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Mini The paradigm shift to collective reputation building means that all marketers should be competent at figuring out the reputational pathways, understand the intentions of those who construct it, and figure out the agendas of those authorities that leant it credibility. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Reputation is the main output of collective intelligence. But who builds the reputation of the reputation builders? Learn how brands gain a reputation and how that is more important than ever before in today’s information dense world The harder something is to verify, the stronger our urge to seek verification. The tougher it is to measure something, the keener we are on doing it. We live with information overload. As we are uncertain about the content of information we receive, we highly value the opinions of others in order to verify the credibility of such content. This reliance can make us gullible. We must strive to stay aware of the biases that the design of such platforms or experts, whether technical, sociological or institutional. There is a neglected contradiction of knowledge that plays a pivotal role in our world of brands, namely that the greater the amount of information in circulation, the more we rely on so-called expertise to evaluate it. The glaring paradox emerges from the fact that the vastly increased access to information and knowledge does not empower us or make us more intelligent or better informed. Information scientists call such a state ‘cognitive autonomy’. The converse is ‘cognitive dependence’. The emergence of tech and tools is making us dependent not autonomous. We are rendered more dependent on other people’s judgments and evaluations of the information with which we are faced. The major revolutions in human society have been about distribution of memory – the invention of writing, printing, telegraph, radio, television and now the internet. Printing changed the configuration of the “informational pyramid” in the diffusion of knowledge. Like printing, the Web is a device for redistributing cultural memory within and across a population. It is active, not passive, and available at near zero costs and at the speed of light. The Internet has made possible a form of aggregation that simply did not exist before its invention and worldwide diffusion. Seen from a historical perspective, the Web is a major revolution in the storage, dissemination, and retrieval of information. Brands are a fully intact subculture within it. With the advent of technologies that automate the functions of accessing and recovering memory, such as search engines and knowledge-management systems, meta-memory has become part of external memory. The actions of users leave a trace in the system that is immediately reusable. The combination may easily be displayed in a ranked ordering that informs and influences the users’ future preferences and actions. The corpus of knowledge available on the Web-built and maintained by its users’ individual behaviours-is automatically filtered by systems that aggregate these behaviours. This is made available to other users and commercially exploited like for advertising to the right folks. Netflix, Amazon, and Google feeds such as news are top examples of aggregated user preferences and the making of correlations. This is a unique feature of these interactive systems, in which new categories are created by automatically transforming initially uncoordinated human actions into easily understandable rankings. That is reputation by one definition. Ever wondered why we have ‘top selling’ authors not ‘best writing’ authors! Rational Man is guided not by ‘information ‘, but by ‘reputation’ which is pre-filtered, pre-evaluated and already commented upon by others. Reputation is the main output of collective intelligence today. But who builds the reputation of the reputation builders? Is it based on their track record, fame or intellectual attainments? We may be reliant on what are the inevitably biased judgments of other people who are unknown to us. The paradigm shift to collective reputation building means that all marketers should be competent at figuring out the reputational pathways, understand the intentions of those who construct it, and figure out the agendas of those authorities that leant it credibility. Whenever we are at the point of accepting or rejecting new information, we should ask ourselves: Where does it come from? Does the source have a good reputation? Who are the authorities who believe it? What are my reasons for deferring to these authorities? Such questions will help us to get a better grip on reality than trying to directly check the reliability of the information at the source. In a hyper-specialised world of knowledge, it makes no sense to try to investigate on our own, for example, the possible correlation between vaccines and the worsening of cardiovascular disease. It would be a waste of time, and probably our conclusions would not be accurate. In the reputation age, our critical appraisals should be directed not at the content of information but rather at the social network of relations that has shaped that content and given it a certain deserved or undeserved ‘rank’ in our system of knowledge. What is reputation? It is not one thing but many. It is a second ego. It serves as a conveyed signal. It is an ‘opinion of opinion’ that stabilises or sometimes destabilizes our social identity. Reputation is also a motivation for action. It is a sensible system for classifying information. It is a ranking based on the authority of others that helps guide our judgments. The control we wield over our reputation is partial and precarious. We can never fully master or govern our reputation. It is a dynamic construct, and the lines are forever moving. Like it or not we cannot live without it. Understanding our reputation, allows us to know our social reflection and reordering the way we see ourselves in response to the way others see us. When we first meet a new domain of learning, our access to facts is inevitably determined by the opinions, values, and preferences of others. As new communication technologies make it increasingly easy to venture into new domains of knowledge, this dependency on the

[siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] I was Chief Marketing Officer of the sports business of Star TV from 2014 to 2018, a period during which major leagues such as Pro Kabaddi, Indian Super League, Premier Badminton League were conceptualised, created, marketed and established. I also led marketing for BCCI and ICC cricket – Test, ODI and T-20 and this included the ODI world cups as well as the T20 world cups. After the transition of IPL to Star, I worked on plans to energise it further. The business had 12 channels in multiple languages covering all major sports. I also ran the star sports (dot) com predecessor to Hotstar. It was value creation at its best. In more ways than one, I learned my marketing basics all over again. The critical catalyst for this reappraisal and relearning was the need to appreciate fan passion. There may be no biz like showbiz but there is nothing as deep as fan involvement with live sport. Fan culture, or fandom, can apply to communities built around a shared enjoyment of any aspect of popular culture, such as books, movies, TV shows, music bands, sports or sports teams, etc. Participatory cultures involve fans acting not only as consumers but also as producers and curators of some form of content. Most fan cultures such as cinema, music etc have elements of participatory culture. However, live sports fandom encourages creative expression and artistic production by its participants. Also Read | Storyboard18 × Just Sports | What will sports marketing look like in 2022 & 2023? Why do we remain loyal sitting in front of the television despite the futility of our participation? What makes us scream our lungs out and jump in our living room when bare common sense tells us that it has little effect on the actual outcome? My learning was that fandom is an act of conscious development of the self. Being a fan is to anchor one’s identity formation and build social identification with millions of others. In many cultures, it can be a liminal passage to adulthood. Emile Durkheim, towering sociologist and profound intellectual, wrote in his seminal work ’The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life’ that whenever a subculture raises anything to divinity, it is – in fact – also simultaneously worshiping itself. Durkheim elaborated on the concept of the ‘totem’ and hence totemic symbols. In his words “On the one hand, This is a universal truth. We all yearn to belong. Modern living has become more virtual, abstract and transactional. Hence, we crave identity and belongingness. Our fandom is a platform for fellowship amounting to kinship. It captivates us via affiliative energy. We sense a congregational power. The sport, team or sportsperson – our totem – becomes a physical representation of that need for identity and unity. It may be manifested as a lapel pin, a cap, a shirt, a flag or collective idolisation of the past greats. It binds like little else in today’s world. Also Read | Storyboard18 x Just Sports | Future of sports marketing In India Faith in institutions—joint family, employer, social movements—is dwindling, though such institutions, social, private or governmental, once rooted us to something larger. In fandom, as in religious worship, our social connections are brought to life. Fandom serves as a reminder of our interconnectedness and dependency. ‘We will beat team xyz’, we say. It projects a complete identification. But it is also an entitlement. After all, fandom is a selfless commitment. The fan directly or indirectly pays for it all – tickets, merchandise, content and advertising. Fan devotion savours of religion be it a pilgrimage to revered stadia, songs, chants, slogans and rhythms or frameworks for ritualism. Thinking in terms of good and evil, divine outcomes, a teleological destined ‘to belong’ etc . All of these suggest a religious impulse. Being a fan allows us to feel kinship with complete strangers. Like religious affiliation, many sports linkages are inherited. Fans talk about generations of followership and fandom. No matter what the track record, switching to a rival team is apostasy and heresy. Like religious catharsis, sports celebrations are effusive. There is a frenzy that is unique. It cuts across distinctions of class and creed. Durkheim called it “collective effervescence.” He theorised that it was a charge, a kind of electricity that gets socially generated when groups participate in rituals. Post-game celebrations and day-after parades, with feverish outpouring of emotion, demonstrate spontaneous solidarity. Elias Canetti wrote in 1960 his ground-breaking work ‘Masse und Macht’ (Crowds and Power) that a crowd needs a binder for uninhibited integration. Once that is done, the crowd is like one individual. It becomes a collective whole. How else can one explain millions of individuals becoming one in mind and spirit. “It is only in a crowd that man can become free of the fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite. The crowd he needs is the dense crowd, in which body is pressed to body; a crowd, too, whose psychical constitution is also dense, or compact, so that he no longer notices who it is that presses against him. As soon as a man has surrendered himself to the crowd, he ceases to fear its touch. Ideally, all are equal there; no distinctions count. The man pressed against him is the same as himself. He feels him as he feels himself. Suddenly it is as though everything were happening in one and the same body.” Media scholar Henry Jenkins define a ‘participatory culture’ more specifically as one that consists of: Ease for artistic expression and engagement Strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others Some type of informal mentorship in which the most experienced members pass along their knowledge to novices Members who believe their contributions matter Members who feel a social connection with one another I recall in 2015 we did the now legendary ‘Mauka Mauka’ campaign essentially to promote appointment viewing for the India – Pakistan game in Adelaide in the

Almost every other week I get some invitation or the other to speak about some horrifically imagined ‘technology meets creativity’ type seminar. Marketing is becoming part data engineering and part surveillance. It is referred to as ‘technology-enabled storytelling’! Metrics rule the world of brand building. I am all for harnessing the power of technology and data, but the mule cannot ride the man. The most precious thing in brand building is an idea. Creative imagination has unmatched power to build iconic brands. But this truth is being ignored perhaps because there are not enough creative ideas. Creative agencies are large corporations. They look at creative work in terms of revenue and cost. Doing culture building creative work is the most interesting thing to do in marketing. There is a lot of false pride in the creation of legendary creative personas. That said, it is beyond dispute that creative gold dust develops brand appeal.   [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Consumers don’t read your annual plan, vision documents, emails, excel sheets or even the much hyped ‘briefs’. They only see the advertising. Consumers listen to other consumers. They experience the product. If the mix does not work, it does not work. Your ‘brief’ or ‘5-year plan’ will not convince them. I am shocked when I hear marketing folks, rhetorically or for real, questioning the need for advertising. The question walks on two legs – Firstly, ‘is advertising effective?’ If so, ‘how do we know that more creatively appealing advertising is more effective?’ Sacrilege! If marketers discard and trash creativity and content led communication what hope do we have of anyone else carrying a torch for it? Here is my take – data, digital experience, optimisation, etc. all of this can be done by non-marketers. A program can do better in some cases. It is as if analysts, ad-tech specialists, and data scientists are falling from the sky for free. A lot of the froth is about what’s ‘being trended’. The symptoms are being shown in place of the diagnosis. The reason why advertising is ineffective is because poor advertisements are on air. There are poor advertisements on air because creative ideas are rare and clients who appreciate them are rarer still. Secondly, the lack of creativity is being covered up by some abracadabra about an “idea whose time has come” and “purpose” and so on. Craft is rendered meaningless. If you make Chicken biryani you need chicken. Making it with soya bean nuggets is not about the craft of cooking biryani. This truism is quite clearly and rampantly violated. The pipe does not quench the thirst, the water does. The guitar will not play itself. The road will not move the car. This emphasis on technical preparedness and digital advantage whilst ignoring creative appeal and craft is suicidal. Remember marketing – advertising has no need to be in this world. It is an act of creative smarts to begin with. We owe our existence to the primacy of ideas. We have data, machines, methods, metrics, and measurements galore. What we do not have enough is talented creativity. Let us put ideas at the heart of the marketing profession or a data driven robotic program will generate your ‘acceptably creative’ obituary! https://www.cnbctv18.com/storyboard/storyboard-the-neglect-of-creativity-is-the-data-driven-marketers-biggest-mistake-9421851.htm

The automobile industry in India has been experiencing a slowdown for the past few quarters. We explore how industry leaders are partnering with Facebook to drive growth in this week’s episode of Facebook’s Zero Friction Future—a CXO series. The episode features Prasanjeet Dutta Baruah (Vertical Head-Tech, Telco, Auto and New Business, Facebook India), Puneet Anand (Group Head – Marketing at Hyundai Motor India), Shubhranshu Singh (Global Head – Marketing, Royal Enfield), and Shashank Srivastava (Executive Director – Sales and Marketing). View the whole discussion video here: https://www.cnbctv18.com/videos/auto/facebooks-zero-friction-futurea-cxo-series-how-to-drive-growth-in-the-auto-industry-4724661.htm   [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget]