Author: manu prasad

  • The year that will be…

    Crystal gazing began in right earnest in Dec 2012, and across the web, there were many top x predictions for 2013.

    Trendwatching made a list, and my favourites in it were #9 and #10 – “Full Frontal” and “Demanding Brands” respectively. The first was about brands moving further on the transparency curve and proactively showing they have nothing to hide as opposed to merely reacting. The second was about brands getting their consumers to contribute to their sustainability and socially-responsible endeavours.

    Branding Strategy Insider made 2 lists – Brand and Digital & Media. In the first, I found #5 – ‘The Known and the Branded’ – a very intriguing thought. Brands being thought of as category placeholders, stuff that doesn’t really stand for anything. Understandably, brands will find it harder to differentiate themselves. In the second list, again #5 – omni-channel marketing is something I have written about earlier while on the subject of cohesive experiences.

    JWT has their annual 10 trends list as well, and I thought #1 “Play as a competitive advantage” and #9 – “Going Private in Public” were particularly insightful. The reason I look forward to the JWT list is because while they deal with the immediate, they also come up with a couple of nuggets which are really far out. But the thing is, I can instinctively connect with them and am sure that even if not this year, these are inevitable somewhere down the line.

    This year, I also found Next Generation Media’s list quite interesting, especially because of their ‘implications for brands’ after each trend. My favourites in this list were #9 and #10 – “New Currencies” and “The WOW factor” respectively. I like the direction of the former, but would have liked it to be pushed further, but that’s mostly because of a more (personal) philosophical perspective on us having no alternatives to money as a currency. “The WOW factor” – related to ‘The Known and the Branded’ I mentioned earlier in the post, and the writing is pretty much on the wall for brands!

    Update: Came in late, but Simply Zesty’s list is a must-read as well!

    until next time, hope y’all have an awesome 2013. 🙂

  • Zerodha

    Zerodha offers a low cost and highly-efficient online trading platform. In conversation with founder Nithin Kamath.

    [scribd id=118221532 key=key-1wuitdrd6edh5tent47m mode=scroll]

  • Broadcast 2.0 then?

    Facebook is planning a new video-ad product that will offer video advertisers the chance to target video ads to large numbers of Facebook users in their news feeds across devices. It is also becoming more public about its Publishing Garage, that aims to put into place a set of measurements to demonstrate how well campaigns are working. Twitter has partnered with Nielsen for the the “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating” – an industry standard metric for measuring the conversation that TV shows spur on Twitter.

    The commonality I see is the shift from social to media, though to be fair, the Twitter-Nielsen partnership also talks of sentiment being measured in the future, in addition to tracking the volumes generated. I am using the term ‘social’ for two of the biggest platforms around now – FB and Twitter, but considering they have been the trendsetters, it is likely that the others will follow suit. Yes, there would be exceptions, I’m sure, but let me generalise a bit. While time will dictate whether this shift is smart or not, I’d think this shift is massively underplaying the true potential that social has thus displayed as a disruptive force. Social is now walking the measurement rules laid for a thoroughly different kind of media. (I liked this post at GigaOm because it throws light on, and questions why every social network is trying to turn into a broadcast platform) Doesn’t this put them on the same path of vulnerability that traditional media is facing now? Is this inevitable or is this sheer laziness and/or conforming? Also, from a user perspective, isn’t this a fundamentally different direction from the original premise/reason for existence of these platforms?

    Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that this is happening at the same time as users (increasingly) are treating social as broadcast – from the shoot-from-the-hip opinions on everything to the careful posturing. Not so suddenly, it’s more about numbers than actual conversations. Now what does that remind me of? 🙂 I don’t know how much of it is unconscious and how much of it is subtle nudging (read) by the networks and their features. But whatever the reasons, imagine a future where everyone behaves the way media behaves today – loud, pompous, full of themselves, ignorant to their own faults, violent towards any criticism, and generally abhorred. What happens then?

    So in the current direction I see the networks (and users) taking, the future media mashup will show more characteristics of traditional broadcast platforms than the social traits displayed by the social networks in the early days. My concern in such a scenario is because of what Godin has stated in another context – “Media doesn’t just change what we focus on, it changes the culture it is part of.” That’s when I wish social/we would be more ridiculous.

    until next time, growing pains

  • Simplilearn

    Simplilearn is the industry leader in online education and training for professional certification courses. In conversation with founder Krishna Kumar.

    [scribd id=116833054 key=key-2l3jk42gatcvwk11lczn mode=scroll]

  • Servility or Clarity?

    Trendwatching’s October brief – Servile Brands, reminded me of a favourite OTA which was generating some buzz recently for publicly firing its PR agency. (enough clues, but no names lest I should be accused of SEO bait 😀 ) ‘Servile’ is defined as “turning your brand into a lifestyle servant focused on catering to the needs, desires and whims of your customers, wherever and whenever they are.” It relates to brands having to evolve to factors such as (from the trend brief) on demand, time compression and consumers no longer revering brands.

    Meanwhile, I would think that being ‘servile’ is scalable and useful only to a certain extent, even if an organisation is supremely wired to be the jargon word that is on an upward swing in the hype cycle – social business. In fact, I’d argue that a business can be social only if it has a clear understanding of what it stands for in terms of what its business is and how it conducts it, who its consumers are and therefore what needs it wants to satisfy. (the order of the last 2 can be switched as well) I also instinctively think that brands which can communicate this clarity across its various interactions will pull the kind of consumers it wants to have.

    ‘Servile’ implies that brands place the consumer’s needs above its own. I’m really not sure of this. Social or not, brands are in business. I doubt if bending over backward on every service request that every consumer has is a viable strategy. The reason why I remembered the aforementioned OTA is because of their reaction to an incident I wrote about in ‘Mean Brands‘.

    The current version of social – pandering to every consumer – is arguably swinging to this extreme. Hopefully, brands will soon learn that there is a middle path and that is the most viable one. The brands who reach there faster will be able to weather the storms ahead better, because they would have a compass. The compass is their clarity of purpose. Scaling it across the organisation is the challenge, and the fun. 🙂

    until next time, all clear?