Stop SOPA / PIPA - Save The Internet!!

And its time You did something about it!

If you hadn't heard of SOPA before, you probably have by now: Some of the internet's most influential sites—Reddit and Wikipedia among them— have gone dark to protest the much-maligned anti-piracy bill. But other than being a very bad thing, what is SOPA/PIPA? And what will it mean for you if it passes?

SOPA/PIPA is an anti-piracy bill working its way through Congress...

House Judiciary Committee Chair and Texas Republican Lamar Smith, along with 12 co-sponsors, introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act on October 26th of last year. Debate on H.R. 3261, as it's formally known, has consisted of one hearing on November 16th and a "mark-up period" on December 15th, which was designed to make the bill more agreeable to both parties. Its counterpart in the Senate is the Protect IP Act (S. 968). Also known by its cuter-but-still-deadly name: PIPA. There will likely be a vote on PIPA next Wednesday; SOPA discussions had been placed on hold but will resume in February of this year.

...that would grant content creators extraordinary power over the internet...

The beating heart of SOPA is the ability of intellectual property owners (read: movie studios and record labels) to effectively pull the plug on foreign sites against whom they have a copyright claim. If Warner Bros., for example, says that a site in Italy is torrenting a copy of The Dark Knight, the studio could demand that Google remove that site from its search results, that PayPal no longer accept payments to or from that site, that ad services pull all ads and finances from it, and—most dangerously—that the site's ISP prevent people from even going there.

...which would go almost comedically unchecked...

Perhaps the most galling thing about SOPA in its original construction is that it let IP owners take these actions without a single court appearance or judicial sign-off. All it required was a single letter claiming a "good faith belief" that the target site has infringed on its content. Once Google or PayPal or whoever received the quarantine notice, they would have five days to either abide or to challenge the claim in court. Rights holders still have the power to request that kind of blockade, but in the most recent version of the bill the five day window has softened, and companies now would need the court's permission.

The language in SOPA implies that it's aimed squarely at foreign offenders; that's why it focuses on cutting off sources of funding and traffic (generally US-based) rather than directly attacking a targeted site (which is outside of US legal jurisdiction) directly. But that's just part of it.

...to the point of potentially creating an "Internet Blacklist"...

Here's the other thing: Payment processors or content providers like Visa or YouTube don't even need a letter shut off a site's resources. The bill's "vigilante" provision gives broad immunity to any provider who proactively shutters sites it considers to be infringers. Which means the MPAA just needs to publicize one list of infringing sites to get those sites blacklisted from the internet.

Potential for abuse is rampant. As Public Knowledge points out, Google could easily take it upon itself to delist every viral video site on the internet with a "good faith belief" that they're hosting copyrighted material. Leaving YouTube as the only major video portal. Comcast (an ISP) owns NBC (a content provider). Think they might have an interest in shuttering some rival domains? Under SOPA, they can do it without even asking for permission.

...while exacting a huge cost from nearly every site you use daily...

SOPA also includes an "anti-circumvention" clause, which holds that telling people how to work around SOPA is nearly as bad as violating its main provisions. In other words: if your status update links to The Pirate Bay, Facebook would be legally obligated to remove it. Ditto tweets, YouTube videos, Tumblr or WordPress posts, or sites indexed by Google. And if Google, Twitter, Wordpress, Facebook, etc. let it stand? They face a government "enjoinment." They could and would be shut down.

The resources it would take to self-police are monumental for established companies, and unattainable for start-ups. SOPA would censor every online social outlet you have, and prevent new ones from emerging.

...and potentially disappearing your entire digital life...

The party line on SOPA is that it only affects seedy off-shore torrent sites. That's false. As the big legal brains at Bricoleur point out, the potential collateral damage is huge. And it's you. Because while Facebook and Twitter have the financial wherewithal to stave off anti-circumvention shut down notices, the smaller sites you use to store your photos, your videos, and your thoughts may not. If the government decides any part of that site infringes on copyright and proves it in court? Poof. Your digital life is gone, and you can't get it back.

...while still managing to be both unnecessary and ineffective...

What's saddest about SOPA is that it's pointless on two fronts. In the US, the MPAA, and RIAA already have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to request that infringing material be taken down. We've all seen enough "video removed" messages to know that it works just fine.

As for the foreign operators, you might as well be throwing darts at a tse-tse fly. The poster child of overseas torrenting, Pirate Bay, has made it perfectly clear that they're not frightened in the least. And why should they be? Its proprietors have successfully evaded any technological attempt to shut them down so far. Its advertising partners aren't US-based, so they can't be choked out. But more important than Pirate Bay itself is the idea of Pirate Bay, and the hundreds or thousands of sites like it, as populous and resilient as mushrooms in a marsh. Forget the question of should SOPA succeed. It's incredibly unlikely that it could. At least at its stated goals.

...but stands a shockingly good chance of passing...

SOPA is, objectively, an unfeasible trainwreck of a bill, one that willfully misunderstands the nature of the internet and portends huge financial and cultural losses. The White House has come out strongly against it. As have hundreds of venture capitalists and dozens of the men and women who helped build the internet in the first place. In spite of all this, companies have already spent a lot of money pushing SOPA, and it remains popular in the House of Representatives.

That mark-up period on December 15th, the one that was supposed to transform the bill into something more manageable? Useless. Twenty sanity-fueled amendments were flat-out rejected. And while the bill's most controversial provision—mandatory DNS filtering—was thankfully taken off the table recently, in practice internet providers would almost certainly still use DNS as a tool to shut an accused site down.

...unless we do something about it.

The momentum behind the anti-SOPA movement has been slow to build, but we're finally at a saturation point. Wikipedia, BoingBoing, WordPress, TwitPic: they have all gone dark on January 18th. The list of companies supporting SOPA is long but shrinking, thanks in no small part to the emails and phone calls they've received in the last few months.

So keep calling. Keep emailing. Sign petitions! Most of all, keep making it known that the internet was built on the same principles of freedom that this country was. It should be afforded to the same rights.

This article written by Brian Barrett appeared originally on Gizmodo! It has been reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License! Thanks to Gawker Media!!

Branding, Identity or Logo! What Is It Really?

Isn't It Time We Decoded Branding Correctly?

It is a great, huge disgrace that the word 'Branding' has been so overused in recent years. More and more agencies (small and big alike) and clients tout the ‘Branding’ word about as though it were going out of fashion… which of course, some people would like it to do.

But the fact is that many of these so-called proponents of Branding simply don't understand what a brand is, or how Branding works. Branding has come to mean very little to a lot of people, largely because it is so regularly misunderstood, and is used so vaguely and liberally. The word 'Brand' is often used interchangeably (and incorrectly) with words like 'identity' and 'logo', and clients who simply need a visual identity are tempted to request a Branding programme because, quite simply, it's been the buzzword of choice for the past couple of years.

A brand is like a unique individual personality. It is the sum of a great many parts, and is made up of an elusive set of characteristics and traits, all of which combine to provoke an emotional response from anybody who comes into contact with it. A person's personality is made up of their attitudes, their values and their beliefs. And the way we perceive someone's personality is influenced not simply by what they say, but by how they say it, what they wear, what they look like, how they behave and more.

The subtleties of perceiving someone's personality are just as evident when it comes to perceiving an organization or their products and services. People have personality traits, organisations have brand values. But they are the same things. Think about Pepsi, Apple or Porsche and the chances are you'll have a fairly similar view of each of them to the guy next to you. This is no accident. These brands have been carefully and skillfully managed to be consistent – wherever you come across them.

A brand can be a valuable business asset, increasing loyalty and revenue from customers, increasing share value and reducing staff turnover, whilst at the same time paving the way for future business growth and roll-out of related but separate sub-brands. Get it right, and your business can flourish. Get it wrong, or mistakenly think you are creating a brand when you are simply designing a logo, and you will be back at the drawing board much sooner than you wanted.

When Ford bought Jaguar, its physical assets were estimated at only 16% of the total value, and when Vodafone, the world’s largest telecommunications company bought Orange its physical assets were estimated at just 10%. The purchase values were therefore largely the result of an intangible set of assets which an accountant might describe as 'goodwill'... and which we would simply call the brands. Vodafone has since bought over many brands including most recently Hutch in India for similar reason while Tata Motors took over Jaguar from an ailing Ford in 2 June 2008 for around £1.7 billion.

As soon as Branding sorts out its identity crisis and is recognized to be more about personality and culture than a simple logo and typeface, the world will be a better place - not just for brand-driven agencies, but for clients and business the world over. Like it or loathe it, 'Branding' as a concept is here to stay, so isn't it about time we started using the term quite correctly?

Jargon Idiolecture

Why is that Lawyers and Accountants speak a strange language?

Had a bad day with my lawyer today and it was my auditor yesterday. No, nothing wrong with them – its just I cant understand the weird language they speak.

It seems that most professionals (like lawyers, accountants, doctors, engineers..) are to blame for developing a complex vocabulary entirely or themselves. Partly, I suppose, to give themselves an resourceful way of talking to each other and partly to sound intelligent but then they forget that the rest of the world hasn't really seen their odd glossary of terms… yet we have their inexplicable jargon imposed on us.

To their timeless credit, lawyers and accountants especially have developed an industry based almost entirely on their own language that only their fellow brethren can comprehend - with lengthy unpunctuated sentences, bizarre unenglish terms and over formal lingo. Needless to say, this means we have to pay them (or law/finance book publishers) simply to decipher what exactly each of them is saying!

Well, the point here is that it's incredibly refreshing to see some brands that are brave enough to realize that simple communication has a much broader appeal, and is genuinely more practical. You should never have to read anything more than once. And speaking in an strange, multifarious or formal tone of voice will not guarantee you project yourself as more gifted or erudite than your competitors.

The evidence is out there and it still feels new, but it's basic common sense – talk as people talk. Explain complex issues as you would to your pal at the pub, and it'll make far more sense than if you try to jargonise and embellish what you're saying with fancy terms.

Anyway, gotta scoot now. Gotta run some ideas up my laptop before my client’s personal assistant locks diaries with me. Hope this didn’t sound too jargonish to you!

Thinking about Lateral Thinking

We're all capable of Lateral Thinking – of thinking sideways, yet still having the natural ability to understand, or to make the mental leap between what is being said and what is being implied.

Yesterday, I watched an old episode of “Only Fools and Horses”, a popular British TV sitcom that ran between 1981 to 1991 and even upto the early 2000’s. What I'm getting at is the genius of scriptwriters like John Sullivan, who anticipates an audience's response before conjuring up something brilliant. With “Only Fools and Horses”, he decided that forever and a day the character 'Trigger' would get his best mate's name wrong, without exception. What an indisputably splendid bit of audience understanding to include such a detail.

So why do we love this kind of lateral thinking? Probably because we welcome humor more if we've got a bit of work to do to 'get the gag'. It's more rewarding.

The point is, Creatives (blokes like me who in the creative industry) bang on about being lateral thinkers... but ask them to explain what lateral thinking is.

For me the best analogy is a joke – 'a man walks into a bar... BANG, it was a lead bar' – Okay, so it's a crap joke, but let's face it, in a split second you probably envisaged that man, saw his face, his clothes, where he was, and you had in mind a particular guy with an open door. Yet you were thrown sideways by the punch line, and the bar in question conjured up a completely different picture in your mind – a solid piece of lead piping, with the same guy's face now wedged up against it.

The fact that, to a greater or lesser degree, we can all consciously make this sort of leap sideways allows us to take what can only be described as the 'scenic route' to a concept. Getting there is 75% of the reward. And the ability to take an even more oblique route is perhaps the difference between a great idea and a bloody extraordinary idea.

To be too obtuse in one's communications is, of course, counter-productive. The more oblique the route, the more likely it is you're going to get lost. Equally, to generate a formula (or road map) for this kind of thinking is clearly impossible. So to make sure we come up with bloody fantastic ideas more often than not, the answer is simply to have an alternative approach, to think in a way that explores all the routes around and between concepts.

And anyway, this kind of lateral approach is much more fun than always going in a fixed direction. So, are you thinking now?

P.S: If Lateral Thinking interests you, read Edward de Bono's "New Think: The Use of Lateral Thinking", "Parallel Thinking: From Socratic thinking to de Bono Thinking" and "Six Thinking Hats: An Essential Approach to Business Management". All the 3 books are a great read and proof why de Bono is perhaps considered one of the greatest thinkers of all time!

Fighting the Recession!

How You Can Stop The Downturn

Today I had one of my smallest US clients default on the payment. And he had the American recession and his house mortgage to blame. With a brand new year just beginning, it felt really terrible.

Recession just like Residential Prices, I am reliably informed by a friend who works for one of the United States’ largest realty advisory – depend on four crucial factors: general employment, household incomes, interest rates and consumer confidence.

Okay, so there’s nothing too startling here or that you didn’t already knew. But let’s take a look at the detail.

Clearly, the first three of these key factors can be quantified, even predicted. But the problem my pal and his colleagues have is that consumer confidence is intangible, it’s indefinable, unquantifiable and in total too slippery for its own good. Property ‘experts’ like him are always having the rug pulled from under their feet by that fickle-minded beast, shopper confidence. Sure, the realty market is still on the up in most areas of the country, but it’s slowing down or stabilizing.

It’s not just the real estate market that relies on consumer confidence, of course. The whole economy relies on confidence.

If one thing’s for sure, confidence is not simple to forecast. We rely on it, yet we can never be sure of where it’s heading. And we have only a very fuzzy understanding of what influences it, what makes it go up or go down. Something we think should be seen as hugely positive news might not have the desired effect on the population, and something else that’s apparently catastrophic might not be given much credence by the economy.

So here’s a practical thought for all of you.

Why do we all fall into the trap of running down the economy just because someone else tells us they've heard there is a downturn, that there are no more jobs or that the economy’s slowing down? Even if there is indeed a recession, why do we allow ourselves to be swayed by unnecessary despair? Nothing more than an insecure feeling that perhaps we should all avoid spending our money right now? Nothing more than a failure to take a little risk now and then!

For God’s sake, we all need to snap out of it! It’s precisely because people like you (and me) are choosing the ‘safe’ route and not spending our money that the whole economy is threatened with slowdown! If you don’t spend your money, the person who would have got it won’t spend his either, and so it goes on, down the food chain of the entire economy.

So…the solution has to be that the chap at the top of the food chain needs to spend his money, and that way it will trickle down to the guy at the bottom, with everyone becoming more and more confident as the flow of cash continues.

So come on all you big transnationals, all you large companies who ought to know better, get your cheque books out and get the economy going again.

And let’s stop talking so damningly about the economy, no matter which country you live in. It’s happening right now, in hotel lounges, bars and pubs, newspapers, magazines, blogs, up and down at all nations (or at least most of them) across the world. And it’s something we've all got to stop.

Or else, if the economy really does slow down to the point of shrinking, we've only got ourselves to blame, myself included. So, let’s change the lingo “The economy’s booming”. Pass it on!!!

Office Space (1999) - A Truly Brilliant Office Comedy

Cartoonist Mike Judge's hilarious “Dilbert”ish Workplace Satire

When Matt Groening's "The Simpsons" reached the height of its popularity, it began to receive major competition from an other (equally famous) new cartoon series aimed at the Generation X market: that creation was the wickedly delightful "Beavis and Butthead". The man responsible for the phenomenon of the grunge-addled, self-indulgent, adolescent duo was Mike Judge (Idiocracy, Extract, Spy Kids).

Judge got his start drawing insert cartoons for TV shows like the "Saturday Night Live", much like Groening did for "The Tracey Ullman Show". Thereafter, "Beavis and Butthead" developed into a popular international cult series, spawning a animated full length feature "Beavis and Butthead Do America" (which incidentally was Judge’s first full length movie) and influencing the more recent crude but hugely admired cartoon explosion headed by "South Park".

Later, Mike Judge, by now a sophisticated satirist who used low humor to make high art, went to try his hand at live-action film with the side-splitting corporate comedy, "Office Space" based on his own Milton cartoon series. Though not a big hit during its time of release, this movie has slowly garnered a cult reputation primarily through word of mouth praise.

"Office Space" rips into the authoritarian motifs that recur in the works of such literary greats as George Orwell and Franz Kafka: authors who paint a dreary picture of urban, working life, devoid of optimism and personal liberty. But where Kafka and Orwell focus on the nightmarish, dystopian elements, Judge focuses on the sly humor that arises out of the irrationality of the modern work place – in this case, the frenetic office of Initech, a software company where all the lead characters work.

"Office Space" centres on Peter Gibbons, excellently played by Ron Livingston (Swingers, Adaptation, Cooler), a systems analyst in a prison of a dead job, who has to bear with ludicrous instructions from his managers on a daily basis, and finds little comfort in complaining to his fellow, equally annoyed, office mates.

Crack-pot Milton Waddams (Stephen Root) is a mistrustful personage who is constantly moved from one work cubicle to another, eventually barricading himself off to any form of communication. And devoted slacker Michael Bolton (Mad TV’s David Herman) has to suffer the daily annoyance of telling someone new with whom he is speaking over the phone that he is simply not "that Michael Bolton!"

Outside of work, Peter finds solace in the arms of girlfriend Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), an over worked waitress who has her own share of work-place insanities: she is forced to wear up to 45 badges on her uniform.

An assortment of similar characters (Ajay Naidu's Samir is a stand out) complete the movie and give finishing touches to a simple story that’s essentially set inside a office but I wont spoil the plot for you further.

All I can say is that Judge directs his actors like he would draw his sinful cartoons, emphasizing their reactions to create an absolutely over-the-top effect that works very well amid the ingeniously constructed workplace farce. And with the current recession, it makes a fantastic and entertainingly funny ‘office’ statement!

FREE Download - DVDRip - Megaupload Link

Lobby Beautiful

Snapshots from a Hotel Lobby
I detest most hotel meetings, especially those coffee shop and hotel lobby meet-ups as they are all pretentious, boring and bloody expensive as well. But, sometimes they can get your creative juices flowing like this one...

Starting A Online Venture - Here's Your Recipe For Digital Sucess

Websnacker’s Top 10 Rules for Launching the Perfect Online Venture

With the stupendous success of Facebook, Twitter and hundreds of other online success stories that you keep reading these days; sure, big ideas seem great but how about some practical tips for successfully building and launching a digital venture? Here are top ten rules derived from my and my team’s collective experience at my creative firm.

Rule 1 - Always Work as a Team: Assemble an integrated project team of business, creative and technology minds to develop the corporate vision and work requirements then see them through to actual implementation. True innovation comes from active, multidisciplinary collaboration so focus on it.

Rule 2 - Anticipate Change: From the outset, the entire team should be ready, know and accept that requirements will naturally change and evolve. Flexibility should be the core team value. Challenge your team to imagine the unexpected a few steps into the future and how they would handle it.

Rule 3 - Communicate Openly: Issues always arise on projects, particularly with new technologies and high visibility. Openly raise the issues, present alternatives and work as a team toward resolution.

Rule 4 - Don't Reinvent the Wheel: Leverage existing products and tools where appropriate but keep the product mix to a manageable minimum. Don't try to deliver all functionality at once.

Rule 5 - Phase the Process: Imagine it (informed brainstorming), define it (prioritization, scoping and design), and do it (implementation). Phase deliverables, test them with the audience, then iterate and refine. For each phase and deliverable, know what you're going to do, when you're going to do it and what it's going to cost.

Rule 6 - Reward Your Team: It all comes down to human beings working together. You won't hesitate to tell your team when something's wrong, so don't forget to reward them when something's right. One of the best rewards is simple and low cost: genuine recognition. Stand up and recognize them among their peers or to a broader audience and they’ll love it.

Rule 7 - Get to Market: Beat the competition. Offer incremental features and functionality over time. The sooner you can deliver, the more time you will have to build brand loyalty. Deliver "good enough" now and continually improve upon it. Think IPod or the IPhone.

Rule 8 - Market and Promote: Whether you're launching a consumer web site or an online web store, you need to let people know how and where to find you, and why they should bother. Branding, marketing, social media and viral promotion are key. Plan for this from the start.

Rule 9 - Measure Results & Improve: Technology permits you to capture incredibly valuable information about who is doing what on your site. Continually analyze and use it to inform your next steps: marketing strategy and tactics, interface and content improvements, functional enhancements or architectural changes. Keep improving.

Rule 10 - Select the Right Partner: Select a creative/marketing partner who can help you solve the whole problem and sell it to your audience. Incorrect branding, marketing, advertising and public relations can all impede innovation and time-to-market but with the right partner, you can get it right. (Hint – try us)

This ain't the magic formula but it sure will take you on the right road to success! All the best.

Digital Playgrounds of the New World

Child's Play and Advertising

Quick! What do you remember about Saturday or Sunday mornings when you were a kid? Chances are, if you grew up in the 70s or later, Saturday and Sunday morning meant cartoons. And while a weekend sunup might have meant cartoons for you, it meant direct-hit, targeted marketing for toy and cereal companies. Bernard Loomis is known as the man who invented Saturday morning because, as CEO of Mattel, the manufacturer of Hot Wheels, he launched the Hot Wheels television show. This flawless blurring of TV show and commercial was a revolution of positively epic magnitude in marketing terms. Imagine getting a consumer's exclusive attention for 30 straight minutes today! Very good luck.

But a few weeks ago on a rainy Saturday morning, I noticed a fascinating experience at my former senior colleague’s home. His three kids (all under 7 years) and their two equally young cousins were huddled around one of the many computers at his home. The living room was completely vacant and the television was switched off. Lazily sipping a fine Nescafe blend, I asked them why they weren't watching cartoons like good little kids.

The collective force of annoyed looks was scornful. "We're playing games with other kids online." Pointing excitedly to the ever-changing screen, my friend’s daughter said, "See, if you want to chat, you type your message here. Look, I'm talking to a kid in Austria while we play." "Whoa," I thought, "After these messages, we won't be right back!"

I was intrigued. Multi-user web gaming isn’t breaking news to me, but it dawned on me that yet another precept of marketing had been rendered dead in the water by the Internet. Man, I just love that!

I sat down in the empty living room with my favorite cup of hot coffee and stared out the window, past the darkened television to the distant wet sky, and wondered just what, exactly; Bernard Loomis would do in this situation.

Marketing is shifting swiftly these days, and technology-driven opportunities are numberless. Just look at the frantic promotions that those sprawling mega-malls are employing to keep people off-line. Or checkout Airtel’s new Facebook promo, the telecom leader in India has a new promotion with Facebook that offers consumers free access to the Facebook’s mobile site in vernacular languages on their phone, a first of its kind in the world. Seems like kind of a stretch to me.

Everywhere you look, big brands are in trouble. Kelloggs, McDonalds and Ford are all examples of big brands having difficulties adapting to the new consumer-driven web economy. Back in 1969 when Bernard Loomis came up with his brainstorm, the brand was the central focus. The thinking was that if you create a popular brand, customers would flock to you. But now, consumers are more concerned with the future of their brands than the history of the brand. Yikes. This turns traditional packaged goods marketing upside down.

Then again, every fit of disorder and change presents new opportunities for those who are willing to apply some energy to their interpretations. We know that kids have moved from in front of the TV to in front of the computer, from passive viewing to active real-time interactions. There's an exchange going on, and the challenge for marketers is figuring out how to meaningfully join in and capitalize.

For Bernard Loomis, that meant creating a TV show based on his product. For today’s marketer, it might mean creating something completely new that delivers exactly what tech savvy kids are asking for these days. Poke around the Cartoon Network website and you'll see what the little kids are doing today.

So if you're a marketer experiencing that nauseated deer-in-the-headlights feeling brought on by out of control change, I encourage you to remember that chaos breeds opportunity. And if you think about it the correct way, you just might find that opportunity waiting to be knocked online (and also offline).

Privacy Is Dead - Get Over It, Folks!

Privacy is dead. It died a long time ago so why blame Facebook alone for it.

If you have ever used a credit card, ordered from a mail-order catalog, subscribed to a magazine, answered a phone survey or supported a local charity, you have provided marketers with information they consider extremely valuable. Long before the Web was invented; you were counted, cataloged, sorted, indexed, cross-referenced, sold, and redistributed countless times.

During my college days, I worked part-time as a telemarketer for a major health supplement company. I was given a stack of printed leads and told to call - all to ask for money. I called. I sold various supplements and brought in plenty of orders. Was it my charming personality and silky smooth voice that convinced total strangers to hand over their credit card numbers to me? I'd like to think so.

More likely, it was that stack of call leads, which told me not only their names and phone numbers, but also what these people did for a living and how rich or poor they were. What kind of diseases they had, who their general physician was, how often they ate out, what kind of cars they drove, recent major purchases, and so on. My employer had purchased their personal information.

If you really want to see someone run and grab their checkbook, tell a U2 fan that by joining at the Club level, he or she will get to meet Bono the next time he's in town. Any die-hard football addict will gladly hand over their credit card number when they are told that it will pay for a 24-hour David Beckham appearance.

Advertisers and Marketers have long been exploring the idea of using personal information to derive and provide value. And the companies who do it are the aggregators. They have also been known as infomediaries, metamediaries, metamarkets, syndicates and disintermediaries. Now, they exist in our midst in the form of Google, Facebook, etcetera. The players in this space combine a large database of user information with a large collection of products and services in order to play matchmaker.

These aggregators can collect large amounts of user preferences and then shop for special deals. For example, knowing that I am looking for a new Android based cell phone is of little value to a retailer. However, knowing that 10,000 people are shopping for and are willing to pay no more than $200 is invaluable to a retailer. The retailer can then decide to lower the price in order to make 10,000 new customers.

In an age where getting and retaining customers is everyone's number one priority, retailers are happily trading margin for volume. In addition to volume sales, the retailer can also benefit from relevant upsells. For example, a new Android phone customer might eventually be convinced to purchase other related products, like an eBook reader or a media player.

Aggregators are able to provide consumers something even more valuable than great deals on products and services. They help consumers regain some of their privacy. By divulging personal information to trusted aggregators, consumers can derive the benefits of sharing their interests and preferences without fearing that their personal information is spreading across the Internet and beyond.

Aggregation may be a situation where everyone wins. Consumers and vendors can each deal with a single point of contact. Consumers are ensured that their information remains private while using that data to secure good deals from vendors. Vendors are happy to have access to a new set of consumers who want their products and services. Aggregators can profit from commissions.

There are some areas that are prime territory for aggregators to step into. Products which require extensive pre-sale research. Big ticket items whose prices can fluctuate. Complimentary products and services which can be combined into packages. Services which require the collection of large amounts of customer information. Products and services where the purchase process is either inefficient or unpleasant.

As consumers realize the value that aggregators provide they will slowly begin to part with some of their personal information in order to enjoy the benefits and security aggregation can deliver.

The Internet has succeeded in increasing awareness about privacy concerns, both online and offline. Unfortunately as the Facebook case vindicates, the popular press has tended to focus exclusively on the negative issues around Internet privacy. As a result, consumers have developed a certain degree of paranoia regarding their personal information. Though protecting one's personal data is very important, it is also important for consumers to know how to effectively use personal information for their benefit.

The Internet is not uniquely responsible for invading your privacy; it is simply the newest place businesses can track your personal information. Instead of harboring the illusion that you can live, interact, buy and socialize in this society in utter privacy, consider the power you hold and use it to your advantage. After all, the power ultimately lies in your hands.

Making Advertising & Marketing Work!

This is my concluding post on Simplicity in Marketing

Why Experts Matter
A qualified corporate messaging process drives the dialog so that the visuals, language and information hierarchies are designed in concert with the product or service. Thoughtful design of content should begin earlier than many corporate executives and entrepreneurs believe. It isn’t just make-up to apply after the real thinking’s done. When experienced content designers are part of a strategic planning team, they can influence explanations for greatest success. They can provide the context to build the relationships between breakthrough ideas and the way they are expressed to the people who will buy them.

Whether homegrown or outsourced, your business needs a team dedicated to scanning for patterns and trends, and forging connections between ideas. They will also facilitate the integration across mediums that will bring together the systems, structures and processes in such a way that choices and solutions are connected, linked and cross-sold. A great marketing team is the liaison between the products of business and the minds of the consumer. It must understand both before it can serve
either.

Particularly in this tight labor pool, a competent external marketing partner can be as important to business success as financial and legal counsel. Assuming a venture has an innovative product idea and business model, a great executive team and enough financing to get traction, it still needs the packaging that will take it to market effectively. An experienced agency (like us) can provide critical bandwidth and brainwidth extensions to ensure that a company’s look, feel and messaging resonate the personality an enterprise wishes to own in the marketplace.

Blending Online and Offline Worlds
Although brands and identities must be integrated, many messages that work great in print suck on web pages. This is a topic onto itself, but here’s the top layer.

Print requires great attention to one-dimensional design and layout. Each view is a discrete canvas. Information elements are static and can explain and enhance each other predictably. Web pages, on the other hand, are a dynamic scrolling experience that place greater significance on navigational feel. Relationships between information components are fleeting.

Print can be visually stunning and still accommodate substantial text. It appeals to the eyes. Web pages are compelling for their interactive engagement as much as their content. They appeal to the hands. Why does everyone need to print stuff out? It is actually quite difficult to read online (never mind the iPads and the eReaders.)

The infinite navigational dimensions of the web, current bandwidth limitations and differing desktop environments mandate fewer and smaller graphics, shorter text and simpler typography. While effective print design is grounded in highly refined best practices, web design is still infantile, with huge upside for marketers who get the interactive value and simplicity thing figured out.

To be successful in today’s energetic marketplaces, companies must project a integrated message across all communication materials – corporate identity, packaging, advertising, promotions and web presence. Companies must quickly amalgamate all of their core messages into a single, powerfully unique selling proposition in order to convince impatient, value-minded consumers. But the approach must be optimized for the delivery channel. The implementation techniques are very different.

Why Simplicity is Paramount
Simple means clear, consistent and easy to find. It all starts with leaders who aren’t afraid to think independently. To explore and map new ways through unchartered physical and virtual spaces so that people, actions and events can be connected in creative, compelling ways. It ends with those same leaders being willing to hear and communicate truth. It involves calculated risks. It requires the insight and courage to involve communication specialists in the development of business strategy.

The leader’s objective is to build a “landmark,” not just become “scenery” in a target market. Landmarks are easy to spot, but often endure on the basis of considerable underlying complexity. They don’t necessarily have to be large in stature, but they must be unique in appearance. They are always enduring and prominent. They are obvious.

The return on simplification is huge. By providing the right information the right way at the right time, messages resonate and trigger responses that deliver actual sales and maximize valuation. By distilling content, leaders are able to spend less to build and sustain differentiated brands. Investing in a singular positive image that is optimized for each medium has leveragable impact across the company’s entire portfolio.

So go ahead: make your long, long story short and bring your brand alive.

Distilling Your Brand’s True Brew

This post is a continuation to my earlier post on Simplicity in Marketing.

Creating a Simple but Effective Blueprint
Distilling the real essence of your message is an intense process that requires quality input, an understanding of goals, analysis and tough decisions. It involves regimented facilitation, real-world testing and expert packaging. There is no magic off the-shelf blueprint that allows you to make the intricacy transparent. However, brand specialists and expert knwoledge can assist with the refinement process – providing the steering tools and structures to aid and accelerate it. Beyond packaging the ideas for ease of consumption, these objectives can enable your company to swiftly convert a business model’s strategic objectives into actionable and profitable milestones that drive momentum, orchestrate positioning exercises and test acceptance.

Most executives want their company’s marketing and advertising messages to be “stylish, sophisticated or professional ” and if possible, “clever.” too. This pasteurized checklist is at the heart of what is leading many competitors toward a fruitless state of uniformity. They’re all saying the same things and trying to lead the customer to the same conclusion.

Eager to demonstrate their “proof-of-authenticity,” many of these same executives are afraid to leave any spec for scrutiny or proof point out of their sales proposition. The extensive detail is perceived as validation. This “everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” approach is an easy way out. And, its net effect is usually the exact contrary of what was intended. This plain vanilla granularity just causes more puzzlement that doesn’t help in any sales conversion or market expansion. Besides, there is brand degeneration resulting from decentralized company silos – corporate divisions and operating units which propagate self-styled messages, positions and identities, often ill-timed, hastily designed and poorly executed.

Think Smart and Work Hard
Product Differentiation and Service Demarcation is often the result of simply noticing what your competitors have overlooked and providing that instead of everything else. Think of the Apple iPhone or Gmail. A lack of sacrifice represents unripe positioning.

If your message designs are based on what really interests people, and how they can talk to each other and make easy comparisons, you will find that you can say a lot less. Strive to find and use the language and questions that real people use.

The Truth is Out There
Let your hair down for a second: When you visualize the triumph of your business, is it based on the way things ought to be or the way things really are? The act of arranging information for simplicity then becomes an act of brand and market insight.

Amidst a flood of new age propaganda and mega-efficient delivery mechanisms, human communication is still very much grounded in some enduring truths, and the maxim that those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it is indeed one of them.

While technology is changing exponentially, the hearts of the people using it are inflexible to transform. Most of what’s being sold today as new insight is merely the rediscovery of knowledge we’ve had for centuries but perhaps not acknowledged. The trick is to admit it and leverage it to your advantage. Candor is a guiding principle and Authenticity provides understanding that transcends spin and packaging. As experience counts, you could also learn from the marketing gray hairs who’ve been through a business cycle or two.

Give What the Audience Wants
To see sales patterns and develop a marketing message that incites a desired result, start with age-old human nature, not cold corporate logic. Hence, the content of your brand message must communicate genuinely in the language of the intended audience. For a brand or image to break through the information overlaod and market sauration, it must be based on what the target audience perceives as indispensable and relevant to them. What they want to know and need. Not what you feel is imperative or exciting to them.

Technology can help and create exhilarating opportunities but it can also overwhelm us with choices. Codifying, collecting and making everything accessible in nanoseconds is less important than describing how it’s used – the application context. Instead of speeds and feeds or the rate of data, concentrate on describing your brand’s spirit and how it relates to your audience, reflecting on the people connection and your brand’s heart.

If you wish to harness technology efficiently, improvise all the time and focus on the things that happen behind the patented breakthroughs. Recognize that the real goal for the technology is for it to be as transparent and useful as possible.

Content is still the King (and the Queen too)
Content is and has always been the language of customers. And as mentioned earlier, remember to always communicate from the intended listener’s point of view, not your company’s. Start your brand messaging where employees and customers meet, work backward from their needs. By the way, cracking the code on your customers’ needs and priorities can’t be accomplished “inside”. The key lies outside your business and perhaps outside your industry.

If all else fails, revert to the inevitable and basic questions of your customer: How is your product useful to them? What value does it provide? What’s truly in it for them?

In this sense, your content should be much more than words, pictures and voices. It should evoke emotion – a deeper connect. It should be simple, insightful and compelling. And, it is perhaps Content - the one thing one can't teach a computer to generate, so there is a uniquely human dependency. Respect that. After all, the content you develop is what will help you bond with your customers and if driven right, help you achieve world-class results.

Why Simplicity is the New Marketing Paradigm

New age businesses are pumping out new ideas and knowledge at an unprecedented rate. As our recent marketing assignment for a radically new product would vindicate, the new age chant seems to be - more, better, faster, louder and most importantly simpler (think Twitter).

For marketing and design professionals, simplicity might well be the decade’s greatest differentiator. It’s the timeless power to do more with less. To be heard at all amidst the electronic chaos, let alone be clearly understood, a brand’s marketing communications must refine and talk the essential truth as plainly as possible.

Have you ever noticed how there now seems to be a “time” for every business and technology idea, and when that time comes, the idea springs into the minds of several people simultaneously? The next big thing emerges overnight. From categories like social media networks, niche portals and concepts like trending topics, social buying, to the fancy fonts and the reds and greens to prop up corporate identities. What’s up with that?

With millions and millions of people receiving indistinguishable data and stimuli, should it be any surprise that many have the same epiphanies at about the same time? This phenomenon gives overnight birth to entire industry spaces awash with venture capital and generous seed money. It also paralyzes decision-makers.

Consumer Minds are more Saturated (and Confused) than ever before.

Business information is doubling every three years. That’s about twice as much stuff every 1000 days. And, the web-centric among us are now bombarded with something like a billion different URLs. Researchers tell us there’ll be ten times that many in two years.

Let’s face it; we’re all developing internal defenses to guard against the blight of buzzwords and boilerplate verbiage. The sheer volume of media available and density of communications is making many potential customers indifferent, if not immune to even the most persuasive value propositions.

Stuff all looks and sounds the same. It’s all mission critical. It all improves shareholder value. And it’s all “e-this” and “i-that”. Even the once refreshingly clever names of techie start-ups have become astonishingly analogous.

Our adaptive brains automatically discount the predictable. The vagueness and overkill is bad news for people who need to promote and sell technology products and services. So they throw more up against the wall in fruitless efforts to see what will stick. Case in point is the scam-tainted, overvalued IPL: It was relatively easy for flush new mobile companies to drop millions of dollars for mundane IPL ads, but what will any of them really accomplish?)

Let’s Just Cut to the Chase

The solution is Simplicity. Simplicity is the result of making the intricate clear. It greatly improves the performance of information. The cost of confusion is greater than the task of making things simple. Simplicity reduces advertising and public relations expenditures.

The key to message simplicity is painfully obvious: focus. Selectively exclude messages and media, which matter less, so that attention is given to those that matter most. That’s it. You need read no further. Just as simple a concept as losing weight for cheap: eat less, exercise more. Duh.

Okay, like weight loss and fitness, simplicity is also a great paradox, an absurdity because achieving it is known to be very hard work. Intuitively obvious. Practically difficult. And sometimes, you need a little coaching to provide the requisite inspiration and discipline. So where do you start? I’ll tell you soon.

Wisdom Sanctums for Lazy Bookworms and Others..

Finding Inspiration at your Local Library

A count of the books I had read for 2009 revealed a disappointing eighteen. A few minutes spent thinking about this and I had convinced myself bitterly that yes, only the privileged few can regularly afford the prices charged by hip and trendy bookstores-cum-coffee shops, with their shelves crammed with volumes of hard- and softbacks wrapped in funky designer covers flaunting the (sometimes-xeroxed) mugs of writers; the aroma of cappuccino hanging heavy overhead.

So, while not on my list of New Year’s resolutions, I made a concerted effort to pay my favorite local library, the British Council Library, a visit at the soonest opportunity in the new year. The proverbial door to a whole new world has subsequently been opened.

Also prompting my visit was my search for Marianna, the lead character in a good old novel I had read when I was a teenager, shrouded in a dark veil of teen angst and with a strong sense of anachronism that gave me a perpetual look of being lost.

Marianna was a girl going through the motions in the Sixties, who found herself overwhelmed by the camaraderie among the young and stoned at Woodstock, who became the inevitable university-dropout hippie who opted to travel through Europe and India instead, who did yoga and who never looked clean to her parents (no matter how often she showered). I had read the book non-stop in a few days during one of my winter school holiday breaks.

It didn’t help that I had met Marianna at a very impressionable stage of my life. Her experiences intensified my sense of anachronism; she fuelled my search for any remnants, even sneak peeks at the Wonder Years (remember Kevin’s sister, played by Olivia D’Abo, was a hippie), of that age.

My need to reconnect with Marianna was sparked by my own kind of 90’s Woodstockish Grunge experience (on a much smaller scale of course) over New Year – on a farm far away from the city with hundreds of other revellers, dancing barefoot in the rain in the mud for three days…

So it was in search of this Evan Hunter novel titled “Love, Dad” (after the way Marianna’s father ended correspondence to her) that I entered the British Council Library on a recent sweltering summer’s day. This library is a gem in the near morass of urban decay. Mosaic floors, colorful panelling along the walls, high ceilings with ornate cornices, slick computers, sunlight streaming in through sash windows, wooden-floored staircases, a pervasive atmosphere of old and wise, of being in the midst of a higher order… a sanctum of unexpressed exhilaration for knowledge.

I found Marianna easily in the maze of bookshelves zigzagging through the large fiction section. I zoomed in on the hardcover section and found “Love, Dad” sitting snugly between several other Evan Hunter novels. A quick scan of the rest of the shelf, something caught my eye… Aldous Huxley’s “A Brave New World”. There was a time when that book was on my "To read" list. I didn’t have such a list anymore, I realised. Now’s a good time to start again I thought to myself, getting all the more excited at the prospect of finding treasure upon treasure of books that I’ve been intending to read, but didn’t.

But these observations lost their haloed glow when the librarian informed me that I had to pay $200 worth of unpaid fines that had accumulated. I had to go back the next day. I discovered my card had also expired since my last visit over two years ago. This was effortlessly fixed. The experience left me warm. Libraries have only benefits to offer.

To summarise, I’d say:

• You can save money by not having to pay for books (unless you’re a lazy bum and don’t return them on time). Latest releases can also be obtained.
• By borrowing books you don’t clog up your own already-dense collection any more only to sell them to a second-hand bookshop a few years down the line.
• It’s a peaceful and relaxing place to escape to for an hour or two given the spacious reading rooms. And the Art and Music section can be a sanctuary especially on a crazy Saturday morning.
• It’s a great way to meet new people.
• The British Council Library (and others) has an Internet facility and a Small Business corner for the business orientated.
• Libraries usually have a community-based information database offering details on recreational clubs, support groups, book clubs etc.
• Most Libraries facilitate literacy classes by offering reading space and books for new and early learners.
• Libraries take special care to cultivate a friendly and welcoming atmosphere for children. It’s the ideal way to introduce children to books and encourage a love for reading.
• It gives you a place to start to complete your "To read" list.

Having revisited Marianna in her ageless Sixties time capsule, I concluded that the read wasn’t as intense second-time around, though I understood why it had left the imprint on my soul when I had read it.

And even though I’m spreading the gospel of getting up and getting in touch with your local library, I know, there are just some books you have to have in your own collection, sitting on your own shelf. No doubt I’ll aim to double last year’s amount, hopefully at no extra cost.

Clients, Wives and One Night Stands

Its Time to Nurture Clients as Family

Okay, let me tell you upfront that this is not a seedy take on extra-marital bang bangs but an allegory of client-agency relationships. As we move ever closer to the next frontier, there is no doubt that we are seeing a momentous alteration in the role of advertising and creative agencies. There are two key areas of change currently taking place. The first is, of course, the rising might of the New Media – read the power of the internet, social media, twitter, facebook, google, the eworks. The second and more understated, is the role ad agencies now play in developing a client's marketing and sales strategy and the growth of mature, continuing client relationships, like an enduring marriage.

The area of most spectacular change is, of course, New Media, as clients and agencies have become more adroit in using online advertising & electronic marketing as an effectual part of the overall marketing blend. Yet, many clients and many agencies are still not fully sentient of the opportunities available from marketing through the Internet and as time will surely tell, it will be much bigger and better than any of us can ever picture.

Lets now come back to our original reference of client and agency symbiosis. In the early days, agencies dealing with 'below the line' advertising or even conventional style advertising were driven by single one time projects or rather creative ‘one night stands’. Before and behind us stretched an apparently infinite set of very short term, tactical work, some of which might occasionally add up to something substantially larger and attractive, but still mostly one off projects. And customarily, the role of advertising agencies was to come up with the Big Idea first. Increasingly however, the spotlight now is to brainstorm, research, test and develop a longer term stratagem first. Once this is in place, the big ideas develop in tune with the strategy.

These long-term projects place greater importance on consumer research and the increased work put into client planning means that advertising & sales promotion activity has now become a much closer understanding of the consumer and the client needs. In turn, this has meant that strategic advertising and niche promotions have become more refined like a courtship, pregnant with unique dynamics that fit closely into the core offer of the targeted brand.

Many agencies fail to understand this and blame annoyed clients instead, reluctant to admit that something deep down in us still yearns for the good old one-time project days. We agency types just can’t kick the sales driven habit of running after those ‘one-night’ projects and as a result, our appearance at the client family table sometimes starts to look rather dubious. To continue the allegory, we may be pretending to eat, enjoying the food but apart, from that, our table manners still sometimes send out suspicious and wrong messages.

However, as caring wives, clients are increasingly enthusiastic to listen to what we have to say and welcome our participation as strategic advisers of the family. To improve that further still, we have to focus more on trust, building the business kindred links we have with our existing customers and ditch our ‘more orders, old sales’ unattached mentality. Unless we do that, the sound, valuable business advice and solid support we can give will go unheeded and a major opportunity to grow our business and industry will be mislaid.

We should not let that happen and break our client-centric families; the main reason because anyone who does continue to try to increase their business solely through new projects alone will find it more and more, difficult to grow. Clients are willing to work with us in new ways and the potential for significant growth and expansion is clearly still there. Perhaps, it's time to "say "adieu" to the one-off project and embrace clients as our newly wed wives. Shower them your love and they’ll love you back. After all, you are family.

Not So Secret Recipes For Employee Motivation

Recently, I was called to speak on “Employee Motivation” at a Business Luncheon organized by a Travel brand discussing ‘Innovation in Business’. Yes, the buzz term – “Innovation” is still very much in Business. The organizers wanted to know how my company with its little crew has been able to withstand the recessionary winds and continue sailing on while our bigger step brothers are almost on SOS rescue missions. Real innovation, hard work or sheer luck; what was our secret recipe? Maybe a mix of all but I would stress more on ‘Team Spirit’ of our small but extraordinarily motivated workforce.

As the advertising and creative industry moves into the next century, everything and nothing has changed for all those involved. And if this seems a rather incongruous statement, let us first mull over our parental ancestors - Adam and Eve. Way back before time began, Eve motivated and Adam succumbed to what could be described as the first incentive - the legendary apple.

I think this is where the root of the changes, or not, in our industry lie. Certain fundamentals of human behavior always remain the same irrespective of time, fashion and history. There will always be a need for people to be motivated and rewarded in their personal and professional lives. So while the foundations of our whole business remain intact, performance is always influenced by behavior. It is all about stimulus and enticement to create the 'best' from people, which of course ultimately impacts organizational culture, brand success and ultimately, bottom line.

The changes that companies will experience, and my company is no exception, are the pace and way that we work. With the advent of technology and science, the physical 'make up' of staff performance programmes has of course evolved. Back in the 70's when new companies formed and management mantra evolved, employees may have aspired to be awarded a Polaroid camera or a Beegees trilogy, whereas today the sky is really and literally the limit. In fact, there is this incentive company which arranges space rides aboard experimental spacecrafts and even jet fighters for a price for your star performers.

Now, new technology and new products develop at such a rate that the challenge is too keep one step ahead and explore just what really is cutting edge and what will actually inspire. This is certainly true of companies worldwide as they strive to keep one step ahead of global product development.

The advance in technology also reflects the way that people have developed. Employees have become far more empowered, and expect to make an active contribution to the management of the organization they work for. Not surprisingly, with their participation and dedication increasing, so does their need for incentive and reward. A staff performance programme must understand what actually drives individuals, as a change in approach is the key to influencing a shift in long term behavior. As for the ongoing debate in the industry as to whether cash, vouchers, merchandise or indeed travel are the most effective mechanisms for a performance based incentive scheme, I think they all play an dynamic part.

We are a ‘incentive middle-of-the-road neutral’ company and actually try hard to implement schemes that will not only encourage staff but make sure that they are equipped with the right skills to get the most out of their individual and therefore total performance. We also spend a great deal of time and investment in inspiring our own people to commit to our brand and culture. It is absolutely crucial for our success, just as it is for our clients, that as an organization we have to have a well-trained, motivated, strong and devoted workforce.

At our company, we believe that whether you use a trip to Dubai, a custom designed IPod or a tailored incentive voucher scheme to egg on your employees, the end result remains the same. It is about identifying exactly what will keep an individual motivated to 'practice' the values of the organization he/she works for. Based on this behavior, lifestyle and aspirations, you can tailor a motivation programme that covers every incentive tool or just one, but it must be part of a clear strategy that encourages employees to take accountability for enhancing their company brand.

Let’s take a branded retail outlet for instance. The manager, the cashier, the merchandiser and the accountant will all have very dissimilar demands of a synchronized business performance programme. So that is where the challenge lies. In tailoring a programme which 'speaks' to everyone individually and yet at the same time, can potentially make use of every motivational and incentive element available. The programme must also understand how each of these people plays a critical part in their company brand culture.

As to the future of employee motivation, the logistics are certainly shifting - 'e' gifts and online incentive schemes have grown and matured to sophisticated limits, travel has becomes more exploratory, and employee lifestyles these days are increasingly urbane. However the nucleus of any business, and of course the industry at large, is about motivating people to give their best performance - to build triumphant brands across the world.

So, by 2100, staff will probably want a trip to the Moon, reward points to stay at an underwater deep sea hotel, vouchers to buy longevity pills, etcetera but these would be still just merchandise used to induce and incentivize employees as part of a staff performance programme. And I think this is what makes the business of employee motivation so interesting - the fact that we would have changed dramatically and yet, since the world began, NOT at all. Eve perhaps, has a lot to answer for!

Survival Of The Richest

I generally try not to focus too heavily on the business side of my vocation but you’ll agree that all vocations are ultimately about how much money we make (and whether we like it our not), have a significant impact on our lives. My vocation which incidentally is a rather fascinating blend of the creative industry with technology, marketing, publishing, social media, internet and old style consulting all mixed in - has been going through a untamed joyride for the last several weeks and months.

For the last one year or rather specifically, the last 6 months; I have been witness to the some of the most momentous changes in my personal and professional surroundings, both in my immediate circle and my extended entourage caused by the global recession and the consequent financial meltdown. Many friends I know have lost their jobs, some have been downsized or forced to take pay cuts. Worse is the case of a few schoolmates of mine who have lost their mortgaged homes and seen their savings wiped-out.

Many of our competitors have shut shop. Fortunately or perhaps, my good karma, we are still very much in business. And unlike other companies, we are fairly busy with sufficient orders that will last the next couple of months but things are still not what they seem.

Big transnational clients who used to pay us on time default these days at an alarming consistency, cheques bounce infrequently or we get requests to delay their deposits. One of our client, a large publishing house which has shut down owes us several thousand dollars while an other of a similar stature has gone bankrupt virtually guaranteeing no payment for the foreseeable future. Comparatively smaller customers and SME’s are on better league but want contracts to be reworked and rates reduced or politely tell us to look elsewhere. The only saving grace being a handful of old clients with solid fundamentals who seem to weather this storm and new contracts from agile start-ups who signed up with us in the recent weeks.

I have been to several business transformation seminars, especially the expensive ones at posh hotels where business gurus in fancy suits promise utopian formulae’s to cut costs and create profits; where celebrated business consultants and management experts talk about Darwinian “Survival of the fittest” - that all companies should “innovate”, cut “costs”, think “outside the box” and hire “the best talent” if they wish to weather this global crash.

What they conveniently ignore and sidestep is the fact that every god damn thing they talk about requires MONEY. For example, it’s impracticable for any company to retain its best talent that would lead the innovations when you have to thrive in a cutthroat atmosphere where it is critical to preserve liquid cash and cut costs. Bright employees deserve and demand more and if a company can’t fulfill their wants and needs, they would inevitably leave. No matter what many wish to believe, this recession want go away soon. It will accelerate the demise of all companies short on cash as credit is a now an expensive and rare commodity these days.

I can vindicate my argument. I personally know at least three companies including a loss making competitor who seem to be completely unscathed by the slump as they are well-funded and moneyed with cash. A former colleague - David works there. I recently met David who is now a Senior VP, and in all frankness, he admitted he was blessed enough to work there. Even though his company was unprofitable, he said their investors were still quite confident on a turnaround and were also willing to pump in more money if it warrants. Lucky them!

I was genuinely impressed by David’s candor. You don’t find many ex-colleagues who speak the truth especially when you are the competition. So without further ado, how should a company survive? Maybe, get fluky and win a lottery or go hunting for a loaded investor who can bail you out. You could then perhaps, write “Survival of the Richest”!

The Evolution of Online

It was once a universal truth that online advertising plays poor relative to the creative nobility of the advertising & marketing agency world. In creative terms, online is considered perhaps less a poor cousin and more dwarfish stepbrother with one eye blind, hearing impaired and a speech impediment. For this reason, the Internet was once viewed solely as a place for direct response campaigns, and certainly not to be trusted with building a brand or driving awareness.

But the ugly duckling is slowly becoming the swan as it moves out of its infancy, and starts having cool haircuts and trying to find a girlfriend. With this, the online creative scene is finally embracing the power, vigour and sexual allure that relative youth can bring, while its daddy reaches for the vitamin pill and looses all sense of rhythm. But what’s behind this blossoming of online? Now that it’s come of age, what is the proper pursuit for a medium that for so long could but crawl, dribble and manage a few simple words like “click here”?

It all comes down to people. The people doing it, the people paying for it and the people consuming it. The people doing it are better.

There was a time when online ads were largely produced by designers who, despite being good designers, were not ‘creatives’ schooled in conceptual thinking. “Knocking out” a few banners as an afterthought, based on whatever design concept they’d used in the header of a client’s website lead to ads devoid of an idea and unable to communicate a proposition to an audience. As creatives replace designers in digital agencies, this problem fades.

The slow down in the advertising market as a whole has benefited digital agencies. Good planners, account people and creatives have begun to consider online as a career option - with the industry growing, a future online looks more secure than in traditional agency roles. The more good people, the better the level of work, which in turn attracts bright graduates to the industry. It’s still the case that most creatives looking for their first job favour big ad agencies, but the reality of life in a traditional shop is often frustrating for creative free spirits. Top accounts being bagged by senior teams and internal competition gives rise to a viper pit atmosphere. Within the online space, there’s room for bright young teams to work on edgy ideas for major brands from the off – and with the relatively fast turnaround on digital projects, they aren’t stuck servicing the same account day in day out. All this makes for a creative vitality producing better and better ideas on the Internet.

The people buying it understand and appreciate it
Agencies can’t take all the credit. The increasingly savvy marketing manager is embracing online as never before and there is something of a “viral” effect taking place as web-literate decision-makers move jobs, helping grow online budgets in companies that once overlooked digital entirely. And with the legendary measurability of online including SEO and SEM, the talented marketer has the tools to persuade boards to release cash.

But it’s always been measurable. What’s changed is that strong brand building creative ideas capable of motivating customers are offering brands the ability to gain unprecedented consumer insights. It’s no exaggeration to say this is transforming the way brands market themselves - FMCG companies now have tangible relationships with the customer unmediated by the big multiples. This is nothing short of revolutionary and is slowly beginning to release the kind of budgets that provide scope for bigger ideas.

The people buying it have the money for it
Marketplace factors that have threatened traditional agencies are benefiting the upstarts. Audience fragmentation on TV, longer working hours and the break down of traditional demographic groups all benefit a highly targeted medium like the net. So while budgets have gone down in the last one year, the proportion of spend online has gone up 50% year on year since 2004. Meanwhile, increasingly brand literate consumers are demanding new things from their communications.

The people consuming it are responding positively
With broadband users accounting for many home Internet connections, an assured good experience means that consumers are spending more time online in greater and greater numbers. The internet now accounts for approximately 10% of all media and news consumption3 and within certain demographics, the Internet is almost the only place to guarantee a satisfactory ROI – the average 21-34 year old spends over 28 hours a month on the web. The more time consumers spend online, and the more money they have with them, the more online as a branding medium becomes relevant. As we know from the offline world, it’s a great deal easier to inspire loyalty and sell premium priced products to consumers who engage with the brand.

From passive to interactive real-time communication
Online excels at engagement - interrupting someone with a 60 second TV ad, does not compare to the possible “time with brand” achievable online. The best online campaigns can capture attention by interruption with a 10-20 second ad and keep that attention with entertaining and informative content on a brand site. The end point of this chain of engagement could be a data-capture opportunity or a purchase, but the motivating factor for the customer is entertainment and information. If the creative standards are high enough en route, the customer may spend up to 15 minutes with your brand before going back to what they were doing.

Using time efficiently with brand
With an entertaining brand experience a good digital agency can keep a consumer engaged. But the key to understanding the potential for brands online lies in what a business can do with that opportunity. Until the Internet arrived, brand communication, driven by TV ads was characterised by the passive consumer receiving messages. It was a one-way process and the advertiser had little genuine insight into response. In order to combine brand experience with consumer insight, DM was brought into the mix. The draw back with Direct marketing is that high creative standards tend to be prohibitively costly for all but the highest ticket purchases (cars, etc). Now that the Internet can deliver on the creative impact and audience reach necessary for brand advertising, its unique strength comes into play. The web combines the reach of TV with the targeting and consumer insight of traditional DM.

In order to benefit from this powerful combination, businesses must embrace a communications process that recognises the importance of a seamless, entertaining journey from ad to transaction. It’s not sufficient to rely on highly creative advertising that simply sells “off the page”. Effective digital strategies require a combination of creative ads with engaging websites, insightful information architecture and business processes geared up to receive and understand the information customers are prepared to give as they interact. Done correctly, joined up branding becomes a virtuous circle where valuable consumer insights are gathered at each part of the customer journey and are fed back into the creative process to develop a more and more engaging brand experience.

The future & beyond
Those businesses that embrace the power of the Internet as a branding medium now will make considerable gains in the future. Higher speed broadband (2MB speeds and upwards will be the norm) will enable companies to deliver richer content and in so doing they will be able to harness consumer interaction more easily. As web use becomes ever more convenient, consumers will continue to spend more time online and will look for brand propositions that deliver entertainment, service and convenience. Brands that understand the importance of a consistent two-way relationship and have the crucial business processes in place, will benefit from a trading environment that brings them as close to their customers as a medieval merchant once was.

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