Author: Suresh Dinakaran

 

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

 

“I will escalate this matter to my manager and we will get back to you within the next 24-48 hours“. How often have we heard this line emanating from multiple ‘customer service centres‘ around the world. The message is clear and simple. Either I am not in a position to decide or I don’t want to decide. Probably, the latter. Because the culture is stitched in a manner where not making decisions is the way to play safe. Shun responsibility. Maintain status quo. And it offers no weightage to your context, the gravity or the exigency of the situation. Fobbing off by keeping decisions at bay. And the audacity of calling them ‘customer service centres‘ blows the daylights out of me.

 

This malaise cuts across all levels of leadership and is probably at its worst at the C Suite level. The reason why we have the C Suite community is to take decisions. As that is the only way things move forward. Decide on things like entering a new market, investing in a new plant, hire additional talent, shut down some stores, more R&D on product development, offer the go ahead to an emerging technology etc etc. The core of their KRA is to ‘make decisions‘ where value gets created and NOT not make decisions.

 

If deferring decision making is your go to strategy, I am sorry, I beg to differ. A lot of us go through the motions of doing a job, go to work, follow instructions, attend some meetings, do some sales and then rinse and repeat it all over again, day after day. Decision making is deferred, infinitely procrastinated or ignored all together.

It would be useful to remember that as much as we are victims of our decision making, we are also victors from it. The coin has two sides. And it is in those decisions the arc of your career or changing the course of your life to much better happens.

 

 

Bureaucracy and not making decisions are birds of the same feather. But the progress, growth and betterment of humanocracy (a must read book of the same name by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini) is contingent on decisions made NOT deferred or not made at all.

 

Fear is a reaction, creativity is a response! And it applies both in the personal and professional context.

 

ENDS

 

 

 

 

Modesty Blaise is a British comic strip featuring a fictional character of the same name, created by author Peter O’Donnell and illustrator Jim Holdaway in 1963. But the rant below is far removed from that.

 

It’s a day and age when vanity and vanilla metrics are omnipresent. The biggest of them engage in shameless narcissism and self-promotion. Being heard, seen, spoken about, consumed, revered, shared and more is the order of the never ending day.

 

Why does self-promotion have a bad name? Why is it labeled an act of being shameless? Quixotic to say the least.

 

Do we all have million of dollars to spread the word on our new product, service or solution? Most certainly not. If we don’t tell the world about our work or art or creation, who will? And while we do that we are actually exhibiting courage to take the good with the bad, the rough with the smooth, being accepted or rejected. The risks and the upsides are both omnipresent. If you have build or created something and do nothing to promote it, the one word that will come to people’s mind to address you would be ‘weirdo‘.

 

Self-promotion is never to be a carte blanche to intrude, spam or take advantage of. The objective is to do it with grace,(most certainly)permission and respect. Please don’t consider someone else’s inbox to be your winbox.

Ideas are plenty but ideas without action are regrets. If you create something worthwhile and don’t tell the world about it, the potential users will not turn up. If you are working for a charity and don’t do what you have to, there won’t be any donors queuing up. If you are an author and don’t promote your book or blog or newsletter, the readers will stay away.

 

Your voice can trigger change, opinion and add more voice muscle. People like us do things like this. Your art will enable another person or communities’ art. Your blog can inspire others to start writing and finding their inner calling. Unless you want to ‘Die Empty‘(I wrote a blog on this some time ago and if you are keen you could access it at https://www.sureshdinakaran.com/blog/2022/04/10/die-empty/ ) and take your unwritten and unreleased book, music, poems, inventions, big ideas to the grave, show up and ship out. Wield the megaphone, go to the rooftop and tell the world about it with respect, permission and grace.

 

So, what we have to be actually shameful about is create something that can better and enrich other people’s lives but refrain from doing so. That will be selfish. That is when you need to feel guilty. Not otherwise.

 

Self-promotion comes with the caveat of rejection.So, when you are sticking your neck out, you are showing courage. To be vulnerable, to be unselfish. To put your ego on the back burner. Wear a new lens on self-promotion and see that as an act of kindness, grace, sharing..

 

The biggest of marketers, brands, organisations, mega celebrities do self-promotion all the time. Out of sight can also be out of mind. So, mind it!

 

ENDS

 

Regular readers of this blog might be left wondering whats with me in the New Year- my first post yesterday was on loneliness and today the rant is on vulnerability, which in an world that revers the Alpha human, will come across as certainly NOT cutting it. How remiss of me!

 

Before I get going on this rant, I am tempted to guide you to my earlier blog that had vulnerability in the main lead. You can read it here on this link https://www.sureshdinakaran.com/blog/2018/07/15/from-povpoint-of-view-to-pov-power-of-vulnerability/ 

 

In a fake believe world(well almost) airbrushed to perfection by Instagram and what have you, authenticity has no place on the social republic canvas. I am tempted to use the phrase that I used in my earlier blog on this subject – ‘to stand naked in your own truth’ – is pleading for retribution. 

 

 

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.”  – Madeleine L’Engle

 

Chasing Vanilla metrics would mean a perennial quest(pressure?) to build ‘connections?‘ There are no filters here for authenticity, meaning or depth. What if we were to walk in the direction opposite to where the herd is headed. Not be birds of the same feather. I’m not talking about more networking opportunities or surface-level relationships that encumber our online lives. Seek fewer connections but deeper, stronger, trusting & solid. With people who matter to you.

 

And the gravitas for such connections begin with you wanting the love and belonging. Believing and living your authentic selves. With all our failings, shortcomings and vulnerabilities. Wanting to be seen, really seen, just the way we are. Sharing the story of who you are with all heart. No filters. When we open our hearts, we get better.

 

Fewer but deeper connections. Where vulnerability is an expected, accepted and respect default.

 

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”
― Brene Brown

 

Game on?

 

ENDS

 

 

Mind you- you are not alone in your loneliness. If there is more than a hint of double entendre in that line, it is meant to be that way.

 

The natural tendency to look at loneliness has mostly been from the prism of negativity. Not surprising. And because that call is coming from deep within ‘ yours truly ‘, and open articulation about it is at a premium, the net result is that you feel even more isolated. Emotional inadequacy takes centre stage and the loop is endless.

 

Yes, loneliness is a drive to overcome a persistent feeling of separateness. This does not mean that we are doomed by it. It comes with the territory, it is part of the human condition. Pioneering psychoanalyst Melanie Klein described the pain of loneliness as “the result of a ubiquitous yearning for an unattainable perfect internal state.”

 

Aloneness, individuality and identity form an inseparable trifecta. So, being separate from the rest is good news in more ways than one. When loneliness meets onlyness, the potential is uniqueness.

 

Let’s look at another aspect of loneliness which probably goes unacknowledged. When you are spending most of the time with your own self, which can be painful surely, what you end up distilling is a path to insight. When you dive into the deepest ravines and unearth your imagination and experiences. As novelist Zora Neale Hurston puts it ” it is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams “.

 

Loneliness and creativity are partners in rhyme. Man’s search for meaning( if one were to borrow liberally the title of Viktor Frankl‘s seminal book of the same name) are all call outs from the valleys of loneliness. In aggregate, there are disparate groups of people who are building things based on their own perspective not despite loneliness but because of it.

 

Contrarian as it may sound, and as painful as it maybe, our feelings of separation are what provide the scope for holding us together.

 

So, the way out(or way in?) would be to see it in ourselves, see it on others, talk about it not as a failing but as a catalyst for change, for self-discovery. And in that lies the deepening of our ability to identify with that most human of feelings.

 

“Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up.” —Pearl Buck

 

ENDS

 

Intuition: the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.

 

The Britannica Dictionary meaning of intuition goes something like this- “a natural ability or power that makes it possible to know something without any proof or evidence : a feeling that guides a person to act a certain way without fully understanding why”.

 

In a world besieged by data and analytics, a compelling need for rationalisation, our default thinking and our incredible capacity to miss the word for the trees, we regrettably overlook the value that stems from this secret emissary of knowledge by investing copious amounts of our emotional and cerebral energies making intuition and its significant potential sub-optimal. Unfortunately.

 

Being prudent in hindsight is a given. It often gives us a clear sense of what was already there, somewhere, well before it penetrated our mind. Not much weightage is given to gut-instinct but it is time that we started throwing that weight around. For all the wonders of modern technology, there is no substitute for the gut instinct. The psychology of intuition is trusting your gut. “Trust your hunches. They’re usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.“

 

Javier Marias encapsulates this beautifully in his book Your Face Tomorrow– he writes ” Everything is there on view, in fact, everything is visible very early on in a relationship just as it is in all honest, straightforward stories, you just have to look to see it, one single moment encapsulates the germ of many years to come, of almost our whole history — one grave, pregnant moment — and if we want to we can see it and, in broad terms, read it, there are not that many possible variations, the signs rarely deceive if we know how to read their meanings, if you are prepared to do so..”

 

 

When people talk about having great intuition or being good decision-makers, it’s because they’ve worked at honing their gut feeling skills. Intuitions are personal, and no one else can understand the full extent of your gut feeling. You have to deal with it alone. Trusting your gut or intuition is an act of trusting yourself.

 

Ready?

 

ENDS

 

The zeitgeist is filled with comments, reviews, recommendation engines and collective bias. There is ample arsenal at everyone’s disposal to judge, critique, offer an opinion on anything and everything. Most of the world is gainfully employed doing this. So, the jury need not be out on this one.

 

Someone else’s opinion of you, your art or business is NONE of your business. Because a lot of the input coming in is irrational with utter disregard to the rational context it has to be perceived in. They are not emotionally connected but given the infinite freedom of expression inventory at their disposal, they find a way to say something. And in any case, humans are woefully slack at explaining our irrational feelings in the context of rational reasons. So, we make things up. Fill the void. Without realising that it ends up being void and baseless.

 

Your daughter applying for University or a close one getting admitted to a hospital. Yes, a second opinion might matter. Generally though, in public domains, the comments or recommendations may not align with relevance and reality.

 

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance- Plato. Be careful how you operate on the altar of ‘ collective bias ‘.

 

ENDS

 

 

 

If you are curious, why a blog post on curiosity just a few weeks after I had written about enrolling into the university of curiosity( you can read it here if you are interested https://www.sureshdinakaran.com/blog/2023/11/11/have-you-enrolled-into-the-university-of-curiosity/), it is because of my quest to build a curious mind and encourage a few others to do the same.

 

The old saying goes ” curiosity killed the cat “, which is more a caution to being too nosy or inquisitive, but in reality, asking questions and seeking knowledge is a valuable way to learn and grow. Our default thinking revolves around assumptions, biases and certainty and the lens with which we see things(both old and new) is conditioned by that. By living a curiosity-inspired life, including practicing things like asking great questions and seeking out diverse perspectives, you are showing others how we can all begin to live and in turn how we can begin to change how we approach our relationships, the way we help children learn, the way we help young people cope and grow.

 

That said, there are two sides to the curiosity coin. Curiosity can impede you as well just as much it can inspire. Because curiosity can send you in multiple directions( being macro-curious) and fracture your attention and focus, both of which are the bedrocks of progress and achievement. So, curiosity without focus is a sub optimal calling. Which could be the reason why you might start a few projects and complete not very many. You drift from one thing to the other, and because they might be unrelated, you do not accumulate any continuity or advantage on the way.

 

Micro curiosity helps move the needle forward on the task at hand. Exploring areas that are heterogenous to your own, finding hacks to solve a problem that you are encountering, asking questions as to how things work etc but all of that while being diverse confluence back to finishing your task or project on hand.

 

How is your curiosity being directed? Is it rocket fuel or a speed breaker? Is it macro or micro? Get the cue..

 

ENDS

 

Addiction: a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects and typically causing well-defined symptoms (such as anxiety, irritability, tremors, or nausea) upon withdrawal or abstinence : the state of being.

 

You can add FOMO to the mix of symptoms in the above definition of addiction. And get away with it without question.

 

A simple Q&A: Who is responsible for social media addiction: Both me and you!  The very purpose of social media marketing is to create addiction. As we know, here’s the journey. Begin with creating content so insanely relevant(with the aid of a recommendation engine) that people spend a lot of time engaging with it on an app or website or a social media platform. Based on the consumption habits that you capture as precious data as they soak in and devour the content, create ads that are bespoke tailored and personalised for the user through targeted advertising. In other words, create social media addiction … at all costs. Create addiction. That’s social media marketing success.

 

All that is great because it is working for marketers, brands, organisations( predominantly the MAANG brigade viz– Meta | Alphabet | Apple | Netflix | Google – the flip side to it is that it seems like a ‘Khoon Bari Maang‘ (for those who follow and understand Hindi). The consternation of this consume at all costs phobia comes with a serious dent in mental health. Unsurprisingly, insights from multiple surveys suggest that design strategies by tech companies that encourage prolonged use of social media are working. And how! Platforms like AirbNB design for trust and a lot of social media platforms design for addiction.

 

Shouldn’t we be concerned? Yes, we damn well be. Suicide rates for teens and young adults are rising. Although some suspect a link between social media use and suicide, there is currently not enough evidence to definitively confirm it as a proven factor. Social media can increase exposure to negative messaging, however, that may promote self-harm.

 

Anxiety can make it hard for adolescents to go to school or participate in activities. According to a recent Pew survey, parents worry about anxiety or depression (28%) and lower self-esteem (27%). They also worry that social media leads their teen to feel pressured to act in a certain way (32%) or could be bullied (29%). 38% of teens say they can feel overwhelmed with the drama on social media.

 

There is a complex relationship between social comparison on social media and eating disorders, which are both medical and mental health conditions. Platforms such as Instagram can be saturated with hyper-idealized and sometimes highly edited images. The perfect life is just an air brush away is the myth. The reality is cruelly different.

 

In November 2021, Lush(the cosmetics brand) decided to remove most of its social media accounts(Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat & Facebook) across 48 countries because of ignored harms to users. Some research has found an association between the frequency of comparing one’s own physical appearance to others on social media and body dissatisfaction. One study suggested that teenagers’ widespread use of social media could put them at risk of eating disorders, particularly if they’re already vulnerable to body dysmorphia.

 

So, what is the higher goal here for brands and marketers. Can we begin with “Do No Harm” as an ethos and practice? Me, as an individual, maybe causing no harm in my personal attempt at influencing my readers | users, but when the entire collective of marketers and brand guardians are creating and encouraging content consumption at all times, it becomes a serious problem indeed.

 

Sometime back, the ex-CMO of Coca Cola Sergio Zyman had quoted “the goal of marketing was to sell more stuff, to more people, more often, for more money.” So, when every social media marketer is creating addiction and profiting from it, the cumulative effort is the root of the global problem. In fact, marketers are the entire problem because the purpose of creating addiction is to sell more stuff to more people, more often, for more money.

 

In summarising, social media marketing is directly contributing to social media addiction. The domino effect of it is the role of the catalyst its playing in the rampant mental health crisis. Perhaps I am playing my part(if one can call it that) of contributing to the crisis. I would be candid and confess that I do not have a solution for this. But, rather than look the other way, we all can start a conversation that attempts to find one.

 

Some relevant reading on social media and healthy habits can be found on these links below:-

 

https://www.brandknewmag.com/these14principles/

https://www.brandknewmag.com/social-media-is-ruining-our-minds-it-also-might-save-them/

How Evolutionary Biology Explains Smartphone Addiction

Ready?

 

ENDS