The year started like yesterday! I mean I can’t even recall where did all this time go. All I have is this blurry vision of things and experiences and all that. Lemme see what I remember without any aids. And I will write about these in the order they come to me when I think about the year gone by.
We cracked a few clients for C4E. And we are growing. In case you are looking for a great place to work, consider us. See this form. Now to do more things with C4E and move in more zones.
Poo went to get herself a better life. I miss her but I am happy that she’s doing what she’s been trying to do for a long long time.
I was in BKK for a trip that was supposed to be 2 weeks long but I had to cut it short to 3 days. I have another 2-week trip coming up. I am hoping to not cancel that.
I got a new rental house in Mumbai. While I was transitioning between these houses, I lived in shitty hotels. I continue to not like the idea of living with friends or relatives.
I decided to take C4E in a high-performing, high-gear mode and I failed at it. I did not push my people more. I could’ve. I tried. But the moment I made some changes, I could see the cracks. I pulled back. But we need to become stronger.
I was in Delhi for a few days and I realised that my parents are getting old and they are fading fast. This is as polite and respectful as I can be about their age. So that. And since I have been thinking about this post from Tim Urban anyway, this visit was a stark reminder of the frailty and impermanence of life. The worst part is that you fade away. I think that’s a bad way to go – on one side, you can say your goodbyes and get closures and all that. On the other, you see former strong people as weak and frail. I dont know what’s more damning. Anyhow.
So that!
These are the things I recall. Lemme check my notes and see what else happened in this year that is worth capturing.
So, I checked my notes and I realised that I had remembered the key events. I would have wanted to change the order of how I remembered but that’s okay.
So this is how the year has been. Fairly ordinary. No large impacts. But then, it’s ok. As long as I’ve been able to manage to stay sane and engaged.
That’s it for the day. I am off to my annual break in less than two weeks. While I am there, I will try to eat better, write and think about life. Let’s see what the rest of the month holds for me.
So, one of the things I run is called the SoG (short for Shoulders of Giants) where I find young, bright people and then throw them with other young, bright people and then do things that make them friends with each other. In most cases, these people realise that they are smart and thus they make the effort to become friends. If not that, at least they develop mutual respect for each other. I throw ideas at them and then I get out of their way. To the point that I dont even bother with what they do or how they do it.
Of course, I do this with an ulterior motive. I want to not die a boring old man and surrounding myself with young people helps me learn more and do more. Plus I take their help in my work at C4E – you know, market research, ideation, concept testing, vox pops, cultural appropriation, new ideas and whatnot.
It has sort of become a symbiotic relationship where young people are challenged and they grow faster than they would. And I (and C4E) get access to ideas that we would otherwise miss. We help each other grow. Think Escher‘s Drawing Hands.
So I know this works. Helping each other grow. Do more. Etc.
And I have seen enough proof of this in action. I have seen how these kids change after they’ve spent a few months with each other. They blossom. It’s like a finishing school. They see the vastness of the sea. They find their way home and they start walking on the long road. They build their respective tribes. They anyway have access to the Internet and this SoG thingy becomes their gateway to people, places, and opportunities. I can write more but I hope you get the point.
For me, I’ve seen how attached I get to them as people – to the point that I get emotionally invested in their lives and success. As if they are my blood and my offspring. May be it’s my age (of 40) where biology is amplifying my fatherly instincts and making me want to protect and provide.
I am digressing. Coming back.
So, what I do at SoG works to the point that I’ve decided to make this my life’s work. While I will make money from C4E or whatever, I will spend a disproportionately large chunk of my time, social clout, energy, money and everything I have on pushing this program. Each thing I have would be spent on building this program up. Each connection I have will be requested to help me amplify these people. You will see me talk about this more and more. To a point, it would become my single largest communication imperative, ahead of even the work I do.
I dont believe in an afterlife or the epitaph (even though I have joked a lot about it) but if there’s one thing that I want to be known for, it is this. The person who gave big shoulders to young people (and in return took their shoulders to stand atop). The two groups (young people and C4E) help each other out and each spiral up!
So that.
However, the thing is, I run it like an ad-hoc program right now. Over the last 5 years, I have worked with 40 kids (if not more) from the ages of 15 to 23 and I have some sense of what works. I also have a sense of what doesn’t. I know why some kids drop midway. I know why some kids are unable to make friends. I know why some And I want to make it better. I want to put a structure to it. I want to write a 78-page plan that each person has to follow once they get into SoG. I want the plan to be a powerful template that each young person could follow to become a grand-slam success. I want it to be like a sure-shot road to success.
I know, I know that am merely thinking wishfully. The kind of thing I want to create and the kind of aukaat I have, they are two very different things. But then, if I don’t take shots out of my aukaat, why am I even here?
Over the next few days, I will work on it and like most things, build this in public. If you have any thoughts, any ideas, or any specific things that I can do to make this program better, please do let me know!
A session of freewriting where I rant about things that are at the top of my head. Specially about writing, people and more.
I haven’t written in a while. Except for PowerPoint presentations, emails and occasional tweets. Heck, I am not even writing stinkers to my beloved. At least with those I would get the creativeness out of the way. I’ve forgotten the joy that I felt when I wrote. I miss it. Each time I said a smart thing or created an amazing alliteration or planted an easter egg (or a 💣) or shuffled a word or two to make the text look better, I would love the feeling and I would clap at myself. You know, how Chris did for himself?
Most times I wrote in the past, I would write about inane things that no one else in the world would care about. It could be about places I’ve been to, things I did or even my love for Diet Coke (which I haven’t had in more than 3 months). See this.
If you see me consuming Diet Coke or Coffee from now on, point at me and I’ll give you 1000 bucks on the spot.
Often I would write about things clouding my head. I will get into freewriting and then before publishing, redact a few things (and copy-paste those onto Roam or whatever notetaking app I was using at the time). I would take all the topics that I am thinking about and then write a note about each. Often the act of writing would give me some clarity. I am the kind that thinks while talking or writing. I can’t deep-think in my head. These freewriting sessions have given me a lot of clarity on a lot of things that I have been struggling to find an answer to. May be that’s what I’d do today?
Let’s try.
A/ Projects.
So, I like the idea of a project-first life. The day-to-day rigmarole is not for me. A project life is where you are immersed in a project with your 100%. While you are on it, you dont have the time to think of anything else. It’s like flying a plane or operating a medical emergency. At a time, you can fly one plane (or operate on one person) and while you do that, you need to be there with your 100% attention. And you get a break after you are done with that project and you get onto the next one. This is because I spent my formative years as an event manager. I would do high-intensity corporate events and would have no time to think or work or read or distract myself with things, I would do the event and then come back to the next one. And in the middle, get ample breaks to recuperate, think, dream, chase hobbies etc.
In fact, I think, life as an event manager was good. I want to get back to it. ISTG I do. But I am not sure how. There is no way I’d get to make a billion dollars with it. And at this time there’s nothing else I want more than a billion dollars. In cash or equivalents. Not in valuation.
So that. Come to think of it, what I do right now (communication / marketing etc) doesn’t give me a shot at a billion either. Truth be told, my current occupation happened because of COVID-19. I was lucky that I could speak well and understood marketing. I was lucky that I had access to people that gave me work. I was lucky that I could create opportunities. I was lucky that people agreed to work with me and help me build C4E. I am lucky that these people now care for C4E and do it more than I do; to the point that I am no longer required.
All of this happened as an outcome of lucky accidents. Nothing was deliberate. I flowed with time. And that served me ok to the point that we are a good business with good people and ok work.
And this is what makes me think – if I could be deliberate with things and move things in a certain manner, we would probably be a great business with great people and great work. And that’s what I need to move towards.
B/ Writing
The other day, Sonali told me something cool. She said the number one writing advice that Neil Gaiman gives to others is, “finish things”.
And that I think is what ails me. Not just with writing but with everything. I am great at ideating, thinking, staring. I am able to put in the resources needed to get things off the ground. But I lose interest soon after and I move on to the next one. Aditya Sir diagnosed it and told me that once I solve a problem in my head, I assume that I have solved it – without putting pen to paper or without making the actual effort to solve it. Which is so true! I mean I dont see the sense in solving it once I know how to solve it. The entire idea is to challenge your brains. And will. And may be the ability to finish? Lol!
The thing is, if I were to die tomorrow, the epitaph would say, “Here lies a man who started a thousand projects but didn’t finish even a single one”. Maybe I need someone to execute ideas. Right now, I have partners who work with me on ideas and that is great (someone co-owns those ideas along with me and allows me to co-parent and help do better with the idea) but I think we need an execution team. A set of people that know what Like a SWAT team that just goes and executes. Long ago I knew of a billionaire who had a team whose only job was to execute things – from planning his birthday party to setting up multi-million dollar manufacturing plants to fixing things that typically look impossible to outsiders.
So as a writer, I need to finish more things. Book 2, short film, 90-90-1, 1000 x 1000 – there are at least a hundred writing projects that I can work on but I don’t. No, the ink has not dried. No, the fun I had with writing hasn’t stopped fun-ning.
And as an entrepreneur, get a crack team of sorts to get those things done. The question is, why would the crack team work with me? What can I offer them? I am not the mad genius that attracts others. I am not that bad boy man that the world finds enamouring. I dont have the charisma that moves the mountains. I dont have the panache that gets young people to want to drop everything and follow you off the cliff! I am just another middle-aged man, past his prime, wanting to change the world. So that’s what I need to think about. Any ideas?
C/ People
The sum total of whatever I’ve written above is two things – shipping and people. And while I may be okay with the second one, I need action on the first one. And that, ladies and gents is my thing for the day – the quart of writing, projects-first work, an execution team and people.
Each marketing problem can easily be broken into 4 simple questions that you can answer to arrive at the solution to even the most challenging problems.
Today’s day 6. I missed yesterday. I tried but there was a social obligation that I couldn’t get out of. So, let’s go.
So marketing to women is a tough one for me. Multiple reasons. Lemme talk about one of those. That I am a man. And that means at a deeper, personal level I dont understand women. I may read a lot, I may consume a lot of literature, I may do deep research, I may create a panel of women to talk to, I may do whatever. My experience and understanding will remain superficial at best. One of my writing teachers told me that while writing unless I feel like the person living that emotion, I will never do justice to what am writing. The same probably goes for marketing. Till I can feel the need-barrier-solution-release journey in my bones, I will never be able to do justice.
In fact, this need-barrier-solution-release is what I can sum whole of marketing in. Lemme talk about each. From the lens of women.
A/ Need. Aka Want.
I know these two are different but for argument’s sake and to keep things simple, let’s assume these are one and I will use these interchangeably. So there is this need that the woman wants a solution to. The need could be any of the following – look good (for whatever reason / occasion – wedding, date, family function, every day etc), take care of the family (nutrition, health, budgets, holidays, etc), manage her career better (navigate politics, balance work-family, provide for the family, etc), fly despite all the shackles imposed by Indian culture and more.
Often the woman is clear about her need. She may not be able to express it in words but deep down, she knows what she needs / wants. And to fulfil that, she starts to look for solutions. Often in the shape of products, services, etc.
To make this easier to explain, let’s take Renu for example.
Renu is 35, a fictional aam-aurat from a regular tier-1 city in North India, a tier-2 locality and middle-middle class. She got married at 26 and has a 7-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter. The husband works at a bank as a manager. She doesn’t work apart from managing the house and wants to give the best to her family, especially the “raja beta”. She doesn’t even know that her managing the house qualifies as work. And since she’s a typical Indian, she is a maximiser and wants more value from each rupee she spends.
PS: I will use Renu as a recurring archetype in these posts. Over time I will create more archetypes that can encapsulate about 80% of women in India.
B/ Back to Renu. And Barriers.
Now Renu’s want of “giving the best” could take numerous shapes – education, nutrition, clothes, experiences, extra-curricular classes, comfort and all that. And she has a limited budget and limited understanding. Her barriers are money and knowledge. The money bit, she can’t solve for. And she knows it. She may want to work at some point but knows that it may not work out. The knowledge bit, she knows she can figure.
So Renu would probably go around seeking knowledge. She would read magazines, talk to elders, connect with others that have given a good life to their children, ask neighbours, look up content on her WhatsApp (shes not gonna do any deep research), experiment with a few things and then probably invest a large chunk of money and time and attention into the son’s life.
C/ Solutions.
As a marketer, you have two potential paths from hereon. Two potential approaches to the solution.
One. Peddle your wares. Make a quick buck and move on. Of course, spend money on acquiring Renu as a customer (CAC) and hope like hell that she spends a lot over a long period (LTV).
Two. You decide to help Renu solve this information barrier (and not just sell a solution). Your CAC is spent on educating, knowing very well that she may pick a competitor once she’s aware. You expert LTV to come to you as an outcome of the newer Renus that you would be able to acquire as a result of the salience that you would have built, thanks to your attempts at helping Renu bridge the knowledge gap.
D/ Release.
Once Renu what to do for her child, and she actually does it, she would pause and catch her breath. Before she jumps head first into the next need. Which may or may not be for her child. But she would carry the experience of this one loop with her. Each time she goes through this loop and she interacts with others (people, brands, influencers etc etc) she would “train” herself into doing better the next time she goes thru this loop.
And as a marketer, your job is to walk alongside her, if not just ahead of her where you pave the road that she would walk on!
So that!
Think about all the brands you love. At each opportunity, they would take the second route where they solve for one of the barriers and not just “sell”. And that ladies and gents is the idea for the day. And the post for the day.
PS: I am not sure if this is helpful to anyone. However, it did make me sit down and think about things. If you are reading this, please do tell me how do I make these posts better for you. And hopefully, over the next few days, I will find things that make sense.
Brands and businesses often impose an additional, discriminatory “Pink Tax” on women. In this piece, I explore it in more detail.
It’s 6:30 PM. I was supposed to write this in the morning but I woke up late, dived head-first into the day and still reeling from all the work. I will no longer stay in bed beyond 7 AM. I have been waking up without alarm last few days but I will start using it now. I can NOT miss this 90-90-1, especially now that I found out that I want to write about and learn about marketing to women.
So, today’s post is about Pink Tax.
What is Pink Tax?
In simple words, it’s the extra money that women need to pay for products that are apparently tailor-made for them.
For example, shaving razors. Multiple women told me (see the disclaimer at the end of this post) that a women’s razor is at least 20% extra (than a man’s) even though it functions the same. The makers do the smart thing of doing communication around it that justifies the inflated price. In the case of the razors, apparently, they say that the blade and the rubber thingy in between the blades are coated with Aloe Vera that keeps the skin of the user safe. They also say that the design of the razors “glides” smoother on the curvy skin. They added a roller to make the functioning better.
I mean wow! To me, all these are mere gimmicks to charge more.
Other categories where I am told this pink tax exists in India are garments (the same tee-shirt for women is about 10% more expensive (as per pop research I did), travel (multiple women told me that they get fleeced more), jewellery (simple things like rings are gram-for-gram more expensive for women), healthcare (contraceptives, condoms etc), personal care products (does) and more.
The pink tax is valid if the products and services rendered require additional effort. For example, a haircut. In general, women tend to have longer hair and thus the person working on hair for women will probably need to make additional effort. And thus the additional compensation makes sense.
But for categories like razors, garments, health products and others, I think it sucks that the pink tax exists.
So, why does the pink tax exist?
To be honest, I couldn’t think of any specific reason apart from corporate greed. From whatever I know the products are not really different from what they make for male audiences. To “expand” their offering and create newer markets, businesses create these products gimmicks and try and charge more. And of course, they would justify the same by throwing information, justification and a combination of some of Cialdini’s principles of influence at us!
Anyhow.
So pink tax exists and there is no denying it. Just that a lot of people aren’t aware of it. And for women as consumers, better awareness will translate into more value for money.
While writing about this post, I realised that there seems to be a lack of content and literature about the pink tax in India. Apart from one post on Mint, an article on Outlook, a BusinessLine piece by a professor of marketing from IIM Amritsar talking about research her students did and a Logical Indian piece, I couldn’t find anything worthwhile. The piece by the professor is worth reading, in case you want some data.
I wanted to research more and learn more but I am not sure what more to read. If you have access to some work on this space, please do point me to it. I am beginning to think that the pink tax may not even exist in India and this could be a mere anecdotal theory that has got more wind than it deserves or merits.
Guess this is about it. See you tomorrow.
PS: This was a painfully short post and a disappointing piece of text. When I come back tomorrow morning (for sure) to write, I hope I have something substantive to contribute.
PPS: For this post, I leaned onto what I already knew about marketing, what I found via desk research and what members of the #SoG told me in one of our #janHitMeJaari sessions. All errors are mine and please help me fix those.
PPPS: As I write these over the next 3 months or so, I plan to share early drafts with some people. If you want to get those, give me feedback before I publish, lemme me know and I will add you to a WA group. Lol, I love these groups ;P
How in 2023 brands need to take a stand and do more than mere communication. Specifically for cohorts like women!
Today’s day 3 of the 90-90-1. In case you don’t know about this, you may read this post to get a sense of what C and I are trying to do. The last two days were spent trying to build a habit of clearing the calendar and not doing anything else but writing. At some point in time (hopefully today), I want to start talking about marketing. After all, that’s what I decided yesterday.
The times we live in are, well, interesting. The world around us is changing faster than you can blink and it’s still the same. We now have self-driving cars, chatGPT and LK-99. And yet we have countries divided over religion and race and color and all that. As a marketer, the job has never been more exciting. Or tougher. People no longer hide behind veils and mumble disapprovals. They now assert their individuality and talk about things that don’t fit into their value system. And when they do that, they are louder than the loudest cheer of fans in a stadium and more articulate than the politicians at the altar. And they spread their ideas with a distribution that brands are envious of.
So, conventional wisdom would say, tread carefully.
And this is where I sort of disagree.
Why tread carefully? As a brand, while you are out there to make a profit and create shareholder value, you have the obligation to lead the charge and herald people into the new. You need to play the role of an instigator, a politician, a pastor, a provocateur, a pop star, a painter. As the brand (and you as the brand manager, the custodian of the brand) you need to take stands. And have what it takes to face the music. Or the cacophony.
Truth be told, many brands have tried this and may I say, bowed down. Tanishq had to take down one of their ads and issue a public apology when they took a brave stand of showcasing an ad featuring an interfaith couple. If you are curious, you may see it here (on a politician’s Twitter handle). Yesterday, Aditi showed #teamSoG an ad by Nike where they took the brave decision of featuring an athlete that apparently had disrespected America’s national anthem. I can’t imagine that happening in India. Staying with Nike and what’s happening around us, I found this beautiful message where they are imploring us to Not Do It! Isn’t this the exact responsibility brand custodians have?
We need brands and businesses to take such stands in India and talk about what’s happening around us. There have been some starts. Future Generali (disclaimer – I had featured their CMO on a podcast) has been taking bold bets. One of their campaigns celebrated same-sex relationships and they did so in as loud a manner as they could for that small cohort – hoarding at one of the most popular junctions in Mumbai at least. I am not sure if they did it at other places too. Axis Bank did Dil Se Open. Kotak has been the harbinger of creating communication that showcases our diversity as a nation. While there are starts, we need things to go mainstream and we need more businesses and brands to take a stand. But then, that would require you to have some spine. No?
As a passive participant in the communication industry, all I can do is stay hopeful that someday the eyes would open up. And with each thing that I work on, I can push things a bit, if not a lot.
Lemme give an example.
Women.
As a cohort. As a consumer set. As the “niche” that every brand wants to be pally with. Each brand I work on, without an exception, – from hotels to financial services to healthcare to travel to everything else wants to be the new best friend to women. And it’s not surprising to see why. Almost 48.4% of India is women. Less than 20% are engaged in “active, meaningful, paid work” outside the farm and casual labour space. And I am not even counting women that are part of the unorganized economy and the ones that “work” at home.
Even if I consider the ones in active work, more and more women are choosing to take control. Of how they live, work, think, operate and spend their money. And of their families. And have an influence over the money of their friends and relatives and neighbors. Women now assert their opinions and voices and dictate where their wallets open up.
While brands understand this trend, they are failing to do the right thing.
In the next few lines, I will make a few statements about what women want. From the vantage point of being a man. Not to mansplain but to learn more. If I am wrong, which I probably would be, PLEASE help me correct.
So, coming back to women and brands, I refuse to see why or how brands create products or communication. I mean, no woman wants a pen that comes in a pink body but writes in blue. Most women don’t really care about “whiter” intimate body parts. No woman wants to “have a happy period”.
What women probably want is equality (not special treatment). They probably want marketers to have a deeper understanding of challenges specific to them. Women probably want solutions to the problems they face as individuals – if that solution is pink or blue or black or whatever, it’s cool. Brands need to arrive at solutions first and then think of colors. Brands need to take a stand and not amplify the already deep-seated biases against women. I mean why would a brand create communication about how a woman eats last and whatever is left after her entire family has eaten? Rather, why can’t we have more pieces of work that encourage everyone to Share The Load?
So that.
I know my understanding and knowledge of these issues is flawed. I know that I don’t understand women. I know I need to do better if I want to make a dent. And that is what I would try and work on over the next few days.
While I am on the journey to do so, come help me! Tell me when I go wrong. Point me at resources that allow me to learn. Share things that I can read. You know where to reach me!
Over and out.
PS: As I write these over the next 3 months or so, I plan to share early drafts with some people. If you want to get those, give me feedback before I publish, lemme me know and I will add you to a WA group. Lol, I love these groups ;P
Why would I take the 90-90-1 Challenge? What do I hope to get out of this?
So, why would I take 90-90-1?
For the uninitiated, today is day 2 of the 90-90-1 that Chandni and I are onto. My first post is here. This is the second. While yesterday I talked about marketing, today I want to talk about why I am taking this challenge in the first place.
In the challenge, she and I have chosen one thing to work on for 90 minutes first thing in the morning for the next 90 days. In my case, it’s my personal brand and I will use the instrument of writing to work on it. I could have chosen to make videos, create podcasts, doodle, talk, think, daydream but I think like most things, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone – so build my personal brand and work on my writing muscle. Like other times I have taken challenges, I dont have a daily word-count goal. I merely want to work on it for 90 days and I want to create a visible body of work (not just a stream of thoughts).
Lemme also talk about why I am taking this challenge and what I hope to achieve out of this.
A. I suck at consistency. This could be a good way to beat that. Apparently, habits take 21 days to form (or may be 66). If I can do something for 90 days, each day, without rest, I hope I am able to build the muscle that allows me to do the large things that I want to do.
B. Do more with whatever time I have left I am realising that at 40, I am beyond my useful age and if I still have to make that dent, I need to be able to work harder than others and longer than others.
While life is not a zero-sum game, life definitely is a race. You can choose to make it a rat race. Or you can choose to make it one where you are inspired by ones you can see running to their own music and pace. Someone’s going fast, someone’s going slow, someone’s in circles, someone is merely on a treadmill.
You look at these people and you take inspiration from these people and sing your song. In my case, the song is of someone that’s out to make a dent. Whatever that dent is. While I dont know what that dent is, SoG looks like it. And to be able to be that inspirational father figure of sorts, I need to be better than most men these young kids would have seen. And within that closed circle, I may not be able to fix things (the way I dress, the hair I have, the shakal I have), but I am sure I can fix others (like, having a body of work that precedes my reputation)
C. The C4E Village As the C4E village grows larger, as one of the early members of the settlement, I am aware of the responsibility on my shoulders. I need to be the provider till others mature and start looking beyond themselves and to the village.
Right now, most of the villagers think of themselves first and then of the village. I am hopeful that a time will come when the collective, the village will become larger than the self. Till that time, I need to make sacrifices and provide. I can’t just go buy those airpods that I know I can afford but I dont want them because I can use that money to hire one more person. I can’t go live in a fancy house because the rent I pay could be used to pay for dinner at a C4E Table. And so on and so forth. And to be able to do all of this, I need to be someone that attracts work. And that will happen once I am a magnet of sorts that attracts potential clients, large deliverables, and money!
D. The SG Personal Brand Now the personal brand is one of those things that I can’t seem to put my finger on. On one side, I know it all. I even wrote a long piece about it that apparently a lot of people find useful. And on the other, I am unable to build it for myself. I think I know the answer to why I haven’t been able to build it. Three reasons actually.
I refuse to accept a niche. Most personal brands are built at the intersection of niches. I am a man with a wide range of interests and I refuse to get siloed into one. And this has caused me a lot of anguish.
I refuse to create click-bait-y content. The lesser said about this, the better.
I am not consistent. This I am hoping to fix over the next 90 days. 89 now. 88 tomorrow.
So personal brand.
Lemme talk more about it and see if I can make a decision today. If I can, it would be awesome. Read on to find out more.
So, what do I want to be known for?
If I were to make a list from the top of my head, I would say the following (and these are probably in order because this is the order in which these phrases came to my head)…
Poker
Writing
Films
Travel
Young People
Longevity
Brands
Marketing
Writing (I know this is a repeat but I dont want to stop)
Inspiring people
Life coaching (lol)
Investing
Teaching
Wait.
That’s it?
I thought there would be more! Most of my thoughts seem to be swirling in these zones only. I had imagined my life is more diverse than this. Lol. Rude shock in the morning.
Anyhow.
So, if I were to use the Ikigai thingy to evaluate and pinpoint what Id like to work on, I would have to make a chart. Lemme make it. But wait. Before that, I made a chart a few years ago. Lemme share that.
Funny that from there on, not a lot has changed. In fact, nothing has changed! Talk of people not evolving. Sigh.
Ok, we shall not beat ourselves about it.
Coming back to personal brand and the 90-90-1 thingy, I will get back to the reasons I listed above and marry those with things I want to stand for. I am looking at an intersection of the following…
the need of running the kitchen at C4E
the want of making a dent
the things I want to be known for that allows the two of the above.
To me, the answer seems clear like the day – that I need to write about marketing over the next 90 88 days.
While the way you market and where your audience hangs out has changed (see my piece from yesterday), a few fundamental things haven’t changed. People are still people and we are all an outcome of millions of years of evolution. There is no way that would change in a few hundred years of modern-day life. And thus I continue to believe that they want to survive and procreate. And thus the basics of marketing before the world became digital will continue to stay relevant. With a few changes. Such as…
The newer delivery vehicles that digital has unleashed (always-on, all the time, connected despite physical distances)
The evolving habits, cultures, opinions, mindsets of digital-first people
The physiological shift in the way people live and think and behave and operate because of how digital meddles with our brains (more loneliness, more screens, more need of “me” time, more individuality, more of more!)
The neverending hedonic treadmill that the entire world seems to be riding on, all the time
And I think this lens of traditional marketing in a world in flux is an interesting lens to be writing on. Just that I need to sharpen the niche. Maybe write about just a discipline. Or a cohort. Or a line of products. Or for a certain TG.
I may not be able to decide today. Hopefully, we will do so as we go along. Over the next few days, I will find a lens within marketing that allows me to take a unique position per se. You have any ideas?
So that’s for the day.
Over and out!
PS: As I write these over the next 3 months or so, I plan to share early drafts with some people. If you want to get those, give me feedback before I publish, lemme me know and I will add you to a WA group. Lol, I love these groups ;P
PPS: I realise that this has become a subconscious stream of thoughts that Julia Cameron often talks about. I love such coincidences!
If you are a marketer, what’s your primary job? And what do you do about it?
A few days ago, one of the SoG members asked me, what’s your primary job as a marketer. At that time I would have replied with some mambo-jumbo to wiggle out of a tough conversation but now that I think about it, the question is more perplexing than I had assumed it to be. I honestly don’t have an answer. What I do have is some plausible alternatives. And I will present those to you and seek answers from you.
So, as a marketer, what’s your primary job?
Here are a few alternatives. You choose.
A. Act as the agent for the client and help them sell more. You know, by building compelling campaigns that inform the world about your client, crafting lines that nudge the fence-sitters, using design as a tool to stir emotions and sell that damn thing that the client wants to be sold.
B. Be brave. Be bold. Fan fire to ideas that shift cultures, shape narratives, and spark revolutions. Your client may not want to be a part of these narratives but you try to hide these in plain sight.
C. Use marketing as an excuse to earn a living from what you enjoy doing – writing, designing, daydreaming (aka brand planning), telling stories, and meeting people. Good work, awards, and sales is a byproduct.
D. None of the above
E. All of the above
While I wait for your answers, while writing this, my reason for being a marketer dawned on me. Lemme give a background and talk about it.
So, my love for marketing probably started when I saw that dude hit the ball out of the park on the last ball of the match and see his woman rejoice like there’s no tomorrow. The love became stronger when a simple piece of communication made me crave for Jalebis like Bablu did when Ramu Kaka talked about em. It got amplified when I saw some kids scrounging around to get their retiring headmaster a suit piece as a farewell gift. And there are many more such stories that made me want to tell stories like that.
Back then, I was naive. And even though I’ve been at it for more than 18 years now, I remain a student and I continue to marvel at pieces of communication with a gaping mouth, bated breath and nervous excitement.
Just that, the pieces that I take inspiration from have changed. The kind of things I want to put my name to has changed. While I enjoy seeing work by Cred and Ixigo and Fevicol and others, I am moved more by things like Farmers by Ram. Or Real Beauty by Dove. Or in India, by organizations like The Whole Truth and AMFI (disclaimer: I do some work for them via a client).
These are the companies and communication pieces that go beyond short-term sales goals to long-term narrative building that inspires people at large to live a better life. These pieces require long-term thinking and slow, painful execution on a day-to-day basis without losing sight of the goalpost.
No, I am not implying that we become climate-warriors, tree-huggers, veganism-paddlers, equality-champions and all that. Rather, as marketers, we need to shift how people live their lives. I mean look at Nike. It’s not a shoe company. It’s an attempt to get people at large to get fitter. Each piece of communication from them inspires me to push harder at being an everyday athlete (I just coined that phrase ;)). Look at Dumb Ways To Die. It made me look left and right and then left again while crossing the roads (trams and trains and metros are still new to me)
Truth be told, a lot of these could be dismissed as tokenism and dash-washing (insert your favourite color here). A lot of these may sound irrelevant in the thumb-twaddling world full of people with tinier attention spans than hummingbirds, each hooked onto social networks proliferated by content marketers, search engines gamed by growth hackers running “marketing experiments” and more. After all, these days CAC, LTV, ROAS and such acronyms are more important. Engagement trumps brand salience. Sales is more important than your raison d’etre. And thus, marketing as a profession has been reduced to copy written by chatGPT, designs by fivers and debates around the sizes of the logos on Instagram posts.
What we’ve lost in this proliferation of this new crop of marketers is the ability to be like poets and politicians and artists and writers and revolutionaries to fan fires to ideas that shift cultures, shape narratives, spark revolutions. Think about it. Which woman woke up and said that I want a pen that writes in blue ink but is encased in a pink body (a pen company makes this product)? Which young person wants to start their day with a shower in a deodorant that smells like chocolate (we all know the deodorant company)?
On the other hand, each parent wants their child to get a car that is safer. What if the marketer could tell that parent that apart from safety, the car also offers zero emission that is well, better!
Yeah yeah, I know that this may not be a marketer’s job to build a car that runs on water. Or electricity. Or air. But it’s the marketer’s job for sure to plant the seed about eco-first cars in the minds of people. And subsequently, make people want and ask for and force car makers to make cars that offer not just safety but greener alternatives.
And that, ladies and gents, is the post for the day.
Lemme know what you think is the job of the marketer per you.
A short rant on (the lack of) work. And an attempt to fill my Saturday evening with words.
This will be a short post.
It’s 9:58 PM on Saturday evening. And I am at a Starbucks (not at a party or whatever). And I am bored. I mean I dont know what to do. In an ideal scenario, I would have been working but I dont know what to work on. Oh, work here means things I would do to earn a living. Whatever I had to do (the deliverables that I had to do for clients that pay us) is done.
Of course, I have work. But most of it is for the future and for building C4E as an org. Things that I want to do to impact tomorrow. For example, the party of 9. I can create content for that and invite people to be a part. I could even action the SoG Grant. I can think about how to bring back LFW in the 4th cohort. All these things are work for me. And I can do those. And there is more. My Asana to-do list is 100 pages long. But these are not really work per se. I dont know what to call this.
Work is what helps me earn my dal-roti. And lemme come back to it.
So, I dont have work. And I “blame” my people for it. I mean I dont know if it’s blame or a respectful celebration of their hard work and dedication. They take ownership and they deliver. I drop them into deep ends all the time and they more often than not float. And they tell me when I need to intervene and throw them a lifeline. And that’s that. The best part? Most clients are happy about how we work. And the clients dont want to see me. Or talk to me. Even if I want to proactively pick up things and intervene, I wouldn’t know what to do. Each thing that I can think of and could’ve done is being done by someone from the team. Truth be told, the results are not really what I want (I can push more, do more). But I know that I am teaching my people skills that will serve them well in the times to come when I am not around. If I were to intervene, I am sure we can make more revenue. But I have this weird fascination with long-term thinking and at the cost of short-term revenue, I am building a machinery that will continue to crank. And while that’s a rant for a different day, today, at 10:13 PM on a Saturday evening, I am bored! At this point in time, I have not one thing that I need to work on.
Thing is, getting bored is not a bad thing — in boredom lies the genesis of brilliance. But someone like me needs to work. A lot. All the time. To the point that there is nothing that I am doing but work!
I know I know. I can work on personal projects (hello, Book2!). My team has allowed me to get a lot of free time to think. They’ve freed me to explore more opportunities (that is work in itself). They’ve given me the most important gift there is – the gift of time. And I think I am not doing enough to deserve it. And I must work.
I just made the move from 400086 to 400053. This is my note on the move and my thoughts about the same.
A few days ago, I moved to Andheri West.
The decision was a long time coming. I wanted to be close to places that were full of action. Or places where I have some connections that can get me into the scene. At Ghatkopar, I was not able to even though there were Anubhab, Powai, IIT students, Mirum and more. Let’s see how it is in Andheri. To be honest, I dont have any one person that I can lean on but for some reason, I am more optimistic about being here than in other places.
Plus, there is some anecdotal evidence – In the week I moved, I saw a play at Prithvi, stumbled on an idea for a film that I could work on, met a couple of filmmakers, hung out with a colleague and more. This happened rarely at Ghatkopar. I am hoping this is a lot more here. Let’s see how this goes over the next few days.
Apart from the work and serendipity and all that, the biggest pain of this move would be that I will have to do up this house – get ACs, mattresses, furniture etc. And I hate these chores. I mean I have had to do these at most places I moved to, just that I dont want to own anything or get attached to anything. Minimalism, you know. Plus, I haven’t done this in the last 3+ years (thanks to a fully done-up house I took up and after that, I lived in Vivek’s). And I am spoilt. Really. At V’s place, I had everything, including a 24-hour domestic help. I did not move an inch.
At this place, I am having to think about how I’d get my clothes washed, ironed etc. I have to figure out my food scene (I want to eat healthier, lesser) but I dont want the mess that a kitchen creates. I need to get the internet / AC etc installed. And there are 100 chores like that. And other things like that. At 400086, I did not even know how to dispose of the garbage. It would disappear just like that! I had things served to me on a platter. I will have to do these now.
No, none of these is unique or different or strange. Everyone does this. Most even make a sport out of this. One of my very dear friends says that this is a great romantic activity for a couple to engage in. Prak volunteered to drop everything and help me with this. However, to me, truth be told, this is a nuisance and I want to avoid it at all costs. I can’t even call Paras and ask him to fix it. Cos, well, different tastes.
The thing is, I dont like cluttered places. And yet I love comfort. I want fewer things but I want each of those to be tasteful, thoughtful and handpicked. Not just things, but the people I choose to spend time with need to be handpicked. No, I am not asking for world winners and figure skaters and trophy winners or whatever. I want people that are special and most of their ethos are in alignment with mine. Wait. I know the word. Elegance. I want each thing around me to be elegant. AK calls it Panache (read this and this; she called this vibe till a few months ago, dont be surprised if she starts calling it something else in a few days). I call it elegance. You may call it something else. But you get the drift.
Whatever you got the drift of, I want to create that at the place I live at. And even though this is a tiny space with some weird maths thrown in (in terms of design) I think this seems like a place that I can convert into one that I would like. Let’s see how it goes.
This is all I have to say at this time. More in the next few days.
Oh, for the benefit of others that need to rent houses in Mumbai, please make use of this checklist. Here we go…
Ensure that the building is not older than 10 years.
Your house can NOT face the road, how so ever tiny the road is.
The neighbours can NOT be senior citizens. I have nothing against them – my own parents are as old as they come. Just that they tend to be, well, eccentric and that could be a problem if you are young (at heart).
Do not settle for “living in the hall” trap. It is THE worst thing you can do to yourself. Even though you would pay a lot, you would still not have any personal space.
You have to have walking access to the local train stations, metro lines or rickshaw / taxi stands.
As I am growing old, I want to be living close to a major hospital. You may ignore this.
It’s ok to pay for location. If you can, the house has to be bang in the middle of where your work is going to be. Even if you have to pay a premium for that. It will ensure that you have more time to spend on your vocation (and with your family, if you plan to spend time with them)
I like walking access to Starbucks. This is my default place to hang out as I get my energy from others.
Everything else is easily findable (chemists, grocers, restaurants, domestic help, gyms etc) at most places in Mumbai.
Of course, standard disclaimers apply. I know that I write this from a place of privilege. The rent I am paying is not less for an aam aadmi. Finding a house that allows you to manage the quirks of the landlord is tougher.
Guess this is about it. I have more to say and write and share but work beckons. Oh, other posts like this are 400072 to 400050 (from 2016), mess in my head (from 2019 and this one reminded me that each time I move houses, I get fucked in this head. This time is no different. However, the fuckery is a lot less cos I got the house from a friend. And of course, I can crib about a thousand things but I think I will be ok), there and here (from 2019) and this Twitter thread.
