• 2020 (1)

    First published in Adgully

    It’s technically a new year, but as the quip goes, it does feel like December 93rd 2020. More like a sequel than a new movie. Familiar characters and themes, with some new plotlines. And hence the title, for a short take on learnings in 2020, and the trends expected in 2021. 

    In light of the pandemic, what narratives are good for the brand?

    The consumer’s needs might not have changed, but the relative priorities, ways of achieving them, and expectations from brands most definitely have. At least in the medium term, health and safety (physical, mental and financial) will remain important themes. That would explain why many brands have attempted to hop on to these narratives. While it works easily for say, water purifiers, it might be a threadbare argument for mattresses and shirts. But yes, Ayur is arguably the most powerful four letter word in business now!

    The abruptness of 2020 has also given us time for reflection and recalibration. One of the related changes has been increased participation in societal issues. But a brand pursuing cause marketing because everyone else is doing it might result in some caustic feedback!

    What has also changed are rituals – commute to family time to entertainment and so on. The narratives might not have changed yet, but the contexts have. Social screening (movies) and Zoommates are all adaptations to these contexts. But soon, radical redesigning of products and experiences will lead to narrative shifts as well. 

    With chimeras all around, how do we frame it better?

    Many aspects of our life are chimeral now – still retaining their individuality, and yet to find the balance of a hybrid. Think about it – working from home, but recreating the office online. Digital transformation, and craving physical interaction. Learning new skills, while trying to avoid burnout at work. This operates at societal levels too. On social channels, we talk about being more empathetic. But we also have mobs that seem to have been born outraged! 

    These chimeral contexts have an impact on segments and personas, as well as how narratives can be delivered. If we go by Superbowl ads, humour is making a comeback, but we aren’t LOL yet. Brands are still playing Minesweeper because they, and their endorsers are susceptible to cancel culture. Even a logo needed to dress up because one person insisted we all share the perception! Narrative control is a chimera, an illusion. I expect brands to soon have influencers on stand-by to combat trolls and bots! 

    And if the action is everywhere, where is the narrative best delivered?

    “There is no mainstream, there are many streams”. With mobile screen time continuing to rise, and OTTs having a dream run, both branded content and product placements will spike. Even more immersive is gaming – you can have an epic life in Fortnite, and (ironically) join the war to save reality! But we are un-screening too. From podcasts to the ambient, and omniscient Alexa. Does your brand have an Alexa Skill yet? 

    Newer platforms offer further scope for narrative renditions in all forms of reality – mixed, augmented, virtual in addition to our normal agreed upon version. And as digital transformation accelerates, marketers are being empowered with automation and no code tools to deliver these. But the tech landscape is also rapidly changing with impending regulation, and privacy concerns. 

    We’re going through an era of institutional realignment – political, societal, financial and so on. The points I have made are more possibilities than spoilers. We might think we have seen this movie before, but we should wait for the release. Multiplex or OTT, you think?

  • Exhalation

    Before I start, I have to ask, when is the next collection coming out? Can’t. Wait. I read “Stories of Your Life and Others” about 2.5 years ago, and was blown not just by the quality of the stories, but by the sheer range of subjects from physics and mathematics to language and theism, not to mention artificial intelligence. Exhalation has nine stories, and each of them is a work of art.

    I tried to deconstruct Ted Chiang’s magic, and for me, it came down to three aspects – the imagination to think up the most original and profound questions, the skill to weave it into scenarios that make it relatable and accessible to the reader, and the ability to articulate his perspectives in such a way that one is forced to engage with them and construct one’s own thought exercises!

    “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” is Arabian Nights in terms of setting as well as nested storytelling but beneath all that is a dizzying tale of time travel that questions whether one can really change the past. “Exhalation”, after which the book is named, has an alien setting but with a dash of steampunk and robotics. The core of it though is what makes it profound – entropy and its inevitable conclusion. “What’s expected of us” is the first of the stories that deal with free will, and goes directly into the heart of it, with a first person narrative of one’s reaction when confronted with immutable proof that it doesn’t exist! The Lifecycle of Software Objects is an excellent take on artificial intelligence, with clear parallels to parenting, and the underlying thought that “experience is algorithmically incompressible”and that the “common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world” cannot be achieved by compiling heuristics. The parenting theme continues in “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny”, but in a different direction, definitely sadder.

    “The truth of fact, the truth of feeling” is simply brilliant, and has two stories that show the parallels when there is a fundamental shift in technology, both around memory. If I really had to choose, this one would be my favourite. The Great Silence is a poignant juxtaposition and a sharp commentary on what we’re missing out on by rampaging through other species. Omphalos is a very interesting take on creationism, and a contemplation of how it would be if humanity were really the reason for the universe, and were literally too, at the centre of it. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom” is the last story, and probably the most imaginative. It mixes parallel universes and free will, and delves into the meaning of the latter when many parallel “branches” (emanating from a decision) are playing out.

    No story is the same, or even similar. When I read some authors, I think to myself that if one really had to write, then this should be the benchmark. In speculative fiction – my favourite genre, Ted Chiang is that author!

  • Agonda

    I have to admit, the Agonda vacation was more an “Ok, fine!” reaction to pandemic peer pressure. Having said that, seeing a place after 13 years does evoke a range of emotions!

    In fact, Goa is a bundle of memories anyway! Our first visit was in 1997 – a college trip, and we were in Miramar when we heard that Princess Diana had died. I didn’t know then that this would be my home for two years at the dawn of the millennium. Our first vacation after marriage was Goa again, and we dropped in annually for three years from 2006, until we dropped it from our travel list altogether. And then it was 2021, and the world had changed!

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  • Dark Money

    Jane Mayer

    Across the world, the gap between the 1% and the remaining continues to widen, and the US is arguably the best example of this. How is society at large allowing this to happen, why aren’t politicians doing something about it? After all, elected representatives of common folks are supposed to work for their welfare, how is that structure failing? 

    In Dark Money, Jane Mayer provides an insightful and well researched analysis of how libertarian industrialists like the Koch brothers are systematically undermining the effectiveness of the US electoral system by flooding it with what they have in abundance – money! Hundreds of millions of dollars spent to impose their worldview on how government should be run. The “simple” worldview being that government oversight of business is an encroachment of freedom! In this world, social welfare and labour protection are unnecessary expenditure, while taxes on wealth should be minimal. Not that I am a theist, but Godless America! 

    The narrative starts in the late 40s, during the formative years of the Koch brothers. Influenced by LeFevre’s “government is a disease masquerading as its own cure”, Charles Koch’s political evolution began early, and with help from like-minded and wealthy others, it led to a well oiled machinery that operated outside the world facing political establishment, and yet has now managed to practically take over the Republican Party. 

    From the 70s, when the rich got a sense that they were being over-regulated, they had started a privately financed war to ensure their philosophy won. A big a-ha moment was the result of an understanding of how to use their riches to preserve their elite status, beyond the obvious means. This was the weaponisation of philanthropy, and the book provides the background on some prominent players like Richard Mellon Scaife, Joh M. Olin and the Bradley Brothers. The steady formation of the Kochtopus machinery is a fascinating read, and one has to admire the strategic brilliance that is at work here. 

    It’s not just ensuring the preferred candidates win, or even that only preferred candidates would stand for election. It goes well beyond, and starts at the grassroots. Using the anonymity of charitable organisations, they went systematically to the bottom of the value chain and thereby started funding online high school education, academia, think tanks, influencing public policy, lawmaking (including the judiciary via seminars and junkets), creating and stoking political activism – Tea Party agitations for instance, spreading alt truth like “climate change is a myth” by spending millions on media and micro-targeting, changing regulation on candidate funding and thus creating the phenomenon of superPACs, and finally even pushing out moderate Republicans, and in the words of one Republican, “supplanting the party”. Using money, coercion, and every means possible.
    Essentially they created institutions and networks that would manufactur ideas that follow their philosophy, converted that into action points through think tanks and academia, and got them executed through activist groups, lawmakers and politicians. A system that feeds itself and creates a world in its own image. 

    The irony of it all? Donald Trump. Firstly, though the machinery was successful in making Obama a lame duck president in his second term, ensuring the Republicans controlled the Congress, and thereby laying the base, he was not their choice of President. In fact, he tweeted in contempt about those Republican candidates who went to the Kochs for assistance. Secondly, he used their exact methods to win the election. However, it isn’t called a system for no reason – it controls the people surrounding him, and is thus, pretty much in charge.

    The book is superb in terms of research and pacing of the narrative, with details and context setting that make it a fantastic, absorbing read. It’s not just American politics, I think this will be the narrative of politics and society in many places. A must read, in our own selfish interest! 

  • Brands, Activism & Morality

    A while back, someone had joked on Twitter that by 2025, babies will be born outraged. But in 2020, the joke, at least in Indian advertising, is that when the Tanishq brand manager begins to think of a campaign, #BoycottTanishq starts trending. When I was writing the article on brands and empathy for Business Insider, I realised it would need a lot of effort for brands to go beyond signalling.

    However, with inequities becoming even more of a pressing topic, and the expectation from brands to be active participants in society – activism to action, is there an inevitable movement that we will see? And hence, this post on brands through the prism of activism and morality, from the perspectives of a consumer and a brand marketer, and the safety of an armchair.

    “We are living in an era of woke capitalism in which companies pretend to care about social justice to sell products to people who pretend to hate capitalism.”

    Clay Routledge
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