I was watching a gripping Ted Talk the other day – “My failed mission to find God and what I found instead”. It is by an American of Indian Origin – Anjali Kumar.

She had planned to visit a highly revered Spiritual master and asked people to write in with their innermost desires which she promised to convey to him. She was flooded by mails in which people didn’t ask for loads of money or world peace or even immense power.

The three things people asked for (and in this exact order) were:
1. Health
2. Happiness
3. Love

And what are customers after all if not humans with emotions. Don’t you agree?

Sort by price is the dominant way that shopping online now happens. The cheapest airline ticket or widget or freelancer comes up first, and most people click.

Getting someone to switch to you is totally different from getting someone who’s new to the market to start using the solution you offer.

Switching means:

Admitting I was wrong, and, in many cases, leaving behind some of my identity, because my tribe (as I see them) is using what I used to use.

So, if you want to get a BMW motorcycle owner to buy a Harley as his next bike, you have your work cut out for you.

He’s not eager to say, “well, I got emotionally involved with something, but I realized that there’s a better choice so I switched, I was wrong and now I’m right.”

And he’s certainly not looking forward to walking away from his own self-defined circle and enduring the loneliness as he finds a new circle.

Which leads to three things to think about:

1. If you seek to grow quickly, realize that your best shot is to get in early, before people have made a commitment, built allegiances and started to engage in cognitive dissonance (since I picked this one, it must be good).
2. If you are marketing to people who will have to switch to engage with you, do it with intention. Your pitch of, “this is very very good” is insufficient. Your pitch of, “you need something in this category” makes no sense, because I’m already buying in that category. Instead, you must spend the time, the effort and the money to teach me new information that allows me to make a new decision. Not that I was wrong before, but that I was under-informed.
3. Ignore the tribal links at your peril. Without a doubt, “people like us do things like this,” is the most powerful marketing mantra available. Make it true, then share the news.

We invent a status quo every time we settle on something, because we’d rather tell ourselves that we made a good decision than live with the feeling that we didn’t.

(Picked from Seth Godin’s blog)

In today’s day and age of rampant tele-marketing, online surveys and retail questionnaires, one would think brand marketers are constantly improving in terms of their proximity to the consumers. Sadly, this is a fallacy. The way many marketers seek consumer data not only yields misleading results, but often adds a negative spin to the campaign objective itself.
There is a well-known restaurant chain that serves grills over a charcoal sigri on the table followed by a buffet spread. Great food, variety and value… eat as much as you like. What more could one possibly want? I’ll tell you what I’d want. I’d want some privacy. I’d want some conversation time with my fellow diners.

Because every now and then one of the waiters will invariably come in to disrupt proceedings, intent on asking questions on my current level of enjoyment, which variety I am liking, my past experiences if any, etc. And just when I’ve politely answered all the questions, another steward will pop up and, like an ace kabaddi player, infringe into my domain and make similar small talk. If by now my answers have taken on a curt, if not exasperated tenor, and the so-called brand ambassadors have retreated somewhat, I should not think that I have won the battle. Along with the bill will come a questionnaire asking me to provide ratings on every minute of time spent inside the restaurant, every section of the buffet and whether I will revisit or refer. Irrespective of whether you filled in the form or not, within the next 48 hours will come a phone call from the telemarketers of the restaurant chain.

If you think this is a stray incident, think again. Upon getting my car serviced, I was accorded a similar treatment. This time, even the person giving the car the final polish, brandished a separate form to sign off on. The call centre got into action within minutes of my driving out, asking if the car felt right. It was not too long before the car manufacturer also unleashed its own set of agents for feedback.

I can understand the first batch of enquiries at the restaurant… it’s a safety measure that could yield course correction in case any condiments were in excess. However, when the repetitive intrusion begins, the consumer realises the diminishing value of encroachment on time, and experiences increasing levels of frustration. Were all these involved processes going to truly yield added value to the consumer? Judging from the mechanical way such ‘surveys’ are administered, much of it is lip service, and it is apparent that the agenda isn’t to disrupt the status quo. Very little attention is usually given to mine such data, reveal a new product idea, propose pricing or positioning adjustments, or cater to unmet demand.

There is no thought given to selecting an occasion when the consumer could be motivated and feel privileged to provide views. The demographic profile of the feedback-seeking agent is often mismatched with the background of the consumer. A customer who has chosen to converse in English, often times is pitted against a feedback agent, who converses in a dialect impossible to follow and who races like an express train!

In a brand’s strategy planning cycle, the initial situational analysis (“Where Are We”), as well as the measurement of post-campaign results (“Are We Getting There”) are heavily dependent on a marketer’s sensitised ear-to-the-ground. It is imperative therefore, that the process of eliciting feedback be viewed on a strategic plane, as it is an important (chosen) touchpoint of brands with consumers who can potentially fortify or erode brand equity.

Marketing isn’t about driving by looking at the rear-view mirror, but about looking through the windshield, fuelling expectations and surging forward to surpass milestones in consumer delight. Every pit-stop in a brand’s journey, even for feedback, is then about maximising the consumer experience with sensitivity and empathy, at a happier meeting point, and charging the batteries for both sides to win.

(This article was published in BW Businessworld issue dated ‘March 20, 2017’ with cover story titled ‘Most Influential Women 2017’. The Author is my ex Boss at RK Swamy/BBDO, Indranil Gupta – he runs BrandNEW Associates Private Limited.)

A) Ignore it?

B) Change your original opinion according to the new evidence?

C) Further strengthen your original opinion?

Read on to know the shocking answer.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said that an informed electorate is a prerequisite for democracy. Recent research, however, finds that being informed may not be as beneficial as we think. In 2010, political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler had two groups of people read articles about how Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion. One group then read an article correcting that information: the 2004 Duelfer report, which confirmed that the country had no such weapons. Of conservatives who read only the first article, 34% believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the invasion. But of conservatives who read both, that number climbed to 64%. Contradictory information didn’t change their beliefs; it actually strengthened them.

And you yourself can experience this effect everytime you hear news against the political party you support or Salman Khan (if he happens to be your favourite movie star).

This is called the backfire effect. And it can be seen as the flipside of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias makes you seek out information that agrees with your preexisting beliefs. The backfire effect is what you do when information that doesn’t agree with those beliefs finds you. In both cases, your mind protects you from the pain of being wrong. As Thomas Gilovich wrote in his book How We Know What Isn’t So, “For desired conclusions…it is as if we ask ourselves, ‘Can I believe this?’, but for unpalatable conclusions we ask ‘Must I believe this?'” Learn more about your tendency for bias in the video here.

WE HAVE COME A LONG WAY… AND HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO

This Woman’s Day, let me take you to a trip down memory lane.

Since the 70s, there have been many iconic ads which have been nothing short of milestones in Indian Advertising. Here are some of them:

THEN

1. COME ALIVE: A girl enjoying her bath and prancing around under a waterfall (in Kodaikanal) was a novelty for the Indian audience in the 70s. It was “fresh” to say the least. And life was not the same for the model Karen Lunel after this. Watch it here. The wild exuberance that she portrayed was in equal measure good acting and the fact that the water was freezing cold!

2. LALITAJI: While the Liril girl was about self expression, Lalitaji was the smart and assertive avatar of the woman. This ad campaign took on Nirma at their own game and repositioned it as a more costly option and helped Surf gain market share. Watch it here. “Sasti cheez khareedne mein aur achhi cheez khareedne mein fark hota hai…”

3. RASNA GIRL: Ankita Jhaveri became the face of Rasna in the 80s. The films were all about what a girl her age would do – playing around, having toys, birthday parties etc. Watch it here. It became a mammoth task to replace Ankita after she had grown up.

NOW

1. TANISHQ REMARRIAGE AD: This ad reflected how a society is moving away from the dogmas of the past. Watch it here. The fact that it was a dusky woman portraying the role
also helped break stereotypes.

2. LOVE BEYOND THE STEREOTYPES:. This film celebrated homosexuality and it was warm, sensitive and beautiful all the way. Watch it here.

3. THE WOMAN’S AD FILM WITH A TWIST: This film by Titan radically changes the way you look at a professional woman and her success. Watch it here.

Human beings are terrible at buying these things, simply because it is almost impossible to sell the future.

What we’re good at is the ‘now.’

Right now!

When we buy a stake in the future, what we’re actually buying is how it makes us feel TODAY.

We move up all the imagined benefits and costs of something in the future and experience them now. That’s why it’s hard to stick to a diet (because celery tastes bad today, and we can’t easily experience feeling healthy in ten years). That’s why we make such dumb financial decisions (because it’s so tempting to believe magical stories about tomorrow).

If you want people to be smarter or more active or more generous about their future, you’ll need to figure out how to make the transaction about how it feels right now.

(Seth Godin)

If you’ve had enough of mush yesterday and yet crave for some more love, here are some campaigns to warm your heart. I bet you haven’t seen most of them.

Campaign 1: The Ad council did this brand activation titled #lovehasnolabels. It delivers a powerful message on diversity and inclusion. Watch it here.

Campaign 2: Here is another shade of love. A love that is around us but we tend to ignore. Caratlane opened our eyes to this charming angle. Watch it here.

Campaign 3: Some practical tips to stop being tongue tied on Valentine’s day while hardselling the product. Nestle tied up with Anuja Chauhan and managed this tightrope walk. Watch it here.

Campaign 4: And here is my favourite! MTV delivers a blow to the guts with this superbly conceptualised film. Watch it here.