Taking Over The World One Mobile At A Time

These days it is not uncommon for food to get onto Facebook / Instagram or Pinterests of the world before it gets into the mouth.

Armed with this insight, Spoon – one of the largest restaurant chains in Costa Rica created the following campaign.

Developed by GarnierBBDO, the beauty of this campaign is that it smartly builds upon an existing habit of people. And why Facebook? Apparently, Costa Rica has one of the highest ratios of Facebook to internet users of 95% (source).

Damn smart! I’d say.

Such campaigns can be a great inspiration for restaurants and bars seeking to drive awareness and generate talkability with minimum investment and presumably a high ROI. In fact, fast food industry today is known to be one of the most represented on Instagram with a near 100% adoption rate!

Instagram Adoption by Brands per Industry

From left to right: cars, fast food, soft drinks, apparel, telcos, retail, personal care, beer, luxury, financial institutes, insurance, technology, oil & gas

(Instagram adoption, MillwardBrown 2012 BrandZ index, Source)

And yes, Food happens to be the #1 category of content on Pinterest too with 57% of Pinterest users known to have interacted with food-related content during 2012. (source)

Now, let’s take one step back in the process and look at another emergent habit

Even before we tag the food in our plates on our Social Media pages, what do we do? We place our order with the waiter/bartender. However this poor waiter today vies for our attention with – surprise, surprise – our mobile phones. Thanks to our emergent habit of ‘checking in’ also called ‘location tagging’.

In fact, during the two year period ended in September 2012, Facebook has seen 17 billion location tagged posts including check ins (source). And to put that number into perspective, using May 2013 statistics, this would equal every single user of Facebook in the world checking in/ location tagging at least 8 times in an year over 2011 and 2012!

Understandably Facebook wants to make this key statistic- that of every user around the world checking in on Facebook – a reality. So after a pilot that was successfully run for over an year at over 1,000 SMEs in the US, Facebook – on October 2nd 2013 – has formalized an arrangement with CISCO. Named as ‘Facebook Wi-Fi‘ program, it converts retailers’ routers in the US into public Wi-Fi hotspots accessible to customers of the merchant establishment for free on one apparent condition. The deal? Go to the retailer’s/restaurant’s Facebook page and check in, and you have the Internet for free!

In other words, the three-step Facebook Wi-Fi system, which can be deployed by merchants running a Cisco router setup, lets people connect to a venue’s Wi-Fi, launch their browser, and click on the blue check-in button to gain unfettered access to the Internet.

The deal for the merchant establishment?

Obviously each customer check in generates visibility leading to additional exposure that could pull in more customers or inspire more ‘likes’
While Facebook shares with the merchant an aggregate of anonymous demographic data such as age, gender, and interests on customers who sign-in to Facebook Wi-Fi, which they can potentially use for more effective targeting of their upcoming Facebook advertising campaigns

For Facebook, the Wi-Fi-with-check-in initiative is part of a broader plan to attack the local market by encouraging merchants to set up and maintain Pages on the social network and more importantly to seed – in the general public – the habit of ‘checking in’ on Facebook and thereby become the default gateway for the Internet.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world…

Chances are that you would have heard of Facebook Zero. If not, you should read this post right away. Essentially in 2010 Facebook collaborated with several mobile operators around the world and worked out an arrangement whereby the end users of these mobile networks can access 0.facebook.com – a faster and a free version of Facebook for your mobile, no matter which phone it is – without any data charges. People will only pay for data charges when they view photos or when they leave 0.facebook.com to browse other mobile sites. So, when they click to view a photo or browse another mobile site a notification page appears to confirm that they will be charged if they want to leave 0.facebook.com.

When this was launched in 2010, Facebook signed up 50 mobile carriers in 45 countries. The following image shows how Facebook made itself accessible on every class of phone through this initiative:

How Facebook made itself accessible on every class of phone (Image source)

A smart way to drive usage of Facebook in emerging markets where the average monthly spend on mobile connectivity, which is often just voice and text, is 8-12% of the average take-home pay of a cell phone user. (source) In fact in just 10 months after its launch, Facebook Zero has become so popular in Africa that the site was said to have driven the adoption of broadband internet, just so users can have faster access to all those pictures and status updates!

Read this brilliant post on Quartz on how Facebook is conquering the world one mobile at a time.

Today, with more mobiles on earth than are people, and with smartphone penetration exponentially increasing in the emerging markets, the story has but just begun – after all there are 250 million Facebook users in Asia , more than on any other continent, and yet that’s just 6.5% of the population. In Africa, its penetration is less than 5%.

And then Google launches Free Zone.

And the battle for world domination continues one mobile at a time.

Marketing Lessons From Emerging Markets

Successful marketing examples from emerging markets teach us many a lesson in getting the basics right.

Let’s take Indonesia for example. While Coke is the beverages leader globally, it is NOT so in Indonesia!

Teh Botol Sosro – The Indonesian Beverages Leader

After 80 years in Indonesia, Coke sells around 80 million cases per annum. Interestingly a local player by name Teh Botol Sosro (TBS) sells 2x that volume. Fascinatingly, TBS is not even a cola, it is a Ready To Drink Tea format and has become Indonesia’s favorite beverage in less than a decade! (source).

The reason? As per this insightful post on Occasion Based Marketing, it is two fold:

(1) TBS’s positioning is grounded in 3 local truths

Indonesians eat several times each day (3 square meals and 3 to 4 more snacking occasions)
Indonesia has a strong tea culture
When Indonesians eat or munch, they feel the need to drink something as well

Given these, TBS positioned itself with the simple and straight forward tagline

“Whatever the meal, Teh botol Sosro is the drink” – (“Apapun makanannya minumnya Teh botol Sosro”).

(2) Discipline in executing marketing strategy

Not only did TBS get the basics right w.r.t the beverages segment, it also ensured robust execution through:

Consistency of the brand messaging across all touch points
Ensuring Physical Availability i.e. solid distribution across retail and popular fast food chains like McDonalds and KFC
Building Mental Availability i.e, driving top of mind awareness and salience by leveraging on all media channels: ATL & BTL

(A Ramadan promo material for TBS, shows the extent of its ‘Physical Availability’ – Image source)

McKinsey & Co Report On Building Brands In Emerging Markets

In many ways, each of the above principles strongly resonate with the findings of a recent McKinsey report titled “Building Brands In Emerging Markets”. Read the full article here for an elaborate report based on research conducted in nine product categories (including food and beverages, consumer electronics, and home and personal-care products) across various developed and emerging markets.

Essentially the report highlights 3 key differences between emerging and developed markets and its implications as:

Harnessing the power of word of mouth is invaluable, as it seems to play a disproportionate role in the decision journeys of emerging-market consumers.
Getting brands into a consumer’s initial consideration set is even more important in emerging markets, because that phase of the journey appears to have an out sized impact on purchase decisions.
Finally, companies need to place special emphasis on what happens when products reach the shelves of retailers, because the in-store phase of the consumer decision journey tends to be longer and more important in emerging markets than in developed ones.

(Exhibit Source, McKinsey Report On Emerging Markets)

While the above example and theory are inspiring and instructive in many ways, these miss out a commentary on an important characteristic of an emerging market.

How about speaking about building CATEGORY RELEVANCE first?

Emerging markets are essentially those where the categories / segments in question are under developed. i.e., the target consumers in these markets don’t find the category/segment relevant to them – at least as yet. So if a segment itself is not seen as relevant in the market place, how crucial are word of mouth / perfect in-store experiences / or consistency in communications for a brand?

As a corollary, brands that start off by ‘setting up the dialogue on a category relevance’ can be said to be leveraging the opportunity to drive awareness of the category/segment and thereby establishing a strong salience of its branded offering in the market. If this key – setting up the context – activity is handled right by a brand, it can naturally have a solid advantage in the market place in the emerging category. Let’s take 2 examples, one from a marketing strategy stand point and the other from a creative execution stand point.

1. Wines in India – Marketing Strategy In An Emerging Market

Wines in India is still an emerging market. In 2012, wine (including imported varieties and sherry) only made up 0.45% of sales of 9 liter cases of alcohol in the country! (source). In other words (for various reasons) wines as an offering in India are still not seen as ‘relevant’ in the consideration set of alcoholic beverages category by most target consumers. So how do you build relevance for wines?

Sula Wines – a pioneer at the forefront of the Indian wine revolution shows by example. It embarked on a set of relevance building initiatives for the segment by going all out to promote wines domestically.For example, it holds about 1,600 wine tasting sessions a year to educate people on the finer points of enjoying a glass of wine, off late it has also been actively developing ‘wine tourism in India’ with vineyard tours and a music festivals held at its winery.

As a result the company produced 550,000 cases of wine last year and expects the number to rise by 25% in 2013. (source)

(Image Source, Kebab Fest @ Sula Wines)

2. 4×4 Drives in Venezuela – Creative Executions In Emerging Markets

Venezuela has 147 motor vehicles per 1000 inhabitants. Compare this with 797 motor vehicles per 1000 that USA has (source). Motor vehicle here is defined as automobiles, SUVs, vans, buses, commercial vehicles and freight motor road vehicles.

So how does Jeep communicate in each of these two markets?

You guessed it right! In a market like Venezuela, Jeep focuses on setting the category context first – i.e. it’s communications are tuned towards building relevance of GETTING OUT as an activity ; and not so much on its technical specifications or competitive claims. See the following print ads by Leo Burnett developed for Venezuela. I love how Jeep manages to drive relevance of its segment without losing its tongue in cheek tone.

(Source, See the other ads in this series here, agency Leo Burnett)

On a related note, see how Jeep communicates in Bolivia here. Similar theme here too – More focus on setting up the category relevance than on proclaiming its uniqueness / superiority vs competition.

Now, as a contrast, how does Jeep communicate in the US?

It still speaks in its tongue in cheek tone, it still speaks about getting out or making the world your playground. But here, it also focuses on what makes Jeep the best in its segment by rattling off the pertinent technical specs or superiority credentials. See the following print ad from the US.

(Source, Click on the ad for the enlarged version, agency BBDO)

The copy says: “Dana 44 solid axles, heavu duty Rock-Trac 4WD system, Tru-Lok fornt and rear differentails, front and rear mounted tow hooks, CD player, and seven speakers.”

On a related note, see Jeep’s print ad for Germany (another developed market) here and here. Similar theme here too as that in the US – The focus here is on reinforcing its uniqueness and/or technical superiority vs competition and not so much on setting up the context / category relevance.

In Summary..

Whether it’s about a marketing strategy or even a creative execution, whenever we see a success/failure of a brand in the context of an emerging market, probably the first questions to be asked could as well be:

Who was the first to drive the category/segment relevance in the market place? (who initiated the dialogue)
And How? (is the dialogue grounded in local consumer truths?)

Once you have these answers, often times, you might not need to see the market shares for validation.

Don’t you think so?

(Featured Image – BRIC Countries, Source)

Block By Block – A Consumption Focused Design Paradigm

It took more than a 100 years for inkjet printers to become commercially viable. The reason?

Severe interdependence of the components and underlying systems.

For e.g., even with the slightest change in the chemistry of the ink, the composition of the resistors had to be changed, and this potentially impacted the physical layout of the circuits and so on. The solution for this? Modularity of design.

Wikipedia defines modularity as ..

the degree to which a system’s components may be separated and recombined.

Today most tools, gadgets, processes, systems, structures, designs that we interact with on a daily basis have modularity built from deep within. Right from the nuts and bolts of a system to the way it has possibly been put together on an assembly/production line, modularity is all pervasive.

In fact it is almost accepted wisdom now among designers and manufacturers that the speed at which an innovation can be commercialized is directly proportional to the speed at which the underlying design (of the system) and the process (of the assembly or integration) is standardized and modularized.

Now consider the above statement in conjunction with the following self explanatory paradigm of Design Thinking evangelized by IDEO, called the Desirability – Viability – Feasibility triad of innovation design.

Based on the above two, my hypothesis is the following:

While modularity in the context of production has almost proven itself to be a pre-requisite for establishing technical feasibility and – in many cases – for driving business viability of a given innovation , modularity in the context of consumption – if done right – can have far reaching implications in seeding the attributes of human desirability for the same.

Three recent examples that seem to suggest the compelling potential for modularity in the context of consumption as a design paradigm:

(1) Phoneblok: Most of us, by now, would have seen this short video on the idea of building a phone with modular detachable blocks. This presents the idea of Phonebloks – hailed as a radical vision of what tech could be. The idea for me, is sheer ingenuity and insight. The possibilities of such a consumer focused modularity in design seem to be truly empowering and liberating.

(2) NoFlo – A Flow Based Development Environment: The philosophy of Modular Programming is the default standard in most coding systems. But this modularity was mostly – for lack of a better term – limited to the realm of abstraction and ideation, since the corresponding code nevertheless lends itself as ‘strings of spaghetti’ and presents challenges for debugging compilation and logic errors. With NoFlow as a development environment, modularity can be made more tangible and actionable in order to help inform, structure, design, test, debug and implement a complete software package. The following is the video put together by the team for their Kickstarter campaign to raise funds (the funding was successful!).

(3) Modularity in content consumption: Unleashing the power of modularity in the domain of content consumption is in fact the name of the emerging game. Platform agnosticism is one of the many ways in which modularity lends itself in the consumption context for services like Amazon, Youtube and now Dropbox. The latest edition of WIRED in fact features a fantastic story on Dropbox’s radical plan for a future where “the gadgets are dumb, the features are smart, and data trumps devices.”

So there we have, emerging examples of modularity in the context of consumption (as opposed to only production) and how they promise to pan out in mobile, software design environments and cloud based architectures. Something for the technology powerhouses to sit up and take note? In fact in a recent interview with Forbes Clayton Christensen worries about Apple saying Modularity Always defeats Integration!

Even in life as usual as we know it, no matter what we do from fixing a meal, concocting a cocktail, assembling a piece of furniture, to laying out our Google Newsfeed, there’s always been a sense of joy, an inexplicable sense of desirability that we had for our stuff, for after all, it was our creation. Step by step. Block by block. Isn’t it?

(Source for the featured image)

Adjacencies and Algorithms

30.56 degrees Celsius.

That’s the temperature at which fungus is normally known to thrive. Now, since fungus is the staple diet for termites, even in the scorching heat of Sub Saharan Africa, they are known to meticulously maintain this constant level of temperature within their mounds. But how do they pull this off?

The answer for this question has been the inspiration for the design and construction of Zimbabwe’s largest commercial complex – The Eastgate Centre. Designed to be ventilated and cooled by entirely natural means, it was probably the first building in the world to use natural cooling to this level of sophistication.

During a Formula 1 race, a car sends hundreds of millions of data points to its garage for real-time analysis and feedback. So why not use this detailed and rigorous data system elsewhere, like … at children’s hospitals?

These tangents of thought are some of the several examples that stand out for the power of combining seemingly different ideas to arrive at breakthrough concepts and revolutionary designs. Frans Johansson calls this The Medici Effect in his insightful book by the same name – a must read for anyone fascinated by the world of creativity, innovation and ideas. This is very similar to the concept of The Adjacent Possible that Steven Johnson speaks about in his book Where Good Ideas Come From.

Essentially it is about two things:

Identifying seemingly different or intuitively unrelated ideas and
Combining them together in new and unexpected ways to yield actionable insights or practical – yet unforeseen – solutions to existing problems.

One related concept of The Adjacent Possible is what could possibly be called as Meaningful Adjacencies.

Two very interesting ways in which the application of this concept has panned out in the recent past. One in the field of stylometry and the other in ‘commemorative design’.

(1) The Algorithm that declared “It’s J.K. Rowling”

When The Cuckoo’s Calling – a detective story was released earlier this year, the novel has received lavish praise and the writer one Robert Galbraith was marked as someone to watch out for. But, reportedly The Sunday Times believed that Robert Galbraith was just a pen name for an author who could possibly be a bit more familiar. So on July 11, Professor Patrick Juola received an interesting mail from The Sunday Times. The task? To verify that Ms. Rowling was indeed the author of The Cuckoo’s Calling!

So what did Prof Juola – the stylometry expert do do? He deployed a computer program called the Java Graphical Authorship Attribution Program (JGAAP) that he had designed to recognize writing styles undetectable by human readers. He loaded the e-version of The Cuckoo’s Calling into JGAAP, along with several other texts, including The Casual Vacancy, J.K.Rowling’s post-Potter novel, set the program running and sat back to watch the fun.

Essentially, the JGAAP algorithm works by comparing the following variables in each of the book within the comparison set:

Word-length distribution
The use of common words like “the” and “of”
Recurring-word pairings and
The distribution of “character 4-grams,” or groups of four adjacent characters, words, or parts of words.

While the first two variables are more distribution and frequency related, the last two are adjacency related. Now this was an insight for me-

– that a set of adjacent words / characters / or even part of words can potentially have a unique pattern of their own so much so that they constitute a distinctive signature of their own and can thereby possibly bring out unique attributions to a specific author!

So in just 30 mins, Prof Juola’s JGAAP did confirm J.K.Rowling as the ‘suspected’ author and to his delight the conclusion was later confirmed by Rowling herself!

The interesting question that this now begets is – Should we teach literature students how to analyse texts algorithmically! Well, if an author’s literary signature is hidden deep within the recess of adjacent characters and words and if algorithms can squeeze out meaning from these adjacencies – then, I’d say Why Not?

(2) The ‘Commemorative Calculus’ Of The 9/11 Memorial

Nearly 3,000 men, women, and children were said to have been killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001, and February 26, 1993 on the Twin Towers. In order to commemorate them, the 9/11 memorial has a very unique feature – the names of every person killed inscribed into bronze parapets surrounding the 9/11 Memorial’s twin pools.

(Image Source)

As Michael Arad – an architect of the memorial puts it “(the idea of having the names of all the 3,000 men, women and childen) allows families’ and friends’ stories to be told.” He says “the river of names, without other identification (like age or title or company affiliation), was meant to convey simultaneously a sense of individual and collective loss.”

But it’s here that it gets interesting. These names on first look, would seem to be randomised in their grouping.

However on deeper inspection it becomes apparent that this grouping has been the result of some truly complex set of algorithms based on the concept of ‘Meaninful Adjacencies‘ – whereby each name has been meticulously mapped to each other on the basis of specifics like location, floor, company of a person and laid out in relation to other people based on relevant relationship contexts .

The result? An intricate mapping of names that commemorates those laid to rest in a deeply compelling way by reflecting thousands of complex interpersonal relationships among them – and thereby telling a story with a real emotional impact.

(Image, Source)

So there we have it – an analytical process that brings in a new twist to the adjacencies of words inherent in an author’s writings and a design paradigm that is predicated on bringing out narratives based on adjacencies of the underlying elements.

So the next time when someone tells you that new ideas thrive at the intersection/adjacency of seemingly different concepts, tell them that it can literally be the case.

(Featured Image, Termite Mound in Namibia, Source)

The Goldfish Conundrum

The fact that Google has introduced ‘skippable pre-roll’ ads on YouTube is nothing new. In fact nearly an year ago, it has also started to enable the same for mobile users.

Three obvious things that stand out for me from these ‘skippable, pre-roll ads’ are:

(1) Permission Marketing: By placing these ads right at the beginning of the actual video and enabling the viewer full freedom to skip if necessary, YouTube has acknowledged the importance of gaining viewer permission (a.k.a a commitment of her attention span) before bombarding her with any message. This disincentives attention abuse by advertisers. [Seth Godin must have said – “I Told You So” 😉 ]

(2) Soft Wired: Understandably these ‘pre-roll ads’ are not ‘hard wired’ to the video ; meaning, YouTube can dynamically mix and match an ad to a video based on algorithms / user preferences / browsing history / relevance and advertiser criteria, with an objective to maximise advertiser revenues. This disincentives lack of relevance of the spots to the viewer/ viewer context.

(3) The 5s litmus test: This is the most interesting implication for me. Irrespective of the length of the pre-roll ads (which typically are 15s or 30s), any ad is given a golden period of 5s within which it can either capture the attention of the viewer or fail at it (for various reasons) resulting in the ad getting skipped. This disincentives lack of the grip factor in the ad – by way of production values/ story / narrative etc.

Not surprisingly, as a result, we now see many of these ads desperately trying to shock / awe / seduce or lure us into seeing the full spot during the first few seconds of the roll. The fascinating thing for me however is this 5s mark that YouTube has set for itself and advertisers. But why 5s?

Well, as it turns out, we human beings are currently rated as a species with one of the lowest levels of attention spans. For eg., see the following table that compares the worsening of our attention spans and contrasts it with that of the Goldfish’s! (source of data)

The average attention span in 2012	8 seconds
The average attention span in 2000	12 seconds
The average attention span of a gold fish	9 seconds

Call it ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or Information Overload or Infobesity, it’s almost an intuitive thinking now that our attention spans are plummeting. As a result, today:

Movie trailers are getting insanely faster.
We now have movie tweasers: (A tweaser is a six-second teaser for a 20-second teaser for a two-minute teaser for a 2:32-length theatrical trailer for a feature-length movie. source)
Vine from twitter is capped at 6s (tweasers are hosted on vine)
And then we have delightful ‘marketoons’ like the one below:

(source and inspiration for this blog: Tom Fishburne)

Obviously, this only reinforces the fact that we are living in an Attention Economy – where attention has become a scarce commodity.

On a related note, you should read this amazing post titled – The Scarcest Resource You Don’t Even Know You Are Spending – here. And do check out this though provoking video.

From the above two observations viz.,

We tend to be ruthless in our attention spans when it comes to consumption of entertainment /information.
We are given only a limited number of ‘attention bits’ to spend in our life time. …

…the insight for me here is that.,,

whilst proving ourselves to be (penny) wise in terms of how we exercise our ‘attention spans’ for certain tasks like say – media consumption, we sometimes tend to be (pound) foolish when it comes to expending this very resource for things that have far reaching implications in our lives like learning, decision making, productivity, interpersonal interaction etc.

Something for us to ponder and reflect upon?

(Image Source)

Now In Stock – Packaged Chunks Of Epiphany

You awake suddenly, and find yourself trapped inside a ship. A greenish fog hangs in the air, and the soft rocking back and forth feels as if the ship is breathing. A low groan echoes in the hull – Looking across the dimly lit room, you see that you are alone. Somehow, you know the ship’s destination is the afterlife, and when it arrives you will die. Can you solve all the mysteries, and escape with your life?

So says the copy of an invitation for one of the most popular and the latest edition of the Real Escape Game (REG) held in Singapore in July 2013.

This is how it works: buy an entry ticket for around 25 bucks, bring along your brains, wits and teammates, get locked up in a room, and find your way out of that by solving numerous puzzles and riddles. The deal: well nothing! After all, everyone is let out of the room anyway.

But this is where it gets interesting. While there are several editions of REGs around the world and while they can possibly differ from each other in terms of nuances like game play, level of challenges, themes etc, most of them – if not all – have 2 things in common:

Thousands of people pay over 25$ to spend a panicked, claustrophobic hour trying to win a game for which there is no prize!
These sessions typically tend to be sold out!!

And this is just one among the many franchises/editions of a business idea that is steadily gaining steam with increasing levels of popularity around the world. While a Japanese company called SCRAP Entertainmen started the concept of the ‘Real Escape Game’ there are many other parallel off shoots around the world that operate along similar lines like the ones listed below: (list source)

Parapark with more than 30 rooms in Budapest and many more in Hungary
Hinthunt with rooms in Hungary and UK
AdventureRooms – a Swiss company, with offerings in Bern
FreeingHK in Hong Kong
Escape Hunt that opened its first room in Bangkok in July 2013
Real Escape Games (Scrap Entertainment) now have a franchise in San Francisco and have become a huge hit
and HintQuest – a very recognized live escape game in Munich, Germany

On first look the concept of Real Escape Games (REGs or the likes of it) might sound similar to that of The Crystal Maze – the 90s Channnel 4 smash hit that was said to have attracted between 4 and 6 million viewers at its height (source). But on second look it becomes apparent that with the REGs of the world today we are at the cusp of a different ball game all together: from the product package, proposition, consumer base, distribution model, pricing, to the end consumer pay off – that spans emotional, mental, intellectual and social realms.

This can easily be one of the latest and arguably the most interesting examples of how the playing field is rife with rich possibilities at the top level of The Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs (Self Actualization). So now we have dedicated puzzle masters that spend months constructing a carefully orchestrated series of aha moments, little sub mysteries that let players come so close to solving the mystery and get commensurate highs of making discoveries – large and small, and professional game designers that are adept at staging REGs (or the likes of it) at venues as large as the Tokyo Dome to those as small as a locked room with space for just 10 players.

Introducing the newest offering at your local supermarket aisle – chunks of epiphany – sealed in an air tight pack (pun intended) – now available in a handy 1 hour time capsule best enjoyed with a bunch of friends.

For a ‘virtual’ taste of such games, try your hand at The Google Puzzle (the result of a collaboration between Google Japan and Scrap Entertainment). And yes do drop me a note if you manage to crack the 5th stage in the puzzle 🙂

(H/T to Valentin Valov for suggesting HintQuest)

The Wabi Sabi Edge

The Ise Grand Shrine – a Shinto Shrine – in Ise, Mie prefecture in Japan has been preserved exactly like it was around 2,000 years ago. Despite such a rich legacy, the UNESCO has refused to list the shrine in its list of historic places.

Why?

(Shinto priests walking beside the Ise Grand Shrine, Japan. Source)

This is because the shrine is not built of a ‘permanent structure’. The ISe Grand Shrine is built of wood and hence it gradually loses its structural integrity over years. So the Shinto priests have a solution; every 20 years they tear down the structure and rebuild another – in an adjacent plot – in exactly the same specifications as the original using the wood from the same forest that the original structure was built from. Result: the shrine is forever new, ancient and original! The present structure, dating from 1993, is the 61st iteration to date and is scheduled for rebuilding in 2013!

A centuries old Shinto belief of death and renewal of nature and the transience of all things called Wabi- Sabi underscores the philosophical and artistic significance of this shrine. To quote the wiki page ….

Wabi Sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.

Burning Man

Further to the west, in northern Nevada US is the Black Rock Desert – an open swathe of desert land where a week long annual cultural festival called Burning Man is held every August/September. This iconic event is described as an annual experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance – a week long celebration of extreme creativity, art, spirituality and innovation. Often compared to TED for its potential to provoke, inspire, connect, indulge or just ‘let be’, Burning Man regularly attracts stalwarts like the Google founders, Eric Schmidt, Chip Conley among many many others. But what makes Burning Man stand out as an exceptional event is the fact that it is transient by nature. The whole venue, the structures and the shelters for the event are practically built from scratch and again torn to dust without leaving a trace at the end of the week!

See below the time lapse video of 2011 Burning Man to appreciate the ‘dust to dust’ cycle typical of the Burning Man.

As Business Strategy

Transience as a method, an approach or a strategy is not just an expressionist arts style or some exotic charm of a shrine. It also has far reaching implications on contemporary business strategy. The June 2013 edition of Harvard Business Review features an interesting article by Rita Gunther McGrath on what she calls as Transient Advantage. She argues that in a world where competitive advantage often evaporates in less than a year, companies can’t afford to spend months at a time crafting a single long-term strategy. She introduces what she calls as The Wave of Transient Advantage and explains its ‘curve’ (below). Companies possessing this edge constantly start new strategic initiatives, build, exploit, re configure and if need be even actively disengage from an initiative as a means to reprioritise, reinvent and renew their approach to growth.

(Wave of Transient Advantage, Source)

She posits that the thinking in this field “has reached an inflection point” leading to an acknowledgment from a multitude of strategy practitioners that “Sustainable competitive advantage is now the exception, not the rule. Transient advantage is the new normal.”

The latest post in the Gaping Void newsletter by Hugh MacLeod pays an artistic tribute to this concept through this delightful piece of ‘office art’.

(You must subscribe to his newsletter, sure to make your day!)

Essentially from which ever perspective you look at it – artistic, personal, emotional, professional or even strategic, the ability to accept transience as the new normal, the ability to let go of the status quo to rethink, re-invent and renew our approach forms the bedrock of the new competitive edge – The Wabi Sabi Edge.

The Last Of Us And The McWrap

What is common between the latest PS3 game The Last Of Us and the recent McDonald’s addition to its menu The Premium McWraps?

Stealth.

Let’s first take The Last Of Us

If you still haven’t heard of this survival horror video game, you must be hiding under an abandoned bunker in a post apocalyptic zombie infested world.

At least that’s how you might feel once the brilliance of this creation hits you. Declared as a masterpiece, for its choice-enabling gameplay, realistic action, emotional depth in the plot, sound design, and environments, The Last Of Us has been the biggest video game launch of 2013 so far, selling over 1.3 million units in its first week after its worldwide release on June 14, 2013 (source)

A key innovation that underpins the genius of this game’s design is its AI system called as Balance Of Power. This enables realistic combat situations and enriches stealth attack tactics to what it calls as Dynamic Stealth.

Dynamic Stealth: While Stealth is not particularly new as a gameplay tactic, the genius of Dynamic Stealth lies in how it makes the player own the consequences of his actions in real time. For example:

If you’re infiltrating a secured building and see two guards at the entrance, you create a distraction, split them up, and take out one of them when he’s off in the shadows. In other stealth games, the second guard would stoically continue to be on the watch as if nothing had happened. But with Dynamic Stealth he starts to wonder where his buddy went, gets panicky and might even call for extra cover and back up.
the game doesn’t pause when the player is accessing their inventory and assembling weaponry (loading guns, crafting a molotov cocktail etc), so the player’s stealth tactics are governed by real life like rules of space and time.

Instead of just bombarding the player with a constant stream of actions resulting in cookie clutter shoot and swear sequences, the Dynamic Stealth system lets the user set the pace of his own survival experience and make him fully own the consequences of his decisions and actions. And that for me is the big insight in interaction or use case design from The Last of Us:

If the system is designed in such a way that it allows the user to own the consequences of his decisions and actions, they’d willingly embrace all its resulting outcomes – both positives and negatives.

Now let’s move over to The Premium McWrap

Launched on April 1 2013 after 2 years of R&D and a blockbuster like pre-launch fan fare, the marketing mix of this newest addition to the McDonald’s menu can be summarized as follows: (Source)

Product: The McWrap is a 10-inch, white-flour tortilla wrapped around 3 ounces of chicken (grilled or crispy), lettuce, spring greens, sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, and cheddar jack cheese topped with ranch, sweet chili, or creamy garlic dressing.

Proposition: “The Subway Buster”

Target Group: Millenials, 18-32, who are looking for healthier and tastier alternatives to their fast food.

Packaging: The PKG design requires the customers to tear off the top half of the container. “The packaging was a very big, big idea,” says Kasey Short, director of menu innovation in the U.S. “When you unzip the product, there was more excitement.” It’s also designed to fit easily in a standard cup holder; 65% of McDonald’s customers order at the drive-through.

Price: At $3.99, it’s four times the cost of a McChicken.

Service: Assembled in 60 seconds, the lettuce and chicken peek out of the top, suggesting farm-to-table freshness.

Ingredients: After lot of R&D, testing and negotiations with the suppliers, McDonald’s managed to add one new ingredient to the McDonald’s arsenal: the English cucumber. That might not seem like a big change, but when the chain added sliced apples to its menu, it immediately became one of the largest buyers of apples in the country! So this addition has a huge implication on the supply chain of cucumbers around the world.

As an analyst sums it up “It’s the best piece of total marketing we’ve seen out of them in a long time. It’s convenient, healthy, fresh, good-tasting, and filling”. While reading about these specific elements of the mix was definitely interesting, the big reveal for me came towards the end in this Businessweek article:

… the McWrap serves another stealth purpose…..customers may come into restaurants with healthy intentions but fall short of their aspirations…. With salads and now the McWrap on the menu, customers may forgive themselves a little more for showing up at McDonald’s. And if they skip the wrap at the final moment and get a Big Mac and fries instead they don’t blame the restaurant.”

Now that’s a tremendous AHA moment for me in stealth marketing – almost like a Dynamic Stealth tactic in gaming.

As they say – It’s a reality of the fast-food business that what can be ordered in a few words, served up in seconds, and consumed in minutes is often the product of years of research and testing. Because the battlefield here is not in the restaurants, it’s not in the ingredients, it’s not in the fields where the ingredients are grow, it is after all in our minds.

No wonder then you have battlefield tactics like stealth meant to lure you not just into making a decision but also into owning it. How’s that for some food for thought?

Nespresso – An Unsustainable Business Model?

Single-serving coffee made at home. That’s the category Nespresso operates in – a segment estimated to be 8 billion USD in 2012 (source).

Some laudable facts regarding Nespresso to start with:

It took 30 years for Nespresso to get to where it is now.
Their first patent was registered in 1976 and it was launched internationally in 1991.
As of 2012, their concept (machine, capsule, service) is subject to 1,700 patents.
Features celebrities, such as George Clooney and John Malkovich, as brand ambassadors.
At 55 cents for a 4-g capsule, Nespresso coffee works out to a nerve-jangling $62 per lb. ($137 per kg). And the hefty markup doesn’t seem to bother its fans.
Is rumored to command gross margins at about 85%, compared with 40% to 50% for regular drip-coffee brands.
The company confirmed that Nespresso is targeting to grow sales by around half a billion francs in 2013.

(sources for the above information: 1, 2, 3, 4)

As a brand, Nespresso has been vaunted as the “Apple of coffee pods” riding high on the classic razor/razor-blade business model – otherwise called as the Vendor Lock In business model. See an informative video here on the specifics of the Nespresso business model using the framework of Business Model Canvas.

Now the not so good news for Nespresso is the emergence of nearly 100 competitors around the world including 50 that claim compatibility with the Nespresso system (many of Nespresso’s patents have expired in 2012). A more recent Reuters report on the latest threat to Nespresso from Mondelez…

Mondelez International, the world’s second-biggest coffee maker, is going head to head with larger rival Nestle by launching capsules compatible with its Nespresso system to steal a share of the premium coffee market.

The capsules will be sold under the Jacobs and Carte Noire brands in many EU markets in the second half of 2013 – the biggest challenge yet for the $4.4 billion (2.8 billion pounds) Nespresso brand that has sued many copycats.

These are just the warning bells for the company as many more brands jump onto the bandwagon of this fast growing coffee segment.

David Taylor on the brandgym blog posits that these moves can be in the larger interest of Nespresso as long as it ensures the following:

Benefit from market growth: Even if Nespresso’s share drops, sales can still increase if the market is growing.
Keep product quality up: Continue offering a better coffee experience through its select blend of coffee.
“Load” existing customers: Defend against the Mondelez launch by loading its existing customers with product, and so taking them out of the market.
Drive distribution: Drive distribution in new channels. e.g., store-within-store formats.
Tell a product story: have a bit more product “sausage” to complement the emotional “sizzle”

I would however beg to disagree here, as I suspect if the current business model can be sustainable in the long term. And my argument is equally applicable to the Tassimo’s, Dolce Gusto’s, Keurig’s and Verismo’s of the world. Why?

Insight #1: Which business are the Nespresso’s of the world actually into?

These brands are not in the business of delivering convenient, barista like coffee at home. Instead they are in the business of making cup after cup of a consistent brew of coffee on demand with consistent being the operative word. Guardian reports

..while pod machines might not make great coffee, they do make a consistent cup. This is making them irresistible to high-end restaurants…. Nespresso machines can now be found in the kitchens of around 30% of the world’s 2,400 Michelin-starred restaurants. The appeal is obvious –they’re consistent, cheaper than hiring a barista and take up less space than a traditional espresso machine.

Insight #2: What can I learn from a cup of Starbucks coffee that bears my name?

One thing I enjoy the most whenever I queue up at a Starbucks for my cuppa is eavesdropping on how different people want their coffee to be customized (a Quadriginoctuple Frappucino anyone?) and finally seeing them hold on to the cup with their name scribbled on it with an affection and warmth that comes out of familiarity and a sense of having co-created the cup coffee (by the sheer act of asking for a slightly personalized brew!)

The scribbled name on the cup just seals the deal in a magical way. (speak about The IKEA Effect)

Now based on these 2 insights…

What if a ‘coffee pod’ sets up a unique proposition of designing a one of its kind, exclusive and a truly unique coffee blend concocted to your minutest specifications and delivered it to you as your own coffee pod (like that cup of starbucks with your name on it) for you to be able to enjoy this very same cup of coffee day after day using the machine back home?

The benefits are obvious: enduring consumer relationships, deeper consumer insights, a treasure trove of data on how people love their coffee, a truly unique blend that only you can deliver, resulting in pods that consumers are willing to pay a premium for and finally pods that cannot be easily replicated by the “me too’s” of the world.

Speak about infusing authenticity to the vendor lock in business model.

Gyotaku And The Trailer

What is common between Gyotaku and Movie Trailers?

1. Both are traditionally forms of ‘advertisements’ of another art form

2. And both have evolved into specialized art forms unto themselves

Let’s start with Gyotaku

Gyotaku is the traditional Japanese art of fish printing dating back to the mid 1800s. Before you read any further, you might want to begin with this fabulous TEDEd video to get a quick introduction on this fascinating art form.

As you can see, the purpose of the early Gyotaku print was to serve as an advertisement and proof of the fisherman’s skills as reflected by the quality of his catch. The emphasis was thereby to capture just the basic proof of the size and species of the fisherman’s “trophy fish” and to record this permanently.

Now Gyotaku has become so popular around the world that it has dedicated competitions, hobby clubs, instruction classes, museums, books, textile prints etc; and has currently evolved to the point where the actual activity of fishing is almost besides the point. The craft has now become a unique representational art of Japanese Culture that honors realism and story telling.

The insight for me here is that,

A good piece of Gyotaku art captures a moment in the ocean and not just a piece of dead fish.

In other words each piece of Gyotaku tells a story where:

1. The narrative often comes from what you don’t see – the negative space: A good Gyotaku composition is known to make use of the negative space within the frame and brings to life the concepts like idea, flow and freedom of movement that come with the ocean.

2. Our minds are lead into the frame and then set free : A good Gyotaku ‘hand holds’ our mind by gently leading us into the exquisite form and finish of the fish. But a great Gyotaku takes it a step further by then carefully setting our imagination ‘free’ as it allows ample space for the mind to take the fish on its journey.

Moving on to Movie Trailers

Just like Gyotaku, the movie trailer has come a long way from being a plain advertisement (of a full length movie) to becoming a genre unto itself. Today it is a thriving industry that is almost as popular as that of the movies they’re teasing, with legions of fans following, dissecting, analyzing, reviewing and rating them on a regular basis even as they are feted out at forums like The Key Art Awards and The Golden Trailer Awards (the Oscars of movie trailers).

From being just a linear montage of title cards, voice-over, a few key scenes followed by a cast run-through, movie trailers today are part art, part marketing wizardry and part awesome creativity. Result: They can tease, titillate, shock, seduce, awe, thrill or even hypnotise us via subliminal messages, imagery, and music and lull us into the cinema for the actual full length fare.

The latest edition of the WIRED magazine has an insightful feature on the Art Of The Movie Trailer. Two insights that emerge from the construct of great trailers:

1.The narrative of the trailers doesn’t necessarily come from what you see, it comes from what you hear (the negative space of trailers = music): Trailers are all about rhythm, pacing, and feeling. That’s why music plays a vital role as a key narrative device and can more often than not make or break a trailer. Mark Woollen, the man behind the trailer for The Social Network shares a secret of how he came up with its music for an evocative narrative ..

I’d had “Creep” on my iTunes for five or six years kind of kicking around before the Social Network trailer…And then when this project came along, I started to consider that song. There are a couple of qualities to it that I thought could do a lot for the trailer. It was a fantastic piece of music—the build, the message, the flavor.

And the rest as they say is history – with the trailer going on to win both The Key Art Awards and The Golden Trailer Awards for 2011 for its outstanding achievement in advertising movies. See this trailer here:

2. Our minds are lead into the plot and then condemned to a free fall: A good trailer gently leads our minds and imaginations into the centre of the plot or the tension that is eventually created in the act 2 and then sets it on a free fall. E.g., Alfred Hitchcock’s trailer for Psycho (though being a tad bit long at ~ 6 mins) very gently teases us bit by bit till almost the end before throwing us off the cliff! See the iconic trailer here: (don’t miss the last 2.5 mins at least)

The trailer for Alien is another master piece that stands out for a similar reason.

So there you have it – Gyotaku and Movie Trailers: two art forms that have begun to become bigger than the art forms that these are based upon, two powerful examples where creativity thrives despite the underlying constraints ; or probably examples where creativity thrives due to its underlying constraints.