A long time back, almost 4 years ago, after seeing Farhan Akhtar’s Lakshya, I’d written about meaning, and purpose, and its relevance in an individual’s life. I guess, as I moved on in life, and feared that time is running out for something, the search for this purpose became more frantic, until I tried to see it in everything that happened to me, and around me. I tried to look at what others were doing, trying to find some parameter of reference. But even if it did exist, it doesn’t seem to be easy to find, and that’s a despairing thought.
“For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself. From within, I couldn’t decide what to do. Unable to see, I heard my name being called. Then I walked outside.” …… Rumi
And then, I found some more food for thought in Hermann Hesse’ “Siddhartha”. A conversation about searching and finding and the difference between the two approaches. Yes, these seem to be two different approaches, and I thought one was the result of the other. 🙂
Searching means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.
When a person searches for something, even something that he defines as a purpose, he focuses on that so much that he is usually oblivious of everything else. It becomes an obsession.
That really does not mean neglecting every responsibility. But it does mean that I do not automatically categorise experiences as good/bad, useful/not useful etc and be done with it. A mindset change from searching to finding will allow me to look at an experience as just that, and to treat it with more calmness. As one of my favourite tees says, “Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling”
I guess we all know it, we just need reminders ever so often, because we set goals which we think will ensure happiness… movie this weekend, vacation next month, party tonight…but are we really conscious about the transient nature of that goal? I’m not going to stop any of it (except for the partying, I never did that anyway:) ), but I will be conscious of its relevance.. and irrelevance 🙂
While the recession hits the economies worldwide, the cola giants have been trying their bubbly best to get the fizz back into the lives of their target audience, through hope and optimism campaigns.
Pepsi began proceedings with its new logo, accompanied by a tagline “Every generation refreshes the world”. You can catch an entire set of creatives in this New Year video. On an aside, the (yet to be proved conclusively) brief for this campaign has caused much amusement. You really have to take a look – it is bizarre and includes everything from gravitational pull and thr relativity of space-time to Mona Lisa and the Bible!! (via psfk) Meanwhile, Coke rolled out its ‘Open Happiness’ campaign a few weeks later, complete with a massive campaign and 2 new Super Bowl spots, prompting the question “Who smiled first“. The answer turned out to be Obama, but Pepsi claimed that finally Coke was following them. Coke pointed out that it had started using smiley logos six months back.
Critics have been skeptical about Coke moving away from the ‘Coke side of life’. Pepsi, they say, having always been a youthful brand has been able to bring out a more buoyant and less laboured campaign. In India, they’ve decided to be totally Youngistan, with SRK no longer a brand ambassador, leaving us stuck with Ranbir Kapoor’s adventures. Some respite recently from Dhoni and gang, with the baap connection.
Meanwhile, these campaigns also made me wonder whether typical mass media communication and feel good campaigns are indeed the way to connect during such troubled times, more so when I read this article by Tom Martin in AdAge. It talks about “the simple human need to connect to others.”
And that brings me to a brilliant campaign I’ve seen (virtually) – froth brand this time, instead of fizz- Starbucks’ “I’m In” campaign, (in association with ‘Hands On Network’) “ an initiative to make it easy to participate in the President-elect’s call for national service.” The campaign allows a person to pledge five hours or more of community service toward a local volunteer opportunity of choice. It rewards the person with a free coffee. The goal is to raise pledges in excess of one million hours of service from all over the country. You can catch the results here. This is what is correctly described as ‘marketing with meaning‘ – which includes several facets – social, personal, storytelling, disruptive, responsible, each of which gives individuals different sets of incentives to be part of the campaign. Starbucks timed the campaign brilliantly – Obama’s inauguration week, and got itself an Oprah Effect. It has all the ingredients required to make a consumer want to be associated with the campaign, and has used the social web very well.
Now I’m not sure of Coke/Pepsi in the US have tangible renditions of the happiness theme on ground, but I know several campaigns in India which have paid lip service to excellent themes/ideas and have ended up looking superficial. In the times and circumstances we live in, there are excellent opportunities for brands to genuinely do good to society within the sphere of their category, and thereby increase their equity in the consumer’s mind. (Jaago re is a great example) I wonder how many brands will see this.
until next time, a lot can happen over coffee 🙂
PS. While on fizzy stuff, did you hear about the RSS launching cow’s urine as a soft drink? Called gau-jal, its undergoing laboratory tests and would be launched “very soon, maybe by the end of this year”. Sumant suggests Mo (rarji) Desai in low riding jeans, basketball jersey and bling, as brand ambassador, and I suggested the tagline Pee yo! Wonder if Coke and Pepsi are pissed 😉
The moment he saw his ex-wife at the party, he cringed. A confrontation between ex-wife and current girlfriend could never end well. But even he hadn’t imagined the scale of disaster. The moment his girlfriend saw the other woman, she told him, “Honey, she’s so beautiful that I don’t think I can think straight anymore”
until next time, love is blind, among other things 🙂
This won’t be the first time I’ve written about Twitter’s revenue model, and I suspect it won’t be the last. In fact, the last time I wrote about it, it was in the context of the deal that almost happened between Facebook and Twitter. Its been a couple of months, so I thought its a good time to check what both have been upto on the subject of revenues.
There was a scare recently on how Facebook is going to make money by selling users’ data, but that turned out just to be misinterpreted statements, based on a demo that they did at Davos to show real time crowd insights, and had nothing to do with the Engagement Advertising model. Facebook has been growing very fast, (stats) and though this is claimed to be a demo, real time insights (permission based) from the exact target audience could indeed add a lot of value to brands, and any other entity that could be interested in data. Market research firms should actually be working with Facebook and starting to develop pools specific to their client’s audiences. With Facebook implementing the Friendfeed style ‘Like’ feature, the tools are becoming as simple as possible.
Meanwhile, I also wonder about the data that could come from the sites that have been tied through Facebook Connect, especially since there are some big names in their respective fields. This could reveal a lot more about the individual’s interests – basis his interaction with the other sites, and that data would be easier to handle since in many cases the site’s content would dictate the context, unlike the generic data that could be picked up on Facebook itself. This would be an interesting space to watch, and that’s an understatement.
A simple yet possibly history making story of how Twitter was made. And in another simple yet profound statement, Seth Godin described it as a protocol. And yet another good one which describes it as a social experiment. Which then raises the question of how a revenue model can be made for this protocol or experiment. As someone once said, “Twitter is what you make it to be”. There are pains too. Twitter’s humble origins and the scale envisioned may not have made a vision mandatory then, and there is also talk that Twitter could ‘go for years’ without earning, but to survive in the long term, Twitter does need a vision, one that’d then give some direction for its revenue model.
There have been many entities trying to use the stream for transmitting ads, adCause and TwitterHawk, being the latest, but honestly, it does seem like a force fit. But I’ll admit that the location+context based approach of TwitterHawk does seem very interesting. In fact, there have been many apps built around Twitter, some of which require the user to give the Twitter password to use the service, and there have been security problems thanks to that too. Hopefully that’ll get sorted out once OAuth is implemented, perhaps we’ll see a new generation of mashups too, leading Twitter towards a revenue model. Here are some very interesting thoughts on Twitter, including searching conversations based on category, and a marketplace around conversations and real products. Its interesting to note that brands have already begun experimenting with Twitter, and with tangible expectations, as the recent Dell promo of exclusive deals shows. More likely to follow that model with the launch of TwtQpon. In this context, check out CheapTweet too. Meanwhile, here’s a good set of thoughts for Twitter revenue.
While Twitter scores on the real time aspect (my opinion since I use both) Facebook offers a lot more easily available data on an individual’s demographics, interests etc. The other parameter is that while Facebook is being adopted by the masses easily, Twitter does require a bit of getting used to. Facebook might have to sweat a bit to crack real time, and Twitter would have to do many things – consider scaling up groups to other regions, have better ways of segregating conversations and data mining. But in the end, it all does seem to boil down to using real time information of potential/existing consumers, with precise demographics and interests based targeting.
We keep saying that social media and its tools are all about the human touch, and the personalisation. And brands utilising these platforms should understand that. I wonder if the same applies to revenue models too, and whether this extreme customisation will mean that both these networks will find it difficult to conceptualise and then implement, revenue templates, that will fit all.
until next time, money makes the social world go around 😐
A whole multitude of them were swept away in the deluge. Others calmly stayed rooted, with the serene acceptance of a ‘Here today, gone tomorrow’ philosophy. They didn’t seem bothered, he thought. But he couldn’t afford the complacency. After all, with the hair being lost every time he bathed, he was one who’d become bald!!
