The phony intimacy of the global village

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading Graham Petrie's 1970 book on Francois Truffaut, and I came across this wonderful phrase which I have used as the title for this post. “The phony intimacy of the global village.” Perhaps this phrase shows its age: “the global village”, was a product of the 1960s US. Invented by possibly the first guru of the 1960s generation, Marshall McLuhan, he created this term, and popularized it in his books "The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man" and "Understanding Media". McLuhan described how the globe has been contracted into a village by electric technology and the instantaneous movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time. In bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion, electric speed heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree.

T years before the invention of the Internet, Marshall McLuhan had already presupposed its existence and impact and had described it as an "extension of consciousness" in "The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man".: "The next medium, whatever it is - it may be the extension of consciousness - will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind."

It was media which created the global village. First, television made information available across the globe; satellite television made this simultaneous and immediate. It also helped create common aspirations, desires, consumptions, and finally common cultures. This created the pathway for global brands. Examples are too numerous to quote. In any case, this phenomenon too obvious to need explanation and examples.

With the arrival of the Internet, a new dynamic entered the equation. Internet is not the preserve of the media empires; it is real democracy at work – for the people, of the people, by the people. (check out the actual quotation) While huge corporations 'own' significant platforms funded by advertising revenues, without you and I providing 'content', these platforms are worth nothing.

Why 'real' democracy? Consider this. Two people, sitting in a car in Egypt, launched the Arab Spring in Egypt. The Egyptian regime fell. The fall of Gaddafi has been similarly fueled by Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc. The regimes in other Arab countries are under threat of popular revolt. Right here in India, the tsunami of popular support from young India behind Anna Hazare and his cause has been driven largely by digital platforms, and for free, rather than by traditional media, like television.

Two such platforms – Facebook and Twitter – have created this truly global village exactly as McLuhan had imagined; they are indeed the "extensions of consciousness" that McLuhan had described. Which is possibly the reason why so many people spend so much of their time on these. The world is now divided into four parts:

• Those of us who are on one or both of these
• Those of us who are not too good at using these platforms, but would rather die than acknowledge that we are not on either or these platforms
• And, of course, there are a few of us who, being contrarians, take pride in staying away from one or both of these and saying so aloud

So, now here we are – with our very own presences in the Internet space, connected with lots and lots of people through FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other such platforms. The last-named is possibly the most functional of all. When I need to find people with specific knowledge and skills for a specific job, this is one of the best ways to find them.

But FB and Twitter? I discovered the other day that I have more than six hundred friends on Facebook. Six hundred! Friends!! Somewhat astonished, I went through the list of my six hundred plus 'friends', and here's what I found:

• there is one distinct set of people who are students whom I had taught, and we stay in touch sporadically. But whenever we do get in touch, there is genuine affection and respect
• there is another set of people whom I had added on as friends some years ago, but with whom there hasn't been any exchange for many many moons. In some of these cases, I have had to scratch my head to recall who they are and why did I add them to my friends list. No doubt they are also assiduously scratching their heads at the same time for the same reason
  
• a third group are really friends going back many years – surely I don't need FB for them. We speak to each other on the phone pretty frequently, at least once a fortnight anyway, even if we are separated by the seven seas
• another group comprises old friends, lost years ago, but found – serendipity! - through FB. That's really great – a lot of the old affection still remains in many of these cases
• a fifth group are alumni from my alma mater – and on hindsight, this is also really great, because FB has helped build bridges across batches, geographies, disciplines, walks of life, etc and built a strong bond across two or three generations

This led me to ponder the phrase “phony intimacy”. If I did a quick count of my FB friends on the criterion of 'intimacy' (dictionary meaning: "close or warm friendship or understanding; personal relationship" as per Collins English Dictionary"), maybe 40% of the list would survive. Would I miss the balance 60? Probably not. Would this balance 60% of my 'friends' on FB miss me? Most probably not either. If I contacted this 60% tomorrow, I guess most of them scratch their heads to figure out who I am and why have I suddenly lurched out of the woodwork, and what do I want out of them.

And that's where the 'phony' part kicks in. And that's why FB and Twitter and other such platforms are such great marketing opportunities. My new book is ready for launch, so I need to drum up awareness for the product. So I go out and blitz all my friends in FB and Twitter and other such platforms about the book, how great it is, etc – I don't need to bother about intimacy at all, as long as each 'friend' is a prospective buyer of my book. I have switched from an 'intimate' person mode to a marketer mode. Remember this from the McLuhan quote earlier: "tailored data of a saleable kind?" That's my book - the tailored data of a saleable kind.

All this may sound cynical, and of course, I have exaggerated in some parts in order to make my point. It may be worthwhile for someone to research this area in some detail. For now, I would love to get some reactions from the readers of this blog.

Ideas – the good, the bad and the downright m************* ugly

In ad agencies all over the world, kids are taught about the power of the idea. Creative heavies, client servicing suits, heads of offices and other seniors face their teams with stern faces during the periodical agency reviews and talk of the power of the ‘idea’. Greybeards carrying titles like Executive Creative Director, National Creative Director, CCO and the like, inveigh against the sins of creating advertising without ideas. Gentlemen and ladies from agency offices outside of their home countries, from both sides of the table – the client and the agency – talk of the power of the ‘idea’ after going through agency reels, with the knowledge and authority given by their job titles.

The sum total of all such lectures is just one sentence: ‘advertising which is based upon an idea is good advertising; all other advertising is a waste of time.’ And, you know what! I agree, with one qualification – advertising which is based upon a good idea can be good advertising; if not, it’s a lottery. The word good is my qualifier.

Once you’ve bought into this precept, there are two obvious questions: “How do I know I have an idea?” and “How can I distinguish between a good idea and one not so good?” In response, agency heavies normally stretch out their long arms to show off some more ads, and try to help the kid learn this basic requirement – judgement. Forget the irony and the cynicism of my language – this is still the best way to learn, from the material which we see every day on our TV screens.

What follows is neither a lecture, nor a set of examples to prove I am right, but some bouquets and brickbats based on my perception about how good or bad an idea is. To me, an advertising idea needs to fulfil a very short set of criteria:

• Does it support my brand promise, personality and character?
• Does it dramatise my brand’s benefit?

Simple, I would have thought. However, looking at some recent ads on our screens and papers, from large agencies, and for large clients and brands, perhaps not so simple after all.

What an idea, sirjee!

To start with, the new Idea ‘School’ Cellular TV campaign, about teaching children in remote villages, is just mind-blowing. I quote from the website: “Demonstrating our brand promise, this campaign asks a simple question, ‘Why should a child be deprived of education if there are no schools close to him/her?’” And indeed, these TVCs do show the power of the idea – that mobile telephony can reach where other media may not be able to, that mobile telephony is not just about basic personal communication, that mobile telephony can indeed do something fundamentally powerful for communities – indeed the power of the Idea is that it can change lives of millions of people in our country. You can see the ads here:

http://www.ideacellular.com/IDEA.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=IDEA_Page_Advertisements&displayParam=IdeaSchool.html

Does that mean that education through mobile telephony is a reality? I have no idea (no pun intended!), but perhaps it will spark questions from many people who have never thought of this medium as a means of education. Perhaps some will examine this medium for this purpose, and perhaps a few will take the plunge of actually going ahead and doing it. Perhaps people in India already have done so. And that would change the face of basic education in our country all right.

Or perhaps education through mobile telephony is not possible, or too expensive, or there are other insuperable problems. But that’s not really my point. I have actually two points to make, for which let’s go back to the two questions I had asked earlier, slightly paraphrased this time around:

• Is the idea in the TVCs support the brand?
• Does the idea in the TVCs support the brand’s benefit?

The Idea website states the brand vision to be “To be the most customer-focused mobile service brand, continuously innovating to help liberate our customers from the shackles of time & space.” The brand values have been stated in the same source to be “Innovate. Stimulate. Liberate....”

Read these, together with Idea's published brand mission.:

• The India footprint Idea: Anywhere connectivity - bringing India closer
• The Technology Advantage Idea: Tomorrow's technology to enrich today.
• The Customer Focus Idea: Make a single interaction a lasting relationship.
• The Employee Focus Idea: Nurture the roots that nurture our ideas.

And now see the ads again. What’s your answer to the two questions I have posed above? To my mind, the idea passes the test with flying colours – it places the brand Idea on a unique pedestal, separating it from other players, and gives it an aura, beyond the functional. Insofar as the purely functional is concerned, it does show all these phones working in villages, where I guess Idea Cellular does provide reach. This campaign has an idea which can truly change our lives – and I do and try to kick my heels (without success and with major discomfort, I might add) and say “what an idea sirjee!”

The dog, the girl and tying the knot

First the dog came back, finding the missing sock for the little girl going to school, then chasing her school bus carrying her tie in his mouth. Then he was there again, licking her stamps for her greeting cards. Everybody in my home went all dewy-eyed and spouted baby talk when these ads hit the airwaves – we had been desperately in love with the pug ever since we saw him when Vodafone was Orange, and when my son insisted that we buy him the same dog (I am glad to say he, the son and not the dog, grew up fast).

The dog personified the brand – lovable, childlike, simple, friendly, helpful, warm, etc, etc. Even hardcore career-building MBA students loved him – I know this, I have taught some 2,000 of them over the last few years: every time I showed them the ads, they all used the adjectives I have listed above.

So when the pug was back a few months back, it was time to quote Robert Browning:

The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn
Morning’s at seven
The hillsides’ dew-pearled
The lark’s on the wing
The snail’s on the thorn
God in His Heaven
All’s right with the world!

The return of the pug was followed by the story of the little girl whose pen ran out of ink just before the end of the exam. The look of distress on her face would have melted the soul of a Ghenghis Khan. But help was at hand – a combination of Sir Galahad in his shining armour and the Scarlet Pimpernel arrived in the shape and size of a small boy who stretches his arm and deposits one, single, solitary, priceless drop of ink on her table.

The girl and pug is called “happy to help”, the boy and girl is called “Chhota credit”, and the tying the knot is called “call conference”.You can see Vodafone ads at http://www.vodafone.in/existingusers/Pages/vodafoneTVC.aspx?yr=2008

Beautifully simple and touching, and stunningly effective, this TVC reinforced all the values of the brand which the pug TVCs did – the adjectives I heard about Vodafone the brand by my friends who happen to buy advertising were ‘lovable’, ‘friendly’, ‘helpful’, ‘warm’, and others of the same ilk.

What I see on the air now is a bunch of kids trying to teach a friend how to tie a knot on a conference call. Now, all of us know that tying a knot is a difficult task, requiring the fullest concentration and considerable dexterity and finger strength – not something to be undertaken lightly. And what do we see in the commercial? These four kids pulling the poor fellow’s legs! Far from helping him, one guy lounging on the sofa guffaws loudly at his friend’s less than successful attempts to get the knot right. Would we use the adjectives ‘friendly’, ‘helpful’, etc to describe the brand Vodafone in these TVCs? I don’t think so.

When I first saw this TVC, I thought this was the latest in the ‘think hatke’ series from Virgin Mobile. The personality coming through in the call conferencing TVC was Virgin Mobile and not Vodafone. (You can find Virgin Mobile ads at http://www.virginmobile.in/tv_ads.php)

So here’s my point – even if the idea of the TVC is a good one, fun, works with the TG, you need to think about whether it’s in line with the established personality of the brand. If not, you better think of another idea.

The serial torturer

You know the old old story:

Girl gets boy.
Girl loses boy. To girl no 2. (I am told by those who know that boy actually cheats on girl no 1, but that is frankly incidental to the whole story.)
Girl no 1 still loves boy and wants him back.
Girl no 2 is a b**** loses no opportunity in snubbing girl no 1.
Girl no 2 also has a temper, and snubs boy a few times.
Girl no 1 happens to be around at various places frequented by boy. Girl no 1 runs into boy at airport, and recognizes pendant they had gifted each other in happier times.
Girl no 1 gets boy back.

At least that’s the story so far. A simple, innocent, five-handkerchief story that can and probably does happen to any girl next door. Girl no 1 may lose him again, or dump him deciding that he’s not worth all this trouble. But we shall see how the story progresses thereafter.

No, this is not the latest piece of tripe being peddled by one of our so-called entertainment channels. You can see the ads here - http://www.truveo.com/tag/POND'S This is an episodic set of TVCs created by one of India’s finest ad agencies for Pond’s White Beauty Cream. Girl no 1 looks truly white and cherubic – but unfortunately through my bifocals so does Girl no 2, so I guess both had been using the Pond’s and the fact that Girl no 1 gets her boy back cannot be attributed to her use of the product. Indeed, the TVC does not claim that she uses the product; nor is her winning back her boyfriend attributed to her use of the product. In fact, the brand and the product is completely incidental to this bunch of TVCs. In the last dog that I watched, where boy and girl no 1 meet at the airport, and she recognizes the pendant the boy is wearing, I thought that the TVC was for a jewellery brand; which was a nice change, I thought, from the normal vacuous puffs of hot air one sees in the jewellery category.

And now for the loud guffaw

Some months ago, I found this ad in one of the pink papers – I forget which. Interesting idea, but such an inept and memorable execution! Feast your eyes and mind on this one: