Author: Suresh Dinakaran

 

THE BIG QUESTION IS THIS – In a world made numb by digital noise, what can any business or brand do to make itself relevant again? Why should anyone care?

 

Yes, I know the caption of this blog sounds audacious. Especially considering the speed, dynamism and unpredictability that surrounds us at all times. So, if you see this is hazarding a guess, you are spot on. Sticking my neck out, nonethless, and it is that time of the year where everyone is empowered to make predictions and forecasts. Here goes.

 

• One of the strongest aspects of the future of marketing is something that we can easily borrow from the past viz the need for a solid product or service. That is a given. Blue Ocean or Green Swan can be your strategy picks while doing so.

 

• It may sound contrarian but the conventional rote method of finding customers for your product or service will need to be relooked at. The better way would be to find products or services or solutions for your customers. You are welcome to see a detailed rant on this in the video on this link https://www.brandknewmag.com/dont-find-customers-for-your-products-find-products-for-your-customers/ 

 

• ARE YOU WORTH A SPECIAL TRIP? It’s an era of Online upending – Now that more and more is ordered online or experienced online, the only trips that we take are special trips. If your brand | service or your place isn’t worth a special trip, it’s unlikely that the customer would be coming by any time soon!

• WE ARE ALL NOMADS HERE. The best ideas come from outside your core vertical – something that we can define as ‘analogous inspiration’. To transform your industry, look at someone else’s. We would have thought that Hilton or IHG or Marriott would have lunched AirbNB or that Spotify or an ITunes would have been created by HMV or subscription would have remained the prerogative of media platforms- cars have been offered on subscription by Volvo for the past few years and the trend will continue.

• CREATIVITY IS FUTURE PROOF – Creativity is human, it is global, it is technology-agnostic, it doesn’t discriminate. From people working at the bleeding edge of their fields to those others who bring humanity to technology and industry. The call to action in times to come will be for creatives to take control of our tomorrow. It helps recapture the feeling of optimism, not fear for the future. Because in the hands of creatives, we potentially have a future that is bright, progressive, diverse and equitable.

 

• CAUTION: THE VALUE OF MARKETING IS NOT WHERE YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD IT IS – Marketing isn’t the act of getting people to buy what you’re paid to sell them . 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.

• Leading in from the above point- AI driven content and experiences will play a significant role in the times to come. The sheer speed and accuracy with which content can be curated, created, aggregated and articulated using AI while keeping personalisation in view will be manna for heaven for marketers and brand owners. It will also align beautifully with an economy that is migrating from ownership to usership at a furious clip.

 

• The Metaverse and such other new ecosystems to have fun- From the Physical, Digital, Phygital and now the meta will offer inspiration to consumers and brands to explore, experiment and deliver | receive great experiences. Avatars that are either homogenous to existing real life personas or completely heterogenous to it will be the order of the day creating a zeitgeist of awe, surprise and the unexpected. The meta will offer the right crutch to address the opportunity as the brain remembers what it least expects, it will be able to deliver the unexpected and create lasting memories.

 

• Yours truly or the personal brand will become the heroines and heroes in the times to come. Augmented and validated by consistency, authenticity and relatability across platforms be it mainstream, digital, phygital or the meta. So, build and they should come.

 

• THE CASTING OUCH – Your audience is|will be the hero. Let’s call them AWEdience!  You are only the sidekick. They want to know how you can help them (WIIFM-WHAT’s IN IT FOR THEM?).. NOT how great you are!

• Speed will be a strategy: Organisations and brands that are leaden footed will get caught like a deer in the headlights. As boardrooms, debate, analyse and ascertain, there are others who are already walking the talk and engaging with their customers. Agility and speed in thinking , planning & executing will serve brands and organisations well.

 

These were some of the aspects of marketing that most interests me going forward. Happy to hear your thoughts. Thank you.

 

ENDS

 

Glennon Doyle writes, “Our next life will always cost us this one. If we are truly alive, we are constantly losing who we just were, what we just built, what we just believed, what we just knew to be true.” The change that we seek and want to see will require you to die before you die. And here dying is not the end. It is a beginning.

 

Moving upwards would mean going downwards. Steps forward often require steps down. Our old self becomes the fertiliser for our new self. Our old truths becomes the torchlight for new discoveries. The paths once trodden by us become the GPS for our new destinations. Life owes a lot to death. The seed dies to give life to a plant. Wheat becomes bread.

 

Stopping to hang onto the coat tails of the past doesn’t mean forgetting. As we emerge out of our default, we begin to see endless possibilities and the potential to fly in a multiple directions. The metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly comes with letting go.

 

 

Life lives on life. This is the sense of the symbol of the Ouroboros, the serpent biting its tail. Everything that lives, lives on the death of something else. Your own body will be food for something else. If your exiting life is too comfortable, one will stop learning and growing.

 

“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.”
― Pico Iyer

 

ENDS

 

What are the ingredients of a ‘good life‘?

 

Is it money? An important job? A beautiful house? Leisure time? These metrics seem to be at the receiving end of our obsessive focus, leading us astray without us either realising or wanting to acknowledge it. Work contributes to our anxiety and pressure and the fall back of our free time is immersed in a backyard called blue screens.

 

“If we really want to live, we’d better start at once to try..if we don’t, it doesn’t matter, but we’d better start to die”- W. H Auden

 

The choice is simple. Between now and the end of our lives we can choose either to live or to die. Biological life is an automatic process, as long as we take care of the needs of the body. But to live in the sense that poet Auden refers to above is not something that will happen by itself. In fact, everything conspires against it. If we don’t take charge of its direction, our life will be controlled by the outside which will ensure that we are marching to a different beat, nothing of which is our own. Biologically programmed instincts will use it to replace the genetic material we carry, the culture will ensure that we will propagate its values and institutions and other people will use as much of our energy to further their own agenda- with no compunction on how all these would affect us. We cannot expect anyone to help us live. We must discover how to do it ourselves.

 

‘To live‘ is NOT just biological survival. It must mean to live in fullness, without waste of time and potential, expressing one’s own uniqueness, yet participating intimately in the complexity of the cosmos.

 

Life will mean what we experience from morning to night, seven days a week, for about seventy years if we are lucky or more if we are very fortunate. So, the best strategy is to assume that these seventy odd years are our best chance to experience the cosmos and that we should make the fullest use of it. For, if we don’t, we might lose everything; whereas if we are wrong and there is life beyond the grave, we lose nothing.

 

Finding flow will be at the sweet spot where one is not restrained by the accident called ‘birth’ and the accompanying allies in the script called gender, social hierarchies.

 

As James Clear puts it “Life is harder when you expect a lot of the world and little of yourself. Life is easier when you expect a lot of yourself and little of the world “.

 

Ready to engage with everyday life?

 

ENDS

 

“Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.” – Doug Larson

 

The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. Deep listening is an act of surrender. We risk being changed by what we hear. The most critical part of listening is to understand what is at stake for the other person(unlike the typical ‘elevator pitch‘ that we have been brought upon over the years). One that can be called a ‘pattern interrupt‘. Because the brain remembers(in a world full of distractions)what it least expects. So, deliver the unexpected.

 

Listening is NOT about what you think matters. It is about what matters to them. A great way to begin is to start losing yourself in their story. Go along with their tide of highs and lows. As soon as you start feeling unmoored, try to pull yourself back into your body, like returning home.

 

It is as if you have trained your imagination to go visiting. Once the story is done, you come back into your skin, your own worldview and introspect how you have been changed by that visit.

 

The velocity of being is best exemplified by movement. Keep moving. Because the best option is always off the market and never on the radar.

 

The easy thing we end up doing is being judgemental and critical. Time to give up on that.

 

To quote a Chilean saying ‘criticising a musician is easy but it is more difficult when you have a guitar in your hand‘. If everybody is hearing alike, then nobody is listening. Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

 

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery- Joyce Brothers

ENDS

 

No, sorry to disappoint you. This has nothing to do with the stock markets and bull runs therein. And in any case I have zero competence to talk or write about shares and bonds, commodities or metals. That will be gross over-indexing on my part.

 

 

What I am referring to do is the conventional practice of bullfighting. Extreme action enthusiasts might find the sport fascinating but we are not going there.

 

 

Often these days, the most used expression across demographics(brought on by the ‘ collective coercion of modern life in the Republic of Not Enough ‘ ) is ‘ overwhelmed ‘. Pulls and pressures, expectations and conforming, getting by and getting a buy in, standing for and standing out, keeping up and upkeep, all of it (make no mistake) contribute liberally to the cause(or should it be curse?).

 

 

Back to bullfighting. The drama is conspicuous. The matador and the bull. The frenzy and the chaos. The anticipation and the suspense. Contrary to popular perception, the bull is least dangerous when it is enraged (that is when the matador is in power) and the most dangerous when it is calm.  When it finds what is called the ‘ querencia ‘. That is the time when it is a potent threat for the matador. In that state of calmness. When it can tap into its full strength.

 

 

We can draw parallels here. Most of us operate this way. The perennially frantic mode. It’s the default established. Moving from one distraction to the other. Busy trying to be busy. Emails, meetings, chores- being all over the place with no clear sense of direction. Almost what one would call in advertising as ‘ spray and pray ‘. A state of calm is miles away and hence the strength, the focus, the energy and the attention as well.

 

 

Under the onslaught of this self-inflicted pandemonium, in the arena of your life, you are only reacting to matadors and perceived  crises. In the process, your true inner self lies deeply buried without getting a chance to express itself. Thinking and responding gets compromised. The domino effect being poor decisions and worse outcomes. Like being trapped in the arena of conflict with no escape possible.

 

 

Taking the elevator down to the fully knowing self, which has been quietly observing it all is the key. A domicile called the inner self. Finding it makes you the most powerful version of yourself. Where you can be deliberate. Purposeful. Most prepared to battle the matadors in your life. Because you have centred around YOUR intent. This shift from reaction to action connects you to your essence, your querencia, your source of strength. And in the process, you don’t just survive the chaos. You thrive in it.

 

ENDS

 

 

If only we knew that learning something new is a default worth pursuing?

 

Our beliefs and our actions are conjoined twins and almost inseparable. The former shapes the latter.

 

” I can never learn Spanish, I don’t have an ear for languages “.. ” Risk taking and number crunching is not my forte, I can never be an entrepreneur “. Because such thinking highlighting deficiencies is highly robust and powerfully self-reinforcing, they begin to become our identity. 

 

And because the belief is so deep rooted, you will do everything in your power to come in your own way and not learn and fail at learning the new language or embark on the journey of being a business person. Such self-sabotage acts as a virtual loop going back to strengthen the original belief. Time to realise that ‘ the obstacle is the way ‘.

 

As Emil Corian quoted ” Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory “.

 

“We are what we are because we have been what we have been.” “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” “To become what one is, one must not have the faintest idea what one is.” “Self-knowledge is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself.” These curated quotes from the likes of Sigmund Freud, Lao-Tzu, Friedrich Nietzsche & Simone De Beauvoir, in that order, beautifully summarises the strong co relation between deficiency and identity.

 

“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.”- William James

 

ENDS

 

” My attitude has always been, if you fall flat on your face, at least you’re moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again “- Richard Branson

 

Contrary to public perception, acceleration can also happen by taking the foot off the gas pedal. A marathon is never run on full flat out mode from start to finish. By doing that, you also take the risk of hurting yourself. The undulations include planned decelerations and accelerations. That way, you have a far greater chance of finishing the race rather than drop out mid way.

 

 

The opportunities for change and growth comes during periods of acceleration and deceleration. When you are on full stretch mode all the time, the shortcuts, the potential, the synergies, the opportunities etc get overlooked. A one dimensional outlook of being at full tilt all the time is like missing the wood for the trees.

 

A state of high alert(which is what being at full stretch demands) deprives us of the opportunity and the flexibility to ramp up or scale down based on context or situation. We short change ourselves in the process.

 

 

The ‘ jury for productivity ‘ in the court of modern life would have us believe that being at full stretch is the need of the hour, every hour. Don’t fall for it.

 

 

Burnout is not a badge of honour!

 

 

ENDS

 

 

Psychology 101 would have this to say ” The brain remembers what it least expects, so deliver the unexpected “.

 

 

If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail. If one were to give into the naughtiness of phonetics, the word surprise itself ends with prise (easily identifiable as prize). Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

 

 

A stream of beautiful experiences remain hidden in the untried, the untread, the unexplored. Be it an unusual concept car parked in a mall, a work of art, a new item on your restaurant menu, the conversation that you have with your daughter..distill them from the routine and see the essence that stands out. When we begin to wear a lens that looks at things NOT in the way you think it to be but in the way it actually is, without any bias or prejudice, pleasant surprises begin to present itself.

 

 

“What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.” – Ellen Burstyn

 

 

A quick Pop Quiz – Do you prefer when:

 

A) Things go according to plan?

B) When the unexpected happens?

 

Most of us pick control and predictability. Yet research reveals a counterintuitive truth: surprise is the key that unlocks growth, innovation, and connection. It is also the secret ingredient in our best memories.

 

 

Surprise is perhaps the world’s least understood and most intriguing emotion. Shifting our perception of surprise lets us thrive in the face of uncertainty. Surprise acts as a shortcut that turns a typical product into a meaningful experience, a good idea into a viral one, awkward small talk into engaging conversation, and daily life into an adventure.

 

 

Our understanding of predictability needs an upside down look. Embrace the unpredictable and engineer the unexpected.

 

 

Ready to be surprised?

 

 

ENDS

 

 

” Everybody is entitled to her own nostalgia “- James Wolcott

 

 

Nostalgia has this strong fixation with the status quo. The fetish for things to remain the same. Mired in the belief that the past was perfect. Are you sure?

 

 

Disintermediation is nature’s strategy. Something that is unstoppable. Culture changes, technology advances, people’s expectations change- and the old gives way to the new and gets left behind, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

 

 

It is not just the gadget brands( of course they resort to planned obsolescence ). Everything comes with a shelf life. The technology that we are struggling to come to terms with now will soon be a relic as something new will invariably replace it. Moving on from the past is a given certainty, whether it is moving on for the better remains a question.

 

 

Nostalgia is a beautiful lie dressed up in sepia…the saddest form of glee. It is, be definition, the least authentic of all feelings, an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories.

 

 

Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson; you find the present tense but the past perfect. Where we often visit the land of lost content, you see it shining plain, the happy highways where you went and cannot come again. The vice of the aged, a seductive liar..a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or some of some past period or irrecoverable condition.

 

 

Nostalgia and a growth mindset are at loggerheads, so it is not a Hobson’s choice. Nostalgia is the enemy of optimism..

 

 

Either you believe nostalgically that the best years were in the past..or you believe optimistically that the best years are in the future.

 

 

Time to go past the past!  Knowstalgia?

 

 

ENDS

 

 

Way back in 1998, Ted Nicholas wrote a book called “Magic Words That Bring You Riches “. Ted was a copywriting and marketing legend and his book is extremely relevant not just for the serious entrepreneur and copywriter but for people from all walks of life.

 

 

The single most important aspect of your life is your ability to communicate. Unlimited success and wealth is as simple as using the right words to reveal herein. These magic words work as if by magic!

 

 

Everyday parlance may not value the weight and impact of these words and hence they are an endangered species, fast being relegated to a bottomless pit. Let’s list some of these magic words first and see why we seem to be missing the wood for the trees.

 

 

Please

Excuse Me

Sorry | I am Sorry

Thank You

May I?

You are welcome

 

As you can see these words or phrases are not tongue twisters or heavy to articulate. Still they get the royal ignore. Is it because people have a sense of entitlement and thereby feel that they need not use them? Is it typical power dynamics and not wanting to consider themselves lower in the pecking order of hierarchy? Is it the absence of culture and appropriate upbringing that makes these words superfluous in their scheme of things?

 

 

“Courtesy costs nothing, but buys everything.”- Hazrat Ali ibn Abu-Talib A.S

 

 

One difference between savagery and civilization is a little courtesy. You would have experienced these often as we trapeze through life’s rat race. You hold the door open for the person behind you and he walks past without even a hint of an acknowledgment, let alone a thank you. You are left feeling like a door knob. You set up a meeting for someone with a person of influence and she manages to get a big contract with that introduction. What do you get? Forget a finder’s fee(that was never the expectation), you are not on her contact list any more!! You are in a queue like a lot of others and this individual goes right up to the front and behaves as if he is the privileged special emissary of the Lord and the rest of us are less than ordinary mortals. Excuse me? And please don’t get me started on road rage!

 

 

Have you seen the snap of the finger at restaurants when the self appointed high and mighty calls out to the waiter? The least you feel like doing at that time is to distance his finger from it’s roots once and for all, but then seizures of  homicidal tendencies do not a civilization make.

 

 

So who | what is to blame for this kind of obnoxious behaviour? Upbringing, K-12 education, organisation culture, life’s rat race, the perennial mercenary quest??

 

 

That said, we can all make a start. Now. May I request you to do that? Thank you!

 

 

ENDS