Tuesday 24 May 2011

Re: Things That Might Disappear In Our Lifetime.......

I agree with all the items in the list except item no. 5 & 7 viz., The Land Line Telephone & Television

The reasons are as follows:

5. The Land Line Telephone - This is one of the beast which will survive like dot-matrix printer or fax-machines. This is because, majority of the world's broadband is still delivered via the traditional land-lines. The alternative is very expensive fibre optic cable infrastructure. I believe only AT&T/Verizon has done that in America and that too at the cost of competition and long-term price rigging for consumers. Till the satellite technology is mastered - which is going to be very difficult because of the fight for band-width between multiple telecom/technology/house-appliances operators and the military (check-out the fight and the resultant corruption in India's bandwidth auction)
Hence even though nobody uses the Landline for the purpose of making phone calls, it will survive, just as dumb pipes to transmit broadband.

7. Television - The great thing about television is its adaptability. When television first came and started beaming serials and live telecasting sports events in our rooms, it was liberating. It was really revolutionary. But then it followed the American model of privatisation and ads which were supposed to be supplementary became central thereby destroying the whole experience. But in the countries like UK and most of Europe the television is still state sponsored. In UK for example, every family has to pay £145.50 /annum compulsory. That allows BBC to create ad-free wonderful television and survive against the ad-based commercial peers.
But the main reason why TV will survive is not because of this model which is not through-out the world (I wish Indian govt. had taken care of the old Doordarshan) but because of the technology. Due to good broadband facilities in most of the developed world and due to the concept of 'streaming' even in the developing world, TV can be transmitted to your PC and then watched as per your convenience on the TV set using the set-top boxes made by Apple/Google etc., This is already being done via BBC iPlayer in UK, Hulu Player in USA and more.

Regards,

Pradeep


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Something to think about.

Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to
them. But, ready or not, here they come

1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office.
They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to
sustain it long term. e-mail, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the
minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every
day is junk mail and bills.

2. The Cheque. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with
checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to
process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the
eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post
office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the
post office would absolutely go out of business.

3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the
newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That
may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper
online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and
e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an
alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies
to develop a model for paid subscription services.

4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that you
hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about
downloading music fromiTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed
my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without
ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with
books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter
before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And
think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen
instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to
see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead
of a book.

5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot
of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply
because they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra
service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using
the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes

6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music
industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading.
It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the
people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The
record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40%
of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional music
that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also
true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and
disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by
Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."

7. Television. Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just
because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their
computers. And they're playing games and doing lots of other things that
take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have
degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are
skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I
say good riddance to most of it. It's time for the cable companies to be put
out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and
through Netflix.

8. "Things" That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we used to own
are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future..
They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive
and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is
on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of
that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their
latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the
Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the
Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it
will open something in the Internet cloud.. If you save something, it will be
saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud
provider. In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books,
or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news.
But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to
disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives
be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and
pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case
and pull out the insert.

9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on
nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time
anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even
built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, "They"
know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and
the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a
zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits.. And
"They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.

All we will have that can't be changed are Memories.!!!!

Saturday 21 May 2011

The 'mayavi' World of BrandZs!!!

The biggest mis-fortune of the liberalized media is the mis-management of conflict of interests. The best example is the recent publication of BrandZ Top 100.
http://www.millwardbrown.com/libraries/optimor_brandz_files/2011_brandz_top100_chart.sflb.ashx

Ofcourse, the methodology will be given, after-all we live in a democracy in the West. But once you start reading the fine-print including the people behind the publication, things start getting bit more fuzzy. In this specific case of BrandZ Top 100, it is published by a branch of WPP. Now, WPP will have huge interest in the concept of branding because they deal in advertising for the same brands. Isn't it a conflict of interest then. As usual regulators are either sleeping or have been made to look other way in the name of 'small government', 'pro-business policies' blah-blah-blah.

Coming to the specifics, after we cross the management jargon, the list is still mis-leading because of at-least three obvious reasons:
1. The inclusion of Utilities where competition and choice doesn't matter.
2. The Distribution Models which restricts competition and choice.
3. Non-inclusion of Aspirations for brand-story.

1. The inclusion of Utilities: What are Utilities doing in a branding exercise. The nature of utilities is distribution of 'scarce' resources. People have no choice but to go with them. The selection is based on availability and price, not on brand. Whether one buys fuel or go to bank for a loan, the same principal applies.
2. Restrictive distribution models: Again, the way the regulation works is people do not have a choice. Without choice there is no brand. For instance you go to a restaurant, you get either Pepsi or Coke. But not both. Similarly, you go to a petrol station and do we have a choice of fuel from 5 different companies? When the distribution models are masked under protectionism, does brand matters there?
3. Non-inclusion of Aspirations: Clearly, a brand is not just about buying the products but being associated with it not just in the present but in future. What about the aspirations to join the team behind the brands?

The simple questionnaire to define brand loyalty is: Are you happy with the product and will you come-back and recommend it to others?

Covering the methodology under gobbledock of company's earnings to brand-equity makes no sense. It just complicates the matter so that the marketing departments of these companies run to the same people for consultancy services.

The best way of doing a branding survey is:
a) restricting it to products where there is competition and people have choice (automotive/tablets/mobile phones are very good example(s), Banks/Oil Companies are bad examples)
b) capturing not just the present purchase but aspiration to buy the brand's products in future.
c) capturing the aspiration of not just buying the products but to join the team to create future great products.

The irony here is the top-ranked Apple. It's marketing and brand management is based on the company's strategies and not on the consultancy provided to WPP or it's marketing spend. For example, as soon as Steve Jobs declared on the Apple Keynote Presentation that Apple deals and leads in POST-PC products, they pulled the plug from the wonderfully creative 'get a mac' ads. That is how brands are created not just by increasing marketing spend.

To put is simple, the Brand is a representation of not just the products sold but also the culture of the company behind it, the creative team's skills, the aspiration of the students/prospective employees to join that team, the aspiration of the people to buy those products in future etc.,

If all this looks subjective, then of-course it is because the brands are felt by HEART not analyzed by minds and definitely not by company's earnings.

Pradeep Kabra