Evolution @ the speed of thought...

Once upon a time, not too long ago, say about 20 years back, there used to be a time when dad would come home, buckling under the two tonnes of paper work and documentation that he’d have to drag home in order to “work from home”. Being the loving tiny little tot that you are, you’d rush up to him and wrap yourself around his knees, unable to contain your delight at having him back home. Dad trips, sheets, binder and paper clips take flight; havoc ensues.

Now, fifteen years is not so long ago. Now, you are all grown up and all that you get to bring home is your old, Stone Age office laptop that creaks and groans. How unromantic! So the next obvious question here is, just what happened in such a short speck of time?

Over the last 2 million years, the human brain has nearly tripled in size. What we as a species got gifted with this time around was a few new structures which literally changed human history. One of these structures is the frontal lobe, particularly the pre frontal cortex. Sounds cool? What this means for the rest of us who don’t speak neuroscience is that humans gained the ability to simulate experiences. In essence, we have the ability to dry run (imagine) experiences or activities in our heads before we actually do them. This is something none of our ancestors could really do and something that no other animal can do quite as well. It is this evolutionary boost that literally got us out of the trees and where we are today. That’s a process that took 2 million years to get us to where we are. Driven by that power to imagine, we took the next big leap forward in about 1958 with the Advanced Research Projects Network or ARPANET which led to the big bang called the Internet and the Information Age. The internet acted as a catalyst, to unify our intellects and imaginations into one massive collective.

Just how has the information age changed the way we do business today? Some of the more obvious changes that have resulted from the information boom would include:

a) Continually shorter product cycles:

Since product development and delivery cycles have now become shorter thanks to the many “technological wonders” of the information age, end to end product developments take lesser time with each passing day. What this also means is that an imperfect product, especially in the software business can be released into the market since it’s now much easier to deliver fixes and patches without interrupting regular business flow.

b) Instant communication now drives increased productivity:

Improved connectivity and next to instant communication has pushed the demand for quicker decision making. Unlike the gaps permitted by the earlier slower alternatives such as snail mail, instant messaging and connectivity now makes it critical to react in the blink of an eye to dynamic market forces.

c) The information overload:

It is estimated that we have managed to create as much data in thirty years as our ancestors could pull off in about three thousand. The challenge today is not the lack of information but rather segregating the right information or “mining” in IT speak from the massive troves of data.

Another significant way this has impacted business is that consumers now have the ability to “pull” information towards themselves rather than be “pushed” information in the form of advertisements and other marketing campaigns. This increased awareness and agility amongst consumers makes it critical for companies to continually innovate and back their claims with a strong product delivery.

So where do we go next?

If we are to really let that gift of an imagination loose and envision where technology and the information age is headed, reality might be headed exactly where Ray Kurzweil has predicted it will. In his book titled “The Singularity is Near”, he postulated that by the year 2045, computers will vastly exceed human intelligence and will be able to redesign future generations of themselves. Ray also goes as far as to predict that in the next twenty years, the processing power of an average Desktop PC would equal that of the human mind. Fact or Fiction? Looks like we are already half way there!

If you can’t stop smoking, cancer will!!

Heard that one before? How about “There are cooler ways to die”? Anti smoking campaigns showcase the pinnacle of failed marketing campaigns and represent billions of dollars wasted in advertising funds.

Understanding the various vectors that contribute to its ineffectiveness would probably bring out some valuable marketing insights.

Although it appears that an increasing number of people have actually retired or never attempted smoking, on the contrary, after years of sharp annual decline, per capita cigarette consumption is now at a plateau. Further, teen smoking has now increased substantially since 1991.

Part of the reason why such campaigns tend to fail is possibly because most campaigns currently target tobacco industries themselves and often “preach” at individuals towards kicking the habit. Hence, following repeated exposures to these messages, one of two things happen: The first possibility is that the message is so weak it can’t really connect to your cognitive reasoning (eg: Tar “.xgm”, Nicotine “.x gm”, Benzene “x.gm” etc) and you’d probably wonder, Ok, so what? Either ways it’s just tiny decimal numbers and obscure chemical compounds, I’m sure regular airborne pollution contains more toxins than that.

The second possibility is that the consequences stated appear so unbelievable (like the super gross pictures on the pack) that it fails to connect to you emotionally as you fail to see how your picture perfect life could possibly end up like that.

Ok, all that sounds plausible, but heck, what else do we do? As Prof. S. Ramkumar at the Sp Jain Institute would say it, introspecting on why campaigns don’t click and complains/faults pour in, often provide deeper insight into what must be done differently. In the same way here, rather than increase the visual appeal and impact of the core message, what needs to be done is change the message itself.

Smokers are exposed to anti-smoking messages designed to discourage youth from starting to smoke, but they seldom encounter smoking cessation messages that offer realistic strategies on how to quit. Instead, too many messages offer overly simplistic solutions that generally fail to hold.

Just about everyone who has smoked long enough has tried to quit at some point or the other. And they have been quite successful at quitting… like a ten thousand times over! Dad had wondered a long time back as to why normally free thinking intelligent men could in a second go from point smart to point stupid by puffing away when all around them there are blaring messages of the death it brings. What most smokers fail to acknowledge is that smoking is an addiction. It is extremely challenging for the body to just abandon the chemical high and quit. Withdrawal symptoms last long after that.

Therefore the key is to switch from pure scare tactics and visuals to imparting workable techniques on kicking the habit. A paradigm shift in campaigns towards education on simple yet practical steps on quitting step by step, inch by inch is what would probably work.

(Also read this feature and many others @ The New Age Marketing blog: http://newagemarketing.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/smoking-kills-but-so-does-traditional-marketing/)

The tigers, terrorism and a whole lotta questions.

"http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/savetiger/sthome.aspx"

“Save the tiger”, google blares out at me, and just about then it got me thinking... A couple of months ago, we as a nation, united towards a common goal, launched a campaign to save our cherished “national animal”.

The masses awoke all over the nation, signature campaigns were launched.. over 5 lakh signatures collected! Funds Raised!... But quickly enough, all of it starts to sound like the radio when you begin to loose out on your signal… Ok chuck that, whatever happened to our home bred hero Sanjay Dutt, prime accused for bringing the guns that shot our heroes, right into our very homes! One day it was the center of a storm and the next morning it's like no one's even heard about it.

To put the whole purpose of this article in context, “I just don’t get it!”

“I just don’t get”.. how amongst over a billion people the world today knows as India, we just can’t seem to find anything even remotely uplifting to read in the papers today. The last time I checked, India, was the flavour of the world, we were on a roll, and everyone wanted to hear our story. But surprisingly, check the news tomorrow, and all you’ll see is violence, opportunity and terror. In a country where our very constitution proclaims religious tolerance, secularism and the right to live beyond oppression, why then do we wake up every day to a bulging sense of paranoia?

Is it because amidst all the masala mixes and the desi flavour we just don’t have anything happy and exciting enough to talk about in our lives? Or is it because terror and the war against it, were never intended to be won, but were rather just intended to ensure its sustainability?

I find it difficult to comprehend why an entire nation is itching to throw away progress and development attained over 61 years of independence and more importantly many more complex but yet extremely significant cultural shocks over a thousand years of history, only to satisfy a thirst for vengeance. Beyond the obvious fact that war in any form would signify extensive casualties (that is, IF anyone can justify the loss of a single life towards it) or the loss of security that we provide our foreign investors and the multitude of IT and call centres that they bring with them; I can’t help but suspect that the terror and the war against it is only intended towards generating extended TRPs, aggravate paranoia and bust millions in our hard spent tax towards the illusion of defence and security. That roughly translates into a whole load of quick bucks earned by the people “behind the scene’, and the rest of the millions we have earning less than a dollar a day pretty much on the same boat.

Tell me that amongst all the major religions in the world, all of them with over a billion believers, and all of them teaching nothing more than the lessons of purity and peace, one religion alone is accused of instigating hatred and violence in a substantial section of its followers, and I simply smell the word P.R.O.P.A.G.A.N.D.A

Propaganda aimed towards subjecting a billion dreams towards paranoia and hence diverting them towards chaos and insecurity. If, in a hypothetical world, I were The Ultimatum, and my word was the law, I wouldn’t stop to think twice towards directing all our available resources towards fighting the very cause I believe to be at the root for all our issues today, Poverty.

I used to wonder, what it would take for someone like me, ‘educated’ and relatively comfortable in life, to want to discard all of it and pursue a wild chase to annihilate all living existence towards my cause, and bring forth into existence my way of life, the very core objective of terrorism. And I realize that there would be absolutely nothing to define me in such a way. I am just supremely comfortable and secure in my life to even consider simple but profound terms such as anarchy.

I truly believe that if we are to eradicate terrorism, our simplest solution yet would be to demolish poverty. Qasab, the only surviving terrorist of the dreaded Mumbai confessed that his family would be “well” compensated for his actions. Now if you can barely afford a cup of cutting chai, why would you wish to decline such a ludicrous offer? Or otherwise, if you could afford an education well enough to take you beyond a life of borrowed and meaningless existence, would you really even consider an option such as terrorism?

Eradicating poverty might not necessarily “end all that is evil”, because for all that is good there would always be men who just love to watch the world burn… But it would definitely grant reprieve to those that live in the shadow of ignorance and the hope that participating in terrorism would liberate them from their torturous lives.

In quintessence..., It’s just not OK anymore…

“My first image of America as far as I can remember is Man on the Moon.

We are not asking them to put man on the moon.. more like.. put man back on earth..

We have the technology . we have the recources,we have the know how to end the extreme poverty... if we have the will..

And I believe we have the will.. We have the civil rights movement, others ended apartheid; our moon shot, our putting man on the moon, We are gonna put an end to extreme poverty...thats what fallen to us to do.

And I Believe, that it's not an impossible adventure.

I believe, that in 50 years, they'll look back on this moment and say there were these people in time who said, It's not ok to have a child die for the lack of a 20 cent immunisation.. It's not ok to have a child die for lack of food in his belly in the 21st century.. That's just not ok anymore..And now I know you know that.. and I'd like you to tell President Bush that.. Primeminister Blair that.. and any other politician that...”

- Bono, U2