Author name: Shubranshu Singh

A world where questions count

Leave a Comment / Forbes India /

In the 1930s, the concept of brainstorming was proposed to bring creativity to problem-solving. In years since, it brainstorming has become hostile towards creativity. For brainstorming to be successful, asking questions and encouraging ideas will have to take the front seat One of us cannot be as smart as all of us. This is an axiomatic truth. But ‘corporate man’ is a hierarchical animal. Therefore, higher authority is assumed to have the necessary answers. Crucially, it’s presumed that those in charge also have the right questions. Developing an intensive approach to framing questions and finding answers requires onboarding as many folks as possible. It can make the difference between failing, surviving or thriving. *** [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Since Alex Osborn of the advertising agency Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn came up with the idea of ‘brainstorming’ in the late 1930s, it has been a known process by which to wed creativity to problem-solving. Alex Osborn divided the mind into two parts—the judicial mind and the creative mind. A mind that imagines, creates, celebrates and another mind that prioritises, evaluates, judges and looks for ratification via evidence. Brainstorming was a method to encourage plentiful ideation while preventing premature judgement. Brainstorming was feted in the 1950s as a means to harness collective intelligence and multiply creative solutions. But, as method began to dominate the spirit, brainstorming became hostile to the creative process. Because it leads to the proliferation of ideas exclusive of merit. Nevertheless, brainstorming has genuine advantages at certain stages of problem-solving. For one thing, it’s an exercise that shows us that systemic rigidity, officiousness, and bureaucracies find it hard to free themselves of rational bindings.6 Brainstorming is about rapidly building up a flood of ideas. It must be in a short period, overseen by a timekeeper, where all ideas are written immediately where everybody can see them. Most important of all—no shooting down of ideas. No idea, no matter how preposterous, expensive, irresponsible, or even stupid it may seem, is rejected at the time it’s expressed. All ideas are put on the board for later consideration. Do one for questions. Do another for answers. *** John Maurice Clark said, ‘Knowledge is the only instrument of production not subject to diminishing returns’. But knowledge is not constant. It increases at a spectacular rate. Alvin Toffler published his most famous work—‘Future Shock’—in 1970 where he explained the phenomenon: “In the 500 years since Gutenberg invented printing some thirty million books have been printed; and an equal number has been published in the last five years. The quantity of information doubles every eight years. “ One cynic has suggested that as we find out more and more, about less and less, the point will soon come when we’ll know everything about nothing. The fact is that the mind thinks with ideas, not information. Therefore acquiring knowledge is useless unless one learns how to use it. A dictionary may contain all the words, but no one can tell a poet which to choose or what to write. *** Brainstorming is not spontaneous. It is a method and it needs disciplined learning. Brainstorming for questions is especially useful. If the group can ask the questions together, they will eventually find the answers together. When a group takes the questions as a given, it is unable to fix cognitive biases or venture into uncharted territory. Staying mindfully in a questioning mode doesn’t come naturally to people. They are conditioned from an early age to keep the answers coming. In Raju Hirani’s film, ‘3 idiots’, when Aamir Khan is forced to take a class, he concocts some weird names for what he claims are scientific processes and the students race against the clock to look for the answers in an ‘open book exam’. Just like that, we are conditioned to seek answers and not to question the questions. Every organisation needs a stronger culture of collective problem solving and truth-seeking—especially the successful ones. Saying that ‘success is the one thing above all else,’ convinces people to stop looking for more questions and answers. They drink the kool-aid and perpetuate the success formula. Powerful group dynamics of following the dominant voice or fears about how one’s ideas will be judged hinder original thinking and stifle the voices of introverted members. If you want to institutionalise and nurture brainstorming, prevent the vicious undercurrents of dominance by creating a safe space for all to offer uniquely different perspectives. One should always seek different questions from the lapsers, the rejects, the cynics, and the critics. They have their worldviews and come up with surprising, compelling questions as they have no investment in the status quo. In brainstorming, there can be no hierarchy. Everyone’s observations, personal stories, experiences, and judgements count. Seniors may not impose though they may do so defensively, as a value add or even as a prideful display of knowledge. To stop this is crucial but difficult. Stigmergy in human groups is driven by ideas. The disruptive questions are the ones that step outside category conventions. If questions can reframe the business challenge, it is a huge outcome. The questioning comes naturally to a child but is snuffed out by rote learning, competitive commitment to a ‘formula for success’ or adopting shortcuts because of external pressures. In social groups, dominant individuals inevitably emerge. Left unchecked, they find ways to build and perpetuate their power. One common way to do this is to silence and ridicule questioners. The smart, aligned, confident ones pose to have all the answers, never any difficult questions. Asking questions is made to seem like evidence of low IQ or worse, low EQ. Learning the convenient answers is committing yourself to mediocrity. In life, you’re going to be a success based on how good your questions are. We are in a world of frantic change, exploding knowledge, and interconnectedness. This is a world beset with existential issues like climate change, inequality, sustainability, and conflict. This is a world where questions count. Let’s brainstorm. https://www.forbesindia.com/blog/enterprise/a-world-where-questions-count/

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Ideas, Ideals And Identities: Role Of Creativity In A World Of Always On Management

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In business, the highest form of creativity is imagining the need for a product or a service and how a profit is to be made by supplying it. If that idea is wrong, then however good the subsequent creative ideas, the business will fail. Brilliant ideas are like truffles. They are rare, hard to find and only come into being under special conditions. The very word “manager” is not an inspiring descriptor for anyone creative. Neither a thinker nor a doer, it is just ‘a manager‘. Status Quoist. Administrator. Repeater. Of course, words can outgrow their origins. But when nomenclature serves as insurance, a refuge or even a source of mystique to justify a deficit of creative leadership, we should worry. Definitionally, “management” is not about creativeness. In fact, a creative resource has been stereotyped conveniently and kept away from the high table of management. Positioned as someone socially awkward, unkempt, clever but irresponsible; volatile, temperamental, difficult to understand, regiment or organize and yet in some way necessary, even indispensable. Basically, categorised as an oddball eccentric. The explosion of value in the Silicon Valley led to the arrival and triumph of the geek as the boss. A geek is a technically creative person. But his fate has been different from his poetic, creative cousin within creative agencies or housed within corporations as paid ‘content creators’. Leadership, especially at the highest levels, is becoming more and more concerned with creative ideas in present times. A need for ideas emerges from the need to respond to ever increasing change – in wealth, technology, demand patterns, demographics, habits, tastes, attitudes, raw material production – and other such considerations. Response to change can be of only two kinds – derivative or creative. You can imitate other people, or you can change in an original, new way. The reason commanders sign their names into history’s records is that they lead. The followers are only glorified en masse A proactive, creative response to change is not a side show in the business of leadership. It is the main act. A great leader cannot be someone who left things exactly as he found them. A leader may change the map of the world, transform transportation or the capital structure of a corporation; but changing things is central to leadership and changing them before anyone else is creativeness. In ‘The Act of Creation’, Arthur Koestler explained creativeness as the result of bisociation, of putting together two unconnected facts or ideas to form a single new idea. Newton saw an apple fall in an orchard and hit on gravitational theory and the attraction of masses. Gutenberg saw grapes being pressed at a winery and divined the printing press as a way for the mass reproduction of text. All these are spectacular examples of creativeness, but the larger business of managerial creativeness is small but always on. Though individually small, they aggregate into something mammoth. Those corporate citizens who flaunt their ‘big moment creativeness’ to conceal their quotidian laziness ought to be challenged. In business, the highest form of creativity is imagining the need for a product or a service and how a profit is to be made by supplying it. If that idea is wrong, then however good the subsequent creative ideas, the business will fail. Brilliant ideas are like truffles. They are rare, hard to find and only come into being under special conditions. Managers also exercise creativeness when deciding between proposed alternatives. The creative manager thinks creatively about the nature of the problem before getting to solutions. Interrogating the brief is tougher than critiquing creative output. If the questions are , in fact, mutant hopes, the answers are readily malleable to the degree they satisfy the managerial ego. Someone once asked the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, “which is more important, ideas or things?” Whitehead promptly replied, “Ideas about things”. Ideas are new ways of thinking. “Resistance to new ideas increases as to the square of their importance”, cautioned Bertrand Russell. Ideas can be categorised by weight of consequence. A notion, a brainwave, a whim – may be something quirky but of small consequence and little stamina. Real ideas are resilient and flexible. Ideas that gain momentum become concepts. The reason resilient ideas get categorised as memes is because they are spread person to person. There is a degree of immutability to great ideas and at the same time there is an inherent adaptiveness as well. That’s why democracy, free trade, secularism, and a hundred other ideas that enhanced civilisation were independently adopted by humanity in different cultures and at different times. Imagine it as a singular solid spherical shape, it is impossible to knock over. A tenet of traditional Chinese painting is that with a concept, the brush can spare itself the work. Finally, managerial method must not suppress inspiration. Ideas are the result of inspiration. The word itself means a breath of divinity. We can see and feel it as ‘a moment of insight’, ‘an act of intuition’ or the symbolic ‘bolt from the blue’. Archimedes leapt out of his bath shouting ‘Eureka’. James Watt was struck with the idea of the steam engine while watching his kettle; Leo Szilard understood the sudden illumination of a neutron chain reaction while waiting at traffic lights in Southampton Row. How such connections spring to mind are guesswork but they seem to favour those who have an unrestrained curiosity and compulsive attraction to problems. As Nietzsche put it: ‘A thought comes when it wills, not when I will it.’ The workings of any machine needs a mechanical apparatus powered by the impetus of fuel being consumed. Ideation is similarly a phenomenon where intuition, perspective and problem become an admixture that is ignited to result in ideas and concepts. In an article in the Critique magazine, Marty Neumeier concept development to a formula: ‘problem + fresh perspective x intuition = concept’ Whether mathematically, sociologically or culturally, the idea of creative ideation is an ideal we should all idolize. http://www.businessworld.in/article/Ideas-Ideals-And-Identities-Role-Of-Creativity-In-A-World-Of-Always-On-Management/08-11-2021-411154/   [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget]

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What’s in a name?

Leave a Comment / AFAQS /

Now Facebook is Meta but the story goes on. Facebook is now Meta. There are many hotly debated underlying reasons ascribed to this move. I daresay any consumer asked for such a change. Nonetheless, it gives us an occasion to revisit the entirety of the reason for any brand to be. It is good to remind ourselves of a brand being a sum of parts. A brand is a “reputation of reputations”. It is a social construct. Branding is indisputably the most important aspect of business. No two brands are the same. No brand is the same at two different points in time. It is, by definition, a dynamic entity. David Aaker’s famed brand identity system deals with the brand as a product, an organisation, a person and a symbol. In this light, name, visual imagery, logo is subordinate to the brand’s larger purpose and self-expressive benefits. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] One can be deluded to think focus boosts a brand’s value. Evian, Tabasco, Rolex, Kleenex, Wrigley’s, Colgate, Moët & Chandon, Hertz or Guinness are, each, one product one brand. But Yamaha, Caterpillar and Virgin are broad brands that successfully straddle different categories.   There are no universal laws of brand success. Each must follow its own individual path with confidence. It is precisely this lack of universal conformity that turns branding and the business it generates, into something fascinating.   Brand value follows a power law distribution. Strong brands become stronger building on past success. Success breeds success. Albert Laszlo Barabasi, the network scientist sought to explain how websites like Google acquire millions of links while billions of other sites with compelling content and services struggle to gain any visibility at all. ‘Preferential attachment’, a concept that emerged out of that research, tells us that the rich get richer, celebrity builds celebrity, and nothing succeeds like success.   The sociologist Robert Merton called it the Matthew effect, after a passage from the Gospel according to Matthew “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.” Category dominant brands always get more than the fair share of growth.   Brand building is deeply inspired by religious templates. And in it, symbolism, pontification, common belief, ritualism and of course nomenclature plays a key role. Its ultimately about ‘in groups’ and ‘out groups’.   A brand inspires faith, love, camaraderie. It is a well-earned prize to inspire life-long devotion and belief in the brand’s authenticity. Successful brands want to be everywhere, and many have already achieved this aim. The Nike swoosh, the golden arches of McDonald’s and the Starbucks logo are now more recognized around the globe than any other element of universality   Purpose linked social creeds are being expounded better by brands than anyone else. Think Body Shop, Patagonia, Benetton – all having stirred issues of import. Tata Tea’s ‘Jaago Re’ was beyond evolutionary in terms of a social call to action. Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ or Surf’s ‘Dirt is Good’, forced a new perspective on the way we are and act.   It is no longer enough for brands to be sold in a shop; Consumers want to live within the brand, physically. Disney was a pioneer with its parks. Experience that acts on all the senses is a high mark of brand encounter. Entering a luxe mall is like visit to a gothic cathedral – awe inspiring yet with a feeling of reverence.   Celebrities such as Cristiano Ronaldo, P Diddy, Virat Kohli, Djokovic not only endorse brands, but are brands themselves with a market value most companies can only dream of.   Brands centre around the pursuit of purity. Sometimes, as in the case of Evian or Château Mouton Rothschild , it is all about the purity of the product. Don’t underestimate the purity of the message. Walk the talk just as much as you talk the walk.   And that brings us to Trust.   It’s a wonderful word high up in human esteem alongside ‘love’ and ‘hope’ and ‘happiness’. It is the single most important thing when it comes to brand success.   A lot has changed in the world of business and consumerism. But trust is more precious as its scarce. Brands that are iconic inspire trust. Unlike love and hope, trust is a rational emotion. It is based on evidence. It develops layer by layer. Trust begets trust. If a company lets you down, you don’t trust them anymore. If they are misleading, greedy, malicious, criminal, manipulative they fall off the high cliff. In the winner takes all world, scandal hits a brand harder now than ever before.   The internet continues to give the right kind of brands ever-deeper reach. Not to mention the internet power brands themselves – Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, Google. These are all in the top 10 line up of the world’s most precious brands in terms of valuation. However, internet brands in particular need to pay attention to the trust issue,   My message to Facebook is that if you are struggling in the whirlpools of broken trust you cling to rocks not driftwood. A brand is an identity. The process of branding is therefore the process of creating and managing that identity.   Now Facebook is Meta but the story goes on.   https://www.afaqs.com/news/guest-article/whats-in-a-name

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A privacy-led tsunami of change that CMOs need to survive

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The changes to digital advertising can only be survived by a willingness to change, unlearn and relearn. Fundamental changes are on in the world of digital marketing due to regulatory as well as customer expectation-driven changes in privacy in all its facets. These new privacy regulations, the rise of ad blockers and the decrease in the availability of data used for measurement and targeting taken together will fundamentally alter standard operating procedures (SoPs) in digital advertising. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Major transitions in advertising modality in every era have led to big opportunities for advertisers, provided they adapt successfully. For those who fail to do so, it is a highway to oblivion. The necessary action streams are in three parts: Creating a durable infrastructure; finessing the measurement strategy; automation and broadening of advertising deployment. One has to concede that third-party cookies and non-consented device IDs are going to see their sunset. This would mean advertisers need to begin rebuilding their advertising infrastructure so they can perform without these tools in the coming near future. One way to create a more durable data infrastructure is by investing in building better, longer-lasting relationships with customers, or eventually spending much more to target and capture intenders on third party websites and social media platforms. The era of a focus on first party data capture and owned data collection is upon us. Next, it would be wise to invest in customer engagement platforms which enable us to communicate with customers without cookies across multiple channels (e.g. email, SMS, push notifications, chat, social CRM). These platforms can help increase conversion rates and customer lifetime value (CLV), boosting the profitability of paid marketing investment. Privacy issues should also be a catalyst to improve the overall customer data infrastructure right now. It is best to partner with a cloud provider to build a data lake, create unique customer identifiers across products, channels, and customer service touchpoints, and begin building a more robust customer insights platform. Learnings from leading retail players indicate that customers who shop both online and in store are 10X more valuable than customers who shop online exclusively, and one can only understand this with a full view of customer interactions. This puts direct-to-customer players with authentic first-party customer data at a distinct advantage as they move omni-channel. It is imperative to invest in technologies that will help to improve conversion tracking without third-party cookies. Loss of measurement data such as 24-hour conversion windows, loss of view-through conversion data on Safari, and the loss of some user-level conversions in iOS apps is already making it harder to precisely measure the business impact of paid advertising. This data loss is likely to accelerate further. Hence, actionability as well as return will be impacted by the above-mentioned changes. So, what can be done? It is important to sharpen the attribution model by leveraging machine learning (ML) and conversion modelling. This approach will help us have more complete data for attribution, in a privacy-safe way, even as actual conversion data erodes. ML is geared to give us a better understanding of conversion paths across platforms and devices, in a privacy-friendly way. Next, it is wise to complement the attribution model with a Media Mix Model, modernized for the digital age. Constant experimentation that complements measurement will be the future of advertising impact assessment. Lastly, it is good to reconcile to the fact that impact measurement of paid advertising will become less robust. Decision making under ambiguity will be a necessary attitude. There is a massive tsunami of privacy related changes which can be only survived by a willingness to change, unlearn and relearn. Like it or not, it is going to be a massive deluge and one does not have the option of wetting one’s toes when that happens.   https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/features/storyboard-a-privacy-led-tsunami-of-change-that-cmos-need-to-survive-7634781.html

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Simplicity is important to win the market

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A product or service can be as complex as a Swiss watch, but it needs to be elegant and simple enough like the dial for easy use by the customer. Brands need to focus on cleaning the clutter to convert intenders into buyers Mastering complication is the highest test of marketing ability. Complex need not mean complicated. Simplicity wins. The reason why Google, Apple or Netflix have been so successful is reflected in their deliberate simplicity. A brand must be obliged to cut the clutter. Technical or quality differences are rare to find in our hypercompetitive world. What gives a superior differentiation is customer experience. Simpler is better. Like a Swiss timepiece, the complication sits below the dial face. Above it, there is only elegance whereas below it lies no nonsense, flawless, timekeeping. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” This is a guiding thought that all product managers, developers, innovators and above all marketers should keep in mind. Additions that complicate, follow the law of marginal futility! Feature creep is the commonest weed of digital marketing. In 2019, I led the program management for the launch of the new Royal Enfield website. The most important criterion was to weld together multiple country sites, features and utilities. The underlying complexity was transformed in the presentation layer. The user interface is simple, elegant and effective. Based on this, a Royal Enfield App and Make it Your’s – a personalisation configurator were subsequently launched with success and rapid adoption. As I implemented GA 360 across all assets and as I saw the interactions with a social media following that grew from 4 million to nearly 8 million between 2018 and 2020, I saw in real data terms that simple, actionable outcomes mattered to consumers. Merely ramping up messaging doesn’t help. Overloading with information at each interaction positively distracts and deters. One has to consciously be wedded to minimalism, think visually and always look to cut steps. As a part of leading a digital transformation, I have always looked for what seems to matter to consumers. What makes intenders into buyers once they are aware? I have evaluated multiple welding points for customer engagement – perception, price, consideration, promotion, buzz and many more. When it comes to the growing legions of digital intenders, what matters seems to be ‘simplicity’. The ease with which your brand can be searched, understood, compared, booked and purchased makes you win. To understand customers’ ease, marketers have to think in terms of customer journeys. Again, it’s much spoken of but seldom done right. When defining a customer journey, many companies focus on narrow episodes of a customer’s experience—the onboarding or payment process for instance, rather than on a broader concern or need. This focus on transactional touchpoints reinforces siloed ways of working. For customers, all of these touchpoints are parts of the same journey. Customer journey programs work only when they are cross-functional and front to back in scope. Discrete incremental improvements won’t cut it. Companies should take their cue from digital natives and reorganize change initiatives around the customer journey. Customer-journey-at-scale transformation, draws on the principles of human-centric design, agile ways of working, and the latest digital and other cutting-edge capabilities, while employing best practices in change management. The marketer’s job is not to own mindspace alone but to mould that into a decision by offering trustworthy information that makes the intender navigate the purchase ecosystem easier, faster and more confidently. One other common failure that breeds complexity is the inability to recognize typologies and cohorts. When data is abundant, it also leads to confusion. That’s why A/B testing and other optimisation experiments must focus on search paths, comparison journeys and purchase modalities. The most efficient way is for the brand to ensure, once logged in, the consumer has to encounter a minimum number of information sources and move smoothly to purchase. This is done via addressing use case types. Personalisation doesn’t mean breeding infinite complexity. The way to do this is to listen well and be data obsessed. Then one must actively triangulate. Social media activity, content effectiveness, clickstream performance analysis married to qualitative pick up. The derived actions must again be put in the iterative loop. It is about the endless iterations to a never reached perfection. Scotch makers have collaborated to marry the whiskey flavours to the map of Scotland. Any Karate student can be judged for ability by the belt she wears. De Beers categorised all diamonds via the 4Cs – Cut , Colour, Clarity, Carat. Apple dominated the MP3 market because iPods and iTunes were easy to use. A McDonalds has standardised menu, delivery, configuration and (PPP) price across the world. Finally, beyond comprehension, simplicity breeds trust. To repeat, customer experience is the proving ground for loyalty. Therefore look at everything with customer eyes. The key to the kingdom is Simplicity. Simplify to solve problems, save customers’ effort and time and earn their trust. It’s truly that simple! https://www.forbesindia.com/blog/marketing-and-branding/simplicity-is-important-to-win-the-market/      

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Big Data, Big Chasm

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Digital transformation creates new possibilities for an organization be it innovations in products and services, better ways of working, and enabling nimble organizational models. But, often, a digital transformation fails because organizations focus solely on technology and are inattentive to data quality, people and processes. “On Exactitude in Science” or “Del rigor en la ciencia” is a one-paragraph short story written in 1946 by Jorge Luis Borges, about map–territory relation. It imagines an empire where the science of cartography becomes so exact that only a map on the same scale as the empire itself will suffice. But, then it’s not a map. It is the world just as it is!! Same is true of data and brand building. Data should evidence patterns that give insight. Else, data is just everything about the world as it is and that is of little use! [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Data has been heralded as the ‘new oil’, but what good is oil be if nobody knows where to find it, extract it, refine it, store it and use it? In my opinion data is more like electricity. It is not finite, lying underground and waiting to be discovered. It has to be created, tapped, transmitted, utilised and handled carefully. Not knowing about your data or its location can cause compliance vulnerabilities and security risks. Since the GDPR legislation came into play, this has been a constant red flag. Its severity goes up for sensitive data such as financial or health records. Data is undeniably the most valuable resource for an organisation today. As a key business decision driver across industries, understanding data, and data analytics, in particular, is often crucial to success. Modern businesses are adopting technology to organise and comprehend the huge amounts of information they collect. But when the data with which big decisions are being made is ‘bad’, or spurious what can that mean for data-driven businesses? From evidence across industries, it is quite clear that customer experience ambitions are being challenged by this phenomenon. The three most common factors preventing businesses from using data to their advantage are data inaccuracy, lack of direct control needed to impact strategic objectives and information overload A lack of trust in data derived insights isn’t necessarily a result of the data itself, but how it is being managed and collected. Historically, businesses have been slow to tackle data quality issues. Inertia makes them endure pains and fix issues sporadically and reactively. Data fragmentation is a common occurrence where legacy structures impose on data collection, storage, pooling, analysis and utilisation. Data is compartmentalised, scattered or located in pieces or multiple copies all over an organisation’s IT system, leading to an incomplete single view of the data, its components, and an inability to extract real value from it. The vast majority of data sets are typically located on secondary storage, used for backups, archives, object stores, file shares, test and development, and analytics However, when fragmented – as is often the case – it can be extremely difficult to locate, manage or put to any use. I have led more than one digital transformation project and in each case the underlying data foundation was the most critical concern. The entire superstructure rests on that foundation. Any customer journey involves many moving parts that the company must connect and orchestrate, including the behind-the-scenes middle and back offices and various support functions that have no direct contact with customers, such as marketing, product, operations, HR, finance, legal, risk, and compliance. For realising the power of data based transformation, customer journeys have to be treated collectively as one comprehensive project rather than as multiple projects. The only way that can happen is if the data flow and single view of customer allows for it. Data pooling, de-duplication and harmonisation is the biggest effort in such a program. As a first step, a company needs to develop a list of relevant journeys, evaluating the business benefits of each and tying the expected outcomes to the company’s overall strategy and purpose. These journeys then become the primary basis for organizing the required data and structuring the teams. For example, a bank should have a journey – “Helping a customer buy a home” rather than separate steps of filing a loan application, submission, documentation, validation, contract etc. Many business leaders view their secondary data as expensive to store, of poor utility and a growing compliance risk. But a lack of control around data ownership will impact strategic ambitions, particularly around customer experience, agility, growth and competitiveness. It seems obvious that businesses that can’t get in front of mass data fragmentation, and tackle such data quality issues, face serious disadvantages that may jeopardise success for years to come. The inability to manage and harness insights is a big competitive disadvantage when it comes to customer satisfaction and development of products and services. Secondly, the inability to know your multiple data sets and its location can cause compliance vulnerabilities and security risks. The problem of poor data and fragmentation is not only an IT concern: it’s a business one. If IT is expected to manage all the organisation’s secondary data and apps across all locations, but neither standard operating procedures nor technology is in place to accomplish that goal, IT leaders will understandably be worried about a wide array of major problems occurring in several different areas. While technology plays a key role in data management and the improvement of data quality, changes in working processes, organization of cross functional teams, reward criteria and employee behaviour are critical too. There is clearly a need for a Chief Data Officer to reinforce both data compliance and security. The solution, of course, would have to encompass a better way of storing, managing, protecting and extracting value from the wide-ranging pools of secondary data. Breaking down business silos, preventing redundancies and using technology to help give real time access to data. These are cultural and business process issues. The world of business is on two sides of a

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‘Direct To Consumer’: What does it take to succeed on the D2C bandwagon?

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Once the D2C model soared, competitors and funding rushed in. But it’s not as easy as just building a product, web page and logo   Over the past thirty years a new class of ‘brand as dot com’ businesses emerged, starting first in America. The first dot com boom lasted through the 1990s and went bust before the start of the new millennium. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Then, with the inexorable rise of internet access and social media, an entirely new breed of brand-led businesses such as Warby Parker, Everlane, Dollar Shave Club, Casper and The Honest Company emerged as pioneers in what became known as a ‘Direct-To-Consumer’ (D2C) model. This model had a standard mix comprising of a borrowed supply chain, web-only retail, direct distribution and social media marketing. Abundant venture capital fuelled ambitious projects and turned them into real businesses. Though they were found in very different sectors and verticals, they shared a design philosophy, digital-first approach and a belief in differentiation aimed at disruption. It seemed like a derby of unicorns. Every idea raced to sky rocketing valuations. Expectedly, once the D2C model soared, competitors rushed in by the dozens. Financers were in a funding frenzy, salivating at the early success of a few standout brands. But digital media was mostly place where advertising money flew. The internet audience aggregation exercise got dominated by the likes of Facebook-Instagram and the price of social media advertisements made customer rallying both expensive and difficult. Unexpectedly or not, there did come a performance plateau. In many cases, it meant a decline in valuation if not revenues. A change is clearly happening all over again. Now, in theory, all business are ‘Direct-To-Consumer’ either wholly, substantially or partially. Folks see the digitally native brands that have scaled significantly in the past few years and think they understand what it takes—a commodity product touched by consumer relevance, perceptible benefits, some influencer marketing, always on social promotion and that’s it, job done! Not really. The factors that truly matter are: product differentiation, branding, a scaled distribution strategy and a defining, underpinning customer insight that endures. As William Gibson put it: “The future has arrived —it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” In India, we see the rise of numerous D2C businesses some flying on hope and founded on delusion. A few have a credible basis and will scale up to create new industries. There are others who are challenging the entrenched but inefficient legacy incumbents within existing verticals. No matter how they are positioned, all D2C brands must navigate the transition from being digital, vertically intensive natives to mass, omni-channel players. They all face a difficult business arithmetic. This is so because competition is gladly catering to demand from smaller chunks of any market. Suddenly, niche market propositions are also being funded. Never ones to throw in the towel, established consumer mega-brands have also caught up, launching their own D2C lines. Earlier liberal investors have now turned tight fisted, given a report card of poor performance data. The big correction is that there is consensus on giving primacy to unit level economics. It is no longer about riding a typhoon of expectations or a hurricane of optimism. It is about the viability and result metrics. Consumers have moved faster than businesses. It has never been easier to reach consumers than now but never been harder to get their attention. It has never been cheaper to start a business, although it’s never been harder to scale up a business. What passed as disruption five years ago, will barely suffice as hygiene today. Earlier ‘being D2C’ was a wow factor. Today, consumers ask what is it that you do that’s different and why should you be believed? It will now have to be ‘Beyond D2C’. There are a few clear lines of action all players must undertake: ● Firstly, reliance on distribution via the internet has proven to be insufficient when it comes to any next ambition of scale. For greater access, the route is to become omni-channel. It may take the form of company-owned brand stores, placement in other retail networks, listings on Amazon or all of these. The important part is scaling up, preserving intimacy with the community and owning the storytelling. ● Secondly, a D2C brand faces a paradox. Without an intimate one-to-one customer relationship it is not ‘DTC’ but without massively scaling up the community, it can’t be viable. This underlines the importance of first party data capturing. When they are gratified and become highly involved, customers engage in a two-way relationship beyond mere transactions. It is vital to co-create new products and services since that establishes a relationship that stays undiluted by the scaling up of the community. ● Thirdly, focus on profitability through integration. To own nodes of value delivery on scale, it is now evidenced, is effectively more profitable than to rent. The margin boost from elimination of retail intermediaries is often eroded by acquisition costs and promotions. Backward and forward linkages are the right ways to increase margin whilst scaling up. ● Finally, prepare for the next tech disruption- Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, distributed supply chains, very novel marketing strategies, and brand systems optimized beyond mobile web may again cause disruption and the innovators of today may seem out of place and out of date. For D2C to be sustainable as a model, it has to earn its leadership. India has more than 600 D2C brands, and a report by Avendus Capital estimates that the addressable market size for this industry will be $100 billion by 2025. Indian brands like Boat have really broken through the clutter and are already profitable. Others like Mamaearth and Licious are growing exponentially and look set to record profits soon. More such brands are catering to a burgeoning class of an estimated 190 million online shoppers in India. But, even the successful brands are gradually pivoting to an ‘online-led’ but ‘offline-supported’ model. This has already happened in the case of global brands as Bonobos, Allbirds, Harry’s etc. Contrary to what a few people would have you believe, a brand is not just a landing page and

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India Needs Mega Corporations

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The past two decades have been good for ‘big’ businesses. While the size of the private sector as a percentage of OECD economies has remained relatively steady since the mid-1990s, the share of companies with more than $1bn in annual revenue has grown by 60 % since 1995. While companies on average contribute to 72% of GDP, they underpin 85 percent of technology investment and 85 percent of labor productivity growth since 1995, a larger proportion than their GDP contribution. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Big companies have become bigger across the world. A new McKinsey Global Institute white paper divides corporations into eight archetypes: discoverers (for example, biotech firms, which push scientific frontiers), technologists (including the platforms that build the digital economy), experts (such as professional services, hospitals and universities), deliverers (which distribute and sell products), makers (mainly manufacturers), builders (utility, telecom and transport companies), fuellers (fuel marketers) and financiers (banks and insurers). [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Large companies, particularly in the US and China, have been the biggest economic winners of the past quarter of a century. This was due to globalization, source and flow of investments and the rise of the platform giants in technology. With every passing decade, there are more and more companies globally that command market valuations of more than $100 Billion. In 2000, 2010 and 2020 there were 43, 51 and 106 corporations that met the benchmark. However, this value concentration is not equitably distributed in terms of country of origin. In the year 2000, out of the 43 mega corporations of 100 Billion+ value, 21 were American. In 2020, we see the US dominating even more – 60 of the 106 companies are American! By 2020, the world saw the bar raised to a trillion-dollars of market value. There are five of these trillion-dollar behemoths viz. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Google from America’s tech sector. China and India were nowhere on the value map in 2000 but China has managed to enlist 14 companies in this elite group by 2020. India has merely 2 in the Star rankings – Reliance and TCS. India must do everything to change this. It begins with a need to celebrate big business entities. We need mammoth corporations that create value by being bolder, aiming to be bigger and embracing growth. Today’s world allows for asset light, idea-rich disruptors to rapidly build value. Robinhood, a US based commission free brokerage service for retail investors that listed on the NASDAQ recently got at an eye-popping valuation of $35B. It is not alone. India is seeing continuous churn but our value growth is relatively tepid. Half of all Nifty constituents in 2000 were replaced by 2010 and then another 50% of Nifty entities faced churn between 2010 and 2020. I would point to TCS, the crown jewel of the Tata Group as an ideal. It has become one of the largest wealth creators not only in India but also across the world. In its sphere of activity it is a global leader. This is one case of a truly focused, enterprising Indian company that competed in the global market and won. Enormous tenacity, growth-minded focus and a bias for action were required for this to materialize. Market forces tested the resilience of the company when the world went bust right after Y2K, then again with the financial meltdown of 2008 and again in 2020 with Covid. TCS had positioned itself as a global company right from the beginning and then continued to deliver in this totally new sector without any form of government support. The credit for this goes to the visionary and disciplined leadership of Mr. N. Chandrasekaran, now the Chairman of Tata Sons. Mr. Chandrasekaran led multiple full-scale transformations as opportunities and challenges presented themselves. He focused on developing scale, cost advantage, intellectual capital and a global delivery system. The Tata Group – founded by Jamsetji Tata in 1868 – has been led by visionary, statesmen leaders ever since. It is a global enterprise and operates in more than 100 countries across six continents. It is indisputable that they are focused on long-term stakeholder value creation based on ‘leadership with trust’ . We really do need to make Indian companies learn from the Tata example. Reliance Industries, India’s largest company, continues to be vastly profitable and successful in the old world businesses of oil and petrochemicals. Reliance chose to make a quantum shift and, through internal accruals, is fast pivoting to a tech and consumer focused organization. Their commitment towards connected networks, renewable energy, software and enterprise solutions and new age businesses shows vision, risk appetite, appreciation of scale and a leadership mindset. Very rarely has such a large company – so quickly and so comprehensively – pivoted itself completely towards future focused growth streams. So, we don’t need to look farther than these two Indian examples that embraced technology and generated wealth for all stakeholders and the community at large. In both these cases, the private enterprise has raised resources and painstakingly crafted their own unique growth story without much external help and both defined success in their respective sectors through Indian talent going global in ambition. If these two companies could do it, so can others. We need to ensure small and big firms flourish. It cannot be a one or the other option. On virtually every meaningful indicator, including wages, productivity, environmental protection, exports, innovation, employment diversity and tax compliance, large firms as a group significantly outperform small firms. India definitely needs more of this mindset. India has strong fundamentals, a growing consumer economy and a young workforce and all these need to be channeled into value through the private corporations of the country. The pursuit of value is a never ending process and the government and private companies should work together with a growth and forward mindset in order to make India the biggest growth engine the planet has seen. India’s appreciation for small business is rooted in socialistic ideals passed down from the nation’s pre-industrial context. We

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अब विश्व के लिए बड़ा खतरा बन रही है गर्मी

Leave a Comment / Patrika /

मोटापा, डिमेंशिया और एंटीबायोटिक प्रतिरोधकता की ही तरह भीषण गर्मी भी आने वाले दशकों के लिए बड़ा खतरा साबित होगी। किसने सोचा होगा कि उत्तरी-पश्चिमी अमरीका और पश्चिमी कनाडा भीषण गर्मी के चलते आपातकाल घोषित करेंगे? अमरीका में पोर्टलैंड, ऑरेगॉन और कनाडा के वैंकूवर में तापमान 49.5 डिग्री सेल्सियस के स्तर पर पहुंच गया है। अचरज की बात है कि यूरोप और साइबेरिया तक में गर्म हवाएं चल रही हैं। एक अनुमान के अनुसार 2018 में भीषण गर्मी के कारण भारत और चीन में 65 वर्ष से अधिक उम्र के तीन लाख लोगों की मौत हो गई थी। मेडिकल जर्नल लॉसेट में प्रकाशित रिपोर्ट के अनुसार यह वर्ष 2000 में गर्मी से हुई मौतों से 45 प्रतिशत अधिक है। वर्ष 2003 में भीषण गर्मी के कारण यूरोप में 70,000 लोगों की मौत हो गई, परन्तु इसका खुलासा 2008 में हुआ। इसके अलावा, कई और मौतें हो सकती हैं, जो अप्रत्यक्ष रूप से इस कारण से हुई। हैं। जैसे हृदय रोग, अंगों का निष्क्रिय हो जाना आदि परन्तु प्रत्यक्ष तौर पर इसे गर्मी का असर नहीं माना गया। यह एक प्रकार से ‘साइलेंट किलर’ है, जिसका पता केवल तभी लगता है, जब आप अस्पताल में पुराने रेकॉर्ड खंगालते हो । जलवायु परिवर्तन के चलते लू का चलना आम बात हो गई है और यह बढ़ता ही जा रहा है। आज हम सब मिल कर सालाना 50 बिलियन टन कार्बन डाईऑक्साइड का उत्सर्जन करते हैं। यह 1990 के उत्सर्जन से 40 फीसदी ज्यादा है। अगर हम सालाना उत्सर्जन में दस प्रतिशत की कटौती करते हैं और वर्ष 2050 तक कार्बन तटस्थता का दर्जा पा जाते हैं, तब भी पिछले उत्सर्जनों के प्रभाव से तापमान में वृद्धि जारी रहेगी। समुद्र के बढ़ते जल स्तर, पिघलते हिम खंड, मौसम की चरम स्थितियां, चक्रवाती तूफान, अतिवृष्टि, फसलों में बदलाव आदि ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के ही साक्ष्य है। इस समस्या का इलाज संभवतः जानकारी इंफ्रास्ट्रक्चर और नए तौर तरीकों वाले आवास निर्माण में छिपा है। वर्ष 2017 में फेसबुक ने तब संभवतः बहुत सारे लोगों की जानें बचाई, जब ढाका की करीब आधी आबादी को भीषण गर्मी की चेतावनी दी गई। इस दिशा में शिक्षा और जानकारी संबंधी प्रचार प्रसार के लिए डिजिटल माध्यमों का उपयोग शीघ्र चेतावनी और पूर्व तैयारी में सहायक होगा। हो सकता है कुछ समय के लिए स्कूल बंद करने पड़ें। सार्वजनिक स्थल जैसे छाया वाले क्षेत्र, वाटर पार्क या एयरकंडीशन हाल वाले विश्राम स्थल इस विषम स्थिति के लिए तैयार रखने होंगे। इन सार्वजनिक स्थलों के लिए बिजली-पानी की आपूर्ति सुचारु रखनी होगी। [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] हमारे मौजूदा घरों और कार्यालय भवनों को अनुकूलित किया जाना चाहिए। दीवारों और छतों को सफेद रंग में रंगने जैसे नवाचारों के जरिए उनको अधिक गर्मी प्रतिरोधी बनाया जाना चाहिए। इस तरह के कदमों को सभी निर्माण गतिविधियों का हिस्सा बनाया जाना चाहिए। शहरी नियोजन और वनीकरण न केवल छाया प्रदान करता है, बल्कि हवा को ठंडा भी करता है। भारत सरकार और राज्य सरकारों को स्थाई शीतलन के लिए योजनाएं विकसित करने की आवश्यकता है। इसका अर्थ है भवनों, एयर कंडीशनरों और पंखों के लिए ऊर्जा दक्षता कार्यक्रम बड़े पैमाने पर कूल रूफ कार्यक्रमों को अनिवार्य बनाया जाना चाहिए। एक सफेद पॉलिथीन छत कोटिंग 2 डिग्री सेल्सियस से 5 डिग्री सेल्सियस तापमान का अंतर कर सकती है। इसका इस्तेमाल गरीब भी आसानी से कर सकते हैं। मोटापा, डिमेंशिया और एंटीबायोटिक प्रतिरोधकता की तरह भीषण गर्मी भी आने वाले दशकों के लिए संभावित खतरा साबित होगी। कोरोना महामारी की गंभीरता का अनुमान नहीं लगाया जा सकता था, लेकिन भीषण गर्मी से जुड़े संकट का अनुमान लगाना मुश्किल नहीं है। कोई बहाना बनाए बिना समस्या की गंभीरता को समझना होगा।   https://www.patrika.com/opinion/climate-change-heat-wave-becoming-a-big-threat-to-the-world-6989353/

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Direct To Consumer And Its Coming Era

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The marketing function developed in the ‘Indirect Brand Economy’. Historically, the advantage lay with the entrenched incumbents. Challengers had a bleak chance of breakthrough. The top few players created a high barrier to entry using a capital intensive supply chain network. Small scale distribution was exorbitantly expensive and it was almost impossible to get shelf-space with the retailers unless you drove ‘big volume’ demand. Inability to manufacture, distribute or create customer awareness at scale meant new entrants had almost guaranteed failure. The third parties involved in value extraction included the advertiser channels who controlled all access to the consumers and retailers who were the only ones to do the last mile demand fulfilment. Right from FMCG to consumer durables, this formula was the holy grail for success and remained so for more than a hundred years. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Fast forward to the current century – legacy systems have longevity and naturally, the major brand and supply systems have endured though eroded. The essentials are all the same – it is important to have an idea, be viably differentiated and create positive meaning. And yet things have changed tremendously. The rush of technology, particularly cloud, has been a game changer in the way brands conduct their businesses. It has fueled a ‘Direct to Consumer’ economy. This trend of selling directly to consumers without physical outlets started in the 1990s itself with the e-commerce players like Amazon and Zappos. They certainly posed a serious threat for traditional retailers but for manufacturers/brands they simply opened up an additional demand fulfilment channel. It is what transpired in the next decade that transformed this equation – we saw a meteoric rise in D2C companies that started disrupting legacy businesses by creating their own brands and selling directly to consumers. Traditional brands were no longer immune from upstarts with a plan. So, the obvious question is what has changed? Firstly, an end to end supply chain can now be leased ‘off the shelf’ – this has not only bulldozed a capital intensive entry barrier but has also eroded the value of scale with the companies becoming extremely agile and nimble. Cost of entry has plummeted leading to fragmentation in not just brands but also how things are sold. Additionally, the rise of digital marketing and e-commerce has ensured that the access to the end consumer is far more democratic – the reliance on the ‘3rd Party hand-offs’ has come down dramatically. In a nutshell, this ‘Direct Brand Economy’ creates value through open source, leased or rented supply chain and does value extraction through a direct relationship between the brand and the customer. The shift from physical retailing to digital demand fulfilment is leading to creation of a different form of companies – an enriched enterprise where the core asset and hence the entry barrier and competitive advantage is data itself. This emergent reality has made D2C – Direct to Customer – a big force and growing reality as evidenced by the deals between Coca-Cola and Costa, Nestlé and Starbucks and Unilever and Dollar Shave Club. All of those deals are influenced in some way by the advertiser’s need to control first-party data or at least use it in a coordinated way. A new breed of specialist agencies will come into the picture and be valuable. For example Sokrati Merkle is a leading edge agency in digital, search and CRM data services. It expanded its data services beyond direct mail and email marketing to include loyalty initiatives, data strategy and modelling, as well as technology integration. Every major brand is looking for a service layer agency that can assist in nurturing relationships, steering creative ideas or post-purchase experiences direct to consumer and not only from media buys and reach oriented investment like doing through the traditional agency network. This is not a competition between physical and digital ways of business but a democratization of these touch points with numerous ‘Phygital’ combinations. Central to all of this is ownership of data and creation of a personal relationship between the brand and the consumer. Technology is disrupting everything and that is not a throwaway line. As a consequence, tent pole campaigns and media dependent growth are becoming déclassé. It’s no longer advertising with a capital ‘A’ but data driven, always on, programmatic advertising with a small ‘a’. Today marketing is like an election campaign without a voting day. Tent pole campaigns and tent pole IPs are being outdone by a virtuous combination of data science and creativity . D2C is –by definition – an accelerated route to market. This acceleration requires change in legacy systems, organization structures and skills. It demands transformation across silos, on scale. Tinkering with digital bits and pieces won’t do. Discrete digital acts within functional silos won’t help. Data driven D2C demands agility, conviction and a painful metamorphosis when undertaken by legacy players. For new challengers, customer experience as a differentiator is also easier said than done. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the era of mass brands which used to cater to consumers through mass retail stores and communicate using mass media is now giving way to a new era of very nimble customized or semi-customized brands who cater to the most relevant target audience and have a semi-personalized set of targeted communication for marketing. A two way relationship with the customer is even more valuable than a one way impression as it brings in voluntarily provided customer data. Every brand needs to think ‘Direct’ – the future of the business lies in dealing directly with the consumer. The growth of digital connectivity made a global consumer convergence possible. Digital interfaces don’t treat third world markets in a second hand manner. The virtual store doesn’t have a velvet rope. It doesn’t smirk at any customer, low or high. The expectations of quality products, services, timely deliveries, online capabilities, responsiveness etc. are irreversible. D2C challengers beat indirect brand behemoths who are pushing outdated value propositions and retaining unwieldy, profit eroding, channel

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