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Storyboard18 | Simply Speaking: Success is a subjective phenomenon where the network matters beyond its measure Andy Warhol said: “To be successful as an artist, you have to have your work shown by a good gallery for the same reason, say, that Dior never sold his originals from a counter in Woolworth’s.” Success is networked, collaborative and functions as a reputational feedback loop. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] In the Web era, evaluations to decide merit can and are being made through new, collective tools that challenge top down, elitist networks. (Representational image: Aleks Marinkovic via Unsplash) Success needs results. Performance needs opportunity. Often, we see that ordinary talent may go a long way whilst a top talent may fall by the wayside or never get on to the road to success. Why does that happen ? How is such a judgement on according credit made? How is success achieved? How genuine is acclaim? Multiple dependencies govern how art, fashion, architecture, politics or even business impact can be judged for individual work. The emergence of collective intelligence on internet platforms has made the stakes higher and the process more accelerated. Still, the more things change, the more essentially they remain the same. First, it is a circular ecosystem. Artists derive prestige from their affiliations with specific galleries and museums; in turn, the prestige of these institutions stems from the perceived importance of the artists they represent and exhibit. Prestige is often as subjective as it is valuable. Invisible, intangible influences have a bearing on assessed value.  Where does it start? There were a few major hubs in the world of art, represented by a few institutions that are linked to an exceptional number of other institutions. In this short list are American names such as New York’s Guggenheim,  Gagosian Gallery, Pace Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. These are closely linked to European institutions like the Tate, Centre Pompidou, and Reina Sofia. These institutions are the trampolines of artistic success. By showing at major galleries or museums, you are propelled towards superstar status in the art world.  Fashion is almost the same. The Fashion weeks at New York, Milan, London and Paris are the big platforms. Fashion labels get a seal of approval here. Buyers, retail chains, critics all congregate here. For 5 seasons, as marketing head of Lakmé  between 2006 and 2010, I also ran the Lakmé Fashion Week at Mumbai and I saw this core ecosystem from an outer circle. I recall Suzy Menkes visiting us and later the investor Ted Forstmann and what that meant in terms of attention worldwide. Haute couture is a twice-yearly five-day show fiesta in Paris where a select handful of brands produce handmade-to-order garments that cost approximately $10,000 to $100,000 a piece. To qualify as a couture house, which is an official designation like champagne, a brand must maintain an atelier of a certain number of artisans full-time and produce a specific number of garments twice a year for a show. There are only a very few that can fulfil the requirements, including Chanel, Dior and Valentino. Many such as Balmain, Versace, Saint Laurent have dropped off over the years, and the governing organization has relaxed some of its rules to admit younger, less resourced and guest designers, like Iris van Herpen and Guo Pei. There are only a few hundred clients in the world who regularly buy couture, including Middle Eastern royalty and American ultra-rich. Guests often sit on gold ballroom chairs. At Chanel, the designer Karl Lagerfeld often recreated gardens from around the world as his sets. This is obviously not a club where one gets voted in on mass appeal. Clement Greenberg, a famous art critic in the 1950s, said that art will always be tied to money by an umbilical cord of gold. It used to be said that you will never have a good art career unless your work fits into the elevator of a New York apartment block. The biggest art hub is Manhattan and if your work is not on walls there, you could forget about being top rated. If you gave most people Rs 680 crore, and they had to choose whether to spend it on a 20-bedroom house and a massive estate in the Swiss Alps or a painting by Mark Rothko of two large dark-red rectangles (in May 2012, Orange, red, yellow circa 1961 sold for $86.9 million when it went under the hammer at Christie’s in New York), the overwhelming majority would choose the real estate. We understand the notion of paying for size and location in real estate, but most of us have no criteria or confidence to judge the price for a work of art. We pay for things that can be lived in, driven, consumed, and worn; and we believe in an empirical ability to judge their relative quality and commercial value. Does it matter if such assessments are done by a cliquish set up? Surely it is the best talent that gets to these institutions. It is tempting to conclude that if you want to succeed, all you need to do is move to New York, or London, or Paris. But that’s not true. It is linkages within the network not the cities that matter. Even in a gallery next door to the Guggenheim it would be impossible to find exposure or success. Likewise, the failures in Milan or Paris are in their thousands. Andy Warhol said “To be successful as an artist,you have to have your work shown by a good gallery for the same reason, say, that Dior never sold his originals from a counter in Woolworth’s.” Success is networked, collaborative and functions as a reputational  feedback loop, where galleries make names for themselves by taking on big-name artists, and big-name artists earn their fame by showing at reputable galleries. Once you are a named success, it’s in everyone’s interest to keep you successful. Galleries don’t survive without buyers. Buyers want value to grow. Big collectors sit on museum boards. They donate major works to these institutions.

There is a clear need to map the markers of charisma and awe and aim for admiration, elevation and perhaps even brand love. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Charismatic brands do highly expressive communication and excel at storytelling. For example, Apple, Nike and Louis Vuitton always have a story to tell. (Representational photo: Francesco Ungaro via Unsplash) All brands have image, symbolism, and prestige to some degree, but charisma is quite another matter. When possessed of it, brands ascend to being icons. This is encountered but rarely understood. What is a charismatic brand personality? Is it something exclusive to luxury brands and high involvement categories? Is it possible to possess charisma without evidence? What are the behavioral attributes of charismatic brands? This understanding is sorely needed for building sustained brand-consumer relationships and as a foundational input to brand strategy and operations. Companies build brand equity via shaping of brand personalities. This encourages consumer interactions and builds relationships. Where brand interactions have emotionally transformative effects, certainly a brand charisma is at play. The dictionary defines charisma as ‘a special magnetic charm or appeal’. Most of the research on charisma has focused on individuals as charismatic leaders that create a sense of excitement among followers, build strong bonds, and ultimately possess the ability to exercise a strong influence on the values and behaviors of followers. The idea that consumers’ relationships with brands can resemble their relationships with people has increasingly become accepted in branding and consumer behavior. This implies that charisma creates and shapes a special relationship with the brand. Conversely, a large following and mass of relationships can elevate a brand to charismatic status. To possess charisma represents a highly rated report card from consumers. These cognitive appraisals cause feelings of admiration which subsequently impact purchase behavior. The word charisma has Greek roots:  charizesthai – to gratify and charis which implies being gifted.  A natural starting point for understanding the concept of charisma is the work of Max Weber. He referred to charisma as a widely perceived appeal which transcends ordinary conceptions of reality. It can be attributed to persons, actions, roles, institutions, symbols, and material objects. Charisma is a kind of aura that emerges ‘with ultimate, fundamental, vital, or order-determining powers’ This ‘person-charisma’ complex must be decoded so it can be applied to brands. Charismatic leaders radiate confidence and set high expectations for themselves and their followers. Charismatic leaders are also role models for others as they have moral courage, assertiveness backed by power and a disruptive ability to challenge the status quo. Leaders with charisma also foster motivation and galvanize their followers with a value-laden vision of the future. Likewise, brands can use mission as a platform to get consumers aboard and infuse them with self-esteem, self-worth and social identification. Just as charismatic leaders affect followers because of motivational mechanisms that are induced by leader behaviors, so also brands affect consumers that are induced by the behaviors of the brand. Adidas, Nike, Budweiser,Marlboro, Apple,Nike , Harley, Volkswagen Beetle, Jack Daniels, Superman, Range Rover, Zippo, Harvard, Oxford, MTV, Rambo, Elvis all are possessed of it. I am quoting universally acclaimed Western brands that have gone global, but it is only illustrative. Charisma is not one thing. It is a composite of many: being visionary, articulate, sensitive to community, unconventional, and boldness. A charismatic brand can influence, inspire and motivate followers. It exudes confidence, dominance, energy, and the ability to prescribe actions for which followers are psychologically primed. A brand’s articulation done with expressiveness and eloquence is a prerequisite to building, growing and sustaining charisma. Charismatic brands do highly expressive communication and excel at storytelling. An Apple, Nike or Louis Vuitton always has a story to tell. Behind each product, there is a history of what brought it to market. It adds inherent value to the brand. Brands that elicit great admiration, draw attention easily and inspire. Brands that are charismatic are honest and reliable. No one can break trust, be insincere and yet retain a charismatic sway. Credibility is the anchor for Charisma. It is foundational. Whether in politics, entertainment, journalism, politics or advertising – the crux of charisma is ‘being credible’. It is not a fantastical construct. Charisma is often treated synonymously with finesse. It cues a very special type of attractiveness – magnetic, charming, appealing, beautiful, elegant, sophisticated, and classy. But that is not definitional. Awe is also related to scale and quantum. Big is beautiful too. Bigness is about solidity. Charismatic brands have a sense of permanence and are there for the long term. The importance of being visionary in unconventional and bold ways cannot be overstated. It is a vehicle to legitimize brand charisma. A vision for the future, positive energy, focus on unexploited and futuristic opportunities presents a brand that is dynamic, outgoing, and ambitious in nature. Being visionary clearly says something about the brand’s strength of character and the will to achieve this vision. Max Weber offered one of the most nuanced and insightful treatments of awe in his analysis of charisma and charismatic leaders. Weber noted that, throughout history, social groups tend to settle into patriarchal or bureaucratic modes of organization, which are stable. In times of crisis people sometimes overthrow these stable forms of power, transferring their allegiance to a charismatic leader who awes the masses by performing miracles or acts of heroism. Charismatic leaders bring about revolution from the inside, by changing people, who then go on to change society. Hence the context can empower an individual or brand with game changing charisma. It can happen very suddenly. Like Weber, Emile Durkheim posited that certain collective emotions have transformative powers; they change people’s attitudes and inspire them to follow something larger than themselves. A man who experiences such sentiments feels that he is dominated by forces which he is not the master of but is led by. Durkheim approached Charisma as a form of Awe. According to him, for something to be thought of as awesome and hence charismatic was a social sentiment

Our fandom is a platform for fellowship amounting to kinship. It captivates us via affiliative energy. The sport, team or sports person – our totem – becomes a physical representation of that need for identity and unity. [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. 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 jumping 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 worshipping itself. Durkheim elaborated on the concept of the ‘totem’ and hence totemic symbols. In his words “On the one hand, [the totem] is the external and tangible form of what we have called … God. But on the other, it is the symbol of that particular society we call the clan. It is its flag; it is the sign by which each clan distinguishes itself from others, the visible mark of its personality.” 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. 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

Calling a finished product ‘a Design’ is convenient but wrong. Design is what you do, not what you have done. Design is what happens between conceiving an idea and devising the means to carry it out. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Always, By Design. I do not believe in blind idolatry of design expertise. Let us be reminded that the Titanic was designed by the best. Nor should we waste breath on debating ‘form vs. function’. Asked whether he designed for pleasure or function, Charles Eames responded…’Who ever said pleasure was not functional?” In every aspect of civilised existence as well as in nature, design is inherent. Still, its study, appreciation and inculcation has been neglected outside the circle of design professionals. Certainly, design does not percolate into our school curriculum. The three Rs’ (reading, writing and ‘rithmetic) got coined in the early nineteenth century by an illiterate member of Parliament in Britain speaking on an issue of education. Actually, he paraphrased an earlier saying: “Education is reading and writing, reckoning and figuring, wroughting and wrighting.” From reading and writing we get Literacy, from reckoning and figuring comes Numeracy. There is no equivalent term for wroughting and wrighting – the creation and making of things. In the 1950s, the term Technics was introduced but the only word in current use that comes close is Design. Calling a finished product ‘a Design’, is convenient but wrong. Design is what you do, not what you have done. ‘No, Watson,’ said Sherlock Holmes, ‘this was not done by accident, but by design.’ Design is what happens between conceiving an idea and devising the means to carry it out. It may even be represented schematically. In short, designing is what goes on for purpose to get to execution. Great design turns a problem into a brandable IP opportunity. Designers are the doers of the art world, and it is something to take pride in. Artists are concerned with solving their own problems the designer’s role is to solve other people’s problems. Genius lies in figuring the elegance of the solution to a given problem. Designers derive their rewards from personal standards of excellence. The best of them are committed to the calling, not the job. They live up to their own standards, not their project outcomes alone. The word design is meaningless by itself. It has a wide spectrum- be it making a movie, creating a commercial enterprise, or rearranging the living room furniture. The idea it covers is too vast. Dieter Rams listed the essentials as follows – Good design is innovative Gives a product utility Is aesthetic Makes a product easy to understand Is unobtrusive Is honest Is long-lived Is consistent down to the smallest detail Protects the environment Good design is as little design as possible. In addition, I share a few profound quotes on the subject: Vasari …Design is the animating principle of all creative processes. Trevanian … Design is a mental habit of seeing things simultaneously in their narrowest details and their broadest implications. Abraham Moles … The job of design is to increase the legibility of the world. Ralph Caplan … Design is the artful arrangement of materials or circumstances into a planned form.  Kenji Ekuan … To design is to give shape to man’s dream. Buckminster Fuller… The opposite of design is chaos. Victor Papanek … Design is the conscious effort to impose meaningful order. Roger Tallon … Design is first and foremost an attitude. Jens Bernsen … translating a purpose into a physical form or tool. Leo Lionni … Design is the power to command and hold attention, to create symbols, to clarify ideas. Wim Crouwel – Design is pure form chosen to serve a particular function. Bruno Monguzzi – …the instrument through which communication is … accomplished. Stephen Jay Gould… expressed by correspondence between an organizer’s form and an engineer’s blueprint. Bruce Archer … Design is a goal-directed problem-solving activity. Art Kane – Design is putting flesh on the spirit.  Willem Sandberg … condenses communication to make it more effective. Vernon Barber … Design is the antithesis of accident.  George Nelson … Design is a process of relating everything to everything. Emilio Ambasz… Design is to give poetic form to the pragmatic. Charles Handy … design is not just about survival and profitability, it is about making a difference for the better.  Ettore Sottsass … design is debating life. Stephen Bayley… imposing meaning on the chaos of the market place. Le Corbusier … good design is intelligence made visible.  Saul Bass… Design is thinking made visual. Tibor Kalman … the difference between good design and great design is intelligence. Adrian Forty… No design works unless it embodies ideas that are held in common by the people for whom the object is intended. Hans Schleger … It can give shape to thought and feeling as the glass does to wine.  Milton Glaser… A designer is essentially a person who makes understandable, elements that are not as understandable without his participation. Buckminster Fuller… an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.  Ivan Chermayeff … a borrower, co-ordinator, assimilator, juggler, and collector of material, knowledge and thought from the past and present. Harry Bertoia … The urge for good design is the same as the urge to go on living. The assumption is that somewhere, hidden, is a better way of doing things. Marianne Moore called poetry an imaginary garden inhabited with real toads. Ralph Caplan called design a real garden inhabited with imaginary toads… and suggested the designer’s role is to realize the toads. Design is not merely manipulating forms and shapes, spaces and volumes, or playing with pen and paper, mouse and screen. Design is applied thought. The manifestations are myriad. Graphic, product and fashion design are merely some of the spheres inhabited by specialists with a particular bent and skill. Genius can funnel its abilities to a variety of purposes. Brunelleschi designed the duomo of the Florence Cathedral as well as devising a

Man has acquired ascendancy over all other living things because he deployed his creativity to make tools. It is the imagining, development and application of tools that made the ‘Homo sapien’ supreme. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] The typewriter was patented in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes, and Mark Twain was the first to use one to write a book. (Image: Chuttersnap via Unsplash) Self-awareness and the creative urge distinguish us from other creatures. To create something requires for it to be envisioned first. Prometheus, the Greek god, had the magical power of being able to imagine the future by projecting a horizon of possibilities. Man has acquired ascendancy over all other living things because he deployed his creativity to make tools. It is the imagining, development and application of tools that made the Homo sapien supreme. Tool, machine, implement, instrument, appliance, utensil, device and gadget all mean “piece of equipment for doing work”. A tool (the word first appeared in King Alfred’s translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae c. 883 AD) is typically small and hand-held, performs a physical task, e.g., culling, scraping, banging or moulding, and can be powered: a hammer is a tool and so is an electric drill. An implement is usually a simple tool, particularly one used for agriculture: a rake or a spade is an implement. An instrument is either a delicate tool for skilled precision work, or a measuring device: a scalpel and a thermometer are instruments. An appliance is usually an item of domestic or office equipment powered from the mains: vacuum cleaners and juicers are appliances. A device is usually a piece of mechanical equipment ingeniously contrived for a stated purpose. A gadget is a small, often novel and electronic device that may form part of a piece of machinery as in, a car fitted with gadgets. Paul Klee‘s studio was once described as an alchemist’s lair, stuffed with the materials and instruments that he made and kept about him. These included home-made brushes, whittled reed pens, toothpicks and razor blades fastened to improvised handles and bent bits of wire to scrape, incise and abrade the compounded surfaces of his paintings. “We make tools and as we evolve, our tools made us” Not everyone is objective about using tools. Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking, claimed Milton Glaser. “We make tools and as we evolve, our tools made us,” observed Steven Pinker and he was right. In 1867 Karl Marx made much of the 500 different kinds of hammers produced in Birmingham, each adapted to fulfil a specific task. He also neatly defined machines as ‘knowledge objectified’ where machines had become an extension of man. Using tools shapes the life we live without tools. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera, Dorothea Lange explained pithily. Creative geniuses have shown their calibre via inventions and discovery across fields. The Lunar Society of Birmingham was founded by Erasmus Darwin in the 1760s. This group of self styled ‘Lunaticks’ formed a nucleus for the industrialization of Britain, and between them had a hand in the origin of almost every mechanism used in the technologies of today. Among the members were Josiah Wedgwood (pottery), William Small (who taught Thomas Jefferson), James Watt (steam engines), Joseph Priestley (oxygen), Benjamin Franklin (electricity), James Keir (chemist). Erasmus (grandfather of the more famous Charles Darwin) was a physician, poet, and inventor of a speaking machine, an artificial bird with flapping wings, a sun-operated device for opening cucumber-frames, a horizontal windmill to grind colours, pumps, steam turbines, canal lifts, internal combustion engines, a compressed-air-powered ornithopter, a hydrogen-oxygen rocket motor and water closet that flushed when the door was opened to leave. He was also obsessed with the vision of a steam-driven ‘fiery chariot’ to replace the horse-drawn post-chaise. The society only met during the full moon as the ride home late at night was less dangerous. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein designed a house, fixtures and fittings. He also worked on a sewing machine and an airplane propeller. The Chinese designer Lu Pan, who lived some 2,500 years ago, is said to have designed the saw, drill, shovel, plane, hook, lock and ladder. His wife is given credit for inventing the umbrella. The brush made of hair is attributed to General Meng T’ien, builder of the Great Wall (c. 210 BC) and Chai Lun is credited with inventing paper (107 AD). The Chinese also came up with the compass, gunpowder, paper, canal lock gates, cast iron, efficient animal harnesses, kites, type, porcelain, printing, sternpost rudders and wheelbarrows. The Greek Daedalus also claims credit for the saw and drill, as well as the axe, plumb line, carpenter’s glue, and making life-like automata. Gainsborough sometimes worked on his larger paintings with a six-foot brush made from a fishing rod. The traditional quill pen was made from one of the first four wing feathers of a goose. The boomerang was perfected by Aborigines as a digging tool, cutting instrument,  scaring birds, ritual dances, attack and defense. Author Anthony Trollope (employee of the Post Office) was the inventor of the pillar box. Charles Babbage invented the great analytical engine, the forefather of the computer, the speedometer, cowcatcher and life expectancy tables. During the 1940s, movie star Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil invented and patented a system to prevent the jamming of radio signals. They were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. You can see, inventive genius is found everywhere. The typewriter was patented in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes, and Mark Twain was the first to use one to write a book. The first patent for a typewriter was granted to William Burt of Detroit in the 1860s. The QWERTY keyboard, so called for the six letters in the left top row, was designed so that people had to type slowly. To ensure this, the commonest letters were scattered on the left side to confound the majority of right-handers. This strategy was to avoid adjacent keys jamming when struck in quick succession. In addition, salesmen could also acquire fluency in typing the letters TYPEWRITER as these occur in the top row of the keyboard. Every discovery, by definition, is unpredictable. If it were predictable, it would not be a discovery. Creativity exposes unpredictable things to be discovered. It is a commonly held view that creativity is something some are born with and others

Seeing the world outside from the inside. That’s the meaning of true vision. Go down this rabbit hole with these learnings in optics, mirror imagery, perspectives and clichés. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] The metamir, or metaphysical mirror, doesn’t obey the laws of optics but reproduces your image as seen by the person who stands before you. (Representational image: Quino Al via Unsplash) ‘Art must take reality by surprise’ – Françoise Sagan A monkey can’t recognize itself in a mirror, but a chimpanzee can. In that continuum, humans naturally have an even more special relationship with visually conceivable reality. ‘Every mirror is false,’ Malcolm de Chazal reminded us, ‘because it repeats something it has not witnessed.’ Philosophy demands that mirrors should perhaps think before they reflect. There is a concept called the metamir, a metaphysical mirror which doesn’t obey the law of optics but reproduces your image as seen by the person who stands before you. A generally less favourable image than the one normally reflected or the one you would like to project. The oldest known mirror is a lump of polished obsidian found in the debris of one of the earliest human settlements dating from 9,000 years ago in Turkey. Self-reflection has been with us since the dawn of civilisation, if not consciousness. The mirror made of glass, at the time a miraculous invention, was monopolized by the Venetians who forbade their export on penalty of death. The French King Louis XIV, who owned one valued at three times the price of a Raphael, offered gold to tempt Venetian mirror makers across the Alps to live and work in France. During the Renaissance they used convex mirrors to enlarge their angle of vision. In the late seventeenth century amateur landscape painters used the Claude Glass to capture the artistic qualities associated with the picturesque. This instrument was a small, portable, slightly convex glass mirror backed with dark foil. When held up to reflect the landscape it was considered to provide optimum framing and a harmonious albeit tinted colour scheme. The mirror was also considered to be extremely precious, hence the seven years’ bad luck if you broke one as it had magical properties. For instance, when you look into a mirror which faces another mirror, you are reflected back and forth until you disappear into infinity. It reverses images left to right, but not upside down. When a right-handed person looks in the mirror while shaving, he becomes left-handed. The reflection of the person you think you are, isn’t you – it’s your other you. Anaïs Nin would spend hours writing her diary at her dressing table which had a set of mirrors so she could see herself in triplicate whenever she glanced up. ‘I needed to reassure myself that I existed’, she explained. In many ways our social media persona is also a mirror image. Beyond reflected reality, perspective is the more profound subject. Harold Ross, the legendary editor of The New Yorker, sifting through cartoons submitted to the magazine would sometimes scribble on the artwork, ‘Where am I?’ Often, when we need to put things ‘in perspective’, what we really mean is that we prefer situations which conform to ‘our point of view’. You can be judged by your perspective on issues. A single fixed-point perspective is an output of a rigid, motionless mind. But let us return to visual perspective: The discovery of linear perspective is attributed to Brunelleschi. In 1420 AD, he demonstrated this illusionary ordered recession of space through painting the Battistero in Florence. Through his perspectile experiment he created a realistic 3D space on a 2D surface. Perspective was considered magical. A two-dimensional surface could be made to appear three-dimensional; large things could be made to look small and small things large; a painting could look like the real thing. The truth is a diamond cut with many facets. In his film Rashomon, Akira Kurosawa showed us four very different versions of “reality”. By altering the perspective and order of events for each character, we perceive the unreality of their contrasting perceptions. Robert Pirsig observed that we build up whole cultural patterns based on past “facts” which are extremely selective. When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern we don’t throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact. David Ruelle gave an explanation: ‘When we open our eyes, we receive an enormous amount of information from the outside world. But because this outside world has a lot of structure, the messages received by the eyes are highly redundant. The visual system performs data compression. This data compression begins at the level of the retina, and even before reaching the visual cortex the visual messages are already highly processed and compressed. What we see are interpreted images, interpreted by a visual system that has been shaped by natural evolution to cope with a certain type of outside physical reality.” Perceptions are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe, wrote Francis Bacon in a penetrating insight. Perception is how we see the outside from the inside. Werner Heisenberg was of the view that what we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning What a piece of bread looks like depends on whether you’re hungry or not. Our notion of reality is moulded by our parents, schooling and culture. Since we all come from differing backgrounds so do our perceptions of things. We build our own models of reality. Seeing Les Demoiselles d’Avignon at an exhibition, a man approached Picasso and asked why he didn’t paint people the way they looked. “Well, how do they look?” asked Picasso. The man took a photograph of his wife from his wallet and handed it over. Picasso looked at the picture; then handing it back, said, “She is small, isn’t she?” During his lifetime Van Gogh couldn’t give his paintings away. The last auction of Van Gogh paintings was in November 2021 by Christie’s where four Van Gogh paintings sold for a total of $161m (1215 crore rupees). The paintings have not changed but aesthetic and visual attitudes have. Salvador Dalí invented the term The Paranoiac-Critical Method to describe

The term bricolage refers to a shot in billiards which doesn’t turn out as intended but is nevertheless successful. It’s a very close to real life thing. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Bricolage is a shot in billiards which doesn’t turn out as intended but is successful nevertheless. It’s a very close to real life thing. (Image: Alex Lion via Unsplash) A grapefruit is a lemon that had a chance and took advantage of it. – Oscar Wilde Is advertising art or science? Is more creativity more effective? What is scientifically proven creativity? How could that be measured? What is art and what is advertising? Does evidence-based marketing prove the impact? Art is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visualform such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power’ or ‘the various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance. As self-expression, advertising could be art with a commercial intent of changing perceptions and behaviours in a required way. One of the acknowledged studies done for creativity and impact on advertising results was by Werner Reinartz and Peter Saffert at the University of Cologne. They published their results in June 2013 in the Harvard Business Review in an article titled  ‘Creativity in Advertising: When It Works and When It Doesn’t’ They analysed 437 TV campaigns for 90 FMCG brands in Germany from 2005 to 2010. Using the definition of creativity as ‘the extent to which an ad contains brand or executional elements that are different, novel, unusual, original, unique’ they developed five dimensions – originality, flexibility, elaboration, synthesis and artistic value – and tied those elements to sales. They found that more creative campaigns were considerably more effective. Specifically, ‘A euro invested in a highly creative ad campaign had, on average, nearly double the sales impact of a euro spent on a non creative campaign’. In 1923, Claude Hopkins published his book Scientific Advertising, which made the grand claim that advertising had achieved ‘the status of science’ as it was based on fixed principles and is reasonably exact. Advertising, once a gamble, has thus become, under able direction, one of the safest business ventures. As he put it “Your object in all advertising is to buy new customers at a price which pays a profit!” We look for information; we look for evidence that fits what we already know or what we already believe, and we try to avoid information or evidence that we either disagree with or that we know doesn’t fit with our perspective. And if someone comes along and says, here’s the evidence, your natural tendency is actually to rehearse arguments against that evidence. This is known as the ‘backfire effect’, which describes how in the face of contradictory evidence, well-established beliefs don’t change but rather get stronger. What really makes a campaign successful? What role does luck /chance/ randomness play in creative success? Paradoxically, the sophisticated mind does believe in chance. Alan Fletcher claimed that John Cage composed music by consulting the I Ching or showing the orchestra drawings and asking them to play whatever came into their heads. Jean Arp made unpredictable compositions by tossing pieces of paper onto a board. Jackson Pollock swung cans of paint to make artworks out of unforeseen dribbles. Damien Hirst throws dirt and grime into his vitrines so it can predictably rot into unpredictable scenarios. For sure, luck is not going to work miracles. A whirlwind can’t reassemble a house. A watch cannot be made by putting all the parts in a box and shaking it. The benefit of knowledge over the potential of chance is acute when chance must trump complexity. Of course, it all depends on how one defines chance. Mathematically speaking, if you thoroughly shuffled a deck of cards and whilst dealing they came up in four suits each sequentially running from ace to king, this arrangement would be just as likely as any other. Chaos Theory proposes that the end result always depends on an initial condition. A popular analogy is billiards or pool where no two shots play out the same way. There is a word used called bricolage. The bricole was a medieval military machine for throwing stones. Nowadays the term refers to a shot in billiards which doesn’t turn out as intended but is nevertheless successful. It’s a very close to real life thing. There was a insightful article titled “Beautiful Minds -The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized” by Scott Barry Kaufman in the Scientific American, March 2018. And it asked whether the most successful people in society are just the luckiest people? To shed light on this, the Italian physicists Alessandro Pluchino and Andrea Raspisarda teamed up with the Italian economist Alessio Biondo to make the first ever attempt to quantify the role of luck and talent in successful careers. To formally capture this phenomenon, they proposed a “toy mathematical model” that simulated the evolution of careers of a collective population over a work life of 40 years from age 20-60. They defined talent as whatever set of personal characteristics allow a person to exploit lucky opportunities. Talent can include traits such as intelligence, skill, motivation, determination, creative thinking, emotional intelligence, etc. The key is that more talented people are going to be more likely to get the most ‘bang for their buck’ out of a given opportunity. All agents began the simulation with the same level of success (10 “units”). Every six months, individuals were exposed to a certain number of lucky events and a certain amount of unlucky events. Whenever a person encountered an unlucky event, their success was reduced in half, and whenever a person encountered a lucky event, their success doubled proportional to their talent to reflect the real-world interaction between talent and opportunity. What did they find? The well known “Pareto Principle” came true. In the outcome of the 40-year simulation, while talent was normally distributed, success was not. Almost half of the population remained under 10 units of success which was the initial starting condition. This is consistent with real-world data, although there is some

In the second of a two-part exploration of colour, we understand what it means ‘to see’, and decode the influence and magic of colour in our world. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] (Representational image) What you see, notice and derive aren’t the same thing. Sight is a faculty; seeing is an art. “I want to know one thing. What is colour?”  – Pablo Picasso Even before we decode colour, we must understand vision itself. The word theory derives from the Greek word which means ‘to behold’. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see,” wrote Henry David Thoreau and his observation is right. Sight so dominates our intellectual development that we construct diagrams and charts so we can ‘see what is happening’, ‘see if something is possible’ and ‘imagine it in our mind’s eye’. “I want to know one thing. What is colour?”  – Pablo Picasso Even before we decode colour, we must understand vision itself. The word theory derives from the Greek word which means ‘to behold’. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see,” wrote Henry David Thoreau and his observation is right. Sight so dominates our intellectual development that we construct diagrams and charts so we can ‘see what is happening’, ‘see if something is possible’ and ‘imagine it in our mind’s eye’. Have you noticed that although plenty of people confess they have ‘no ear’ for music you don’t come across many who admit they have ‘no eye’ for painting? When looking at a picture if we don’t understand it, we react angrily. Perhaps rubbishing something because one doesn’t understand it is a remnant of a survival instinct which threatens the unknown before it threatens you. Most people live with a bag over their head. They treat sight as a means of avoiding bumping into things or watching television. Most people’s lives are like sitting facing forward on a train where everything rushes past in a blur, instead of sitting with their back to the engine in visual comfort to let the landscape scroll by. In contrast, most of us faced with a scene look at it rather than look into it. What you see, notice and derive aren’t the same thing. You wil, of corse, have noticd the delibarete mistaiks in this sentence . To visually recognize a gap doesn’t impair our ability to derive meaning. Sight is a faculty; seeing is an art. The Greeks assumed that light entered the eye bringing with it what we see and the beauty of nature. They were wrong. Light comes as invisible wavelengths. It’s the brain which does all the work, parses the spectrum, sorts out the shapes and lines, puts everything together to form a mental picture. What happens is this – Light waves arrive on the retina, this translates them into tiny upside-down images. Millions of receptors carve these up into messages which race off to several billion cells. These interpret the data and send back messages to project the images the right way up. That’s what you see in the ‘mind’s eye’. The picture translated by the retina and the image projected in the mind’s eye are not necessarily the same. During the process language and culture act as prisms to bend and shape our view, so although we all start out seeing the same things everyone unconsciously creates their own interpretation. Therefore, although we think of the world as an entity existing outside our head it’s only a mirage in the mind. “If I look at the external world,” said Dylan Thomas, “I see nothing or me.” Stereo vision was discovered by physicist Charles Wheatstone in 1838. Until then everyone assumed that we have two eyes for the same reason we have two kidneys: as a spare if the other gets damaged. Each human eye has more than a million connections to the brain, which has more than ten thousand million cells, each of which has ten thousand further connections. We learn to see. We are not given to understand the world by instinct but make it through experience, categorization and memory. Vision is the art of seeing things invisible, as Jonathan Swift claimed. Different creatures see differently. The female praying mantis attacks anything smaller which moves. Males are smaller, thus a target. Since mating requires both proximity and movement – it is often a lethal combination. The eye has arisen de novo some forty separate times in the history of its evolution which began well before 540 million years ago an entire sequence from skin to eye across more than 400,000 generations. There is a history of the evolution in R.L. Gregory’s book ‘The Intelligent Eye’. And then there is the extinct marine reptile, a species of ichthyosaurus, which had eyeballs one foot wide. Trilobites, crustacean-like creatures that inhabited the oceans for three hundred million years, had eyes made of crystal – or to be more precise calcite – the same stuff as the white sea cliffs. There are enough common visual evidence experiments for colour: – Weber-Fechner Law –  One might assume that to make an equal scale of tones from white to black, one adds an equal amount of black for each step. Wrong. An equal progression requires the amount of black to be doubled at each step. For example, using transparent grey film the first step has one layer, the second needs two, the third needs four, the fourth eight, and so on. It’s an interesting concept. -The Greek Jinx Wheel-  This disk has a pattern of different coloured stripes and patches on each side. It is made to whizz around by pulling a loop of string passed through two holes near the centre. Legend tells how the Greeks used these devices to enchant their bored lover – quite how, I can’t think – anyway by spinning the disk the colours optically fuse into just one. – The Benham Top-  This is a disk with a pattern of black lines on a white background. When spun clockwise (five to ten revolutions per

How can marketers attain simplicity in a world awash with complexity. Simply speaking, it’s complex. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Authenticity is the sensibility to see oneself without illusion. It leads to adopting those technologies which make a positive difference to how the organization works. (Image: Marija Zaric via Unsplash) “It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties.” – Donna Haraway Marketing breeds complexity. Such is its nature that complexity manifests itself internally first. Projects, committees, portfolios, bureaucracies often grow weeds more than flowers, leaving little time, resources or mind space to innovate. Yet innovate we must, else it’s a slippery slope to extinction. Nora Bateson said “the opposite of complexity is reductionism. Simplicity is complexity with grace.” I wholeheartedly agree from a marketer’s perspective. The ask is wickedly simple. We need to separate what’s needed from what’s not – across technology, data and people. If it’s not delivering value, then it’s not a priority. No matter what the strategy, vision and brand purpose – less is more.  If only doing this would be as easy as stating it! In the brick-and-mortar era, marketers knew exactly how to drive traffic to stores. Marketing spend was simpler, more efficient, easier to measure and much less costly. What you did was what all competitors did as well. Then, the universe of competitors became vast, attention spans narrowed, marketing turned “always-on” and it became harder to reach customers. Today, the running cost of digital marketing is controlled by Google, Facebook and Amazon along with other powerful players like Apple. There is a rapidly growing form of digital marketing in which advertisers pay marketing companies called “affiliates” or “publishers” when a specific predefined action is completed; such as a sale, lead or click. All this brings greater complexity and cost. What should we keep in mind in order to attain simplicity and avoid complexity? Be authentic – Don’t adopt tech for being au courant  “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” said Goethe. Technology solutions give a competitive edge to one’s marketing. But the best fertilizer for the weed of complexity is technology for technology’s sake. I propose a new definition of ‘authenticity’. Authenticity is the sensibility to see oneself without illusion. It leads to adopting those technologies which make a positive difference to how the organization works. This must be seen considering the organizational culture. Will the culture adopt, adapt and change? If not, all technologies may be superfluous, ineffective and become tools for complication, not simplification. First, be realistic about your needs, then evaluate from the available tech landscape what the candidate technologies may solve for. Scarce resources are wasted on acquiring, working, incorporating and instructing personnel to use technologies that don’t contribute net value. Data is the north star Data can drive every organizational decision. But everywhere there is a problem of plenty. Data has a flood on the supply side but a drought in processing and utilization. In order to make use of data – pooling from many sources, de-duplicating it, harmonizing it and bringing it together to derive insights is the key. But people dance to the noise as much as to the signal. Let me tell you an open secret, without the right data you can’t judge the impact of data! It cannot be done alone – Think of a partner ecosystem. Shift transactional tasks that don’t need judgement down the priority ladder. Innovate for workforce agility. This is where partners come in. Develop stretch capacity plans to get to a model for handling demand peaks. As captain of the boat, look at the horizon not just beyond the bow. Future-ready means in the next hour, rest of today, tomorrow, next month, quarter and year. But it’s also fifty years from now. The boat will be best navigated with an eye on the horizon. If you merely gaze at the bow / boat, you will end up going round and round in circles. Think of the new consumer motivations  Beyond the traditional criteria of price and quality, the how, why and from whom people purchase goods and services is changing. Ease, convenience, service, personal care, trust, reputation, product origin, and now health and safety matter. It must factor into how brands connect with consumers, but also how marketing teams are organized and work. Your team should be set up to listen and adapt to what customers need. The reality is that as people’s mindsets and buying patterns transform, marketing must follow. Complexity arrives because of ignorance. When you don’t know what matters, everything matters. When you don’t know what to measure, everything is measured.   [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Disparate platforms also contribute to the fragmentation of user experiences. It is a toxic form of complexity. (Image: Dan Cristian Padure via Unsplash) Think of Consumer Experience needs before platforms Given a plethora of shiny new marketing tools that are constantly being ballyhooed, thousands of vendors with shiny new tools come promising superior targeting, improved conversions, and better efficiencies. To avoid the many, it is seductive to buy into the idea of a single, heavyweight, unified digital experience platform to serve as the hub of all digital experiences and running the full portfolio of websites and digital properties. But it is a road to failure because of the cost, intricacy of implementation, and rigidity of the massive platform so chosen. On the other hand, disparate platforms also contribute to the fragmentation of user experiences. It is a toxic form of complexity. Every touchpoint platform becomes a silo, to be managed independently which can’t share resources, and must be secured and controlled on a one-by-one basis. Consumers don’t care about your plumbing. They want water in the tap. Whatever form of digital and off-line marketing you do decide to invest in, there must be substantial testing, trailing,