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Few months back during the pandemic lockdown, a new colleague joined us. The entire on-boarding and introduction happened online. In fact, even today the regular interactions are happening virtually. The more I keep thinking about this new way of working, the more I’m convinced about the importance of internal marketing & employee branding. The stuff neither the marketing folks at client side and the agency folks are least interested in.   The future of work will change due to Covid19 pandemic. Whilst many offices may go back to normal way of working, many others will shift towards a new way of working. Some will still continue to work remotely (Home), some will go back to working from office, while practicing social distancing (work bubbles)… In short, EX ( Employee Experience ) will no longer be about close proximity working, but rather about Distributed Working . Traditionally, employee branding involved lot of high touch activities. Being in the office physically, exposure to

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

source: rappler.com Many brands are joining the ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ campaign, against advertising on Facebook, until the social media platform does something substantial to stop the spread of hate speeches, racial abuse, and fake news. As of last count there were more than  1000 marketers  who signed up for the boycott, including news-worthy brands like The North Face, Patagonia, Coca-Cola, Verizon, Starbucks, Microsoft, Unilever, Ford, etc.  But, is there more to it apart from the hate speeches and racial abuses that brands are concerned about?  Here are few of my thoughts: Shooting the messenger syndrome Perception Management The (in)effectiveness of advertising on social media Firstly, I think the issue is similar to proverbial, shooting the messenger. Facebook is not the content creator. It is the users. Facebook is only a platform where different people voice different opinions. Yes, some of these opinions are false, decisive, and dangerous.. but that is so

These are interesting times. With the lockdown and impeding near-recession scenario, agencies will be faced with challenges in terms of both revenue growth and being prepared for the new norm in a changed world. As advertising agency business is closely linked to client’s business and since most companies will focus on business continuity, portfolio sustenance, and holding to their market position thus impacting marketing spends…it will not be business as usual at the agency end.   Some of the answers that agency leaders seek are - Profit: Where are the growth opportunities for agencies? People: How do agencies retain/attract talent? Process: Will there be any change in the way agencies work? Growth opportunities: Going by the popular catchphrase - follow the money, we know marketers have and are investing heavily into Martech & data in a big way. Their future marketing actions would be based on these investments. As a marketing and communication

Pic sourced from Flexijobs I know that only a few of you will get to read this article. Taking a cue from the apocryphal Chinese saying, we are living in interesting times. It is really disturbing not being sure of how the future will be. With the virus out there and most people confined to basic travel and self-isolation, Work-from-Home might become the new norm. This article is future-gazing on the obvious and not so obvious impact, if working from home becomes common. The obvious impact would be seen in the commuting sector. There will be lower demands for automobiles, cab hailing services like Uber & Ola, and affiliated categories like fuel. The demand for commercial real estate would also decrease, with more manpower for lesser commercial spaces. Remote working pods will increase. Telecom - internet service providers would see increasing demand for data, smartphones and better computer devices that can be used for networking and collaboration would increase too

Pic credits: Getty & Inc.com Recently, a friend of mine asked me, what are the skill-sets required for becoming a successful entrepreneur? Having walked in the entrepreneur/start-up journey for few years, I gave him some top-of-mind thoughts on what makes an entrepreneur successful. However, the question stayed with me and I tried finding few common traits and reasons on what makes some folks successful. I got links to various articles where people wrote about   passion, resourcefulness, willingness to listen, team work, inspiring leaders, etc. But is there something more than these common actions that these (successful) people have? Something basic but more powerful in shaping their success. As they teach in many management strategy lessons that there are 2 powerful forces that impacts any outcome - Internal (Strength/Weakness) and External (Opportunities/Threats); with this premise, I started my search for answers to understand the intrinsic and extrinsic

Image from Shutterstock I t's been a week since the Kunal Kamra-Arnab Goswami episode took place inside the Indigo flight. After Indigo airlines put out the No Fly ban on Kunal, complying to a tweet from the Minister of Aviation, there are a huge outcry about their decision on social media (Twitter). The strange part was, both the sides - users who were against the incident and for the incident were talking about not flying on Indigo. While the brand remained silent on their decision, it made me think, could the brand have done something different or handled it better. The thought also led to a larger question, when a brand takes a position, how can it defend itself, if there is an outcry or backlash on social media. What (else) could Indigo have done differently? Follow due process and procedure:  The best thing that Indigo team could have done is putting out a message stating that they will follow due process as laid down by the government and law of the land and in t