Adjust Kar Lo...

 The Indian auto rickshaw is made for at max carrying 3 reasonably weighing people. But often I see families haggling with the driver to let one or two more people crowd in the small backseat. The fact is that just the shopping of an average Indian family will require an auto rickshaw, let alone the big fussy family. They don't want to go separately. Its not that they can't afford to get 2 autos. But they would not even want to travel apart. Family that shops together, eats together, laughs together also travels together. A vehicle is an enabler. It could have identity connotation, but its not as personal as .. say a cell phone is. (A recent research we did found out that for people, cell phone is the most personal thing. The man shared everything with his wife, but not his cell phone.)
As against say US, where a car that can carry 4 people, is used by an individual. It's perhaps the strongest personal identity statement there. (correct me if I am wrong.)
So while for Indians, a tool of connectivity and communication is a personal identity statement, western world has more things that would need to be personal.perhaps its a function of opulence.(In rural heartland perhaps the concept of personal space does not even exist and along with urbanity, the 'need' for personal space is born and increases thereby.)
Anyway, i am digressing here..
I was wondering if you could see such an happening (where family is haggling with Taxi driver to take more people in) in developed world. Would they trade the convenience of lesser people and driving in convoys with the uncomfortable experience of sharing a cab ride with so many people and so much inconvenience, just so that the family can travel together? This has many implications.. safety, comfort, efficacy, time..
Would you want to be uncomfortably stuffed in a vehicle which will be unsafe and probable entail slow travel to reduce risk?
I guess an Indian family assumes that they must travel together and later variables are adjusted accordingly. So they will drive slower, someone will be on the lookout and assistance. there would be some 'accomodations'.
Would it be right to assume that perhaps out of this subcontinent, convenience and safety would get higher weightage in consideration? perhaps, they are not as fatalistic and would want to show concern for the family and break it up in multiple vehicles. Perhaps, Time is of consequence.. and the systems are built with convenience and efficacy in mind, people are bound to take up those assumptions.
The efficiency assumption and safety paranoia defines the first world's considerations. (Amongst Indians, a paranoiac want of bottled water is a sign of  upward mobility; an attempt at first world citizenry.) However, Indians don't have 'faster, higher, stronger' in their ethos really. So while an Indian would say 'adjust kar lo'.. the first world counterpart, in his bewilderment, would perhaps not know what is happening :P

Microtargetting Uncertainties and Anxieties

A colleague sent an ad that recently came out. Its for Wildstone talc and it aims for making men feel ashamed for using the normal talc which had traditionally been targeted to women.



Its very humorous and does a good work of accentuating men's anxiety about their manliness. Perhaps, a sustained effort on this front with a few more players joining in would certainly create enough anxiety amongst men not to use 'women's talc'. It has already happened in a lot of other categories.
The reportage and analysis about matters of creation of sub-segments is peppered with words such as 'progress' 'maturity of market'. They are not wrong.. creation of segments is symptomatic of growing purchasing power, increased nucleation of needs.. a movement to western style first-worldliness if you will.


But it is also symptomatic of a greater humanistic and social malaise. Sonal talks at her blog about the collective conscience that brands of yesteryears built is non existent now thanks to micro-targetting. TV was seen as a nation building tool and served the purpose for a while, before the fragmentation of the medium started and polarisation of narrower consumer world began. From an outwardly accomodating world, the multiplicity is creating insecure, tight-compartmentalized and gate-walled communities.

The increased micro targeted communications are creating anxieties and making people unsure about what they are 'supposed to need/want'. Their reference points are no longer their own thoughts and needs but rather what they should probably need being a certain person they aspire to be (the reference being the commercial personality projected in media.)
This begs consideration as to how does this collective communication salvo, affect the consumer's choices; his ability to decide; and his triggers for actions.
At this juncture where the identity of a person is not his to decide, but a uncertain choice from amongst the commercial images that he wants to subscribe to; his uncertainties lend to the shakiness of loyalty towards not just segments but brands too.
So a man who had been comfortable with his skin and use of talc was just hygiene, now has to worry about people judging him for it. anxiety now seeded in him, he would be intrinsically unsure due to product parity but brand polarities and would have to lend mindspace to something he never had to before.
Congratulations mr. brand, you have got another gullible soul 'involved'. But if the consumer is unsure about the segment, how can he be sure about the brand? what trope will be chain him to the brand irrespective of what 'business the brand gets in'?

in search of the great nothing

I have a hypothesis. which is really an extension of thought. but to present it, i must develop a context.(or trend-spotting as they call it)

1. nucleated world -> people are connected to more people far more thinly. (a lot of hi's, hello's, how are you's.. very few hugs, time-spent-together's, ILUs.)
2. people removed from cause-effect ->  most of us have no clue what their salary paying job's effect is in the world around, due to matters of scale and transferability of work. (did my work as biz develpment for a media company went into funding his accentuated war advocating rhetoric?; did my design for valve go into the bombs that shelled afghanistan's villages? is all that incessant printing in office and penchant for cleanliness causing felling of millions of trees?)

this ignorance of cause-effect also alienates us from what we consume. take that burger out of your mouth and see what's inside. can you name all that goes into it? did u know where it came from? do u know who all touched it? do u know how many people were involved to get that burger to your mouth which would go down in minutes without you yourself noticing it, being lost in staring at this screen?

this increased distance between us and things is definitely a child of industrialization. what we consume is nothing more than its price, and the pleasure of having it. we live a life never having had the pleasure of having created anything at all.

and this brings me closer to presenting the hypothesis...

We identify with abstract ideas more than concrete things around us. because media has brought the abstractness closer, and industrialization has sent the alive things (trees, soil, fresh air) far and replaced them with dead things (table, concrete, plastic) around us.


people have forgotten the joy of consuming. instead joy is found only 'around' the act of consumption.
( imagine a dinner without TV! :O or with friends in fancy gimmicky theme based restaurant.) (imagine drinking water. hmm .. or.. drinking fizz water with thousand static images of drinkers you see all around...on hoardings, on tv, on point of consumtion.)

(and probably its this joyless consumption that is leading to the worldwide epidemic of over eating and consequent obesity)

and finally.....

and hence, abstract brands that have no physical evidence stand to grow humongously, while palpable, consumable, substantiated brands will have to try much harder. so brands that essentially sell nothing, will be most valuable. lesser the substance, higher the value (not necessarily price).

from tea, iron supplements to computer peripherals.. all are selling emotions these days. (To planner -> While doing some category analysis, you might come across that only vacant positioning that is left to occupy is probably the ones that talk of what the product simply is .. physically.)
brand activism is on rise these days. in a few years realising that people can't take the hypocrisy anymore, the brands will move to some other area perhaps.. wonder where are brands headed...

physicality -> emotions -> morality -> ? 
next is what.

this century is going to see a race towards nothingness. in search of the great nothing. 

Consumer's bosoms

 

Coke, HUL.. are arguably amongst the biggest brands in the world. tell me how many people will buy merchandise of these brands without any push marketing (coke logo on Aamir khan's poster.. people are buying Aamir's poster, not aligning their identity to coke)
What does your brand mean to people? why should its symbol be cherished by people?
I took this picture at a stall on the way to a temple near Pune (where I was dragged to unwillingly, by parents as only parents can do. the trip was I think to alay fears of 'me getting lost' to them.)
The letters on the key chain is the name of a populist maharashtrian political outfit (with loud nasty agendas). It is populist, with its leader always portrayed with raised upright hand pointing in a vague direction. well, its not exactly vague... he is pointing to the 'others/outsiders'. The posture is allegative, on front foot.. saying 'you better do it our way, or else'. I wonder how was the revered german dictator's posture in then propaganda communication.
anyways, the point is, like all populist communications, some people love it with all hope that they can muster through their frustrations. while some hate it silently, for the sheer madness of it and their apparent helplessness.
with only this kind of love/hate polarity can a brand find a way in a people's psyche and become a proactive choice of advocacy or derision.
The brand is talking to the 'faithfuls' of a certain deity. its merchandise is sold at stalls selling faith in trinkets. people walk up the 200 steps in submission, collecting evidences of their faith on the way. They are most receptive to suggestion now. the brand is aligning faith in itself with the faith in the deity.
talk of activation. talk of engagement. the Rs. 5 key chain is doing it all.

Ofcourse, this doesn't hold true for all brands. brands like Volkswagen which are all about 'unassuming understated excellence' can't really afford a polar emotion. I wonder why then, they are doing 'the fun theory' experiments in some geographies. (well increased awareness can't possibly harm i guess. hmm.. )
but for tata tea which has aligned itself to anti corruption and waking up people from their reverie of citizenry's right without citizenry's duties, the measure of its success would be the consumer's adoption of brand identity to his bosom. waiting for the day when the consumer sports the tata leaf around its neck or on the wrist.

the pimp

i am a pimp. i hustle brands everywhere I can; on glowing rectangles you stare at, in schools that your children attend, in streets that you travel, in movies you watch, in books you read, on umbrellas of ushers, on clothes you wear; wherever your senses may take you, you will find a pimp hustling his brand. and i stop at nothing. (well, unless you go numb and in coma of some sorts. then why should my dollar and time be spent on you at all..?)

i brand cars, i brand tea
i brand you, i brand me
i brand everything.

In his book 'Identity', Milan Kundera has something interesting to say (though as a cynical provocation)about Advertising. He says 'thanks to advertising, everyday-ness has started singing.'
I follow quite a few publications, blogs etc where paeans to the joyous occasion of birth of a new brand or campaigns are sung.
Let me be the devil's advocate. i like being that. i will try here to respectfully shine on the ad world my views about advertising's effect on us.

hmm.. something like carbon foot print..
let the advertising message be the CO2 for your mind. i will try and measure its acridity on your soul.
but even devil sometime dissolves at the sight of a little kid fighting mud monster trying to cheer up her sister. so do not mind if, from time to time, i divulge and try and appreciate some good interesting work or write about some idea/theory that came in my head which i think is kickass.

until later.. have a good day.