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The New Uprising and Change It Can Drive

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For the first time in history of the county there is a social movement that is driven by women. Finally the women in society have found their voice, united themselves spontaneously and have spoken out against oppression.  This should have happened many moons ago, but it took one horrific crime and one brave heart survivor to spark a revolution.

There are, many things that the movement is asking for: capital punishment, public lynching, castration, e. fast trials and many more. May be all the demands are right. May be all of this should be agreed upon. May be this will improve life of women in our country.

To do any of this requires executive action. To make all our 400 plus MPs to agree on a single agenda is not easy. They may eventually come around to drafting and legislating a new law. The new law may improve the situation visibly.

. The society has always placed the males on a higher pedestal than females. The desire to dominate the females has been the driving force of social codes in the country. The changing gender roles, increasing independence of women, the drive from women to be independent is creating a pressure on males that they have never faced. This competition and knowledge that you are losing out is possibly behind this social malice of today.

I have always believed that only laws cannot change deep rooted social malice. To change them the society needs to take positive action.

While the desire for better laws, sensitive law enforcers and faster court indictments is all fine, this will take too much of time. The cops will still not record every event of eve teasing, the victims will not always go to the cop station, the social stigmas attached to such events will ensure that the crime is continued to be committed every day.

The current mass uprising has been ignited, fuelled and spread by the social media networks. They have truly become the change agents. The same power of social media can be unleashed to drive a really powerful change. This change can be long lasting and a radical social change driver.

Let’s start with eve teasing, the more widespread of two evils. This is one evil that is not as widely reported as it should be; the victims are forced to treat this as part of life, and this is an evil that seems to have a no cure.

What we need is to create one central eve teaser registry. Every event that ever happens should be reported and recorded here. As far as possible the names and identities should be reported on the site. As a registry this should be open to every woman in the country, and registering a complaint can be through a simple SMS. Once registered the entire onus of proving that the person is not guilty should be on the shamed person and not the one who registered the complaint.

The entire Police Force in the country should pick up the complaints from this site and investigate the incidences. Let them apply the principle guilty until proven innocent.

The entire registry needs to become more than just a complaint redressal forum. This needs to become the registry that drives your entire life. Let parents check the grooms out on this registry first before they seek match for their daughters. Let the corporates check potential employees here before they hire. Let the insurance companies refuse insurance policies to the guilty, let the Passport Authorities refuse passports, or mark it on the passport of their status, let every government deny jobs to the perpetrators of crime.

A lot of these steps are voluntary; they don’t need an official sanction and can be implemented easily.

Lack of credible deterrent is the prime reason for a host of crime that happens against women. Legal deterrent is one way to minimize the crime, but social deterrent is a far bigger motivation.

If we as a society stand up and drive the change within, insensitivity around such crimes will come down dramatically.

Admittedly it will drive the change in the slightly higher echelons of society, but culture trickles down and becomes a rampaging flood. It’s time to unleash the collective force of our society.

Let’s stand up!

London Olympic Games or Social Media Games

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Last night Twitter suffered a global outage. The Microblogging site for down for many hours and users across the globe could not access the site. While Twitter officially did not attribute the outage to Olympic Tweets, the tech bloggers refused to discount the possibility. Today Facebook seem to be suffering the same fate. Again is London Olympic a part of the reason?

The Olympics Games Organizing Committee emblazoned the giant screens inside the stadium with hashtag ‘savethesurprise’ during the games rehearsals. Yet the details leaked out forcing the organizers to even delete the videos from You Tube. The social media is putting tremendous pressure on the organizing committee to keep things under wraps.

This is a prequel to what I think is about to happen. London Olympics will be the catalyst for the social media’s growth and adoption world over. The adoption of social media will put pressure on traditional news media even more, even altering the entire business dynamics.

Till now the audience globally has had to depend on news media for ‘breaking news’ for ‘inside information’ and have driven it by ‘our channel exclusive’. All this might take a back seat this olympics

The first thing we will remember the games for is Twitter. The games can truly revolutionize Twitter and pose a real serious challenge to more established Face book.  Suppose the players Tweet their opinions; the coaches Tweet their reactions; and the spectators too Tweet their experience. We as spectators can know how the player thought, planned, performed and felt all in first person, and that is just one of the many new ways of connection. The news channels will then have to find alternate means of connection. The fans will be able to follow their stars without boundaries any time, all the time. Twitter can go really main stream in India if that happens.

The videos of Opening Ceremony rehearsals found its way to You Tube. The videos of official ceremony are bound to find their way to You Tube. This means as an ordinary viewer you can watch the opening ceremony with hundreds of different viewpoints. The Games will push the entire user generated content phenomenon to a new level.  The real story of games will not lie with what is being telecast on TV, but in what the players, coaches and spectators are saying. The ‘insiders’ point of view will always carry more weight than the telecast version of the games. The viewers will be spoilt for choice as they would get to see very vantage point that is there to see or experience.

All this will be fuelled by the new age high quality video enabled cell phones. A slew of mobile apps dedicated to Olympics are already available on Google Play and App Store. These games will be the games of  mobile phones, apps on phones, streaming videos on phones, videos shot on phones and a virtual medial networks created by phones. The true massification of apps can be fuelled by the Olympics games.

Faster, higher, stronger, this time around also applies to all the viewers, followers and those who like.

IPL 5: Its coming of age

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The IPL started under a cloud of uncertainty. Indian team had a disastrous tour to first England and then to Australia. It won nothing in England, and won almost nothing in Australia, save for one freak game in Hobart against Sri Lanka. Just when everyone thought that the Indian subcontinent is where Indian cricket will bounce back to previous glory, the fans were in for more disappointment. India won against Pakistan and SL, but lost to Bangladesh and couldn’t defend its title of Asia Cup!

It seemed that Indian cup of woes was overflowing.
Meanwhile Indian sport was mounting a strong challenge to Cricket. Hockey was played to a packed stadium, boxing was drawing crowds in the World Boxing Series. And a host of sporting events were attracting eyeballs.

It seemed that the dice was loaded against IPL
The opening ceremony did nothing to perk up the interest, and the first week of cricketing action left television audience cold. Ratings dipped, inventory piled up, and generally it looked like IPL 5 will fare worse than IPL 4. Add to it the controversies of fixing and rape, the league should have folded and gone belly up. Admittedly it’s easy to criticize IPL. The auction process, the international players, the cheerleaders, the focus on entertainment, the money power, the franchise system, the actors and businessmen are more than enough cannon fodder.  I have no intention of either criticizing or adulating the league.

Let’s evaluate the league purely as a media property. Has it worked or not?
If TV audience is the only measurement, then may be it hasn’t been very successful. But looking at IPL merely as a TV spectacle will be foolhardy. There are three indicators that will tell that IPL is headed in a slightly different direction.

First the online viewership has seen a phenomenal jump. The official IPL site has seen page views explode. Indiatimes, the official internet partner saw a 56% jump in viewership in first two weeks of the league. Since then, it would have only gone up. Clearly the action shift from the analogue world to the digital world has been stark. Additionally the online following of all the teams combined has doubled since the time the league started. That is impressive performance.

Second, the matches have been played to packed houses. 146 matches have already been played, and there are just two left to play. An estimated 44 Lakh people have watched the match live. That’s a staggering number, and it will go up to 45 Lakh at the end of the league.  No live event has ever created this kind of reach in India. The viewer enthusiasm has been unmatched with matches being sold out weeks in advance. Live events in India are usually chaotic, not IPL this year, it’s been impeccably organized

Thirdly, the quality of the product has improved, and that is the most important indicator. The improvement in quality of cricket did lead to increase in TV viewership too. It may not have produced new stars this year, but it did produce moments that captivated the country and the world. The traffic on social media sites is a testimony to that.

IPL seems to have filled a long existing gap in the Indian entertainment scenario, which was the lack of a good sustainable, scalable live entertainment property. While cricket has always attracted crowd in India, specially the ODI variety, the matches themselves have been very few in numbers. The live audience was so miniscule that it didn’t matter in overall count.

What it means is that IPL this year probably has transformed from a TV only property to India’s premier live entertainment event. Yes the viewers want to see scintillating cricket, but they also want to
experience the big arena feel. The energy, the feel and the joy of enjoying a live event made the viewer’s go again and again to ‘see’ the match.

IPL 6 will be a true marketing challenge. The audience appetite for IPL action will mean brands can have a two pronged strategy to engage with IPL. There is the conventional TV/internet as a property to leverage; and there is also the live audience as an opportunity to engage.

If there are 5 Million viewers who are watching the league, these five million are people who have sought out the league, they watch, they tweet, they have a conversation on Facebook, their multiplier effect is actually immeasurable. The 5million may actually impact another 50, driving either the TV audience or online viewership. For once the audience becomes the medium. Imagine the opportunity the brands can have to engage the in stadia audience through gigs and acts in the break, without stemming the flow of the game. And the impact of such acts will be far greater than any amount of passive TVC that brands can buy on TV. For once the gigs will not be dependent on the TV audience, but will be fuelled by the camera totting all sharing audience.

This is not to say that IPL doesn’t need to fix a few issues. It does, and I am sure the board’s working towards fixing them. Cricketing reasons drove the audience acceptance this year, and if the quality of cricket remains this good, fans will flock to watch it

Most brands have heavy consumers and light consumers. Media choices do not allow smarter targeting but both consume similar communication. IPL too has heavy and light consumers, and that means brands can target the two with different strategies

IPL is transforming the entertainment landscape; it could do the same with communication landscape too.

 

original got published here

http://pitchonnet.com/blog/2012/06/05/ipl-5-its-coming-of-age/

Social media isn’t all that new

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It is difficult to imagine life without social media today. Facebook itself is possibly world’s third largest country by population and possibly is on its way to displace India as second largest. If China lowers its famed walls, it may even become world’s largest nation. Such is the power of just Facebook.  Add the various other components like micro blogging, blogging, video sharing, music sharing, book discussions and what have you, social media is a powerful aggregator of people.

It might be very surprising if I insist that Social Media is not a new phenomenon. Today at a broader level there is a battle raging between physical world and the virtual world. The virtual world is radically altering the physical world. In some cases physical world is trying hard to stick to the old order, but in many cases the virtual world is welcomed by the physical world.

Music and movies are two sectors that have seriously resisted the new order imposed by technology. It resisted the need for music to be mobile and exchangeable. Neither of the two were actually new desires. Music went mobile long ago; in fact mobile music was the driver of music going mass. Radio was the device that made music mobile. The music industry willingly adopted radio, as the industry could control radio. Exchange of music always existed, through records or cassettes or CDs. Internet changed everything. It took control out of the hands of music industry, and the industry resisted in tooth and nail, till it was brought to its knees and forced to surrender. Amazingly the same internet is the savior of music industry today. The entire distribution mechanism has transformed, it has become cheaper and efficient and music industry is singing again.

Technology is a dragon, managing the dragon and riding it requires very different skills.

Now back to social media. It did exist before the entire internet revolution. It did thrive before the internet revolution. And as in modern times it was not censored or controlled by any authority of any kind. Gossip is the true precursor of today’s social media. Gossip is actually far more then precursor, it’s the foundation on which the entire phenomenon is built.

Gossip is an activity that is primary to the entire mankind. Gossip transcends gender, social hierarchies and is essential to social grooming, affirming relationships, displaying bonds, and creating alliances. Our appetite for gossip is insatiable, and this appetite is neither random nor irrelevant. Gossip in general is a corollary of our disposition towards sociality, which helps us to figure out where we and all others stand in relation to each other.

 

Let’s look at gossip and see how it figures in relation with Social Media

Gossip is a way of affirming one’s likeability in the social group

Gossip helps you make more friends

Gossip spreads new idea and themes

Gossip is eminently enjoyable

Gossip counters authority

Gossip gets you more friends

Gossip can destroy relationships

Gossip can be detrimental

Ditto for Social Media.

 

Gossip is word of mouth, but today it rides the wings of word of mouse!

Though there is a difference between gossip and Social Media, and the difference comes from reach and accessibility. Gossip creates Social Capital. Social capital is the “glue” that holds societies together and refers to the quality and depth of relationships between people in a community. Social Capital helps merge the boundaries between private and public, between government and public and between authority and public. Eventually an enhanced social capital can do what gossip networks achieve in a small measure: a more responsive society. Once upon time there was word of mouth. Now the word of mouth rides the word of mouse.

 

What can be the future trends?

Clearly future evolution of social media will be influenced by the real world. Interest based networking has started to make its impact. Hobbies, common cause, government inaction, eradicating social evils are such areas where social media can evolve. Will it be similar to what we have today or will emerge into something very different is hard to say, but the future may be more connected and more engaged.

 

What will matter will be not a clash, but as coexistence between physical and virtual world.

Ten to go independent

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One of the biggest misconceptions that people have is that if you work for yourself, you will get richer quicker. If money is all that drives you, then going independent can be a bad idea. Here are ten reasons for which you should go independent

  1. Build something:

Everyone must build something that is your own. This is a true reflection of your ability, skill enterprise and ideas. There is no better way to self-actualization then to say, I built this. Bragging rights don’t come easy in life

  1. Nurture your baby

Every new idea needs careful nurturance. The idea is yours, so one else knows the idea better than you. This is like being a father, only you know what your child wants.

  1. Dream big

Ambition knows no limits in your own set up. This is truly where your dream and your vision alone control the destiny of your enterprise. There are no approvals to be sought, no forms to fill, just you and your enterprise.

  1. Improve quality

The buck truly stops at you. There are no approvals to be sought; there are no conflicting egos to be settled. You can deliver truly great work to your client, sharper and quicker. It’s amazing how layers of bureaucracy can dull the edge of even the sharpest sword.

  1. Connect better:

Your connections with your clients are stronger than usual. They are your clients because they like you; you are their partner because you like them. There can be no better way than this.

  1. Challenge yourself:

Doing a job tends to make days monotonous. You follow a routine and if follow it well you would be fairly successful. But when you run an enterprise yourself, every new day brings a new challenge to face. If you never want to do same thing twice, go independent.

  1. Follow your passion:

You remember those days in school when you woke up early to go to cricket coaching classes or something like that? You did it because you loved it; it even made school more fun. You wanted to get up early, even on the coldest morning. That’s something true of an independent venture. You do what you love, and you love what you do

  1. Greater risk to reward ratio:

This is simple, the risk is yours, and the rewards are yours too. This does not mean that going independent is a get rich quickly scheme. It may be years before you see major financial benefits coming your way.

  1. No retirement planning

Retirement plans can be put on ice. Your enterprise needs you to do the best for it as long as you can. Every day you will gain experience that will make coming days more promising. There is no point of even thinking of hanging your boots

  1. Give back to society:

This is where as an independent entrepreneur you can make a small contribution. Work with the society, work with your Alma matter, and give back in time and effort. This one singular reason can make going independent worthwhile.

Is IPL 5 floundering?

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Is IPL 5 floundering?

The ratings are out and officially it looks like India’s love affair with instant cricket is hitting rocky patches. Official figures indicate a more than 1TVR fall for first six matches of IPL over last IPL, and last IPL was not a very successful one.

There is something interesting at play here though, all 12 matches of IPL till now have been played to packed houses. A quick check from web sites that do ticketing indicate that future matches too may have packed houses, especially the ones involving Mumbai and Chennai teams. Yet the TV audience seems to be dwindling. For four years Bollywood postponed releases during IPL fearing a loss of audience, which does not seem to be the case this year. Houseful 2 was a big release and seems to have withstood the IPL pressure.

IPL 5 this year was flagged off in light of a really terrible year Indian cricket has had. So bad has this year been, that viewership for Indian matches has never been on the same level as what cricket historically has had. Also the advertisers have backed out of IPL this year, hedging their bets and seeing which way the league goes. Though the telecom companies have kept up with the tradition of launching new campaigns during IPL; Vodafone, Airtel, Idea and Aircel all have new campaigns on air.

Social media often can be a good way of accessing what is happening to any big event. Last year for IPL4, I dug into just Twitter data to understand issues with IPL. This is a quick analysis of what has happened for first dozen matches and how the viewers are reacting to IPL5. Today for instance, when RCB is playing against CSK, and Gayle has been plundering runs, the Twitter chatter is about everything but cricket.

First the packaging of the event is coming off the seam. The opening ceremony was tacky, boring and lacked fizz. For most people it looked like a poor film award show that had been put up. It lacked the context of cricket, and became too much poorly conceived dance show. Even the supposed showstopper in Katy Perry turned out to a show buster. Twitter was abuzz with comments, with Omar Abdullah’s tweet taking on Rajeev Shukla’s opening speech in no uncertain words. The opening salvo clearly didn’t fire. Issues with packaging have also pervaded the playing arena. The cheerleaders who added extra spice to on field action have been dressed poorly and dance absurdly. Both have evoked more derision than liking. Possibly the TV coverage and the channel advertising of IPL has better packaging and greater dose of glamour then the event itself.

Second, the teams are not able to build a solid fan base.  “Whole of Calcutta has stopped supporting KKR, they now support Pune Warriors as Dada plays for Pune” said a comment on social media. This highlights the fact that teams are still struggling to build a following, and players are still dominant in drawing the fans. The entire IPL model is built on city vs. city rivalry. The initial editions of IPL did try to build on the rivalry aspect, but now with shifting of players, it seems to be fading away. Twitter following for all teams seem to be stuck at same numbers as they were during IPL 4.  For instance MI has just 2577 followers, up by a few hundred from last year. Pune and Delhi were at forefront of building a community and they have remained the leaders, but the growth has been slow. Are the teams missing an opportunity of connecting with fans and building a fandom?

Third, IPL may be losing its expanded audience base. IPL was the silver bullet for cricket; it helped in expanding the ambit of viewers. IPL the event and Set Max the official broadcaster were able to rope in a fresh bunch of audience who otherwise did not watch or follow cricket. The quick pace and shorter format made it akin to watching a movie. It seems some of the new audience has drifted away from cricket after having sampled the action. As it may happen with any sales promotion, host of new audience walks away once the promotional scheme is over. May be this is the true level of viewership of IPL, may be this is where it will start to stabilize. It may be early days though.

Fourth, quality of cricket is an issue. For IPL as a brand to survive, ultimately it has to be the quality of cricket that it dishes out, and this year there has just been one match that can be called as a thrilling IPL style match. There has not been a major impact innings from an Indian player as yet (except one) and that too is adding to the jadedness of IPL and cricket both. The Aussies or South Africans or West Indians may do very well at IPL, but it’s the Indian players who pull in the eye balls.

Eventually the fate of IPL 5 will be in the hands of major Indian players. Till then it will remain as one more programme that comes at 9PM every day.

April 12, 2012. Published in Impact Magazine and http://www.pitchonnet.com

Will IPL5 save Indian Cricket?

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Life has come full circle for the brand IPL. It was created on the back of India’ unexpected win of the inaugural T20 championship. The win generated enormous excitement about the newest format of cricket and the viewer friendly length of game added to the whole appeal. There was ICL in those days, and if you treat ICL as the test marketing case, the indications were that the league will be a success.

IPL created a new lingo of cricket. It brought showmanship, glamour and fun to an otherwise intense game. It seemed to work fine till last year when IPL 4 faced diminishing viewer interest. Ratings dipped, stadium seats were unsold and generally lacked the buzz that IPL had generated for three full years.

Admittedly it came on back of India’s famous T 50 world cup victory. May be people were emotionally so high that IPL didn’t matter. A deeper analysis pointed towards issues with the quality of game itself. Somehow the cricket did not seem to be appealing enough, fans did not connect with teams and the tournament itself was long and often the matches did not have tight nerve wrecking finishes.

The slide has continued for Indian team since then. The English tour was a tour to hell. India lost every match. The English came here and India won, but the viewer remained lukewarm. The West Indians came and went without generating much heat. Though they almost managed an upset and came close to beating India many times. The subsequent tour to Australia and the imaginative branding of the tour by broadcasters came to haunt India. Viewers switched off in large numbers. India went to Bangladesh, beat Pakistan but came back empty handed without managing to reach the finals.

Cricket in India is facing a crisis and surprise surprise is looking at IPL to revive the interest.

In five years the sporting arena has changed dramatically in India. Once upon a time, the only game that generated any eyeballs was cricket. This is no longer true. The Olympic Hockey Qualifiers and the just concluded WSH has seen near packed stadiums. This is when India does not have one star Hockey player who can generate viewer interest. India now has its own F1 racing track, the inaugural race was viewed by a packed house paying more money than they normally pay for watching cricket. Add Badminton, Squash, Boxing, and Tennis to this mix and cricket has serious competition to grab viewers’ attention. To top it, this is the year of Olympics, with India sending its strongest ever contingent.

In five years the viewer fatigue with T20 also has increased tremendously. T20 was cricket’s silver bullet to attract new viewers, expand its appeal and fill up the coffers of the Board. It did this for a short while, extremely efficiently. Movie halls turned into IPL screens, Youtube beamed the matches live, and there were multitudes of fantasy cricket games that rode the wave.

The tables have turned completely. For brand IPL to reconnect, the focus has to be on performance. Over the next 45 days it is the quality of cricket that will have a major say in how well the brand performs. More than ever, it’s now that how Indian players perform will have an impact on the future of the brand.

IPL is at the cross roads and so is Indian cricket. Indian cricket will survive, but for IPL the quality of cricket will matter the most this time round