Every today has its roots in a yesterday Every tomorrow has its roots in today Let us remind ourselves of how the Information Age came into being My attempt as presenting the ‘Digital Evolution Chronicles ‘ #Digital #Pioneers #history #fact #informationtechnology #computing #ai
AI: Hype or Hope? Asks Shubhranshu Singh in this week’s Simply Speaking Clay Shirley said “Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new tools, it happens when society adopts new behaviors”. I think it applies to this case a well,” writes Singh in his Storyboard18 column.
People of Bharatiya Origin are now leading the world’s biggest multinational companies and are also playing important roles in local governance. One of the crucial facts which have helped them achieve this remarkable feat is Bharatiya Culture, which promotes harmony, adaptability and sensitivity [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Ajay Banga, Indira Nooyi, Gita Gopinath, Rishi Sunak – any picking of names from the global leadership lists shows the deep and wide presence of the diaspora from Bharat. From the House of Commons with a count of 19 members to the top two of the three business school deans in the United States, people of Bharatiya origin are marching from success to success. This is a vital, vibrant and value-adding community wherever it may be in the world. It does not matter whether they were born and raised here and then left for foreign shores or have been overseas for generations. What matters is that they have a connection with Bharat.In the business world, the impact of Bharatiyas is perhaps even more pronounced. Adobe, Alphabet, IBM and Microsoft are all led by people of Bharatiya descent. Today, more than 25 of S&P 500 company CEOs are Indian born. This is up from a list of 11 a decade ago. Bharat is the leading country of origin for immigrant founders of unicorns in the United States of America. It is not by chance that there are so many Bharatiyas in successful positions making their mark globally. It is a cultural strength that provides them with an inherent advantage. Bharatiya culture promotes harmony, adaptability and sensitivity. Our culture teaches us to be respectful, flexible and empathetic to others while working diligently to achieve success. We also possess the sensibility to strive without hankering for results. The list of successes spans across fields as diverse as cricket, business leadership or politics. We have a near-permanent presence in the corporate, entrepreneurial, applications technology and financial networks of the West. The areas where there is headroom for us to grow include global media, foundational technology, aviation, defence, luxury and logistics. These connections help us build global connections to Bharatiya businesses and facilitate Bharat’s integration into global value chains. Meanwhile, did you know that the fastest-growing language in America is Telugu? The Bharatiya diaspora plays a crucial role in shaping global social, economic, and cultural spheres. As individuals of Bharatiya origin have dispersed worldwide, Bharat’s soft power boundaries have expanded. Bharat is now much more respected on the global stage – both as a services powerhouse as well as a leader in development. The likes of Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai or Ajay Banga have not left Bharat,but taken Bharat with them to all corners of the world Economically, the Bharatiya diaspora has been a driving force in fields like technology, medicine, and finance. Culturally, the Bharatiya diaspora acts as a vibrant ambassador for Bharatiya traditions, arts, and languages. Festivals, music, dance, and cuisine from Bharat get rooted in diverse corners of the world, enriching the global cultural tapestry. This cultural exchange not only enhances an appreciation of diversity but also fosters a sense of unity among people from different regions of Bharat. In America, Desi is a proud self-identifier. Socially, the Bharatiya diaspora provides active involvement and financial support to their adopted countries. Even as generational change occurs, their distinctive contribution makes them a formidable force on a global scale. Corporations like Google-led by Sundar Pichai, Microsoft-led by Satya Nadella, MasterCard – earlier led by Ajay Banga have all stated on multiple occasions how important Bharat is for them as a market. Corporations like these are not just net acceptors of Bharatiya intelligence and leadership but also bring a lot back to Bharat itself in the form of partnerships, technological know-how and investments-all of which stand to benefit Bharat in the long run. So, brain drain ought to be thought of as brain gain. The diaspora’s ability to navigate diverse cultural contexts enables them to facilitate communication and understanding between Bharat and their adopted countries. Our Prime Minister has made it a powerful part of his international diplomacy. It has galvanised the global Bharatiya diaspora in the context of a more confident Bharat. Bharatiyas are the highest-earning migrant group in America, with a median household income of almost $150,000 per year. That is double the national average and well ahead of Chinese migrants, who have a median household income of over $95,000. In America, almost 80 per cent of the Bharatiya-born population over school age have at least an undergraduate degree, according to a research analysis by Jeanne Batalova at the MPI. Just 50 per cent of the Chinese-born population and 30 per cent of the total population are under-graduates in comparison. Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor who coined the term “soft power “more than three decades ago, noted, “Such power is created by the success of the diaspora and not merely by the number of people you send abroad. This creates a positive image of the country from which they came and that helps their native country.” Bharat is now much more respected on the global stage – both as a services powerhouse as well as a leader in development. The likes of Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai or Ajay Banga have not left Bharat, but taken Bharat with them to all corners of the world. Be it economic growth, cultural enrichment, diplomatic relations or social development, recognising and celebrating Bharat’s civilisational export adds to the nation’s well being. The synergistic output from this ‘larger Bharat community are boundless for Bharat as well as for the West. They may have been far away but they are not away.
The Vice President, Marketing, Commercial Vehicle business, Tata Motors, talks about how the landscape of influencers is impacting marketing campaigns. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] It may seem as a tool for commercialism, but the growth of the “influencer-content creator” is a revolution. What began as blogging, advisory and “aficionado commentary” is now a global, multibillion-dollar industry touching every aspect of our lives and society. Blogs, social media personas, and their associated technologies of self-commercialisation has enabled a repertoire of tools that allows people to monetise their digital presence. It’s profitable self-expression branded by authenticity. The influencer industry is a complex ecosystem. It comprises influencers, intenders, technologists, marketers as brand builders and sponsors, social media corporations and many more. Together they have negotiated the meaning, value, and practical use of digital influence. A commodity has been branded with a personal signature for the social media age. They produce, evaluate, and market “influential” content. It has upended how we interact with our world and make sense of it. It has demolished traditional barriers and empowered millions of individuals. It has created vast new sectors of our economy, while transforming legacy institutions. This is not some energised fad but arguably, the greatest and most disruptive change in modern capitalism. Everyone looks at Big Tech and the power they wield. However, it’s not new tools but new habits that create change. The business of Big Tech is not algorithms and innovations. It’s about being a platform for creation and connection. From the first amateur blog to the newest Insta sensation, it has created rich content and collective attention. Influencers have revolutionised entertainment, advisory, fame, and ambition in the twenty-first century. The internet based influencer dynamics has changed in the twenty-first century and changed the world with it. This transition is accelerating as the online and offline worlds merge. Users change how technology envisages its offerings. Online creators don’t just produce content; they define the norms and dynamics of their medium. As a marketer, I have the chance to create a better system that amplifies independent voices and rejects the flaws of traditional media, conventional advertising and legacy channels and institutions. This story began when the internet lowered the barrier to publishing, allowing independent authors to gain a following directly, and serve communities who were previously overlooked. Social platforms emerged and lured people online, teaching them to post for an audience. As the platforms scaled, they introduced public metrics, rolled out new content formats, and attracted advertisers, laying the groundwork for users to redefine fame and take advantage of significant new economic opportunities. Platforms now partner greedily with their top users — YouTube first and most notably — and have been rewarded handsomely. The Covid pandemic brought ‘creator economy’ into the mainstream of the business world and rewrote the playbooks. The rise of social media has meant an expansion of opportunity for the creators with the rise of social esteem and material rewards. An industry has emerged out of nowhere, with almost no guardrails or prescribed methods. Content creators are the new media No matter how hard you try to avoid it, you’re in their online world too. The smartphone is a multimedia studio all on its own. The internet has made the world a stage more than ever before. The most powerful online creators build such a bond between themselves and those watching their videos, reading their posts, listening to them talk. They advise, perform, sell, display and build a connection with their audiences. This blog was first published in Autocar Professional’s December 15, 2023 issue. Tags: Tata Motors,influencer marketing Link: https://www-autocarpro-in.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.autocarpro.in/news/tata-motors-shubranshu-singh-on-the-rise-of-influencers-in-marketing-strategies-118429?amp=1
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[siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Bharat is on the road to being a great economic, geopolitical and cultural power in the world. This has become possible through a virtuous combination of political will, economic momentum and favourable social factors. While today is better than yesterday, our tomorrow will be better still. But though there are several global Indian businesses, there are only a few, if any, global Indian brands. Cultural power is a strength for Bharat. Thus by promoting our culture, art, and spiritualism, we can help shape a better world. Bharat has brand ownership of ideas, personalities and movements but do we genuinely have powerful, aspirational, global brands? It is not a governmental responsibility alone but needs a vigorous tri-sectoral partnership of the public sector, private sector and the social sector. Bharat is not merely a country in terms of a political state defined by boundaries. It is a civilisational state whose culture, history, and identity must shape its policies and governance. We have a duty to Bharat and all of mankind in preserving and promoting our unique cultural and civilisational heritage as a core part of our national identity. Every global agency, analyst, institution and forum worthy of note has asserted that we are the next great economic power. Goldman Sachs has predicted we will become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075, and Martin Wolf wrote an article in the Financial Times in July 2023 where he suggested that, by 2050, Bharat’s purchasing power will be 30 per cent larger than that of the US based on a population 4.4 times larger and a GDP per head (at Purchasing Power) at 30 per cent of US level (roughly equal to where China is today). So, the momentum predicts our ascent to a great power status. This optimism is credible due to a confluence of demand, supply, and the systemic facilitating factors. Bharat is a civilisation, economic entity and nation state whose time has come. This momentum is greater than any economic cycles, macro shock or policy dependence. The first area for civilisational greatness in a modern economic sense is to make ‘Born in Bharat’ a self-evident power statement. The most fundamental basis for the credibility of Bharat’s economic promise is the vitality, size and ambition of our consumer pool. With more than 1 billion people progressing from nothing to something in consumer terms, our growth is powered by domestic consumption and investments. Real wages have steadily grown and are further expected to grow at 5 per cent levels such that real disposable income will continue to grow more than 15 per cent. Bharat has an eager and responsible consumer pool. There is no mature industry here, rather there is growth for one and all. Almost all verticals and industries that are maturing or trapped on a growth plateau in the West are thriving and growing fast in Bharat. Housing, airlines, consumer durables, steel, automotive, retail, media – you name it and there is galloping growth in excess of double digits across sectors. Bharat is a vast land where fibre optic cables have been laid out even before roads. In our consumption pyramid, every segment is growing but the aggregated value is always higher as you traverse downwards. We deserve brands, local in spirit, local in cultural sensibility but global in performance, quality and technical capability. Bharat must pay close attention to its Intellectual Property in terms of brand image, brand consciousness and brand appeal. Economic Nationalism Replaces Globalisation Across the leading economies of the world, economic nationalism is being resurrected and globalisation is retreating. The sovereign right of a nation state to act, and its conflict with the obligations of various multilateral agreements, is at the top of the agenda for political action. Brexit to ‘Trump Tariffs,’ the world has been in ferment. The topmost economic entities of the world today are corporations- multinational, transnational, multi-local, global – call them by any name but they are dominant in world economic flows. They rule consumer minds and leverage their preference for profits. Bharat, given its current status as a top world economy, with amongst the highest growths in the world, needs to act. Our much respected marketers are amongst the best in the world, but they need to ensure we have truly global homegrown brands. Our marketing talent has mostly served western brands. We need a ‘Born in Bharat’ brand building mission. We must dominate the world of global brands with flair, intuition, charm, creativity, style and taste. There are great examples to study. How did Italian flamboyance, French finesse, German engineering, Japanese technology, Korean Value for Money and American innovation get established? We deserve brands, local in spirit, local in cultural sensibility but global in performance, quality and technical capability. Bharat must pay close attention to its Intellectual Property in terms of brand image, brand consciousness and brand appeal The beauty is that the more we globalise, the more the rootedness and urge to belong becomes stronger. Sadly ‘West is Best’ has meant stifled creative innovation and standardised product -centric or claim-centric communications steamrolled by Western brands into India, just as in 100 other markets. Sameness is a blight upon authenticity. Western brands and their empires came hand in hand. They were the products of a mass production world enabled by the Industrial Revolution and fostered through the rise of affluence, media and literacy in Europe and America. Unilever, Colgate, P&G, Nestle, Coca Cola, Pepsi,Cadbury, Ford, Rolex, Citibank and many more – these were the creators of brands and brand cultures and the flag bearers of the Western way of life. Brands enhanced desirability for their culture. When you opened a bottle of Coca Cola or wore Levis Jeans – you lived a bit of America. There are several global businesses from Bharat which are ready to be global brands. Economic expansion must meet brand creation, creative focus and domain excellence. What Will it Take to Make a Brand Nurturing Culture Emerge? Looking beyond immediacy of profit: Brand stature or
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Brands succeed mainly by inspiring loyalty, but consumers aren’t out there thinking about brands. When they do think about it, how a brand is positioned matters in it being recognised, retrieved. Al Ries and Jack Trout immortalised the word ‘positioning’ for generations of marketers. This week’s column of Brand Matters pays tribute to the marketing legend. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] AI Ries (pronounced Reese), marketing strategist and thinker who, along with partner Jack Trout , created “positioning,” passed away on Oct. 7 2022 at his home in Atlanta. He was 95 years old. His work on positioning was all about owning a bit of the consumer’s mind. For the first time, the business world was told that creative advertising wasn’t enough persuasion; it needed smart positioning. Volvo owns “safety,” Crest “cavities” Sensodyne got ‘Sensitivity’, FedEx brings to mind “overnight,”. It is all about strength of association and cutting past the clutter of advertising messages. In his own words, the task of positioning for brand builders is to “find an open hole in the mind and become the first brand to fill it.” Trout & Ries went on to run an Ad agency, which mutated into a strategic consultancy. It successfully positioned the Trump Plaza Hotel as “Atlantic City’s centrepiece” and Burger King as the place to get “broiled, not fried” hamburgers. The quality of focus on positioning was evident in the brief they handled for Sabena, the Belgian national carrier. In a contra-brief action, they positioned the country instead of the airline. Focused on five Belgian cities (Brussels, Antwerp, Bruges, Liège and Tournai) that had each received three stars from the Michelin Guide, whereas only one Dutch city, Amsterdam, had the same. The campaign’s slogan was sheer genius: “In beautiful Belgium, there are five Amsterdams.” They shaped a prized selection of brands, including Paramount Pictures, AT&T, KPMG, Sotheby’s and IBM. Al Ries was inducted into the American Marketing Association’s Marketing Hall of Fame in 2016. Alfred Paul Ries was born on Nov. 14, 1926, in Indianapolis. He graduated in 1950 from DePauw University in Indiana, where he majored in mathematics and began his advertising career with General Electric in Schenectady, N.Y. He later moved on to Needham, Louis & Brorby and Marsteller in Manhattan. With two partners, he started his own advertising firm, Ries Cappiello Colwell, in 1963 and hired Jack Trout four years later. When he first thought of positioning, it was “the rock”, an immovable foundation for the brand. Later, Trout advocated calling it a ‘position’ in the mind and Ries acquiesced. The idea took off in the advertising industry in 1972 after a three-part article in Ad Age magazine. In it, they shone a light on 7Up, the “uncola,” and Avis, the No. 2, which claimed to “try harder.” Ries and Trout also wrote “Marketing Warefare” (1986), “Bottom-Up Marketing” (1989) and “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” (1993). Ries talked about owning a word in the mind but partnering with his daughter in a strategic consultancy that later extended the concept to anchoring in a key visual. Positioning is the most valuable thing that companies as diverse as Apple and McDonald’s own. What’s distinctive is valuable. Brands succeed mainly by inspiring loyalty, but consumers aren’t out there thinking about brands. When they do think about it, how a brand is positioned matters in it being recognised, retrieved.” Brands identify products that are distinctive, like a Burberry scarf. Elsewhere, a logo brands a commodity like cement or wafers or cola. More than advertising, product advantages or customers’ experiences can lend brands a sharp positioning. The idea of positioning gained traction very fast as brand equity became an asset in the late 1970s in a world squeezed by the oil shock and cut-throat discounting by consumer goods companies. Nirvana lay in patiently building brands to become recognised. How to inspire loyalty, increase stickiness, gain new buyers and expand into consumers’ lives. It’s about awareness, associations and loyalty. Brands are the face of a choice heuristic. They serve as a shorthand for choice. Hence, awareness precedes associations, which leads to trial, usage and, eventually, loyalty. A brand must assure consumers about the quality of a product or service. Sony, Mont Blanc, Singapore Airlines and Heineken each do it though in different ways. But now customers can review products on shopping websites, talk to each other through social media and consult review websites. Brands thus have “a reduced role as a quality signal,” write Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen in their book “Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information”. They argue that consumers are becoming more rational and need brands less. People have been predicting the death of the brand since the birth of e-commerce. It has not happened. Brands were fated to collapse in the era of perfect information, and that didn’t happen. If at all, brands have become more precious and pervasive. Indeed, Al Ries’ work on positioning can take some credit for strengthening brands in the latter half of the 20th century. Positioning is not what a brand tells a consumer. It’s what a consumer tells himself about the brand. (The author is the chief marketing officer for the commercial vehicles business unit at Tata Motors.) Link: https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/marketing/how-al-ries-and-positioning-changed-marketing-forever/105972241?utm_source=linkedin_web&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialsharebuttons
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The author explains his perspective on ‘business’ as an ecosystem and ‘brand’ as a platform. In 1960, an article titled ‘Marketing Myopia’ argued that companies and entire industries often misunderstand the business they are in. With a narrow-gauge definition, ideas, innovations and ways of working, all suffer from self-imposed constraints. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Markets, brands, business models, channels and business ecosystems are all tightly linked. Are there growth industries or growth companies? This is a critical question to consider. What an expanding market does is make companies lazy, complacent and set in their own ways. If we have a commanding share of the market, we must be better, is the thinking. Marketing is not about finessing the status quo. Real marketing is tapping into people’s basic wants and needs. The basic core of the industry ought to be questioned from time to time. Long-term alternatives to the industry’s products or services and how it might be surprised by external developments, must be imagined and considered. It is these things that truly determine the fate of industries and companies. So long as marketing remains the optional part of doing business, industries will be surprised when they decline, and companies will get fatal shocks when people no longer want what they are making. Oil companies now see themselves as energy providers. Telecom players reimagine possibilities as communications providers. Media is looking at the world through the consumer’s eyes, agnostic of channels or screens. Logistics is way beyond cargo movement. Financial services are manifold bigger than banking. In 1960, an article titled ‘Marketing Myopia’ appeared in the Harvard Business Review. It was authored by Theodore Levitt, a professor at the Harvard Business School. He argued that companies and entire industries often misunderstand the business they are in. With a narrow-gauge definition, ideas, innovations and ways of working, all suffer from self-imposed constraints. Levitt’s classic example was that of the American railroad industry which declined despite a boom in passenger and freight transportation because these giants saw themselves only as railroad businesses. They were blind to the option to consider themselves more broadly as transportation and cargo businesses via roadlines, shipping or aviation fields. They were fixated on their product-rail-transport and not focused on their customers and their need to transport themselves and their goods. If management takes a broad view of the firm’s purpose instead of being narrowly focused on the product or service it currently provides, it will avoid obsolescence. When in doubt, follow the consumers. Any investment in an industry that has “no competition” is doomed to fail. When all of a sudden, viable alternatives become available, the established player takes a tumble. The Oil industry, for the first 50 years of its existence was in the illumination business. The boom business was kerosene for lanterns. Then Edison’s light bulb came along. Oil was dying till the Internal Combustion Engine came along and the rest is history. Levitt shockingly prescribed that “to survive, any company will have to plot the obsolescence of what now produces their livelihood.” This is what it takes to be a leading-edge market creator. When the big Detroit automobile manufacturers eventually started making smaller cars and selling a lot of them, they naturally saw it as an example of their successful mix. In fact, the small car boom showed that big Detroit firms neglected the market opportunity they ought to have known well. They had been spending millions of dollars on market research but not truly asking what people really wanted, only showing them what was already planned and asking them to choose between iterations. Eventually, American Big Auto lost out to foreign carmakers in every sub-segment. It was a cruel fact that foreigners had a better idea of what Americans needed and wanted than American automobile executives themselves did. The railroads reigned supreme in America in the 19th century; automobile corporations were the best investment in the 20th century and represented the future throughout the 20th century. In due course, both collapsed despite government subsidies and eventually went bankrupt. A brand exists to find and create a customer, and if it can create a platform, it will naturally do it better. Platform-based thinking has transformed many sectors and industries. Thinking of business as an ecosystem is now a prerequisite before brands and businesses can play a larger role in the customer lifecycle by orchestrating platforms. A platform is like a value-producing biosphere. It goes beyond mere backwards/forward integration or brand extensions. The broader the platform, the more it creates value and customer loyalty. Huge data availability and changes in customer expectations are compelling businesses to cater to a finer spectrum of segments. Customers across industries, whether in B2C, B2B, B2B2C or D2C modes, expect brands to know and personalise offerings and experiences. To be able to cater to this means providing for information, boosting customer choice, and allowing configuration with greater speed. If this is done, brands can viably participate in new value pools and yet maintain superior ownership of the customer lifecycle. The name of the game is to create value via customer connect and orchestrate delivery via partners, where needed. No matter what the size, all brands can benefit by defining their business in the broadest terms and then setting up to harvest the value. Doing something may not be enough but nothing is not an option. Is your business a maker of products or the creator of value? Brands as business ecosystems are the future, and the time to act is now. (The author is the chief marketing officer for the commercial vehicles business unit at Tata Motors.) Link: https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/marketing/what-business-is-your-brand-in/105796119
The recent age of globalisation created huge benefits but was accompanied by social costs and a widespread political backlash. The new pattern of commerce that replaces it will be no less fraught with opportunity and danger. Global power brands have played a role in being global catalysts. They strengthen world commerce and are, in turn, as much as a consequence of it. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] For the past 300 years, the most crucial factor in global affairs has been the growing exchange of goods, money, ideas and people across borders. It has reshaped relations between states, both large and small, and has increasingly impacted internal politics. From Boeing to Burberry, globalisation has remade the world and its tastes. It has led to the growth of global brands which in turn accelerated globalisation. Recently, though, the character and tempo of globalisation has changed. The pace of economic integration around the world has slowed by many measures. “Slowbalisation”, a term coined by Adjiedj Bakas, a Dutch futurist, in 2015, best describes the phenomenon. Is the world retreating to national or regional markets? Is it rejecting globalisation? How much will a trade war between the USA and China exacerbate it? What will global commerce look like in twenty years? The recent age of globalisation created huge benefits but was accompanied by social costs and a widespread political backlash. The new pattern of commerce that replaces it will be no less fraught with opportunity and danger. Global power brands have played a role in being global catalysts. They strengthen world commerce and are, in turn, as much as a consequence of it. Since 1945, the world economy has run according to a system of rules and norms underwritten by America. This brought about unprecedented economic integration that boosted growth, lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and helped the West prevail over Soviet Russia in the Cold War. Today, the system is in peril. There is a global slide towards subsidies, export controls and protectionism. Countries are racing to subsidise the green industry, lure manufacturing away from friend and foe alike and restrict the flow of goods and capital. Mutual benefit is out, and national gain is in. An era of zero-sum thinking has begun. Will it mean the rise of country and region-specific brands? There have been periods of more and less globalisation throughout history. Today’s era sprang from America’s sponsorship of a new world order in 1945, which allowed cross-border flows of goods and capital to recover after years of war and chaos. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe started to be one economic entity. China and Russia emerged as markets and competitors to the West and India started its economic liberalisation. Containerising freight sent shipping costs plummeting. America signed the NAFTA, helped create the World Trade Organisation and supported global tariff cuts. Financial capital roamed the world for risk and reward. Measures of global integration – Trade, the cross-border capacity of supply chains, intermediate imports and the march of multinational corporations have remained steady or grown. Long-term cross-border investment by all firms, known as foreign direct investment (FDI), has been a key factor boosting economies such as China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. Globally, wealth creation is now more geographically diffused. At the same time, migration to the rich world has risen slightly over the past decade. International parcels and flights are growing fast. The volume of data crossing borders has doubled every three years since the year 2000. However, MNCs have not had an easy run. In large economies such as China, India, etc., local competitors were equally or more capable of creating demand and managing operations profitably. Services are becoming a larger share of global economic activity and they are harder to trade than goods. Emerging economies are getting better at making their own inputs, allowing them to be self-reliant. Trade in the last 100 years grew from commodities to value-added manufacturing. Now, the big opportunity is services, and the flow of ideas can pack an economic punch. Cross-border e-commerce is growing. Alibaba expects its Chinese customers to spend at least $40bn abroad in 2023. Netflix and Facebook together have over a billion cross-border customers. Brands are the outcome as well as the inputs to a globalised world. But it’s not only Western brands- European, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and some Indian brands are operating on a global scale. But have brands advanced the well-being of consumers and global capital? Naomi Klein’s ‘No Logo’ is a modern incarnation of Vance Packard’s idea of the power of advertising –‘ The Hidden Persuaders’, published in 1957. Her argument is that corporations control, not compete; they coerce customers, not serve them. This is false. We have choices. A random selection of brands from Fortune 500 – Exxon Mobil, General Motors, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, General Electric, Toyota, Royal Dutch Shell, Siemens, BP, Wal-Mart, IBM, Volkswagen, Unilever, Coca Cola – shows us how brands, products, corporations are deeply intertwined across diverse industries. We cannot create any hierarchy of their factors of success without putting the brand up high. Yet, none of them is remotely powerful enough to be coercive. Technology services are especially vulnerable to politics and protectionism, reflecting concerns about fake news, tax dodging, job losses, privacy and espionage. Everyone from TikTok to Meta, Huawei to Alibaba has had issues. America discourages Chinese tech firms from operating at scale within its borders and American companies like Facebook and Twitter are not welcome in China. As globalisation fades, the emerging pattern of cross-border commerce is more regional. This matches the trend of shorter supply chains and fits the direction of geopolitics. The picture is most apparent in trade. The share of foreign inputs that cross-border supply chains source from within their region has risen by 50 per cent between 2012 and 2023 in Asia, Europe and North America, as reported by the OECD. Tech governance is becoming more regional, too. Europe now has its own rules for the tech industry on data
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A tiger lives as long as its teeth. Likewise, AI feeds and lives off data. Chat GPT feeds on 1trn words and the more they feed the more ravenous they get. With such computing power at hand, the data sources within the present internet seem manageably finite and are near exhausted. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] In the oceanic proportions of Big Tech, generative artificial intelligence has been like a Tsunami. Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT had racked up 100m users within 60 days. The hottest ticket in tech investment, it pulled $40bn in venture capital in the first six months of the fiscal. But the novelty is wearing off. ChatGPT use has declined and search volume for “artificial intelligence” and “AI” has declined. But consumer exposure and interest are not the real metric for its progress and traction. A boosted-up AI ecosystem is taking shape driven by computing power. Hence the commercialisation of AI will be dependent on Microsoft and Google leading the way. Open-source models are coming into the world of generative AI. Hugging Face, an AI establishment, estimates nearly 1,500 versions of such models. A tiger lives as long as its teeth. Likewise, AI feeds and lives off data. Chat GPT feeds on 1trn words and the more they feed the more ravenous they get. With such computing power at hand, the data sources within the present internet seem manageably finite and are near exhausted. One quest is to get the force multiplying network effects so prized in tech. Meta hopes that llama will gain a loyal community of programmers. Abu Dhabi plans to establish a company to help commercialise far and wide applications of Falcon, its open source AI model. Who will emerge victorious? Openai , with its vast number of users has an edge. Google has the advantage of data structure expertise and vast monetary resources. The prize will go to the efficient model-builder that has a core capability to produce and weld together data and that takes an early lead in branding. The prize is world mastery. No wonder that President Biden has issued an executive order with an aim to regulate how U.S. companies develop AI and how regulators oversee it. The order will create standards for American companies and public agencies. Invoking the ‘Defense Production Act’, authorizes the American President to mobilize U.S. industry to support national defence. The US aims to remain the global leader in regulating the fast-growing tech, with the British government hosting an international summit meeting on A.I. safety this week. The order requires content created by A.I. systems to be labelled to minimize the effect of “deep fakes” a concern shared across democracies which see it as a potential systemic risk. Yesterday, more than 100 world leaders, tech honchos, global power hitters including Elon Musk started a two-day “safety summit” on artificial intelligence, hosted by Britain’s government. Bletchley Park , the historic site of Britain’s secret code-breaking unit during the second world war is the meeting venue. It is thought that these discussions may lead to a possible quasi-governmental institutional arrangement like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The “AI Safety Summit” is an effort to rein in potentially damaging AI. The European Union’s aiming at an ambitious AI act within the calendar year. China, party to the meet in London has already unveiled a “Global AI Governance Initiative” earlier in October. Traditionally Big Tech, in fact all tech, opposed regulation but the world and its ways have changed and now giants such as Google and Microsoft are keen on it. This is because entry barriers are low, and iterations can go from being on a laptop to a global storm within days. Imagine an AI model revealing details on nuclear and bioweapons. The concept of truth and facts can also be shredded. But regulatory requirements are viscous and intrusive rules slow everything down. Thus far, non-binding codes of conduct have been preferred. Britain’s existing “Frontier AI Taskforce” may be the first off the block but without American and Chinese participation nothing will crystallise. The race to regulate AI has started across power corridors in those world capitals that matter. Link: https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/digital/ai-ai-oh/104901608
Brands are made from memory. Memory is made of stimulus. Memory is brand building. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] The modernist, playwright, memoirist, philosopher, psychologist, novelist and nonfiction writer Elias Canetti won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981. He was profoundly interested in the question of the individual versus the collective. He wrote “Of all the words in all languages know to me, the greatest concentration is in the English word I.” What is this ‘I’? When we open our eyes in the morning, is there some boot file that kicks in and suffuses our being with this sense of ‘I’ ? Is it an act of retrieval of memory? If my memory is wiped out, I cease to be me to myself but I am still alive in the collective memory of others. It brings up many questions critical for brand building. How do we remember things? Why are some things memorable and not others? Do we retain everything we live through even if we can’t actively recall it ? Why are childhood’s first memories often unfaded till the end of our lives but we forget the number of the hotel room where we stayed only two days ago? All these questions are not well understood or evidenced. But we know more than ever before. Memory is not about the profound or the perfunctory. Familiarity does not breed contempt. It builds memory. Evolution honed the ability to learn quickly aided by memory development. Where do we get the ability to determine what is important and what is trivial? Many argue that brands associated with a few things really distinguish themselves in the minds of consumers as against those with but one differentiator. The essence of the argument is that ‘distinctiveness matters, differentiation doesn’t’. Often treated synonymously -differentiation and distinctiveness – how must they be defined when considered in terms of memory formation and retrieval? Differentiation is a benefit or ‘reason to buy’ for the consumer. Distinctiveness is a brand looking like itself. Distinctiveness is thus the essence of ‘being a brand’ and is legally defensible, while differentiation is not. Distinctiveness is in the body of the tangible offering or service. Differentiation is in the mind. The truth is you need to differentiate and be distinctive. You can’t do one without doing the other. A brand’s locus standi is to differentiate one supplier from another. That is why we have trademark law against imitation or counterfeiting by another. Any aspect of the brand’s identity or expression: the name, logo, tagline, the colours, the imagery, the packaging shape, the copylines etc. comes into play because it is remembered and recalled. Consideration is always a subset of awareness. We can all think of brands that we recognize and thus are able to differentiate purely on their logo alone. Often we don’t even need to see the whole logo – one letter or one half of the logo will give us the clue we need. The third rule of differentiation would be what we would call the ‘meaningful’ differentiation, the reason you buy or prefer a brand because of something that they do which particularly appeals to you. Being better or at least being perceived to be better is a differentiator. The fact is people know what is distinctive, familiar and recognizable about their Cola, shampoo, online retailer, airline or automobile. Todd Horowitz and Jeremy Wolfe, two researchers at the Harvard Medical School, showed that no memory is employed during certain types of visual searches. When dealing with the truly trivial, the brain does not evidently bother to learn anything. When you drive home from work, you are in a flow aided by landmarks and unbothered about the visual stimuli elsewhere. This is true when you walk down a store aisle packed with competing brands. It follows that if everything encountered in life is not stored away somewhere in the brain then retrieval is not the real challenge. Rather, it is the construction of the memories in the first place that is of critical importance to brand marketers. Memory -short-term, intermediate and long-term – is distinguished by different biochemical activities within nerve cells. Only in the case of long-term memory are entirely new groups of proteins produced changing the physical structure of the brain by stimulating the formation of new connections between nerve cells. Memory researchers know that memory is minted in the hippocampus. People who suffer hippocampal damage are unable to form new long-term memories. The hippocampus is in the middle of the brain. But these patients recalled significant earlier memories from before the damage. It means the brain can store memory elsewhere into a long-term storage site. That archive is in the neocortex-the most recently evolved part of the brain. When we encounter anything new by way of environment, groups of nerve cells in its hippocampus start firing off electrical signals. Then, the neocortex and hippocampus fire in synch at night and transfer happens. This was researched in the case of mice by Matthew Wilson, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Bruce McNaughton, at the University of Arizona. When asked to think of a brand, very often we -at first – go to the visual identities, colour schemes and the tagline. The experience and associations come later to mind. It is so because these distinctive elements are encountered most frequently. Advertising changes but these remain the same. Thomas Carew, a neuroscientist at Yale University, found that most reliable way to build a long-term memory is through repeated exposure. He studied the effects of exposing nerve cells to a molecule called serotonin; a neurotransmitter responsible for carrying signals from one nerve cell to another across synapses. The takeaway from research was that if a nerve cell is exposed to the same amount of serotonin, but it is delivered not in one long pulse but as a series of short pulses with intervals then the retained memory span lengthens. Hence incidence and frequency may make the even the mundane memorable. But before closing,
