas, Ashish, Dinesh, Patrick, Anand, Sindhuja, Ashwini, Amrita, Priya, Naresh, Aruna, Avinash, Amitabh, Manik, Anish, LV, Atul, Natraj, Sejal, Mona, Verghese, Tejasvita, Shilpa, Manas, Kenny, Paul and many others, who have had a impact on me.

Each of these people have inspired me. I feel incredibly lucky for it and I feel humbled.

Amith [Prabhu] asked me to write something as my last piece of advice. But I have decided not to give any pearls of wisdom or helpful advice to you.

Today I just say my thanks, to each of you, for making my 12 years in SMG- each day of it- worth it.

Thank you.

[Published in SMG India house journal StarSync special edition, Dec 2010]

The End of Pregnancy for Point of Interaction Communication.

Or why In-Store Media is the big undercurrent of 2006.

Over fours ago, I remember having included an interesting media option called Q-jam in a recommendation to a client targeting young people. Q-Jam is a networked jukebox that was then being installed in recreation outlets such as Café Coffee Day by a Chennai headquartered technology based marketing solutions company called Real Image. Users could play the song of their choice for a small charge and advertisers could insert their commercials and custom promotions between songs and on the menu. The recommendation did not go through because it was ‘ahead of its time’. Earlier this year, the folks from Real Image came and made a presentation to us at Starcom on Q-Jam and other services of theirs and I do not remember any of us talking about ‘ahead of time’.

As I reminisce on 2006, this is what appeals to me the highpoint of the year. It’s a bit like being in 1992 when the satellite television came or in 1996, when mobile telephony was launched. To me, when in 5-6 years, we all look back at how retailing and in-store communications has grown in India, we will realize that 2006 was the defining year.

It’s not as if retailing was new news to us by itself. We have all heard of Shopper’s Stop, Crosswords, Vijay Sales, Vivek’s, Subhiksha, Music World, Planet M, Agrani Switch, Crossroads, Barista, Heera Panna, Palika Bazaar, Apna Bazaar, Super Bazaar. And of course the mammoth and revolutionary Pantaloon Retail Group, now better known as the Future Group. But what makes 2006 very interesting is that big name gladiators are finally jumping into the game in full armour. Reliance, Bharti, Goenka, Birla, Munjal, Tata. Add to the list Godrej, Levers, ITC and that together between these, they will alter the way we buy is no longer in doubt. Finally, after nearly a half a decade of claiming that retail is the next sunrise sector, the sun is about to rise.

Modern retailing will have many influences on the way we make marketing and communications decisions. One of the more significant ones that will get all us excited and worried over the next few years will be in-store communication, or my colleague Kaushik Chakravorty calls ‘last 3-minute’ communication. Real Image now offers their digital point-of-sale advertising service Q-sign. Kolkata based Flash Media announced offering a memory-card based advertising option earlier this year across Shopper Stop outlets. Later in the year, a Bangalore based company called Tag Media Network started testing in-store advertising with original content and advertiser funded programming, across Spencers stores, mainly in South India. In October, the Future Group announced the obvious, starting of their own captive in-store media company – Future Media, headed by a Times Group stalwart – Partho Dasgupta. With dozens of own stores in all kinds of formats and growing rapidly, Future Media is expected to deliver a powerful retail level marketing solution to marketers. Another big news came towards the end of the year – Focus Media of China entering India under the guidance of the venerable Mr. Ishan Raina.

Some of us may choose to see this as another fad. I see a strong undercurrent. Will classical media such as television the way we know it die? Not really. But we need to re-assess our expectations from them and re-evaluate the way we use them and measure their efficacy. At Starcom, we are convinced that the single scarcest resource in marketing tomorrow will consumer attention and marketing practitioners will be evaluated on how well we attract and retain that precious resource. We will need to realize that attention will increasingly come in small measures. We will need to develop new knowledge on where our prospects are receptive and when they are attentive and engage with them in a manner that is relevant and contextually sensitive. The future will not be about draining our messages through a pipe that presumably goes directly to the consumer mind. That is too simplistic a view of the world. Tomorrow’s communication will increasingly need to be multi-dimensional, sensory and experiential.

This is where point-of-Interaction media such as in-store, malls, coffee bars, ATMs [RBI willing] fit the jigsaw. In my view this is the medium that will tip over the next few years.

[Published in the Hindustan Times dated Dec 30, 2006]