e Magus

  This Diwali holidays, apart from the regular cleaning of the house, I also spent time clearing out old files, an archive of past pitch decks/presentations, from my laptop to save space. As I went through these remnants of previous efforts, one thing became clear: the pitches that resonated most with clients and were successful, were those that was anecdotal rather than data-heavy. Rather than charts, graphs, and research reports that dominated the slides, it was structured narratives, telling a story that clients connected with. What kept me thinking was, why do we instinctively lean towards stories, and why do stories often win over data? Our everyday interactions offer clues. Stories, whether in advertising, news, or casual conversations, are more memorable and engaging than standalone facts. Psychologists have long suggested that humans are “wired” for stories. Studies such as those by Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow , reveal the power of heuristic biases—me...

I’ll never get tired of saying this - writing is tough but getting into the mood to write is tougher, and what to write is toughest. Today, after a long time, I’ve decided to address the tough, tougher, and toughest. I’ve been working on a lot of data related stuff the past few months. I can safely assume basis the data analysis, that Mr. X from Company A is interested in Product/Solution M & N. Also, looking at the frequency, recency, and additional time spent on the website, I think Mr. X from Company A is looking to buy this or similar solution at the earliest. Superimpose this data with data from other sources, I can closely guess his potential budget, the competitors he is reviewing, etc. This made me wonder, why do people like Mr. X (and I too) leave our digital footprint around, some times unknowingly but mostly knowingly.   I keep coming across tons of articles about data privacy and how easily we share personal data or how easily there is inter-portability of personal...

Internet, they said, was an ocean (or cloud) of knowledge. The Net was invented for free and smooth transfer of information, thoughts and ideas. But somewhere along the way came algorithms, data collection, & AI and now we are being served information conforming to our likes, interests and digital behaviours. The more we use the Net, instead of swimming in an ocean of knowledge, we sit inside an echo chamber confirming our own biases. Let’s take the 3 common use cases we engage on the Net - reading news, social media, and search (for information) engine Discovery of news on the Net happens mostly through aggregator platforms like Google News or through the home pages of the news portals. Apart from the top/latest News, have you ever noticed sections that mention - News for you, top picks, etc? These are News articles that is shown to you basis the past content that you’ve consumed. Ah! Social Media, the favourite waste of time for most of the digital natives. We spends hours chatti...

Season's Greetings and warm wishes for a great year! In Content Marketing, 'tis the season for either predicting the trends/things to watch out for this year or give a quick review of what worked and what didn't in the year gone by… or maybe both. My content calendar too has the same topics :) However, looking at my past blog posts that I posted around this time, I realize how repetitive the predictions were year after year. For example for past few years, all subject matter experts including me, are talking about Mobile, Augmented Reality, IoT, etc as the things to watch out for and it looks like it will remain the same for next couple of years too. Hence this year, I wanted to look at trends in a broader but more impactful perspective. I was attending a corporate event during the last week of December and got to hear various speakers from technology, consultancy, and media fields. They shared their observations and wisdom on how they perceive digital will im...

Sometime back, Martin Sorrell, WPP’s head honcho, was mentioning about data and how it can help creativity. In fact, he went onto the extent that (ad) agencies are no longer in advertising business ( http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/03/24/sir-martin-sorrell-definition-creativity-needs-change-we-re-not-advertising-business ) In today’s world, you are surrounded by data. In fact, it is happening right now when you are reading this. Your browser, the webpage, your device, everything is collecting data. From a marketing perspective, it was always a numbers game. Only difference, now, the numbers has become bigger and complicated. So, what is data? It is nothing but a collection of values - numbers, words, observations. Most creative folks in the agency would be aware of the numbers/stats quoted in the market research done by the planning team or client’s marketing team. It is just that, previously, it was mostly qualitative but now it is quantitative. While there are tons o...