Your audience is not where you have been told it is

Did you get that? I am sorry if you thought otherwise.

 

Brian Eno is a musician par excellence. He is considered to be the inventor | father of what we refer to today as ‘ ambient music ‘. His quote is worth paying a load of attention to. Here goes:

 

” People often want to aim for the biggest, the most obvious target and hit it smack in the bull’s eye “, Eno says. “Of course with everybody else aiming there as well that makes it very hard to hit.” The alternative? “Shoot the arrow, then paint the target around it,” Eno explains. “Make the niches in which you finally reside.”

 

What is the prognosis here? Fly away from the competition. We are so often tempted by the SOS(Sea of Sameness), the resident comfort of herd mentality or the wisdom of the crowds !! . Even though it is very much a drift into a tumultuous Red Ocean territory. Playing it safe has never been more dangerous.

 

Instead of aiming for the same target as other writers, sportsmen, designers, musicians—trying to out-write, out-play, out-sing or out-design them, focus on how you can stand out, your uniqueness.

 

Time to stop suppressing your unique crafts and skills because they don’t conform, adhere or comply in the default ecosystem dictated by the omnipresent industrial complex of scale.

 

Embrace your weirdness, idiosyncrasies, your anomalies, your contrasts and bring them to the foreground. And here’s the thing : We notice things because of contrast. Something stands out because it’s different from what surrounds it. Celebrate your difference.

Time to woo your AWEdience! Thankfully they are there ( what we refer to as the MVA- Minimum Viable Audience), willing to explore, experiment, discover and celebrate with your youniqueness.

 

 

ENDS

 

 

 

It’s only Words, but they are all snapped up!

” Smile an everlasting smile, A smile can bring you near to meDon’t ever let me find you down, ‘Cause that would bring a tear to me..

 

The above lyrics are from the cult Bee Gees classic Words.

Now, try keying in Words into your search browser and see what gets thrown up. You will get everything but the song you are looking for. That’s because most of the key words( deliberately writing it as two words instead of one ‘keywords’) have already been taken.

 

SEO Strategy conventionally would have had us going for keywords that the search has the best potential to throw up high in the pecking order. But, that strategy is passe. You are not going to win that search. You are not even going to figure in page 30 of the search results. It seems as if most of us have lost the key to the keywords in the battle of the search.

 

Probably an ideal situation to pivot to doing something remarkable. How do we own our word? Do things that make people search for us by our name, our work, our projects. Showing up with the right work, at the right time, in the right places. Do the hard yards, the slow deliberate work hard of earning permission, building a tiny circle, the smallest viable audience. Over time, the tribe embraces you, the word (your word) becomes the shortcut to get more of what you offer.

 

The arithmetic is different here. The 5% is > the other 95%.  A lot of our time, effort and attention is spent on trying to onboard the laggards and the lurkers, the 95%. Whereas, our focus, gratitude and energy should be on the people( the Minimum Viable Audience) who are showing up for you and shipping out.

 

How about substituting SEO(Search Engine Optimisation) with another acronym? FEO- Find Engine Optimisation. Because it’s more reliable to seek to be found by people who were looking for you all along.

 

The chasm will get bridged at its own pace. That’s fine. Let’s take our word for it!

 

ENDS

Locabulary!

Taking advantage of the flexibility of the English language, the caption is an attempt to share a vocabulary all its own. For convenience sake, I have captioned it ‘ locabulary ‘.

 

” English language is the most universal language in history, way more than the Latin of Julius Caesar. It’s the most punderful language because its vocabulary has a certain critical mass that makes a lingo good for punning “- Richard Lederer

 

 

Move over the vocabulary pundits. With due respect to Mariam-Webster, Oxford, Collins and what have you. This warrants a new dictionary. Lets turn the page.

 

 

Here are some extracts from every day local communication from Maximum City Bombay that a lot of you would be using or aware of and that which breaks the mould. They bear testament to the fact that nothing like ‘ radical candor ‘ to get the message across. No compliance or adherence to the default. Here goes:

 

 

Abbey: Before you get there, let me forewarn you that this has nothing to do with a nunnery or a monastery like what you would see in places like the UK. It is just a wake up call to someone asking him to smell the coffee. It puts everyone out there on a level playing field(inspired by the DEI rallying cry) and is oblivious to titles be it Ms | Mr, positions of authority or any such formality. No power dynamics at work here.

 

 

Chayyla: Before you rush to get a cup of tea, and invoke the bawarchi in you, pause. This is used when you feel short changed or have made a fool of yourself. More like a self admonition than anything else.

PS: Chayyla  is best expressed at 20 db decibel levels.

 

 

Khajoor : This would be a detrimental representation of ‘ dates ‘ as it should be known conventionally but here the parlance is referring to someone who is downright stupid. Nicely palmed off I dare say. Khajoor sows the seed with a sweet tinge of respectful disdain.

 

 

Pendal: First I was at pains to understand what this meant and I continued soft-pedalling the issue. Only to realise later on that this is a well accepted pseudonym for ‘ pedal ‘, as seen on bicycles. And the big advantage is that just like pedal, pendal can be used either as a verb or a noun.

 

 

Poblem: Without any problem I reckon you have guessed it. Why are we bothered about the ‘r‘ as long as the problem is getting conveyed. Ignore the letter r in the right spirit. I have no poblem..I mean problem with that. After all phonetics has to have a say! Actually, subtracting one r from the word, seems to have added some weight to the problem, don’t you think so?

 

 

Singal: If you turn red or amber or green on this one, I can understand. Though the alphabets are juxtaposed, what is being signaled is signal. So, left, right or state..straight? Traffic law abiding citizens are well versed with this, whether they are single or..

 

 

Waat: I know some of you might be letting off steam on hearing this but this has no relation whatsoever to James Watt( of Steam Engine fame). Waat is the weighted average explanation of a totally screwed up situation. Waat The F…? Not to be mistaken with ” Waat Pahath Hotha “, mind you. Imagine, waiting for ‘waat‘? We and our masochistic tendencies!

 

 

Apun: This may come across as a pun but there is no pun intended here. This is I, me, myself and defending one’s turf with a vengeance. Apun has a close relationship with the beach town of Alibaug and is best expressed in this usage ” Apun Alibaug se nahee aaya “- meaning- I am not a fool. I have not come from Alibaug. Embedding destination branding in everyday parlance has been inspired from this. So ahead of time!

 

 

Peshyal: Before you wonder what is so special about this, let me offer you more than a hint. This is something masquerading as special. Last heard, I am given to understand that Peshyal could also be spelt as Paycial. I am spell bound. Next time, I will do some more spell check.

 

 

Ghochoo: Tempted as you would be, please don’t rush to conclude that this is another brand from the Jimmy Choo stable. This is a not so decorated but a go-to way of addressing an idiot. The jury is still out on whether Ghochoo has an oriental descent but apparently it has been patented by Dongri, Kabutar Chawl inhabitants.

 

 

Chaapter : Stop, don’t turn the page. This has no connection to the chapters that we have in books. The additional ‘a‘ in Chapter distinguishes itself from the run of the mill. A for aura. This is a hyper localised version of addressing a shrewd and cunning person. How you role your tongue and at what angle do you open your mouth is critical in getting the pronunciation for chaapter right. Going slightly awry would mean closing the chapter shut.

 

 

Raada: Phonetics could play tricks on you and coerce you to think this would be from the Prada lineage. Alas, sorry to disappoint you. A raada is a heated argument with a strong potential to go upstream and become a full scale physical assault.

 

 

Vat Le: This is no government diktat on the collection of VAT. Nor is anyone using the French masculine article Le wrongly. Vat Le is a crisp get lost message delivered best with just one side of the mouth and minimal lip movement. Just imagine Marlon Brando saying Vat Le in Godfather and you will know what i mean.

 

 

Temporvary : Hearing this, your temper could vary. Everything in life is temporvary. We are getting philosophical here. Temporvary is a convoluted way of addressing temporary and has been used for such a long time that now it has become permanent fixture in the locabulary.
Raag : I suspected this was coined by the musically inclined. Or someone like Balamurali( the legend, who created ragas with three swaras) . But, I couldn’t have been more wrong. If you hear someone’s raag, it may not exactly sound like music to your ears. In plain speak raag is bluff made palatable. Raagpatti ( whose Cognates are found in Greek, Persian, Khwarezmian and other languages ) takes the narrative a couple of notches above and into the zone of intimidation.
Machmach: Before you arrive at the conclusion that this is a new clothing line brand from Inditex( of Zara, Pull & Bear, Bershka, Stradivarius, Massimo Dutti etc fame), machmach is nothing much more than an argument, a not so fervent plea to distill the signal from the noise. Mach obliged.
XCoosMe for me now. More mach I mean such in my next.
ENDS

 

 

 

 

 

 

Margins can be profitable!

Margin is the space between our load and our limits– Robert Swenson

 

Remember, back in the day, when writing on paper was a salve and stylus and laptops were not as omnipresent as they are now, we would fold the foolscap paper from the left by an inch or so and offer it a margin ( I would never get it in a straight line but I always made an effort). It was the signal where to start off from and give our articulation some space before it began. The fold mark remained conspicuous and so did our writing, in most cases.

 

As you play your vinyl, you are happy to hear the reassuring hiss between the end of one song and the beginning of the next. Building expectation. It happens as credits roll as a comforting precursor to the constitution that is the movie that is about to begin. All of our media has margins. A space between what we are consumed with and the rest of the world.

 

As Christa Sterken put it, the best things in life are written in the margins. White space has the calming, soothing effect that a Hoover agnostic mind and life are not letting us. The white space serves us an offering to think outside of the confines of the text. Like a visual and a mental break.

 

Imagine books or magazines or newspapers. Think of how difficult it would be to read if the words were to be taken completely to each edge of the paper. Paintings have a frame, or a wall separating them from the next.

 

Margin is having the pace and space in your day to allow real life to happen. The margins are where you will find yourself. The honesty, the integrity, the real friends, the relationships that last a lifetime through good and bad.

 

As the inimitable Seth Godin puts it ” The self-discipline to see the margin and use it as a tool is a gift we offer the consumer of culture “.

 

Living in the margins will not make you marginalized. On the contrary, that probably is where the you-er or even the you-est ( the best version of you) in you will come to the fore.

 

ENDS

 

Beware! The Biggest Boycott in History

Is programmatic advertising writing its own obituary?
We’ve become obsessed with media strategy at the expense of creative strategy.
By far, the most heavily debated issues in the ad world these days are around media strategy — traditional vs digital; precision targeting vs mass reach; programmatic vs direct, etc. There is far less impassioned discussion over creative strategy.
According to ANA and PwC, 70% of advertising dollars spent on online programmatic advertising never touch a human being. Of the US$ 550 billion expected in annual programmatic ad spend in 2023, over 70% will i.e over US$ 380 billion will disappear in ” ad fees, ad fraud, non-viewable impressions, non brand-safe ad placements, and unknown allocations.
By unknown allocations, you can read ” shit that no one can figure out “.
Brands are funding an opaque eco system. advertisers are being screwed blind by ad tech ferrets. More than 800 million devices now have ad blocking. Truckloads are being spent on advertising
that is neither seen nor impacting.
And, worst, it’s actually alienating people that it is supposed to impact. The really important issue is the impact of tracking (the basis of all programmatic activity) on society and the enormous damage it is doing to individuals and to democratic institutions.
Equally important is the quality of the creatives that are putting off people.
So, BEWARE!

Is Advertising is really bad at being kind?

Walking a tightrope. On delicate ice.

Purposeful provocation is the idea. A warm cozy hug or a splash of cold water on your face. A salve or a wake up call. Both are responsibilities.

Responsibility in advertising requires that all stakeholders honor their obligations to one another. Advertising over the years has evolved beyond just focusing on grabbing consumer’s attention by catchy jingles, videos and packaging to a more refined medium with a certain sort of narrative. And while it’s still criticized for a lot of the ills that comprise the more negative aspects of modern consumerism, there is little doubt about its ability to deliver complex, far-reaching messages and forming an instant connect with the psyche.

An interesting look at advertising and the humanistic approach can be had from this article in BrandKnew

 

DON a hue: Your thoughts on INTERPOL’s recruitment policy ?

Caveat Emptor: Written purely in jest with malice towards none and deep respect for all, living and demised. May relate only to people with one foot in the brave (or baby boomers, it’s contestable, respectable pseudonym!). If at the end of this(or well before that) so long a rant, you want to call out ‘ so long ‘, I will understand perfectly! It also hedges that the 1.8 people who will read this(after circumventing the social media algorithm), have seen the movie Don(the original one starring the Big B).

 

For the purpose of brevity, acronyms have been used as below:-
OS: Late Om Shivpuri (RIP)
PK: Late Pinchoo Kapoor (RIP)
Big B: (if you don’t know who he is, time to get a life!)
NI: Nariman Irani (RIP)
DS: Dileep Sharma (RIP)
May 12, Circa 1978. A typical summer day in Bombay. Oppressive, sultry, so much so, you wanted to send out the May Day signal. But, aborted the thought. And lived to see another day. Yours truly, with one of my best friends Nazir had set out as usual with wasted interests to do what we did best. Nothing! The breeze was stiff, so stiff, it refused to move. It was when our expectations were close to nadir, did we hear a call, from up above. No, don’t get your expectations that high- it was from the third floor of one of the buildings in our society and DS (one of the most amiable blokes you can find with a perennial smile and hockey skills that would have given Mohammad Shahid a complex) and through the thick foliage of the Mayflower tree directly under the building, we could see he was calling out to us from his bedroom window. He had two tickets to NI’s Don, Amitabh’s movie that had released the same day and asked if we wanted to go. Since he was not. If there was anything called manna from heaven that was it. Big B in two doses(if anyone wanted a masterclass on how to deliver suave with wow and awe, this was it): our excitement knew no measure! Thank you so much Chandra Barot.
The next thing we know we are gaping open mouthed as DS decided to fold the tickets and hurl it (what an inappropriate description for such a gracious gesture) down. Now, if you know anything about movie tickets of those days, they were not exactly printed on 350 GSM Hand Crafted Wood Free Paper. And if they are Lower Stall tickets( Not Balcony or Dress Circle as they were in the day), the paper quality reached a new low. Lower Stall for the uninitiated are seats that are very very close to the screen, sometimes so much so that you go beyond the screen and do an auto-rotate of your neck to discover new laws of concave and convex (apart from discovering that Amitabh could also be right handed and if it’s a double role it only added to the complexity). That being said, the two of us are now witnessing a descent of the tickets of unprecedented volatility- one moment sashaying as if Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie was playing in full blast and in another defying Newton and gravity as it decides to hang nonchalantly, stubbornly, mid air. In the midst of all these, we had one of those brilliant WH Davies moments (yes of the ” what is this life full of care “…fame) as we look awestruck at the mayflowers blooming in unabashed, glorious beauty on the society’s showpiece tree(also our controversial boundary indicator during cricket matches), which every May kept it’s unfailing date with it’s namesake. That ‘ moment ‘ of distraction (shouldn’t it be attraction?) overcome, we see the tickets land firmly on the road, which at that time would have made the lunar surface look like a green top billiard table.
Armed with the most prized possession of our lives, it was destination Topiwala ( not tirchi but the name of the movie house). Before I move on, letting you in on an inside story. During the late 70’s, there was a famous inner wear brand called Dawn( and without paying too much credo to phonetics, we all know even Don sounds the same) and it was only Mario Puzo’s Godfather that gave the word Don a sense of aura and passable respectability.
Enough preamble. Will segue into the constitution now. For those of who have seen Don, would recall the prominent characters from the movie. Big B apart, there was Zeenat, Pran, Iftekhar ( yes of the ‘ born to inspect ‘ lineage alongwith Jagdish Raj, Inspector for All Seasons and For All Reasons!), PK, OS among others. OS, BTW, is not another Operating System but Om Shivpuri as already indicated right at the beginning. And here is playing the role of a ‘ Responsible Interpol Officer ‘, assigned to crack the whip, as captain of the hip. Which didn’t lie. Or so we were made to believe!
Since our growing up days we held Interpol in great esteem. The world’s best International Police Organisation. It had an unquestionable aura. Even Balram wanted to enrol(not from the Ramayana but of Ram Balram fame) into the organisation. So did Pathankar. From Budhawar Peth. And Saini from Munirka. It had a cult like following. If Ajit had his way (just like he had with Mona, Michael and Shetty), Interpol would have been headquartered in the LOIN’s Den near Dongri but sadly it had to be Lyon, France. The jury is still out on that one. How you wish geography could be history!
Time to get serious as the next few paras are all about the interview process at Interpol and how OS got the plum(p) assignment for the roll, I mean role.
To begin with, after acquiring diligent espionage skills, we took a deep dive into the Psychometric Testing Questions that OS was put through during the recruitment process @ Interpol. Psychometric Testing as we may know involves numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning, logical reasoning, personality assessment etc among others. Here goes:
Numerical Reasoning
Interviewer: Why do you think your breakfast has to be 12 Aloo Parathas?
OS: I always had a soft corner for having one two many. One and Two is 12. Hence..actually it’s a no brainer
Verbal Reasoning
Interviewer: In the fitness of things, what makes you so eligible for this role?
OS: Two and a half hours of jogging, 250 squats, 80 push ups and 45 minutes of planks…
(he gets interrupted before saying ‘ over the last 40 years ‘)
Interviewer: That’s incredible..
Logical Reasoning
Interviewer: What makes you ‘ different ‘ from other contestants applying for this role?
OS: My name is Vardan(with a V), that means blessing. I am actually a blessing(in disguise- in this case he was pretending to be RK Malik, the role played by Weighteran Actor PK, worth his weight in old).
OS(continuing in chaste Punjabi confidence): And mind you, I don’t have any Imposter Syndrome!
Personality Assessment
Interviewer: What is the one thing that determines your ‘ style quotient ‘ ?
OS: It takes two to tango- so, I am afraid I have two to share:-
1. People have bad hair days. I have a bad hair life.
2. People wear trousers around their waist and use a belt to keep it in place. I have higher ambitions. My trousers are a little above my chest(Sorry, if I am hitting above the belt!) and instead of a belt I use both my armpits to keep it in place. Giving G B Shaw’s Arms and the Man due respect!
As an afterthought he adds
3. Nobody can carry a pinafore dress with a toy gun from Crawford Market with as much I mean business swagger as I can.
That was the sucker punch. That landed on the right spot (yes, you guessed it- a little above the chest) and put OS firmly in the Interpol’s HR spotlight. Appointed with Immediate Defect. To them a new HeRo was born! That will play the perfect Villain.
OM SHADY OM!! It was the Don of a new era for Interpol!
ENDS

The Privilege of Working With Your Mind..

As they say ” The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven“.

 

Back in the day and throughout history, most people have had to do backbreaking labour, just to sustain themselves, with no hope of thriving. The perennial, relentless quest to move from day to day, meal to meal, to survive.

 

Today( and we are fortunate), we get to exercise our creative gifts, solve problems, and create value that none of our ancestors would have imagined(let alone a large percentage of the world’s population today).

 

As adults, we spend a lot of time talking about all the things we have to do:

 

You have to wake up early for work.

 

You have to make that sales call.

 

You have to prepare dinner for the family.

 

You have to go to your daughter’s dance show.

 

You have to work out today.

 

You have to write an article.

 

Now, imagine changing just one word in all of the sentences above.

 

You get to wake up early for work.

 

You get to make that sales call.

 

You get to prepare dinner for the family.

 

You get to go to your daughter’s dance show.

 

You get to work out today.

 

You get to write an article.

 

It’s important to remind oneself that the things we get to do each day are not burdens, but opportunities.

 

So often, the things we actually view as work are actually the reward.

 

Mind you, if you are reading this, you are among the top miniscule percent of a percent of people who have ever lived in terms of opportunity and wealth.

 

So, what are you getting to do? Game | Mind(set) | Match!!

 

ENDS

 

 

CAUTION: THE VALUE OF MARKETING IS NOT WHERE YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD IT IS

Let us begin with defining what Marketing is NOT!

Marketing isn’t the act of getting people to buy what you’re paid to sell them.

Marketing is about probabilities and likelihoods. It’s about moving people, both metaphorically and otherwise.

Nobody gives a flying shit about your philosophy. Write that in big letters above your desk.

“Brand purpose” is the first hiding place of bad marketers. We have seen enough and more of ‘ purpose washing ‘. People see through that.

Time to reconsider your tired email lists, sneaky retargeting and costly pre-roll ads.

Instead, reach for next-generation experiences that touch people’s hearts and move their minds.

Give your audience genuine human emotions: goosebumps — quicken pulses, and they’ll never forget you.

Marketing’s value has a different domicile unlike perceived and practiced. So, it’s not about where YOU are but where YOU should be.

ENDS

Curiosity Skilled The Cat!

Curiosity is that strange human trait that got us out of the cave, across the globe, and onto the moon.

 

A trait that has led to communication and  collaboration.

 

“Why” has the X factor! So, start with why!

 

Albert Einstein quoted that a mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size. All research, come to think of it is ‘ formalised curiosity ‘.
Doubt and inquiry are the two pillars of progress. Contrary to public perception. The things that pique your curiosity aren’t random. They will point you to where you need to go. There is a toss up between ‘ chasing happiness ‘ and  ‘ following your curiosity ‘. Learning a new musical instrument, going hiking or tapping into unchartered culinary exploration, maintaining a journal, going white water rafting.. anything unfamiliar that you can try your mind and heart at..can all take us out of the default and deliver a new , happier tomorrow. The GPS to get there is inside us. It won’t throw up on Google search.
There will always be reasons for coloring inside the lines you have drawn for yourself. It is heartbreaking to leave the cocoon of certainty and comfort and embark on a path never trodden. To step into the alien, unknown, where all things that never existed are created. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend only a little of this mystery every day.
Curiosity could be a lust of the mind, so give into that lust. As Ian Leslie put it so succinctly ; ” Curiosity is unruly. It doesn’t like rules, or, at least, it assumes that all rules are provisional, subject to the laceration of a smart question nobody has yet thought to ask. It disdains the approved pathways, preferring diversions, unplanned excursions, impulsive left turns. In short, curiosity is deviant“.
Let’s move on. From Intel Inside. To Curiosity Inside!

So, what’s your story? I am curious to know.

 

ENDS