e Magus

Long time back, during the early days of Internet, I read a futuristic book called ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto’ which started out with a radical thought (at that time) - Markets are conversations. If you look closely at most of our online activities, we can see that almost all the activities are some sort of conversations - from searching to shopping. Also, whole new businesses and platforms are built on daily basis in the digital space based on conversations - Social Media My take is that digital technology has impacted a lot in terms of ease and reach of our conversations. However, its impact on the increased volume of conversations would be marginal. What I mean is that the amount of an individuals conversation has not grown drastically from what it was before the penetration of technology. Just because there is something better tomorrow does not mean that I will increase my individual capacity or change my inherent behaviour to speak more. What has been driving the gr...

Until few years back, brands and branding was all about pursuit for perfection. Marketers and advertisers spent huge amount of time and monies trying to build the perfect brand - its attributes, personality, attitude, etc. Communication was all directed to achieve this perfection - flawless copy, flawless models, flawless product shots, etc However, technology and people’s use of technology, especially Internet and social media, changed all that. Today’s brands are spending efforts trying to be human. One important criteria of being human is ‘nobody is perfect’. It is the small imperfections that makes each human being acceptable, lovable, and sometimes more desirable. Just imagine, would the recent Dove commercials (using ordinary women) be as successful, if models were used? I guess not. In fact, a study done using neuro-scientific tool based on EEG’s, by a major European cosmetic brand, for shortening their long ads, showed that the more human-like the ad scenes were, the mo...

Being in advertising, one thing I keep hearing about daily is, the art of story-telling. All that we plan and do in terms of insights, culture, data analysis, personality sketch, mood boards, etc... all lead to the output of telling a good story. But, why do people love stories? Me thinks, it is much more than effective technique of communicating the content & the context; it is a question of fulfilling what we (or at least most of us) lack. The lives we live are mostly predictable - school till 17, then college, then higher studies, job, marriage, etc, etc.. as the days goes by, it becomes more predictable and monotonous. Thus our lives starts to become a staid repetition, consisting of same characters and same situations. Our lives are bereft of a good story. To satisfy this inherent want or need of good stories, is when we become receptive to good stories. Most stories that are successful (in popular terms) are those that do not reflect our lives, but those which...