Category: Brand

  • Social Interactions

    When Paul Adams makes an ‘appearance’ on this blog, it usually involves profundity. (background) Last week, on Simply Zesty, I saw this amazing presentation he made recently, which, in addition to showing the evolution of communication technology and its impact on us, also shed light on the role Facebook envisions for themselves. (Do read the post linked to above to the 3 main takeaways) The video is a must watch and worth the 20 minutes you spend.

    The part, however,that interested me most, and affects my current line of work, is where he mentions that the way forward for brands, before they get ‘heavy’. Many lightweight interactions over time, that’s what he says. And I nodded my head vigorously when I heard that.

    It also ties in well with the ‘tyranny of the big idea’ concept discussed here before. Lightweight interactions involve fewer resources – time and money, offer opportunities to create nuanced engagement based on objectives, user interests and other contexts. The tendency for brands is to use the media part of ‘social media’ and attempt to make big splashes. But I strongly agree that these are relationships which take time and a lot of interactions – to build trust and understanding. Once this is done, the big splashes will be made even bigger thanks to the support of an active and engaged user base.

    until next time, light the fire…

  • Master Class

    Last week, I read a profoundly insightful post at Gaping Void, titled ‘On Mastery‘. The post seeks to answer (in Hugh’s own words) ““Suc­cess”. What does it take to be suc­cess­ful, pros­perous, happy, have a sense of pur­pose etc? What does THAT actually look like?” The answer, according to his post, is mastery. (do read his post for examples) When I shared this post on Twitter, Asmita related it to Chandni Chowk food vendors. Bingo. Around my own city – Bangalore- I can see examples of that. I can also see examples of when some of them have tried to scale and have fallen apart.

    Fame, popularity and money are by-products, but the master is not really dependent on that. In fact, he might even see it as undesirable side effects. As someone commented on Hugh’s post, it’s not even about the product, it’s the process. In Hugh’s own words “It’s something that truly belongs to you” and perhaps that’s why it’s so much more better, because there’s no dependency, unlike the by-products.

    It’s more of a personal learning for me, and it struck a chord as soon as I read it, as though I had the thought in my subconscious but lacked the cognizance to express it, even it to myself. In fact, I’d go on now to slightly disagree with Hugh MacLeod and say that for many people, mastery is success.

    Meanwhile, how does all this apply to business and brands? If I look at it through the prism of how things work now, I might be inclined to say that mastery cannot really scale, and I’d go back to my ‘Institutional Realignment‘ post and say that we’ll eventually get back to making mastery, a smaller ‘audience’, and a lesser scale the norm.  But in some ways, I can see examples of brands having mastered a culture and found a way to scale it – the much abused example – Zappos.

    However, if I had to look at it another way, I’d say that the web has made discovery much easier. Not in the traditional media way of ‘push the message to a mass and the interested ones will find you’ kind of a way, but the exact opposite. To use the data that people are sharing and through that, to find the right audience. The kind of audience who will appreciate the brand’s mastery, and who will then create good old fashioned community and word of mouth. The web offers tremendous opportunities to focus, but unfortunately we’re still in the early days of organised marketing and CRM data and most brands are busy losing focus and spamming themselves into oblivion, courtesy the lure of scale and its trappings.

    Of course, a part of me believes that mastery should have nothing to do with business, but as with many other things, the web might just change my perspective.

    until next time,  Master of Business Administration 😉

  • Building Brand Frameworks

    It was an interesting coincidence that a couple of weeks back, around the time I posted on brand building and the effects of instant gratification (largely in the context of social media), I also got into a minor debate with a colleague on brand communication – tonality, voice etc. This is a topic I constantly think about – brand building in the social era- and on this blog, that is manifested in the form of posts from ‘flawsome‘ to ‘consistency and cohesion‘ to larger canvasses like brand identity and the definition of ‘brand’.

    Thanks to an ever changing social landscape, the questions and the answers are extremely dynamic. Different brands face different challenges as per their category, (pricing, demographic, ‘conscious’ly purchased or not) how long they have been around, their internal processes, structures and culture, and so on. But the earlier eras also had challenges and yet, we managed to define certain basic frameworks of brand building, which could be adapted across product categories, geographic locations and so on.

    Social has indeed disrupted everything because unlike say, television, which probably took over from print, it fundamentally changed the linear narrative by making ‘media’ a two way street, with side lanes opened up by consumers. It is probably because of this, that (for example) a Leo Burnett’s Human Brands concept (this post, for context) goes beyond adapting current frameworks and into the purpose of the brand itself.

    Brands that have built themselves in the ‘traditional media’ era are trying to adapt themselves, and that brings its own set of challenges. But what about brands being built now? Ignore the tech brands for now please – Facebook, Google, Twitter etc, what would your framework be if you had to build a brand starting now, in this age of massively fragmented media and user presence? Would you design the brand identity and adapt it to different media platforms or would you go with a bare minimum checklist and allow it to evolve with consumers adding context across various touch points – real and virtual? I’d really love to hear some perspectives!

    until next time, frames per second…

  • ‘Algebra’ & Twitter

    My favourite story in Paul Theroux’ ‘The Collected Stories’ is Algebra, a simplistic tale of a clerk easing his way into London’s literary crowd through one chance meeting and several arranged ones thence.

    Friendship is like algebra, but there are operations most people are too impatient or selfish to perform. Any number is possible!…. But one can be unselfish…. in giving everything and expecting nothing but agreeable company. ‘Giving everything’, I say, but so little is actually required – a good-natured remark, a little flattery, a drink.

    Last week, I completed 5 years on Twitter, and while I haven’t broken into literary circles nor started drinking, I have made friends. In the self conscious, real time and usually selfish world of twitter, where snap judgments are the order of the day, it is not easy to give at all, let alone expect much in return. And yet, many a time, I have been at the receiving end of acts of kindness. On most of these occasions, they are unaware of what they’ve done and the difference they have made. I’d like to think that I have passed it on. But meanwhile, they reside in my favourite list on twitter.

    until next time, follow through 🙂