Suresh Dinakaran's Blog

 

Daily. No, I am not talking about a newspaper, though even that makes it count day after day. Not letting go of the opportunity. Being relentless, slipping under your door(or in front), come hell or high water. Enough metaphorical talk.

 

A new day, is a chance to create better process, habits and assets. What are you doing every day that compounds and something that you can build on? Something you create or learn that makes you more valuable, more sought after, respected. Curiosity skilled the cat.

 

Every day is a lot of days. And in the long run, what you do in the short run accumulates. When you spend every day working toward achieving your ultimate goals or just living your purpose consistently, you will be happy. Most probably, you will be happier than most.

So, whether it is practicing gratitude, learning something new, drawing on your well of creativity and expressing yourself, investing in me time, facing your fears, finding something you love and doing it, you would have done pretty well for yourself.

 

ENDS

 

It seems like a toss up. Well, it isn’t. Choice architecture has its say and it is actually pointing us in the right direction. Provided, we are prepared to walk that path.

 

A slight recalibration is all that might be required. To alter a habit, for the better. You want to be heard. Or have you considered listening instead? The temptation is to doom scroll on social media and post a nasty comment. Or would you opt to call someone and make their day? Taking a nap looks enticing. Or you go for a walk and get some me-time. You can make a purchase for interim joy and the thrill of the chase(and add to the Stuffocation at home). Or, you can consider making a donation. Reacting angrily to an email might be the go to default. Or, perhaps a polite conversation can clear the air.

There is a GPS setting of our mind. There too, you can avoid tolls. It might be the route less trodden but a journey worth embarking on.

 

Ready to be a Contrarian? Or, you prefer staying the course?

 

ENDS

 

 

When I talk about links and connections I am not referring to airports or airlines. The rant here is about us humans in full protein form.

 

Social media has made ‘connections to be the vanilla metric’ to thirst after. And we do wave the number of connections flag with impunity.

 

All these said, there is a yawning gap. We all want to be connected. But we shy away from being the connector. We want to be respected. But, are you delivering on that front with your side of the bargain? Trust deficit is a collective responsibility. We want to be trusted but do you trust?

There is so much opportunity we are leaving on the table. Connections, hope, optimism, progress, resolution, possibilities are all birds of the same feather. A collective bias can give it immense energy and meaning.

 

We don’t have to wait for everyone to get going. It can begin with someone. You.

 

When you wear a new lens and begin to re-imagine, in a lot of cases, you are offered perspectives that are better, richer and game changing. You might find the video on the below link interesting or even inspiring.

Knew Thinking. New Possibilities.   

 

ENDS

 

It used to be called the ‘Welcome Kit‘. When you applied for a credit card, especially a premium one, and you were fortunate enough to be validated and considered eligible. The courier would come with a fancy pack  and a collateral running into over 150 pages. While the onus should ideally be on us to read all the pages, the clauses(clawses?), the ‘fine print‘, rarely do people go through it in entirety.

 

Deep into the booklet, somewhere on page 74, will be those easy to miss fine print in font 6.5 size which houses the shock & awe. Just when you are settling into your newly acquired status of hypermetropia. Those clever clauses which reaffirm that it is top down and you can only be a mute spectator. Where even caveats have back up caveats. Disclaimers and thatclaimers where you end up having nothing to claim. Do they still call it ‘Welcome Kit‘?

 

Organisations and individuals do it all the time. Your data is trespassed on unabashedly – apparently the fine print that you ignored coming to terms with offers carte blanche entitlement to the organisation to spam you. To lend it to other vendors. Use it behind your back. Imagine if they are doing all these, you are left wondering what else are they doing?

 

Nothing in fine print is ever good news. As they say “Read the fine print or be imprisoned by it “. No, I am not going there- Instruction Manuals. Every time someone looks to the manual for instructions, they’re acknowledging that you know something they don’t know. The worst instructions fail to have empathy for that gap.

 

In an era which is increasingly considering ‘designing for trust‘, isn’t it time to say Not Fine?

ENDS

 

 

 

Scholars believe that the term “race to the bottom” first appeared in a 1933 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Liggett vs. Lee. Justice Louise Brandeis, writing his opinion on the case, argued that in order to gain a competitive advantage, firms are incentivized to undercut one another while governments are incentivized to deregulate(Investopedia).

 

Being cheaper in the quest for short term gain is a calling. It is a trap. It is a race to the bottom.

 

If you are a freelancer, you have experienced this more often than not. In the ‘gig economy’, the ‘yet another‘ is always a commodity. You are short changing yourselves to land business thinking that the next project might fetch you better or higher. That remains a myth. You have just boarded the one way train in the race to the bottom.

 

The problem with the race to the bottom is that you do feel that you are winning. In reality you are far from that. Because you are facing the brunt of the brutality of less and inferior. Solution- find better clients. And there are better clients I assure you.

 

Although there are legitimate ways to compete for business and investment dollars, the term race to the bottom is used to characterize unhinged tit-for-tat competition that has crossed ethical lines and could be destructive for the parties involved.

 

This could be because of cut throat competition. But, it is a vicious cycle, a whirlpool from which you cannot extricate yourself without compromise. When companies engage in the race to the bottom, its impact is felt beyond the immediate participants. Lasting damage can be done to the environment, employees, the community, and the companies’ respective shareholders.

 

The other side of the coin is consumer expectations for perennially lower prices and the squeeze on profit margins for organisations. The domino effect being sub optimal quality of goods and services and needless to say the market for such goods and services dry up. It is a bottomless pit with no winners.

 

A better alternative is: You’ll pay more than you hoped but get more than you paid for.

 

Ready, steady, race…?

 

ENDS

 

 

 

Our track record of prediction is abysmal to say the least. The world is far far more complicated than we think it is. That in itself is not a problem, except of course when we don’t know that we don’t know. Little wonder that some wise men(read A Lincoln | P Drucker) ended up saying “the best way to predict the future is to invent it”. 

 

Being prudent in hindsight is a given and most of us are quick to pat ourselves on the back for our ability to narrate backward and in connecting the dots to make sense of what transpired(after the event only mind you), at inventing stories that we have a good handle on the past. Little regard is given to what Nicholas Nassim Taleb calls Black Swan moments.

 

Despite the extremely shallow empirical record we have about predicting, we continue to crystal ball into the future and ‘project‘ as if we are masters at it. The truth is far from that. There was no prediction about Post It notes, fax machines, computers, internet, touch phones, laser etc. And the appreciation of all these took a while to come into being. Needless to say , they were all Black Swan moments but our civilisation continues to look the other way.

Yogi Berra is one of the great baseball coaches of our times and he had to say this “It is tough to make predictions, especially about the future“. He later said “the future isn’t what it used to be“. The ‘enterprise of predicting‘ has several holes that can be plugged only with what may seem contrarian thinking.

 

Talk about contrarian and look at this- the gains in our knowledge and our ability to model(or predict) the world is dwarfed by the increase in its complexity- implying a greater and deeper role for the unpredicted. The larger the role of the Black Swan, greater the difficulty in predicting.

 

With predictions now having a digital walkway and more data being available at your fingertips than ever before,(ideally) we ought to be getting better at predicting what’s going to happen next and determining who’s good at that and who isn’t.  That said, our biases and beliefs are a strong force and confidence(based on accumulated knowledge) and volume(multiple used cases if you may) are certainly not a replacement for seeing the way things are and understanding ground reality.

 

ENDS

 

Their vision and mission statements look like The Hippocratic Oath. Customer experience, customer delight, customer engagement, customer centricity, customer care etc are terms used with gay abandon. Posters articulating the brand story adorn the corporate walls. These are all nice to have vocabulary but with no intent to walk the talk, the delta between the cup and the lip is an ocean. You are most certainly in choppy waters.

 

It cannot be even called the flavour of the season. Well, that is supposed to be seasonal. When billboards scream at you 13 months in a year with the ubiquitous 25 to 70% off discount. In so doing, what you are wielding the megaphone on is that your brand is NOT worth a special trip and the only way customers can be pulled in is by perennial bribing and apparently deep discounting.

 

(If numerology and how it got into marketing interests you, I can direct you to an earlier blog of mine here).

 

You are a brand of artisanal chocolates. Hand made and imported from Belgium. Heart crafted for flavour, delight and an ethereal experience. Lot of love and emotional labour goes into making a brand of this nature and stature. That is desired, cherished, gifted, spoken about. And then you melt it all away by plastering your storefront with (terribly designed) SALE stickers.

 

You have build a hotel unlike any other. Sorry, it can’t be called a hotel. It is a destination meant to wow. The designers, the builders, the owners put their money where their mouth and stuck their neck out for offering elevated privileges and a never before experience. And then what happens- your front desk receptionist decides to pick up customer calls only after her nail paint has dried.

 

Your online banking is an uphill struggle. Your brand’s communication is all about seamless, frictionless user experience. Reality is that the website navigation would need the skill and agility of a war mariner.

 

Your neighbourhood health clinic(part of a large hospital & healthcare chain – yes the one that uses the four letter word ‘care‘ at every nook & corner) has given you an appointment after you held on patiently and listened to badly chosen music that plays on the IVR for a good 7 minutes before you got a human on the line. By the end of it, you may or may not get an appointment, but a new ailment is guaranteed. Which your insurance may not cover.

 

Sum summarum, what I want to highlight here is that what gets practiced is what the culture encourages. It is mostly top down. After all a brand is a story that we tell and expect our constituents to carry forward the baton on and touch the customer in ways that enhances, resolves, inspires and gets them coming back for more.

 

” Your call is important to us and will be attended to shortly “. ” This call may be recorded for quality and training purposes “. For God’s sake, stop lying!! Time to introspect? 

 

ENDS

 

How many times have we heard the common refrain- have a Plan B. Not content with just one back up plan, some of us go much further and test out all the alphabets in the English language. Running hard to stand at the same place. Phew!!

 

It is like being in a state of hyper vigilante at all times. Fight or flight. Keep the door ajar to escape just in case. Happy to be in no man’s land. Half committed, not deeply engaged, the perennial ‘what if‘ mode. Typical of people who keep withdrawing from their ATM called Bank of Worry.

 

Having multiple back up plans does not guarantee you insulation from life’s uncertainties. It is a deeply flawed strategy and brings in preemptive agony and suffering. Bracing all the time for life’s storms which at most times don’t arrive.

 

The domicile of being between a rock and hard place is a slippery slope. Over indexing on the ‘what if’ does not fetch anything of significance. You are investing in a one dimensional mind that only thinks and calibrates to the perceived danger at hand and thereby missing out on the creativity and agility that we are all so capable of. It will be a shame if that inventory goes unused.

The no man’s land is the half hearted approach to your art or craft, or to a conversation or a relationship for fear of total commitment and a harder fall, then there is nothing much going for you. You can’t learn to surf by being tentatively placing your foot at the edge of the surf board.

 

Having a plan is good but it should not be a bank of worry. Analysis paralysis and over preparation is far less useful than amping up your adaptability and agility. Don’t under estimate your tenacity and resilience. Replay those moments in your mind’s home theatre of how you came through in spite of being against the wall with challenges.

 

Fear is only a reaction, creativity is a response. You’ll often find that what you feared is far less harmful than the bunker you built against it.

 

ENDS

 

I was skimming through Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2023 report for a nuanced understanding of the opportunities and challenges shaping the global brand landscape at what appears to be a critical juncture.

 

Gonzalo Brujo, Global CEO, Interbrand has observed there that the total value of the Best Global Brands increased by just 5.7% in 2023—a significant drop from the 16% surge observed in 2022.

 

The observations based on conversations with the global C-Suite is a common feeling of pressure for brands to play it safe, driving a wave of incrementalism and conservatism for most.

 

Look at the landscape today and there’s almost no part of the marketing challenge today that isn’t about desire for immediate return. You have six seconds to make someone care. That’s a really hard job. It is highly apparent that ever mounting pressure to demonstrate immediate and measurable returns has shifted the marketing needle firmly in the direction of performance tactics. We seem to have lost sight of the benefit of broad reach and communal experience- the experience of creative and messaging that moves people and brings them together.

 

We used to have these huge cultural moments when people came together and experienced events collectively. We don’t have that common ground anymore and thats a big lever that is missing for brands.

 

So what is bringing in this era of incrementalism?

 

The erosion in value and the stifled growth of 5.7% compared to 16% the year before can be evaluated in context. The main observable reason for this decline is a widespread incremental brand management approach, focused on protecting the core. Most brands made no significant gain or losses in strength or value, nor did they make notable moves.

 

But look closer, and against this backdrop a small set of brands stands out, showing above average brand value growth- the usual suspects like Amazon, Apple, Lego, Disney, Microsoft, Ferrari, Netflix etc.

 

What these brands share is, a bit of strangeness. They don’t fall into traditional categories and sectors, defined by products or services. It’s increasingly hard to describe Amazon as a retailer at a time when it is pours millions into entertainment productions; similarly, consumer hardware is where Apple comes from, but certainly not all it is today.

 

If categories fall short of making sense of the current situation, things become clearer if we shift our perspective from inside out to outside in – and rather than focus on what these brands do, question what they help people do. To bring in the element of arena thinking, these are brands that help us Thrive, Play, Express, Move, Dwell etc, vying for the same time, money and attention, and addressing the same fundamental motivation – or ‘job to be done’, to use Clayton Christensen’s term.

 

If you want to transform your industry, look at someone else. Analogous inspiration anyone? Because the best ideas and thinking are coming from outside your core industry- ask camera manufacturers what the mobile phone industry did to them. Airbnb should have been an Hilton, IHG or Marriott play, but look who got it in the zeitgeist. Thinking in terms of arenas rather than categories is a powerful antidote against competitive blind spots. While traditional diversification hinges on competences and assets – ‘if we do this, we might do that too’, arena-based growth starts from relationships – ‘if you feel good about us, here’s what else we might help you do.’

 

The most progressive brands became providers of all round experiences – not just products or services. At a time when consumer electronics was zigging away from retail spaces, the Apple Store zagged, creating a shrine that was about attraction rather than transaction. Today, as we face extreme turbulence and volatility, some of the most influential brands have become acts of leadership – doing things right, yes, but also doing the right thing. At a time of declining trust in traditional sources of authority, brands are expected to take stances – walking the talk and talking the walk. Nike’s Kaepernick campaign remains a memorable illustration of showing leadership whilst reinforcing the bond with Nike’s key target audiences.

 

These brands stand out by blending in, because people measure the entire experience by how much it adds to their lives and how little it disrupts it. To create relevance and shift expectation, we need to ask if we are doing better and different. Are clutter and conformity obscuring your codes – or are you distinctly memorable?

 

Brand as an asset for strength and growth is under leveraged across the board, which is paradoxical because in today’s world it’s harder and harder to cut through the noise and fragmentation. Unless you are resorting & acting on arena thinking and an approach that combines the three lenses of human truths, economics and experience.

 

ENDS

 

 

 

The unabashed bias has always been towards the ‘tried and trusted‘. Coming from a place of quiet reassurance. Comforting and calming. No friction or inertia.

 

Sometime back I had the opportunity to do an interview with Steven Covey Jr for our media platform BrandKnew. He had then just released his book ‘ Trust & Inspire‘. For those interested, you can access the interview here. The conversation was way more than intriguing and opened up a can of multiple possibilities in my mind.

 

Food for thought- I firmly believe that ‘culture is strategy‘ and much water has flown under the ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast‘ bridge. We are trusted because of our way of being, not because of our polished exteriors or our expertly crafted communications. Trust is not a matter of technique, tricks, or tools but of character.

 

I am sticking my neck out here with a rant of a different kind.We have stock exchanges all over the world and stocks move up and down due to macro or micro economic factors and equally importantly company performance in terms of both top lines and bottom lines. My wish list is slightly different. What if organisations were to be indexed on a Trust Stock Exchange and measured on various metrics that include all key stake holders be it the entire supply chain, the end users | customers, the internal stakeholders | employees, associates and business partners, suppliers, regulators, banks, internal and external auditors and financial institutions, the conventional stock markets- each and every possible touch point that an organisation engages with, day in and day out- and the most vital metric used to measure performance is trust. Whether they are complying with norms or not, are they under delivering, are they practicing DEI, do they walk the talk on customer and employee experience, is it engaging in unfair trade practices, are they sourcing ethically, are they practicing the need to go green, are supplier payments made on time, is it meritocracy driven etc etc- sum summarum, is the organisation trustworthy? The index could move up or down in real time and the scale could be on 1 to 100. Greater the trust ratings on the index, more the value and the equity of the company. Which in turn brings on more gravitas from customers, collaborators, the entire value chain. The domino effect being the stocks on the exchange reflect positively too.

This can be applicable across Governments and electorates, communities and society and in all walks of life. Measuring an intangible will become the norm.

 

Could this be for real? Can this inspire? Would this be the future? If trust-deficit is so loosely bandied about(simply because that is the reality in most cases and places), don’t you think it is time to walk the talk?

 

ENDS