​I was in Delhi last week attending to my 90-year-old aunt who was about to go through a major surgery. We finished the admission formalities and settled her into her well-appointed room the evening before the surgery. The surgeon and his team had exuded confidence but had also quietly cautioned us (and her) that any ‘major’ surgery at her age did come with associated risks.  Sobered by this thought, a few relatives and friends, sat around her chatting cheerfully - trying to keep her, and our own spirits high. 
 
It was then that a friend turned to me quietly and said that the clock on the wall was ticking too loudly. 

​
​This illustration is of a row of confectionery-coloured shophouses on a Singapore street. It also happens to be (ahem) done by yours truly.  Sketching is a hobby and I have a shop on etsy.com where I have put up prints of my illustrations for sale (shameless plug).  And this illustration has outsold the others and in fact, sales have gathered momentum in recent weeks.
 
It did set me thinking as to why this particular illustration.  A clue came from one of my buyers who said “I was looking for something Singapore related to decorate my apartment in Helsinki and most of the ones I found were kind of generic in the sense of what a tourist would see Singapore as. This print however reminded me of the Singapore I remember growing up there!” 

It's December, and the Music Season in Chennai is in full swing. For the next three weeks or so, we shall bathe in the melody and movement of classical music and dance. And I thought it would be fitting to explore an interesting analogy between Indian classical music and classic brands.

​We were in Bhopal last weekend, running one of our Marketing Masterclass simulation sessions. With our flights scheduled in the evening, we managed a trip out to Sanchi on Sunday morning. The complex sits on a peaceful and meditative site atop a hill and is a magnificent symbol of an emperor’s message of peace. The Great Stupa, visible from the plains and railway line below, is clearly the showpiece of Sanchi - with an architectural legacy that is manifested even in the dome and balustrade of Rashtrapati Bhavan.

And that did trigger a thought…

What connects the Great Pyramid of Giza, Cologne Cathedral, Empire State Building, Petronas Towers and Burj Khalifa? 

Watching Qantas’s in-flight safety video on my flight home last week reminded me of how much in-flight safety demos have evolved.

From the days of bored flight attendants blowing whistles, pulling out red tabs and pointing out the nearest exit to disinterested passengers…

…to slickly produced stories showcasing thebrand and home country, often in partnership with not just creative hot shops  like wieden+kennedy but even  Hollywood and music entertainment companies.  With a reach today that goes beyond the 777-300 to millions of views on YouTube.
 
So how did we get to the point where our planes are full of mythical film creatures, swimsuit models, football stadiums and even a medley of internet memes?

Are websites breaking to bits?
 
Is the brand website becoming an archaic idea, at least as a communication vehicle? Given the content overload in the environment isn’t it wishful thinking to expect people to troop to your website or download your app unless they desperately need to? Wouldn’t it make more sense therefore for marketing engagement to happen at places that are part of the organic flow of people’s lives? Also, given that the digital age demands and allows marketers to have a disaggregated view of segmentation, shouldn’t content be created and distributed across a multiplicity of communication platforms and properties appealing to a wide variety of segments?

Digital advertising turned 25 this week. Doesn’t seem very old given Google and Facebook were not even born in 1994. But that rainbow-hued clunky ad “Have you ever clicked your mouse here? You will” was arguably the harbinger of massive change for the advertising industry.

I recently came across an article on this where seasoned ad industry practitioners reminisced about what they were thinking then and how they feel about it now. It certainly made for interesting reading.  

I was left with the thought that, despite that much touted idea of ‘personalisation at scale’, how much of digital advertising has been about the adtech and how little about the consumer of that adtech.

'Season 11 of Gruen has just begun on Australian TV. And it completed 100 episodes in 2017.
So what? You may ask. And err, what on earth does Gruen even mean? 

Gruen is a show “that tracks advertising almost as closely as advertising tracks you “. Ah, so one of those CNBC Storyboard type programs, you may say. Well, it occupies the prime 8:30pm slot on mainstream network ABC. It consistently features among the top-rated programmes nationally across all channels.  It’s been a turbo charger for ABC audience shares. And its panellists are now celebrity brands in their own right.

So what made a specialist programme like Gruen such a phenomenal success with mainstream audiences?

Why do we collect autographs? Why do we wait patiently in long queues at book launches to get an author’s signature? Why do we accost celebrities at hotel lobbies, airport lounges, and cricket grounds to obtain that indecipherable (and yet coveted) squiggle, often scrawled mechanically without even a glance at the recipient or the surface being signed?