Tag Archives: Social Media

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.

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.

Road Ahead For Media Planners

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The Original Article

Future is always complex. Predicting future is fraught with danger. Chances of getting future wrong are bright. However future is always built on contexts that are current. Future is always shaped by the challenges faced in present.

There is a lot happening in our world at this time. Technology is progressing at a pace that is hard to keep track of. Just for example in last three years the mobile penetration has doubled, homes with digital TV subscription have gone up exponentially; the FM stations have moved from metros to class one and class two towns. The changes are not just tech driven.  The demographic changes are re-crafting the entire society. The rapid urbanization is throwing up challenges not faced before. There are no indicators suggesting that the speed of change will slow down or the transformation is eased off.

Here are three challenges that we are likely to face in coming years. First is the challenge of nomadic audiences.  Second the challenge of contexts. Last is the challenge of measurement.

Challenge of Nomadic Audiences

Media planning and buying is dependent on a set of audience being available to receive the message. The process of enumeration assumes that the audience is stationary, and once counted is always available. In today’s technology empowered scenario, the audience is not stationary. Rapid adoption of net enabled personal devices like tablets is making media portable. This has serious implications. It means that mass media will get empowered by personal media. It means that that notion of fixed audience will have to shelved. It means that media buyers will have to find a way of synthesizing the broadcast media with new age portable media. Nomadic audiences and personal portable media are forces that have will permanently change the media landscape

Challenge of contexts

Let’s take this rise of portable personal media and the possible stagnation of traditional mass media forward. Till now the media planning was built on increasing salience, so that it impacted interest in brand so that it lead to positive action on retail point. This is straight forward and linear in approach. This has delivered great results for brands. Today, the entire context of brand consumption is changing. Salience matters and salience impacts the interest in a brand, but from here on two new forces comes into play. The personal portable media is the transformational force. It makes Search and Share more important than mere Action of the traditional AIDA theory. Today everything is searchable, and people share everything. We know that this peer to peer network has an amazing power to influence brand choices. This change in context is already a reality and will only grow in future.

Challenge of measurement

The concept of fixed audience is ingrained in the existing media measurement systems. With the nomadic audience and the rise of personal portable medium will require a new type of measurement system to be created. Media agencies have tended to merge TV with online TV, press with Digital media and events with outdoors. Tomorrow they will have to find a system of one composite measurement that merges the traditional with new. The search and share impact on brands health will have a far greater bearing than mere rise or drop in reach and salience

Future is complex, and it is often not possible to predict it with certainty, but the present has a way of showing the impending challenges. We need to be prepared

Published in 4Ps of Business and Marketing, November 4th, 2011 Issue

Enter the Curator

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It is believed that in the age of social media expertise is a rare commodity. Expertise comes from having a considered opinion that the world buys into. Today everyone has an opinion, and everyone can express them with ease. The consumer is becoming an expert and the experts are facing survival blues.
Is this really true? Consider this, a movie critic watches a movie and posts his review on his blog. The viewers who visit the blog add their comments on the review. The expert in this case does not have to wait long to figure out how his viewers are reacting to his reviews? The next time he writes the review, the existing feedback helps him to be sharper and more connected in his review
Now is this consumer generated content or expert generated media? The expert generated media obviously is far more interesting phenomenon than consumer generated media.
In case of the movie critic for example, the critic is not someone who has seen a few movies. More likely he or she lives movies, knows the process of making movies, and possibly has an insight on making movies more engaging. The dynamic feedback that the audience provides allows the expert to tell a more engaging tale.
Yes this is the world of collaborative co creation. Yet the collaborative co creation is not diminishing the value or role of expertise, it’s actually enhancing it. This is where the expert generated media has a role to play. This process is a curative process
Curation is a process that comes from the world of art museums, but is increasingly becoming important in the world of brands. Views, opinions, feedbacks etc are all chosen, sorted and organized by people who are experts equipped with necessary knowledge and experience. By leveraging the experience and knowledge the curaters can help brands connect better with its consumers.
Planners need to actively act as curaters to stay relevant in these changing times. The traditional ways of gathering consumer insights are outdated, and they rarely work. The planners can act as enhancers of consumer experiences by acting like a curator
Curation of opinions allows the experts to add more depth to the context. It allows the experts to step into their shoes, know their opinions, become more connected and be closer to the subject. It actually lets the expert even mold the opinion. That is truly what an expert would want to do. This is what a planner always has to do.
Experts curate and cull out best, clearest and the most thought provocating arguments. An average consumer will rarely want to read every opinion that is written about the subject. This is what a planner does constantly, sort and collect. Than cull out what matters and make it work for the brand.
Curation of opinion can shift the balance back to brands. In this collaborative world creating content is easy, but gathering and presenting is the real challenge. Consumers may value another consumers’ opinion more than advertising, but by no means is an average consumers’ opinion the final word. Therein lays the real opportunity. Planners are experts; they now need to be curative experts
Published in Brand Wagon, 9th November, 2010

Alone and aloof or crowded and connected?

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One of the best status messages I have come cross on Facebook says “the only place where it is cool to talk to a wall.” This reflects the popular predictions that pundits have often made about the generation that loves to be online. They have always argued that the online habits will turn a whole generation into antisocial isolated zombies. And that the Google enabled world will make everyone ‘search’ for bite sized info as the appetite for discovering new things will go down tremendously.

Has it really happened?

Dan Tapscott in his book “Grown Up Digital” has debunked many of these popular predictions. He calls this multi tasking, living in multiple dimension generation as Net Generation. He goes on to explain that in order to understand what the future holds we need to understand the Net Generation. He debunks the theory about short attention spans and zero social skills. He terms the Net Generation as remarkably bright community, which has developed revolutionary new ways of thinking, interacting, working, and socializing.

Popular trend watchers have now started to speak about a new trend of ‘mass mingling’ where the net generation will live simultaneously in real and virtual world and make both the worlds meaningful and engaging.

So is technology making people alone and isolated or is technology enabling them to be connected and engaged?

Technology actually has moved to a new level. Version 2.0 of net is not PC but on the mobile. The very basis of the aloof argument has been turned on its head. So now your friends, connections, appointments, and possibly emotions always travel with you.

The basic insight of people wanting to be connected has not changed. It’s this need for connection that had driven 500 Million people to be on Facebook, Twitter, My Space, Four Square, Google Wave etc. and through the act of status updates, feeds, blogs, pictures and interests they broadcast their desire to find new connections. The invariably find new connections and friends through common interests, hobbies, opinions and practices. It doesn’t stop in virtual space only. Look at your Facebook page and see how many event invites are there. By attending any such event people have proactively connected with a bunch of common interest friends in real world. So instead of making the net generation socially challenged, it made them socially active and eclectic.

This version 2.0 of internet may spark off four dominant trends, here’s a look at all four of them

Go out often: Technology has made finding interesting place around the cities easier than ever. Places can not only be discovered, but also is commented upon. This will encourage people to explore their world more. This means people will eat out more often but at a far larger number of places than ever before.

Get bitten by wanderlust: The constant feed of holiday pictures from a variety of locations will encourage people to pack their bags and discover their world more often. The normal holiday hotspots will make way for newer more exotic destinations. May be tourism boards need to revisit the very motivations of travel

Niche will get powered by mainstream: The niche performers, products, brands, bands will increasingly get access to mainstream audiences as customers will become patrons and interest groups will broadcast their approval to a wider set of audience

The world will become large: the world instead of becoming a global village will actually become a very large thriving vibrant mega polis. This will mean more people to meet, more things to do, more smells to savour, more connections to be made.

This is a very interesting transformation that we will see all around us. A generation that was supposed to be socially challenged will challenge the norms of social connectivity.

Published in 4Ps of Marketing, July 15th 2010 issue

Bhopal and changing India

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December 2 1984 is a date that whole of India can never forget. It is on the night of December 2 that the gas leaked from Union Carbide Plant. It is the worst industrial disaster that the world has ever seen. Over 500000 people got exposed to the gas. There is no unanimity on number of dead, it could be between 2500 that the authorities say or 15000 as independent observers say. The world has never witnessed an industrial tragedy of this magnitude

And it’s been 25 years and the case drags on. In these 25 years much has happened. India has seen 5 different Prime Ministers, the state of MP has seen six different chief ministers, the case has dragged on, and the victims wait for relief and compensation. 25 years is a long time

Now I am not building the argument about the case. Everything that has happened till now on the case has been wrong and unjust. Let’s leave it at that just for a while. Let’s look at what has changed in India in last 25 years. Let’s look at India through this prism.

The India of 1984 was a very different India. It was an angry India, and it was an unsure India. Our economy had just started to find its groove; the wave of growth had just started to build. We were not the confident optimistic nation that we have started to become now. May be it was this lack of confidence and lack of trust in ourselves that we let Warren Anderson leave India. May be this was the reason the amount of compensation sought from Union Carbide was paltry.

The country was aghast at what had happened then. The students in colleges protested, the civil society raised its voice, the news papers kept at it and piled on pressure, but eventually the issue faded from active consciousness of the nation. The society in those days had no way of keeping the whole issue alive for a long period of time.

Now, in 2010 when the final judgment on the case has been pronounced the country is nothing like what it was in 1984. India now is a much more assured country in its own right. We are sure of ourselves and brimming with confidence. We are optimistic of our future and know we will make tomorrow brighter. The economy has transformed dramatically, we are a service economy now. In 1984 we looked at World Bank and IMF and they dictated our economic policy. In 2010 the world is looking at India to drive them out of the clutches of recession.

The changes are deeper than macroeconomic in nature. The media is far more widespread. The access to media has gone up many folds. In 1984 we took to streets to protest. The protests were seen as a law and order problem more than the reflection of ground reality. Today the anger and disappointment has been empowered by social media. The protest are no longer on a few streets, it’s everywhere. The protest are no longer restricted to a few people, they involve a much wider audience. The protests then were spontaneous reactions that die down as anger subsides. The protests now can be sustained drive a deeper change. The media today is powered by social media and together they are a potent force, a force that can truly change the fate of victims of Bhopal

And that is the real issue. The tragedy of Bhopal cannot be reversed. But it should not remain a tragedy that affects a small set of people. If we as consumers can use our power to drive changes in brands, communication and social culture than the power should be put to proper use. The true test of social media is here. If we can together drive a change, social media will truly come to life, or else it will remain one of those things that are fashionable to know, but is of little value.

Bhopal and the tragedy should be a turning point in the history of social media. Will it stand up to the test?

Published at http://www.mediaworldbuzz.com

Into my drawing room and no more

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We have always had a clear cut demarcation between public and private lives. The whole concept of Drawing room in our homes is our concept of public life. Drawing rooms are meant to be the public face of homes. This is where the guests are welcome, this where the family achievements are showcased, and this is where a lot of showmanship is practiced. Drawing rooms are projections and they are designed to leave a good impression. Then there are the other rooms of home. They are private, they are out of bounds for guests, this is where the family retreats and keeps its affairs away from public gaze.
Essentially homes strike a balance between an intrusive welcoming public space and reclusive non welcoming private space. A line is always drawn between the two spaces and everyone at home knows where one stops and the other starts. While there have been debates about where the division between public and private space should be, and the debate often relates to where a line should be drawn rather than about abolishing the line entirely.
In our culture it’s drilled into our heads from a very early age that ‘familial matters’ should never be discussed in front of ‘outsiders’ and should always remain within family. If a family can keep its matters private, it can keep its honour sky high.
However the coming of mobile phones in our lives has started to blur the lines between private and public at an alarming rate. For one the mobile phone has entered spaces that were always deemed private and were out of bounds. And subsequently they have allowed people to share moments, memories, secrets and desires that were always private and were always hidden. Yes mobiles are extension of our lives, but they are removing the sacred line.
Just for an example look at what youngsters are doing on Facebook. I am assuming that most people who are on Facebook are attitudinally young. It has become a complete eco system where the youngsters do far more than just status updates. From events to places visited to playing games to endless chatting, youngsters keep finding newer ways of interacting and connecting. If that was all than it should not have been an issue. The real issue is the amount of private moments and desires are posted on online spaces for the whole world to see. There is no dearth of moments people are posting: honeymoon pictures (always private), private parties (not open to all), and even family reunions (is every one on one’s friends list interested?)
So how is this blurring of public private space going to affect the world of branding? And why should the world of branding be even interested? Well there is are two issues credibility and authenticity that we will have to battle
Social media has always been seen as a more influential medium than conventional communication channels. Opinions and conversations posted on Social Networking sites are more trusted and valued. I am not sure in coming days this will remain as sacrosanct as it is portrayed. Will you trust the comments from a group of ‘friends’ who in your opinion have been more open than others?
The second issue is of authenticity. Brands always want to build authenticity in their DNA. Part of building authenticity involves keeping things private, hidden, secret. Will this new all baring, all sharing audience respect this attitude from brands? Will the brands be eventually forced to abolish the line between private and public that they have held sacred become a liability?
As always, may be the emerging reality will lie somewhere in between!

(Published in 4Ps Magazine’s 22ns April Issue)