Sunday, August 22, 2010
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Let's reinvent the wheel
So, I keep hearing this again and again and again and again - "Let's not reinvent the wheel." I hear it so often that I often feel the urge to shove the wise-guys cracking the wheel line under the wheels of a railcar or something. Damn them, and damn the advise to not invent the wheel. Let's never shy away from reinventing the wheel. It might bring quite a few practical benefits:
- An alternative design: A square wheel may be no good for a cart, but it may come mighty useful in a locking mechanism or some other machine.
- An alternative material: A wheel made of cotton may be of no use outdoors, but in a hospital or something it might come very useful.
- An alternative process: Burning a wheel may be very useful when you need to speed up the process, instead of curving it.
And, above all you can always have the joy in knowing that your superior intelligence have never depended on someone else to invent the wheel for you. Cheers.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Look, Mummy. There's an airplane up in the sky.
This came to me so suddenly that I had to put it down. Forgive me if I'm grossly wrong. This is how I decided to define the three key components of an agency:
Servicing: Always speaks in a manner that spells "I know" (it's helpful to induce confidence as much possible). Core competence ideally should be people skill and organization.
Creative: Always speaks in a manner that spells "I don't know" (it's fine to be oblivious of reason as long the gut ruts in the right way). Core competence should ideally be imagination and a skill to express that imagination (through writing, designing, singing, whatever).
Planning: Always speaks in a manner that spells "I shall find out". Core competence should be analytical abilities and a very steep learning curve.
I kept the skill to understand brands and the skill to judge communication out of this, as both would apply to all three groups. Now, can I go and hang myself from the next street lamp for the sin of stating the obvious?
Servicing: Always speaks in a manner that spells "I know" (it's helpful to induce confidence as much possible). Core competence ideally should be people skill and organization.
Creative: Always speaks in a manner that spells "I don't know" (it's fine to be oblivious of reason as long the gut ruts in the right way). Core competence should ideally be imagination and a skill to express that imagination (through writing, designing, singing, whatever).
Planning: Always speaks in a manner that spells "I shall find out". Core competence should be analytical abilities and a very steep learning curve.
I kept the skill to understand brands and the skill to judge communication out of this, as both would apply to all three groups. Now, can I go and hang myself from the next street lamp for the sin of stating the obvious?
Thursday, April 9, 2009
C what I mean?
After a long time, posting something to with planning. It's about the 5 "C"s I've found absolutely necessary for good planning:
Category Insight: How does products and brands behave in a category. That category could be something as wide as "FMCG" or something as narrow as high-end mobile mobile handsets. The client should be able to help with buying habits, market challenges, competitions' strengths, and more. A retail survey and household survey should also be able to help at that. Quantitative? Qualitative? I'd say both.
Consumer Insight: The tricky part, and total planning job. Mining for consumer insights isn't an easy job. Conventional marketing and behavioral research may not deliver the appropriate insight at all. An entire range of stuff - from experiencing the consumer with and open mind and an open heart to taking a look at biological features of psychology - may be needed before coming to the the insight to make or break history. This alone is enough to keep the planner busy with both high-end studies and living a fully social life. Surprise draws attention, but meeting expectations works to hold them on.
Cultural Insight: Never to forget that the homo sapience is a social and cultural being, evolving fast in the cultural direction. There has to be solid insights into emerging trends as well as cultural bedrocks, hallmarks and landscape of the field of operation. Even at a global scale this is a total necessity. It is often wiser to ride on the existing cultural paradigm than to fight it. You really don't want to interrupt you audience who is already pressed against time and fighting against your thousands of competitors trying grab their attention.
Communication Insight: Competition mapping for an advertising professional isn't really about the merchandise they are selling, rather it is the communication they are selling. I'll strongly insist upon that we don't get carried away by the "creativity" of some of the communication that come out. It is important to draw attention and "disrupt", but are measuring these communication for their impact (i.e. is it translating into trial or retention?) and, of course, their shelf life. Even the most memorable works of advertisement these days hardly have a shelf life of more than three months. The clutter and the race towards greater creativity is just getting way too much. Sometimes it might help us to be completely non-creative, if we are sure of what we are doing.
(and last, but not the least) Client Insight: The client is a many headed beast. Living too close to the brand and burdened with business cases, they mostly miss all the points there are. It is primarily important to understand how far the client is ready to go and what syntax would get through the client's cute little head. Without this there is no selling of creative material or strategies. The consumer/audience don't give a flying rat's ass to what the CCO or CMO of a company is going through, but they do care about the creative material they experience. And, at that lies the Achilles' Heals of advertising. Damn.
Consumer Insight I can manage most of the times. Cultural Insights I devise out of thin air. Category Insights I have on an on-and-off basis. Communication Insight I can borrow. But, that last-but-not-the-least Insight I never get, almost. Sad.
Category Insight: How does products and brands behave in a category. That category could be something as wide as "FMCG" or something as narrow as high-end mobile mobile handsets. The client should be able to help with buying habits, market challenges, competitions' strengths, and more. A retail survey and household survey should also be able to help at that. Quantitative? Qualitative? I'd say both.
Consumer Insight: The tricky part, and total planning job. Mining for consumer insights isn't an easy job. Conventional marketing and behavioral research may not deliver the appropriate insight at all. An entire range of stuff - from experiencing the consumer with and open mind and an open heart to taking a look at biological features of psychology - may be needed before coming to the the insight to make or break history. This alone is enough to keep the planner busy with both high-end studies and living a fully social life. Surprise draws attention, but meeting expectations works to hold them on.
Cultural Insight: Never to forget that the homo sapience is a social and cultural being, evolving fast in the cultural direction. There has to be solid insights into emerging trends as well as cultural bedrocks, hallmarks and landscape of the field of operation. Even at a global scale this is a total necessity. It is often wiser to ride on the existing cultural paradigm than to fight it. You really don't want to interrupt you audience who is already pressed against time and fighting against your thousands of competitors trying grab their attention.
Communication Insight: Competition mapping for an advertising professional isn't really about the merchandise they are selling, rather it is the communication they are selling. I'll strongly insist upon that we don't get carried away by the "creativity" of some of the communication that come out. It is important to draw attention and "disrupt", but are measuring these communication for their impact (i.e. is it translating into trial or retention?) and, of course, their shelf life. Even the most memorable works of advertisement these days hardly have a shelf life of more than three months. The clutter and the race towards greater creativity is just getting way too much. Sometimes it might help us to be completely non-creative, if we are sure of what we are doing.
(and last, but not the least) Client Insight: The client is a many headed beast. Living too close to the brand and burdened with business cases, they mostly miss all the points there are. It is primarily important to understand how far the client is ready to go and what syntax would get through the client's cute little head. Without this there is no selling of creative material or strategies. The consumer/audience don't give a flying rat's ass to what the CCO or CMO of a company is going through, but they do care about the creative material they experience. And, at that lies the Achilles' Heals of advertising. Damn.
Consumer Insight I can manage most of the times. Cultural Insights I devise out of thin air. Category Insights I have on an on-and-off basis. Communication Insight I can borrow. But, that last-but-not-the-least Insight I never get, almost. Sad.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
−273.15° Celsius: The zero in the name of this blog
By international agreement, absolute zero is defined as precisely 0 K on the Kelvin scale, which is a thermodynamic (absolute) temperature scale, and −273.15° on the Celsius scale. Absolute zero is also precisely equivalent to 0 °R on the Rankine scale (same as Kelvin but measured in Fahrenheit intervals), and −459.67° on the Fahrenheit scale. Though it is not theoretically possible to cool any substance to 0 K, scientists have made great advancements in achieving temperatures close to absolute zero, where matter exhibits quantum effects such as superconductivity and superfluidity. In 2000 the Helsinki University of Technology reported reaching temperatures of 100 pK (1×10−10K), which is the coldest temperature ever produced in a lab.
Absolute zero is a temperature marked by a 0 entropy configuration. Temperature is an entropically defined quantity that effectively determines the number of thermodynamically accessible states of a system within an energy range. Absolute zero physically possesses quantum mechanical zero-point energy. Having a limited temperature has several thermodynamic consequences; for example, at absolute zero all molecular motion does not cease but does not have enough energy for transference to other systems, it is therefore correct to say that at 0 kelvin molecular energy is minimal.
Absolute zero is a temperature marked by a 0 entropy configuration. Temperature is an entropically defined quantity that effectively determines the number of thermodynamically accessible states of a system within an energy range. Absolute zero physically possesses quantum mechanical zero-point energy. Having a limited temperature has several thermodynamic consequences; for example, at absolute zero all molecular motion does not cease but does not have enough energy for transference to other systems, it is therefore correct to say that at 0 kelvin molecular energy is minimal.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
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