It is not a decline but Political and Moral Hegemony is no longer the Paradigm.

In the last two to three years, there has been deluge of books written on how the world order that we have witnessed in the post WW-II era is no longer tenable...

How no single country can superimpose its political, social or moral hegemony on others...

Much of this discourse harps on the theme of the demise or decline of the American Power.


Some like Fareed Zakaria and Kishore Mahbubani however differ. I personally like Zakaria's intellectual slant on this better. Zakaria posits that it is not so much as the decline of the United States as what he calls the "rise of the rest".













May be Obama agrees, and that explains why he was seen lugging around the same during the Presidential Primaries last year.






Mahbubani however brings a distinctively Asian flavour to the argument. Yes, Asia has risen. But Asia to me is still defined by the two Asian giants-India and China. The rest of Asia,including Singapore, the country that Mahbubani himself represent is yet to make significant geo-political dent in the American stance till now.
However, I really like one hypothesis that Mahbubai said in his interview with Stephen Sackur on Hard Talk.

He says, that for the last 1800 years the two foremost powers that the world had known were India and China- this balance shifted in the last two hundred years towards a decidedly Anglo Saxon axis. Now it is shifting back again.

It is interesting to see how Sackur who is normally dispassionate is almost riled!!!!!

And this shift is generating its own set of reactions from the Western Intelligentsia, some of them acknowledging but most of them skeptical and even disbelieving.

Here is Mahbubani's article that he wrote in the Wilson Quarterly this Spring.But do watch Sackur's Anglo Saxon prejudice coming out!! I like Sackur though!!!

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=518042

The Tao of Advertising-Still evolving...

Every industry is defined and led by some core principles and dogmas.For example, Within the Tech industry we have the Metcalfe's law and Moore's Law etc.

Similarly there are laws in Geology, Medicine, Engineering etc.

One often wonders if the same was true about the Advertising & Communications business too.....Off lately, I have been looking at some of the talked about ads in the last decade or so. Ads that got the agencies that created them , talked about and also the product categories/brands they stood for.

The emergence of digital and viral platforms and social media etc have made this exercise quite interesting.




From a traditional perspective, there are some fundamental pricniples by which advertising lives by. At least till now.

But if one were to have a look at the communication that really got talked about in the last decade or so, ads that really got people chattering about, one would surmise that the old paradigm of Messages, Propositions, Benefits and "what is the pay off" is crumbling if not dead.
If one were to ask the general consumer on the street, some of the most iconic campaigns of the last few years have been those that have made a mark beyond their immediate target audience, have sparked a buzz, a conversation and has touched or booted a cultural moment.

Some Advertising Planners that I have been speaking to are still conditioned by the Classical school of Benefit, Pay off and USP led communication.

They also don't classify these successful ads of recent times as "real advertising"

But the fact remains that the end consumer - the entity for whom this kind of advertising was aimed at has lapped it up.
What explains this dichotomy? Is there a real difference between the way Agency Insiders (specifically Advertising Planners) and consumers measure and consume advertising?
I guess it is true. Looking at things in too much of a structured way can distort perspectives. I am sure that consumers don't look up at products and their messages the way we do. Their is no sitting and no post hoc rationalizations. Most of the advertising consumer is at the level of intuition and sub-liminal processing.

Should it surprise us? Not really. Works of Antonio Damasio and Robert Heath have been available off-the-shelf for quite some time now.

It is no coincidence that in recent times some of the bestseller ideas are coming from the fields of cognitive and neuro sciences, product decision making and Behavioural Economics.

Infact, one of the most talked about works, Malcolm Gladwell's Blink- posits exactly this- the importace and precedence of intuition over logical decision making.

In this context works of two agencies that have really come in to their own in the last decade or so can be the signifiers of a new paradigm that is emerging- a paradigm that puts much emphasis on entertainment, engagement and simple, joyous and indulgent kind of advertising.
No overt thrusts on USPs and Benefits, no flogging around "why is the product better for you" and "you really need it"
Yes, you might have guessed what I am talking about- Works by Crispin, Porter and Bogusky and Fallon.

I still remember how around 2006 and 2007 people in the advertising business were anxiously questioning how Sony Walkman and Cadbury's Guerrilla had the product Branding coming only for a couple of seconds- that too towards the end!

To a lot of Classicists, it was tantamount to sacrilege. And of all the things the client was Sony. Some of us who have worked on Sony, will vouch how the client is in absolute love with its products and telling the client that the product branding will constitute only a minuscule part of the final communication is akin to hara kiri!!!!












Crispin is another agency whose work and credo is admirable.The knack of taking a Brand, projecting it in popular conversations most provocatively and making these conversations culture defining is something that they have consistently done.

And this credo is now spreading.

As Peter Field in the April 2008 issue of Admap writes that a cursory analysis of the most effective advertising concludes that the creation of Buzz has a dis proportionate impact in generating super optimal ROI for the campaign and making the Brand in question loved by the target group.

Mos of the present UK advertising has this viral/buzz component built into it almost by default.

Adage wrote about this as well. You can read more about this here.

http://adage.com/globalnews/article?article_id=138478

Some of the contemporary ads this year that have a substantial buzz component in built are -







Some other examples are-

Client-Agency Relationships- What endures?

In my professional life, I have had the good fortune to experiment with Planning at two distinct levels.

First, at the level of Strategy and Business Conulting and second at the level of communication, consumer and market consulting.

And this has enabled me to view the client/agency/consulting partner,relationship play out across various categories.

What I have noticed is that clients view their relationships' dynamic from a completely different lens when it comes to Advertising and Communication Agencies.

In the Business Consulting world, relationships with the client are often well defined, project led and mutual respect for each others' expertise is a given.

Contrast this with the Agencies' relationship and one will find that the relationship is generally under a scanner, the agency often having to prove itself year on year and the Client always behaving and taking decisions unilaterally.

Not that this happens always but it generally happens to be true.

Now the contribution of a great Advertising Idea to the business is as substantial (if not more) as a Business Consulting. This is generally now accepted and proven that great Advertising just like Great Business consulting, does create an exponential diffferential to the client's market share and drives business with as much gusto.

One often wonders then, why do the Greatest of Agency Client realtionships are not enduring as one would expect them.

Here is something that Adage published on the 17th of this month.

Volkswagen- one of the most awarded clients in the world, and also one of the world's savviest, is parting ways with its US Agency of Record, CP+B.



You can read the detailed story here-

http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=138499




Generally, one would expect such a thing to happen when the advertising and agency's output was not up to the client's expectations.

But no, in this case, VW's market share increased in the four years concerned.

The Advertising that CP+ B created got noticed by the consumer. VW increased its consumer pull and equity.

You can take any index or any brand measure and you will see that the relationship performed.

Then why does VW looking for a change?

The second development that happened is Sony calling a review for its Creative duties.

You can read more about it here-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/advertising/theres-no-monkey-business-about-the-success-of-fallon-1769863.html

Now, everybody thought that the single handed way in which Fallon's creativity made the Sony portfolio a winner would make the relationship of almost six years endure.

But no, Sony wants a fresh understanding and hence the pitch.

Now some of the most Iconic advertising that got created during the past six years or so was for these brands.

Consumer loved the Brands, market share went up, advertising got awarded....Infact, during these six years two of the most loved ads (Bravia Balls and Paints) were the most watched and awarded ads in the world..!!

But still the relationships could not endure seamlessly..!!!

Why does that happen? What was lacking?What more could the agency have been doing?

If even so called Great Performing and Disruptive Ideas can not ensure the continuity of the relationship then what can?

I would like to hazard an explanation.

The Communication business is much more dynamic and competitive than the Business conslting business. Consumer Behaviour and category purchase dynamics change much quickly.

And as a result the clients are forever made to feel, by the media, by other competing agencies and by their own hubris that may be they can still get better.- bettter consumer understanding, better creative thinking and overall better Brand direction.

Such an approach is risky can actually backfire, as we have countless examples where a new Advertising Idea or communication platform has often backfired for the business.

Since the business fundamentals more or less remain the same for any business-logistics, manufacturing and Product Manamgement etc- Business Consulting vendors and their client relationships are much less uncertain.

As I write this, CP+B, being a proud agency as it is, refused to participate in the pitch, saying, it believes in its creative output and has a policy not to defend its businesses that it believes it has given its best. Bravo!

Fallon too set this example, when shortly after the BMW films, it refused to participate in a creative review citing roughly the same philosophy.

I guess, the advertising business needs more such Gladiators who believe in themselves and their work.

Can consciousness be explained by "Emergent Phenomena"?

Off lately, I have been driven to explore cultural and cognitive studies.

Especially as to how, Culture and Cognition develop in humans.

I have been deeply influenced by the works of Joseph Campbell, Karl Gustav Jung, George Lakoff, Antonio Damasio, Mark Johnson, Rafael E Nunez, Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier.

And the more I understand Cognition and Culture Development, the more I begin to believe that unlike what was thought earlier, Consciousness and its after effects- Cognition, emotion, memory and other mental states are not emergent phenomenon.

As Gestalt theoreticians would surmise, they dont arise on their own and out of randomness.

There is much more to it.

Physicists however have a different point of view.

The example of a collective effect or emergent behaviour they give is that of magnetism, which occurs in isolation but only when many atoms are present.

Physicists call such phenomena “emergent” because they depend on a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.

By this logic Physicists surmise that consciousness may be a collective effect, too.

For those of my friends who would like to read more about conceptual blending and cognition development, I strongly suggest the book by Fauconnier and Turner-The Way we Think-Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities.

Stripped of all Matter, Forces and Fields-Would Space and Time exist?

I guess, Einestein had a lovely title for imaginative thinking- he called it "thought experiments".

I too, occasionally indulge in these experiments.

And a thought that has come to occupy my mind off lately is the nature of matter, force and quantum fields.

I often wonder what is vacuum? Is it the presence of nothing? Or is it something from which everything has been removed? What remains when everything is removed? Is nothing really nothing or there are further smaller particles there in?

What is Space? Is it nothingness? Or is it an interaction between matter, (doesnt matter if it is white matter or dark matter) and some hidden forces?!

If there is no matter how would a force filed pan itself out? Conversely can space exist without force fields?

Are quantum phenomenon only possible at sub atomic levels? How do they then magnify to macro levels?

Amartya Sen's Idea of Justice.

I have been reading Amartya Sen's recent musings in a book called "The Idea of Justice". I like the way Sen's builds his logic and thought flow and I like the way that Sen tries to compare, criticize and comment on different disciplines.

The hallmark of gifted thinkers across the ages was their cross-disciplinary thinking.

Post The Argumentative Indian Sen's journey towards being a Philosopher and a social scientist is complete with this book.

I quite like the idea that Justice as a construct is devoid of any absolutism. It is fluid and dynamic and what can get construed as "just" in one time and place might not be so, elsewhere.

Well this is true. And this whole thought of Ideas being relative and mutable rather than fixed and unchanging, has always found resonance with me.

You take physics and the uncertainty principle, you can take cognitive psychology and this whole concept of morality etc.

Sen too says that this relativism is best exemplified in the Indian body of thought where Justice is denoted by the concepts of Niti and Nyaya.

Niti is a kind of policy or rough thumb rules whereas Nyaya will involve a good amount of judgement and discretion.

This book can be a nice read on a Sunday afternoon.

Obama and the Race Question- Beyond rhetoric.

First let me confess unabashedly, that I am no Obamaphile and I am not at all moonstruck with Obama and his so called "celebrated by liberal media eloquence".

I supported McCain through out this campaign and I still believe that McCain might not be as silver tongued as the erstwhile senator from Illinois but he is a guy with a far greater depth of character.

Now, this is not to say that Obama's character is under a lens. Just that Obama is defined more by his vaulting ambition and elocution (you can read that as circumlocution!) than his character...

But Obama constantly reminds me that he is the kind of politician you can not ignore.

He comes across as intelligent, at times effusive but never seeming to lack a sense of purpose.

I have watched his numerous interview and seen him giving those speeches to throngs of supporters- and trust you me, it is very difficult to catch this guy off guard..

But I have always felt, that Obama diligently cultivates a kind of public persona that has often hidden Obama the person.

I am sure, Obama the person will have the same neurotic streak, same vulnerabilities and same insecurities that every human has.

And that is why out of all the speeches that Barrack has delivered, I really like the ones where he has spoken from the heart....(by the way modern historians will tell you that he is already the president who will go down in history as "the teleprompter president"!)

And one of these speeches he delivered at Philadelphia on March 18, last year.

Now, is that relevant now?

I think yes.

Race relations in US have the same complexity to them as Hindu Muslim relations in the sub continent.

And I have really loved the way Obama and his political advisers took these complexities head on and rather than carping about ushered in a whole new paradigm of political thinking.

They branded it as "post racial politics".

I guess, for a world that has gone younger over the last few decades but at the same time is grappling with never before seen problems like global warming, poverty and healthcare, looking towards the future and endeavoring to craft it is a better option than fretting over the past.

Great Idea- Open source code but with whom lies the authorship?

I have been constantly told a lot about the might of the media purveyors (both media content creators and media inventory buyers)and how this might is growing...

One of the oft discussed themes at most of the advertising and marketing seminars these days is how media guys are getting more creative, how they are literally encroaching on the turf of "the creative idea" and how the creative use of media is as big, if not bigger, as the Big Idea itself..

Some debates have a tendency to masquerade differently in different ages.

And I reckon this question too is not new. To me the Creative Idea is the central strategic principle that goes ahead and engages with the consumer.


The media environment within which this idea plays itself out is an executional element, albeit an important one.

No matter how brilliantly one crafts that executional element, it will continue to remain an amplifier, and never become the core principle.

And all this debate is akin to the old debate of what is important, the strategic idea of the execution of it.

I guess, that despite all the pushes of the panic button the creative agencies will continue to own the connection with the consumer, because they will continue to create the central engaging principle- The Big Creative Idea.

But, yes they would need to acquire a deeper understanding of how consumer process media content and information.

I envisage Channel Planning coming back in a big way in the communication agency culture.

To me this debate is reconciled by one agency called Crispin, Porter and Bogusky.

They have one great idea and they really merge it seamlessly well with their media understanding, especially new media understanding.

Some of the other most loved campaigns of recent times Dove, Axe and works by Fallon especially for Cadbury's and Sony also have the same lineage.

Just have a look at their work with Burger King, BMW Mini and Dominoes.

Here is something that they released last year and the work got recognized and awarded.

Ray Ozzie Wants to Push Microsoft Back Into Startup Mode

This is something that Wired came out with last year in October.

So why am I sharing this now?

For the simple reason that this is still very relevant..

Suffice it to say, that I simply do not agree with over enthusiastic screams that Browsers are going to be the next platform, that too at the expense of the PC (as a platform...)

Yes, the browser computing environment is richer and has really come into its own in the last three years, but I guess, consumers would still toggle between cloud networks and their own PCs.

Read on , lest I bore you too much on this...


Ray Ozzie Wants to Push Microsoft Back Into Startup Mode

Posted using ShareThis

Insights and USPs-Is our consumer understanding configured by ultra-reductionism?!

I have been going through a lot of consumer facing campaigns off late.

Brand Films, Corporate Communications, Movie promos, Newspaper editorials and what have you....

A casual analysis of all those communication pieces that have been well received by the consumers seem to indicate that the way the consumer is understood and his/her responses measured is remarkably different than what s/he would otherwise want us...

Why do I say that?

Nothing disturbes me more as much as the penchant and this almost blind pursuit of some agencies for something that used to be a cliche and is now becoming a farce...

They call it "insight"

In the last two years I have had the chance of meeting and interacting with a lot of global practitioners of the craft of marketing and consumer planning.

Barring a few almost everybody is of the opinion that trying to pigeonhole all the marekting thinking as having emerged from an insight is oversimplification at best and irresponsible at worst...

I have personally looked at a handful of consumer categories, and almost all of the key Insight platforms have been taken by Brands..of course over the years...

Similar is the situation with this thing called the USP...

In an age of Brand parity, I find it quite imaginative when somebody tries to peddle the product on tha basis of a USP.

Yes, some categories by their very dynamics (consumer tech for instance, high end automobile for instance, for categories that are very much design led) can have a genuine product based USP every now and then...

Some people might turn around and say that emotional USP is still valid...

I tend to agree, but I think an emotional USP is better defined as "the unique POV of the Brand to which the consumer subscribes"

Taking Technology to Governance-Countries like India really need it.

Just recently, I was reading this report that posits that between 1980 and 2006, the productivity of American Businesses went up substantially, owing to the deployment of technology.

Now, it is undeniable, that technology has been the singular transformational force apart from globalization that has made the world we live in, so dynamic.

No wonder that after the enterprise sector, the consumers have cosied up to technology.

All this while, aware citizens would always question, why technology could not be applied with as much gusto to the government sector.

As Eric Schmidt said at this year's Aspen Ideas Festival, that he sees no reason why all the government meetings can not be posted online, with all the names of the participants, key ideas discussed and conclusions reached.

Everybody agrees that it will foster much needed transparency and accountability at a cost that is nominal.

What surprises me is that again the developing countries, (especially democracies like India) have lost the initiative to developed ones like the UK and the US.

Nevertheless, pls have a look that Tim O Reilly made at the same venue-they are calling it Gov 2.0...

Aspen ideas Festival Talk on Gov20

View more documents from Tim O’reilly.

What do you want to be "Most Trusted" or "Most loved"?

One of the things that has occupied a lot of board room time, is the question that as a marketer where do I, peg my brand on the perceptual landscape of my consumers?

Now, research typically throws two kinds of options- Brands that are respected/trusted more than they are loved (they call it the "most respected/trusted brands") and Brands that are loved more than they are respected/trusted(they call it the "most loved brands")

But curiously so, it seems that a Brand can not occupy both these perceptual spaces at the same time...

Now, whys should that be so?

May be it is because, Trust and Love are two distinct values, at least in the minds of the consumer.

I remember having worked on Sony, with one Sony executive telling me that one of the global conundrums that the Brand wrestles with, was that despite years of bringing out good products consistently- products that were really ahead of the curve, consumers still thought of Sony as not youthful enough.

They trusted the Brand but in the list of most loved Brands it was still not up there.

Contrast this with a Brand in India- we have one Brand that has consistently being ranked as the "most trusted" and that is Colgate.

And I dont think Colgate executives have sleepless nights over this. Colgate to me is one Brand that has made a conscious choice to be on the trust end of the spectrum than on the love end...

But Sony and Nokia are different. In the last few years we have seen them consciously try to straddle both the spaces.

But I guess this ain's possible.

It seems that being most trusted/loved is the "accomplice of the market leader". Market leaders typically will be scoring higher on the trust and respect co-relates and challenger Brands on those of Love's.

This conundrum gets doubly complicated if the market leader has a huge heritage as well..

But what confounds me is that Nokia despite being a young brand, (I mean it really came into its own only in the late 90's) could never be as loved as say, Apple or Blackberry...

Just watch this video, Nokia thought of the Smart phone platform much before Apple or Blackberry was on the scene...but still user communities found the latter far more "cooler" and "loved" than Nokia....

Are we living in the age of "Populist advertising"?

I understand that with so much of punditry that goes around in advertising, there might be passionate criticism about what I am going to write...

I am sure that everybody of us would rate Vodafone as one of India's most "loved" brand...and in the last few years that I have had my own interface with Indian advertising Vodafone (erstwhile Hutch) ads have been the most talked about piece of communication both with the so called, "advertising know-alls" and the common folks we label as "consumers"...

Now, some of the brands with an evolved sense of marketing, will draw a line between "being respected" and "being loved"...(More on it in my next post)

But, which ever side of the fence, one chooses to sit on, the classic principles of communication state that, any advertising must also position the Brand..

Yes, it has to be engaging and entertaining, but it must position the Brand..

And when I take this scale, some of the most loved and popular advertising does not live up to it....

The classic example is the "Zoo-Zoo" piece from Ogilvy. Great ability to bust the clutter, greatly engaging and yes tremendously memorable, but does it position the Brand in the consumer's mind? I am skeptical...

Having said that, there seems to be this huge paradigm shift towards this kind of advertising where the communication is one great piece of earth shattering entertainment...but slightly tenuous thrust on Positioning.

And I guess, if there was any one agency that kind of began this shift was Fallon London with its iconic Guerilla.

Now, some of us might turn around and say that Guerilaa did position Cadbury's as "the giver of joy" but I guess, this was done by the post buzz that the TVC generated rather than the TVC itself....!!!!