Book Reviews: 'The Goal', 'It's Not Luck' and 'The Choice' by Eliyahu Goldratt

Cropped cover images. Source: Amazon.in

I have been a big fan of Eliyahu Goldratt's books ever since I first read 'The Goal' during college. I have read it multiple times, and ditto for 'It's Not Luck', which is now also titled 'The Goal Part II'.

These books are written as novels, and narrate the story of Alex Rogo, a factory manager who solves problems at his factory, in his marriage, and later at his division with the help of a consultant, Jonah. Fast-paced and gripping and yet easy to read, these books present Goldratt's approach of finding breakthrough growth by challenging seemingly logical assumptions.

Most of his other books are all written as novels too.

'The Choice' is the one I read most recently.
Here as well, his thinking processes are presented as a conversation between him and his daughter. The book is written from the POV of his daughter, a professional organisational psychologist. She takes the reader through her stream of thoughts and intermittently reads from reports to understand work done by Goldratt at various companies.

Compared to other books, this book distills the thinking processes into a set of belief systems that Goldratt holds about how humans work and solve problems. Since I had read other books, some bit of this books repetitive and slow. But the reveal of the basic beliefs was as enjoyable and mind-blowing as his other books.

Here are the links to books I have read and their ratings according to me:
The Goal, applies his theory to Production Management; Rating 5 stars of 5
It's Not Luck, applies it to Marketing; Rating 5 stars of 5
Critical Chain, applies it to Project Management; Rating 3 stars of 5
Isn't It Obvious?, applies it to Retail and Supply Chain Management; Rating 4 stars of 5
The Theory of Constraints, explains the core theory; Rating 5 stars of 5
The Choice, explains the core beliefs; Rating 4 stars of 5

Book Review: The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely

Cropped book cover. Source: Amazon.in

Just like movies, it's true for books too: sequels are rarely as good as the first. But 'The Upside of Irrationality' by Dan Ariely, is an exception.

Dan Ariely's first book on this topic was 'Predictably Irrational'. It introduced us to irrational human behaviour. And gave a few examples from his researches over the years.

But with 'Upside...', Mr. Ariely gives a more application-based understanding of our irrationality. And with each topic he assesses, he shows the variations within that irrational behaviour of ours. Hence, this book remains as enlightening and fun, but ends up being much more useful than the first book.

Also, it has many more examples and lessons that you will find relatable to your life and your decisions. So it has the added advantage of partly being a self-help book too.

Rating: 4.5 stars of 5
You can buy the 'Upside of Irrationality' on Amazon here

Book Review: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Cropped Book Cover. Source: Amazon.in

If you say yes to one or both these questions, you will find this book very interesting:
(1) Do you like reading about what drives our habitual behaviour?
(2) Do you believe in this saying “culture eats strategy for breakfast”?

Much like the cover explains, this book aims for both explaining human behaviour and taking a shot at self-help and improvement. It also seems reliably applicable in personal and organisational situations (sections 1 and 2), but it seems a force-fit in the social context (section 3).

Rating: 3.5 stars of 5
High rating for the applicability for the framework, cutting a few points for the 3rd section.

If you have already read and liked this book, you will like these too:
- Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point” and “Blink”
- Thaler and Sunstein’s “Nudge”
- Lewitt and Dubner’s “Freakonomics”

You can buy the ‘Power of Habit’ on Amazon here

Book Review: Presentation Masala by Vivek Singh

 

Cropped Book Cover. Source: Amazon.in

Think of this book as what Dale Carnegie’s books are for Public Speaking. Loaded with examples, and yet extremely simple and crisp is why I loved reading this book.

The author delivers exactly on the expectations set out by the title. None of the chapters are about content. The entire book is about context, packaging and delivery.

A must-read for professors as well as professionals, and more so, for those who focus exclusively on content when preparing for their presentations.

I got the Kindle version for free due to a LinkedIn promotion, but it’s worth paying for, too. And I don’t know Vivek, so this isn’t the obligatory positive review. The book is genuinely good!

Rating: 4.5 stars of 5

Book Review: The Joy of Game Theory by Presh Talwalkar

If Game Theory sounds intimidating and complex, start here to see how it is simply all around us, and while you're at it, learn some tricks too.

While this book is a "collection" of articles, it is written in a very delightfully interesting way and makes for a fun reading. Makes me want to read about Game Theory, so yes, serves its purpose too.

Rating: 4 stars of 5
Free on Kindle Prime Reading

Book Reviews: Leonardo da Vinci and Mao Zedong

I find history fascinating!
Especially how it shows over and over that success and failure are usually a result of both circumstances and choices.

These 2 books are what I read, but the Hourly History collection is much bigger.

Very crisp and informative; it took about 60-80 minutes to read each. A good first book about the topics, and not detailed enough to form your opinion about them.

Rating: 4 stars of 5

Read them for free on Kindle Prime Reading

A guide to survive and (maybe) grow through this pandemic

Like me, if you are a normal being, you would have gone through many phases - feeling imprisoned, excited, bored, overwhelmed, even scared of the present and the future. You would have also felt miserable because you aren't any of the cool stuff either. FOMO will set in. Damn, you didn't even learn a new course from those umpteen free websites!

Same pinch!

But there is a way to turn this around. Let's start with understanding ourselves. On one hand, all that talk about WFH feels like a lot of freed-up time, but on the other hand, our brain is telling us that we are locked down in our homes and there is no free will. Every day is an empty canvas, but also chaotic and meaningless.

Hence, start with scheduling your day. It tricks our brains into having a sense of control. Now you are at home all day, because you have a list of tasks to be done at home. Plus, because the unscheduled time is the only "free" time - it becomes valuable. Next, find a purpose to all these tasks. It will make you think you are doing something worthwhile. Now as you move through the day, you will get work done, and feel proud of having done it. Yay!

Next, what should you really do? Here is a hierarchy to follow.

Category #1: Survive. Do all your routines. Get the groceries. Cook. Clean up. Do everything that keeps you alive. Schedule time for this. The less you skip this, the less you will feel overwhelmed and powerless.

Category #2: Socialise. There's a very important reason why we are called social animals. And that Harvard study also gives more details on how our connections lengthen our lives and add to our happiness. So, go ahead and chat. Gossip. Call up that old friend. Cry on a video call with Mom. It will feel good.

Category #3: Selfcare. Don't jump to doing stuff that everybody is posting and getting likes for. Rather, start with what you were craving for during your busy days. Watch that movie. Read that book. Listen to that playlist on loop as you cook some dal-rice or Maggi. Whatever makes you feel cared for.

Category #4: Skill Up. With all this stuff taken care of, it's time to look at the future. Only the near future, though. Start building the skills that will help you stay in your job. Learn the soft skills to become a team leader. Or get certified with those free courses to expand your job profile. It may feel horrible if your job was taken away, but then, you need to work faster to get the next job. Find out about new emerging skills, and get skilled for those. Or start learning something new for a side-hustle. Why not!

Category #5: Serve. Even if you are more privileged than others, don't do this from a place of guilt. You will continue to feel guilty or ashamed, if you do that. Instead, create a 'positive' purpose around it - solidarity, gratitude, positive karma, etc. (And don't post on social media, because you will then keep checking for likes and comments.)

Did it work for me? Yes!

(1) Survive: I slept a lot more, not feeling guilty about my dropping productivity. And I changed my work hours a bit. Once I found my rhythm, I regained my focus during "work hours", and my productivity was up again.
(2) Socialise: I have scheduled after-dinner play time with my family, and it works as a reminder that I am home during their awake hours. Very fulfilling!
(3) Selfcare: Reading books and writing this article is my way of self-care, so yeah, happy about it!
I am yet to do something about (4), and won't discuss (5) for reasons mentioned above.

Like everything else, this requires practice too. Keep switching between these 5 categories. Keep what works. Throw away the rest. And start again. Chances are you will get a lot of stuff done, and also feel good about it.

Book Review: Make Love Not Scars by Ria Sharma

Going through the first few pages felt like "is this even a serious book about acid attacks!"
But that was because the author was taking me on a journey... a roller-coaster ride! Some chapters are so dark I wanted to quit, but continued even as I struggled to cope with the Covid-19-caused lockdown in India. But man, what a story!

Thank you, Ria, for writing this.
And thank you more for the candour with which you have written it.

Rating: 3.5 Stars of 5
Buy it here.

Is disruption a necessity for brand stability?

Recently, WPP's research firm Kantar Millward Brown released the BrandZ Top Indian Brands 2019 report. It has many interesting opinion pieces on the theme of 'Stability and Disruption', in line with the mood of the economy and marketing industry today.

I wrote the below piece in that report, on the topic of 'Is disruption a necessity for brand stability?'

 
“Relax! Nothing is in control.” Maybe you’ve seen this motivational quote. While it is supposed to be liberating – advising us to be detached from the failures and unpleasant aspects of our lives – it ends up being scary, too, by making our successes and glory inconsequential.

A similar kind of ambivalent feeling is shared by those of us in the business of building brands. We want to disrupt something in the market to our advantage, but we want everything else to be stable. Success lies in pushing past this discomfort and uncertainty to find an optimal balance between stability and disruption.

Stability and Disruption: Two sides of the same coin
Apple built its success by disrupting every category it entered – from personal computers, MP3 players, and smartphones, to its later forays into content subscription plans and digital wallet services. But all these disruptions are based fundamentally on the stability of Apple’s closed, protected ecosystem. Because its users are willing to pay for simplicity and data privacy, Apple can continue to provide more and more services at an additional fee. Even with newer technologies and VC-backed investments, start-ups will find it difficult to “disrupt” Apple’s dominance.

This is true with everyday products and categories too. Patanjali and Sensodyne rocked the Colgate boat for a while with their herbal and sensitivity-solving toothpastes, respectively. But Colgate came back eventually with its own variants, and continues to dominate oral care in India.

How should striking the balance between stability and disruption work for your brand? Here are a few lessons that we have learned working with our clients.

Identify what makes the brand stable.
All efforts to define your brand’s essence should be directed at this goal. Once a stable brand core has been identified, the brand is free to disrupt other aspects of its business.

For example, when the Savlon antiseptic liquid and soap brand looked to expand its portfolio, it decided to pivot around the brand promises of providing protection to mothers, and of making healthy habits fun for kids.

With this brand essence as Savlon’s core, its expansion into hand wash was by unlocked with the idea of making hand-washing fun. Ideas like “Healthy Hands Chalk Sticks” and “Id Guard” not only broke through the protection category’s typically serious marketing codes, but also led to stronger behavior change in the long run. The brand’s moves into hand sanitizers put similar tactics to successful use.

Over-invest in disruption to invest in long-term stability.
Pidilite’s brands Fevicol, M-Seal, and Fevi Kwik have been adhesive category leaders for decades. To maintain this leadership, the company has had to invest in multiple new products and consumer segments, sometimes without getting results.

Fevicol struck gold with Fevicol Marine, a variant that promises stronger bonding even when wooden furniture is in frequent contact with water. Not only did Fevicol Marine unlock growth in a new segment, it reinforced Fevicol’s leadership and got the brand firmly entrenched at its core promise of “Ultimate Adhesive.”

On the other hand, M-Seal’s launch of M-Seal Super resulted in only incremental growth, despite being a revolutionary, low-price DIY sealant product with multiple applications. However, had M-Seal not invested in this innovation, it would have left empty space available to new entrants to disrupt its hold on the market.

Ditto with Fevi Kwik. While repair was once seen as the exclusive household domain of the men, Fevi Kwik risked its affinity by targeting homemakers. It urged them to try repairing regular household items with Fevi Kwik, and in the process, to try to earn family members’ appreciation. This strategy turned out to be a great success, and now Fevi Kwik is the go-to instant adhesive for a much larger consumer base, making the category even more uninteresting for competitors.

Each of these projects could have gone wrong for Pidilite, but not venturing into these disruptions would have meant putting these brands’ future stability at stake.

Similar to how you can use disruption to protect, use stability to attack.
Every brand, leader or challenger, is always at the risk of being upended by new technologies, entrants, or policy changes. At such times, the very stability of big brands allows them to take risks smaller brands can’t afford.

For example, ITC’s Mangaldeep is India’s 2nd largest brand of agarbattis. This year, during the Rath Yatra at Lord Jagannath Puri temple in Odisha, it launched a special multi-layered innovation: the first-ever agarbatti with dual fragrances and dual colors, with ingredients that are special to the Lord Jagannath Puri temple (Neem, Tulsi, Kasturi, and Chandan), all in an agarbatti that’s made by women’s self-help groups from Odisha itself. This innovation was so powerful, that it got the endorsement of the Temple Trust, and every pack sold results in a contribution to the temple itself.

In the Mangaldeep example, it was the established brand’s strong, profitable core that allowed it to take bigger risks and handle larger losses. While there are agarbatti start-ups that try innovative ingredients, fragrances, and partnerships, it is likely that they will have to merge with each other to gain economies of scale (or else get bought over by an existing large agarbatti brand). Big, established brands still have strong cards to play in the competition ahead.

Marketers: Don't be like Thanos

Yes, we have come to that stage in human evolution when we should take lessons from fictional villains in movie-adaptations of comic book stories. Perhaps the only saving grace is that we learn what not to do, rather than what to do, from these villains.

Lesson #1: Look before you snap!
In Endgame, Thanos gets to know that 5 years after his snap, Earth hadn’t flourished in spite of all the reduced competition for resources. And immediately, Thanos invents a new alternative of resource-planning – wiping everything out completely instead of partially.

That makes us think - Thanos had been doing this partial-killing for a long, long time before he got his hands on the Infinity Gauntlet. (Ha, that pun happened nicely!) If we start from the time of Gamora’s adoption and assume her aging process to be same as humans, it would mean Thanos had been doing this for at least a couple of decades (in Earth-time). And yet apparently, this was the very first instance when Thanos was analysing an outcome of his killings.

Does that mean he never went back and did a Return-on-Efforts-Invested analysis for all those years? Assuming he wiped half-a-civilisation every month for the past 20 or so years, he had killed half of about 240 different civilisations and not done any ROEI check! Wow!

Lesson #2: A Tree is not the same as the Forest
Thanos changes his life mission based on data taken only from Earth. But his snap had wiped out half the life in the entire Universe! That means he projected data from ‘sample’ of one, to the ‘population’ of hundreds of thousands. Maybe what happened on Earth was the exception and not the rule. He doesn't consider this. But then, even if he did, he had no way of finding out. (See Lesson 1)

I don’t suggest Thanos should do an MBA or study Market Research, but it seems even some basic knowledge would have helped him a lot!

Lesson #3: Don’t put all your Stones in one Gauntlet
To avoid getting killed, Thanos goes to a point in the past, where the Infinity Stones are with his enemy - the Avengers. Interestingly, in the original timeline, he was killed by these Avengers even when they didn’t have the Stones with them. Moreover, in the original timeline, Thanos was anyway able to get all the Stones, defeat the Avengers, and fulfill his life mission before he gets killed.

Thus, rather than just figuring out how to stay alive in his original timeline, Thanos goes to a battlefield where his enemy is not only stronger than him, but also more informed (Thanos knew nothing about time travel). And he does at the dual risk of dying and his life mission remaining unfulfilled. Why ruin an already earned achievement this way?

That’s why, marketers, don’t be like Thanos!
(And Thanos, if you are alive in any timeline, please study some research and strategy.)

Defending Gillette, or maybe not

Almost exactly 9 years ago, a brand from the P&G stable ran a very cool campaign titled ‘Smell like a man, man’. It showed an attractive African-American man in a towel talking directly to the camera (i.e. ladies watching the commercial) about how Old Spice body wash would make their man smell like the man he portrays. His attitude added to the charm – his persona was described as “wildly smug, cool-cat smooth dude”. The campaign was wildly successful, and it also won a Grand Prix for film at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. In short, lots of claps and pats on the back.

Fast-forward to the present. Another brand from the P&G stable runs a campaign with the message ‘The Best Men Can Be’. This time, it’s a razor-and-after-shave selling brand that urges men to challenge themselves to do more so that they can get closer to their best. What an awesome, inspiring message! What could possibly go wrong here?

Umm, if you are with me till here, you know how polarising this campaign has been. Maybe there’s no hidden message behind the casting here too – in two different situations, the guys about to harass women being white, and the guys stopping them being black is just coincidence. But this ad made many men uncomfortable, and they are raising all kinds of questions about the ad.

Rather than look at those questions, let’s look at why they should be questioning this campaign at all. The first and most obvious fact is that this ad evoked a reaction. Meaning, it touched a chord somewhere. You could like it, hate it, scowl at it, but you couldn’t ignore it. Maybe it made you feel inspired, threatened, irritated, or simply angry, it means it did a fantastic job. It got your attention and it made you react. Strike one.

Next, is how this ad makes men feel about being a man. Some would feel being reduced to a stereotype. Or feel guilty because it holds them to a higher standard. Some would feel uncomfortable because it urges them to address an issue they have been quiet about, while some others would wonder if they really would have to interfere in a fight to earn the respect of their sons and be their hero. Again, this simply means that it touched upon a relevant, urgent issue that forces the viewer to take a stand. They aren’t just paying attention, they are now emotionally involved. Strike two.

Last, is the significance of the stand that they have taken or will take. It is not going to be an easy decision to make. If they agree with the argument, they have to plead guilty – guilty of being part of a group that has made not just workplaces, but every other place as well, unsafe for women; guilty of allowing, if not propagating a stereotype about men being aggressive, tough, and strong; guilty of asserting their masculinity by objectifying women, feeling entitled to their bodies, being insensitive to their feelings, emotions, and most importantly, consent. On the other hand, if they disagree with the argument, they fear being exactly what they have been accused of for decades – ‘good guys’ being complicit in the stereotyping of men, and harassment of women, even if only by inaction. Now they aren’t just emotionally involved, they are put in a moral dilemma. Strike three.

That a simple ad can do this, is by itself, pretty amazing. But let’s not get carried away. It’s just that this is the first ad that talks about this issue head on. And that too, by a brand that makes products almost exclusively for men. (You had forgotten it makes razors for women too, right?)

So, are justified men in applauding it or booing it?

Which camp is the bigger one? The right one?

What do I know? I am just another advertising guy.

Disclaimer: While I am hardly taking a side, it’s important to point out my employer has P&G’s competitor, Unilever, as one of its biggest clients. Also, that these views are my personal views, and they don’t represent anyone else’s.

Choosing a brand-name: Going beyond the rhetoric

Choosing a brand name is a tricky process.
Asking how to go about choosing is even trickier.

People who emphasise how critical it is to get it right, will talk about how Nike (named after the Greek Goddess of Victory) would have been a dud in its previous avatar of Blue Ribbon Sports, or of how the friendliness and simplicity of Apple Computer made it stand out in the tech-heavy, IBM-dominated personal computer industry. Could it have achieved similar success if it were named something as geeky as Altair 8800, another computer released around the same time when Apple was founded?

On the other hand are the cynics, calling the entire process a waste of time. They talk about how Coca-Cola gets its name simply from its ingredients, Pepsi from a condition it was supposed to be a treatment for, or that Mercedes was named so, only because a car-seller/racing-enthusiast asked it to be named after his daughter. If these origins can also lead to great successes, "What's in a name"?

Both these schools of thought explain their stand by cherry-picking success stories.
And both are non-starters to help the actual process of choosing a brand name.

So how do you go about it?

1. Start with the purpose of branding
Usually, the purpose of branding is said to be to stand out or to be memorable. But these are more evaluation parameters. The purpose of branding is to establish a reputation before customers can actually experience the brand.

The reputation could come from the credibility of founders (Chanel), or uniqueness of its ingredients (Coca-Cola), or some unique processes (Blaupunkt). Or it could just "explain" the product by association (Motorola).

Brands who are first-movers want to become the default choice and communicate the same through ubiquity - Android as an OS for mobile devices, Walkman as the personal audio player and lighter alternative to the boombox, etc.

2. Go for uniqueness
Pharma and ingredient branding are great examples here. Naming a medicine brand after its ingredient molecules is helpful but not unique if all companies are doing this. It wouldn't be wise to name your shampoo after its active ingredient 'panthenol', if Pantene already exists as a brand in the market.

A caveat here: uniqueness doesn't necessarily mean exclusivity. A brand can stand out by being inclusive too. Big Bazaar is one such example.

3. Look for a great brand story
Stories, especially origin stories make for great memorability and even reputation. But they may not exist and need to be invented. Hence I say "look for". Häagen-Dazs is an invented name that wanted to convey an “aura of the old-world traditions and craftsmanship.”

4. Build the brand elements
 Here comes the complete package - aesthetics like colours and designs, hard factors like physical structures and product features, and soft factors like brand personality, and customer service.

5. Rebrand if you can, and only if you must.
Flipkart started out as a book e-tailer and later, became a marketplace and one of India's biggest e-commerce companies. Should it have changed its name? Maybe. But it would have been expensive, and perhaps unnecessary. On the other hand, a hatchback from Tata Motors 'Zica' had to go for re-branding after emergence of 'zika virus' as a carrier of contagious diseases.

Hope this outline helps you go beyond the rhetoric.

Feel something can be added to the list? Add your comments.

Marketer's To-Do List before 'Going Cashless'

The last couple of months have been nothing but tough for companies in India. FMCG sales are down by Rs. 3,800 crore, and consumer durables sales are down by 40%. The auto industry too is affected, but with different intensities across segments.

So companies are trying their best, by going digital / cashless.

And while business is hopeful, brands are panicking – everyone is adapting to this new trend so fast, that it has already become old news for consumers. “Cashless / Digital payment” is already the new clutter.

Here’s what can help your brand.

Step 1: Stop that advertisement release
Releasing a full page advertisement in the newspaper will make top management, investors, and partners happy, but it will do little to boost your sales, simply because your entire finance, logistics, and distribution network isn’t perhaps ready yet. Therefore, choose your media wisely, and cascade your message through targeted channels only to your most critical audiences – company newsletter, SMS, even WhatsApp groups can come in handy.

To add credibility, put up an announcement on your website, and add that link to all outgoing messages in other channels.

Step 2: Create a G-T-M plan
Going cashless will change and challenge many existing practices within your organisation. Hence, treat this new step like a product launch, and prepare a full go-to-market plan. Talk to all stakeholders and see if they are ready to switch to cashless, and also if your infrastructure is ready to handle the estimated boost in new traffic.

Step 3: Prepare a promo plan
It is very likely that by now, your consumers have already tried something from your competitors, and are frustrated with the problems they had to face. Here, your readiness is your biggest differentiator! Come up with promotions that leverage this – bulk promotions, cross-selling, preferred treatment, ready delivery, etc. And while you are at it, go for new partnerships and tie-ups too.

Step 4: Now, release that ad!
But only targeted at geographies where you are ready. With today's tools, most media can be geo-targeted. Explore digital too. After all, the consumers are already there, and they are most ready for digital transactions.

Step 5: Track all your efforts
When a business goes digital, a lot more data becomes available at every stage of the transaction. And at a much shorter lead time too. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Happy New Year!
Got more ideas? Feel free to add in the comments.

Can Colgate toothpaste go beyond Patanjali?

Leader brands usually find themselves in situations where they are working hard on keeping challengers at bay, instead of looking for new ways to grow. Colgate’s present situation in India seems to be similar.

In 2015-16, Colgate’s market share was 55.7% in toothpastes and 46.2% in toothbrushes. Considering that next 2 players in the market are Hindustan Unilever and Dabur, competition is obviously tough and has deep pockets too. But when newspaper reports start talking about new entrant Patanjali’s herbal toothpaste making a dent at the market leader, you know the battle is being fought for each basis point of market share.

But it shouldn’t be this way.
The oral care market still holds big growth potential!

Per capita toothpaste consumption in India (136 grams) is way lower than China (264 gms) and Brazil (617 gms). And the prices are even lower – providing scope of ‘premiumisation’. Colgate’s own value-added line contributed to just 20% of its sales in FY 2015.

So what has Colgate done to grow?
A lot. Through its ‘Bright Smiles, Bright Futures’ program, it has reached more than 135mn school children across 2mn schools. Its other program ‘Oral Health Month’ benefitted almost 6 million in FY 2016 alone. But these activities are expensive, and involve multiple logistical issues and free giveaways, not to mention the renewed dedication of the entire team year on year.

Are there better ways?
Yes – Using brand strengths
I have always believed that the biggest results come when consumer insights, brand strategy and business goals come together.

Last year, we saw the brand leverage its consumer base through advertising, where mothers talked about their trust for Colgate. But I guess it wasn’t very effective, not because of the ad, but because it didn’t use its biggest strength. Colgate has another franchise more powerful than mothers – dentists. For years, the brand used dentists to claim superiority and preference… Dentists, not mothers!

So let’s use this strength some more, and grow the market!
Consumption in the personal care category generally is habitual – patterns for quantity, purchase, brand choice, etc. are set. Even this brand with all its might has achieved limited success in making people brush twice a day. The Mother’s Trust TV ad, too, talks about not switching from Colgate to other brands - almost suggesting 'hey people, stick to your habits!'

But using dentists could change that, and here’s an idea about it.

The growth potential for toothpaste exists because of low per capita consumption and scope for premiumisation, and dentists can help us drive this growth more than anyone else. All we need to do is drive consumers to dentists.

Consider this.
Indians consume less than 150 grams of toothpaste per capita. That translates to just Rs. 60. In comparison, we spend more on bike servicing (avg. Rs. 150-200 at least twice a year), on haircuts (~Rs. 50 every month), and on mobile phone recharges (monthly ARPU ~Rs. 125).

Using this comparison persuasively can push people to get more involved with oral care. Similar comparisons, if made for preventive oral care versus corrective treatments, can also persuade people to visit their dentists more often. Pushing this further, months in a calendar can be designated as dental check-up months to suggest multiple options in a year – June and December as after-vacation months and being 6 months apart, fit the bill quite well.

Would this work?
Targeting a change in behaviour is tougher than proposing a feel-good idea. But leader brands across categories have taken up causes of all sorts to drive both brand and business metrics. Ariel asks men to ‘Share the Load’ of doing laundry, while Dettol urges mothers not to stop their kids from playing. Surf Excel recently rolled out a TVC where they said prison inmates spend more time in the open than kids. This was part of its ‘Dirt is Good’ campaign.

So yes, it can work wonders.

What do you think?

Demonetisation - an assessment using the Effectiveness Approach

For a few years, my job involved working on tracking advertising effectiveness, and I co-authored an entry that won a Gold at the IPA Effectiveness Awards. This is only to establish that while the below analysis is way out of my league, the logic behind it has been well thought of. Do feel free to poke loopholes, and I will try to reassess accordingly.

On 8 Nov. 2016, India demonetized Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes with immediate effect. It has been widely proclaimed as a great step in curbing black money in the country. Now, while the move is bold and brave no doubt, I invite you to consider a possibility that the impact may not be as big as it is thought out to be.

Estimating cost of printing new notes At its press conference, the RBI said that it estimates 16.5 billion Rs. 500 notes, and 6.7 billion Rs. 1000 notes to be in circulation. This doesn’t add up according to my calculations.
As mentioned in an article by the RBI, the currency in circulation in recent years is roughly 10% of GDP. Thus, based on the IMF estimate of USD 2.25 trillion for India’s 2016 GDP, and exchange rate of Rs. 66.5 to a dollar, the currency in circulation would be Rs. 14,963 trillion in 2016.

Again, according to the same RBI article, Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 are total 47% and 32% of value of money respectively in circulation. Then, total no. of currency notes to be replaced will be:






Anyway, let’s go with the RBI-quoted figure of 16.5 billion and 6.7 billion notes respectively.
In one day, roughly 23.2 billion currency notes stopped being legal tender! Take some time to process that number.

For cost of printing, a Mint analysis (which is brilliant, by the way!) quotes RBI information that cost of printing new currency notes are Rs. 2.5 for a 50-rupee note and Rs. 3.17 for a 1,000-rupee note. The new notes will be more expensive to print due to costs of designing and adding new security features. But since the volume to be printed would be large too, let’s go only a little higher for pegging the cost of printing –Rs. 2.6 for a 50-rupee note and Rs. 3.5 for a 2,000-rupee note.

Let’s say we replace all old Rs. 50 notes with new Rs. 50 notes, and all Rs. 1,000 notes with Rs. 2,000 in equivalent value. The cost of printing these many notes will be:

We would spend Rs. 54.63 billion to print the new currency notes only for replacing old currency!

Before we look at other costs of this massive decision, let’s look at the benefits arising from this. The two big benefits expected from this move are curbing black money and curbing funding of terrorist activities.

Estimating impact on Black Money: The press release of the announcement puts the value of the black economy in India at 23.2% of GDP in 2007. Considering that same ratio for 2016, while highly unlikely, gives us a figure of Rs. 34,713 Trillion. However, not all of it is cash. In fact, a huge proportion of it will be in the form of real estate, gold jewellery and investments. Replacing currency notes doesn’t affect this at all.

So how much of black economy does it affect?
The black economy would have limited financial services as its disposal, but it would also have fewer participants, hence, fewer hands to exchange. Therefore, purely as a guess, let’s say the currency required for the black economy to operate is half of what is required for the white economy. Thus, 5% or Rs. 1,736 trillion will have to be replaced by black marketers in the event of replacement of currency notes.

Note that this Rs. 1,736 trillion turns out to be only 15% of the total currency in circulation in 2016 – Rs. 14,963 trillion. Doesn’t feel good, right? Ok, let’s push our original guess of 5% to 10%, so that this ratio goes up to 30%.

So does all of this cash become “white money”?
Not really, since black marketers can continue exploiting all existing loopholes to plough this same cash back into the black economy. But let’s still consider that this becomes white.

Reversing the Currency-to-GDP ratio, this will grow India’s GDP by Rs. 34,720 trillion in the first year. Converting black money to white by itself doesn’t matter much, what really matters to the government and to us, is the tax income generated from it.

Estimating incremental tax income Last year, the income from Central Taxes to the government was about 0.01% of GDP (Rs. 14.6 trillion on Rs. 1,37,855 trillion), thus, this new white money will give the govt. Rs. 3.47 Trillion more money.

Note that we will spend only 2% of that amount in printing new currency! Cool!!

But then, we have calculated only first year tax income, that too, only for Central Taxes. What about additional tax income to states, and also the multiplier effect of tax income spent as government's capital expenditure over the years? That will increase the benefit. But, for sake of ease, I assume that this impact gets balanced off by the fact that this tax income to government also takes it away from the hands of people who would have spent it, and that the original amount spent by the government on printing new currency would also have a similar multiplier effect over the years.

Let’s look at the second big benefit – lesser fake money for terrorists.

Fake money estimates An Indiatimes article says that ISI makes a profit of Rs. 500 crore a year by printing fake money and smuggling it into India. Cancelling old notes makes all that money worth nothing, but ISI has already made its profit on that money, so it hardly makes a difference.

Let’s say it takes ISI or its partners a full year to figure out how to make counterfeit new currency notes. Then, it loses Rs. 500 crore in this one year. Now what matters is... how much of ISI’s income comes from printing fake money. We wouldn’t know this.

But what we can estimate is that ISI will earn higher profits right from the moment it figures out how to print fake currency notes of Rs. 2,000.

Makes the whole step seem pointless, no?

Let’s assess the third factor now – removing corruption We keep forgetting that the black economy is an economy – meaning it already has figured out the loopholes of the official system, and has been exploiting it for years, perhaps decades! A change in currency notes is nothing more than a speed breaker in the journey.

Will replacing currency notes stop people from asking for dowry, paying ‘donation’ for school admissions and college degrees, escaping tax assessments, asking for undue promotions in government jobs, etc.? No way!

Let’s now come back to the additional costs involved in replacing currency notes in a knee-jerk manner like this.

The biggest cost is of transporting this money all over the country to bank branches and ATMs. It’s difficult to put a number to it.

The next cost is a nominal one – Business lost during this time. A recent nationwide strike of trade unions estimated losses to be in the range of Rs. 180 billion. That’s for a single day, for a section of the entire economy.

In our present case, nearly 80% of all currency notes, Rs. 14,950 billion in value, are rendered useless overnight, and are replaced over 50 days. This is in an economy where 2/3rd of transactions are in cash as per a Hindustan Times article.

During this 50-day period, even if we consider that the impact is equivalent of lost business of only 5 days, it totals to a massive Rs. 0.9 Trillion loss.

In other words, we would have lost 26% of our incremental tax income expected over the next one year, at the beginning of the exercise itself.

Impact on poor This cost, while not nominal, will be hidden and difficult to estimate too.

According to a 2015 study, while 53% of Indian population has a bank account, it is with a 43% dormancy rate – no deposits or withdrawals in a 12-month period. Again, go back to the previous mentioned cash becoming illegal overnight.

The timing makes it worse too - first week of the month, and just a week after Diwali, when quite a lot of them receive their festival bonus.

Now imagine 125 crore Indians, only 10% of them with an active bank account, scrambling to replace 80% of their cash.

Theoretically, it should affect only black money. But we already know black money in cash is only 15-30% of all cash in the economy. Be my guest in estimating the losses Indians will occur!

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Disclaimer: This analysis has been done using all openly available figures and study reports. This massive move will undoubtedly have far-reaching effects in terms of scale and time. I have made an attempt at calculating a short-term impact using my skills from another field. It does not reflect the views of my present or past employers.

Getting better at evaluating TV ad scripts

So a round of script presentation has just gotten over, and the agency team is looking around the room, trying to gauge reactions. The client starts speaking: one element in one script doesn't seem right. He rejects that script. And the downward spiral begins.

Somehow after multiple rounds, a script is approved, and everyone leaves the conference room happy. But when the final ad film is presented, the mood is not as exuberant. Because "the film didn't come out as expected".

So what can be done about it?
Most marketers haven't been through a film-development process, so they don't know what to expect at the intermediate stages. Here is what can help them:

1. Train yourself to visualise an ad from a scriptPick up your favourite movie and look up its script online (one source: The Internet Movie Script Database). For me, it was with 'The Matrix'. But even if it's not a sci-fi film, there will be a lot 'not said' in the script that gets added in the film.

Another option is to read a book that later got made into a movie. Notice how storytelling differs as words and as scenes. The Harry Potter book series, and 'Song of Fire and Ice' series (made into Game of Thrones) can serve as recent references. This will familiarise you with how the script that you are listening to, may look like as the final product.

2. Watch a lot of ads and show-reelsAd film directors, just like movie directors, have their unique way of storytelling. Thus, watching show-reels will get you a sense of how the director would treat the script.

3. Read comic booksSince most popular comic book characters have been around for decades, we can compare how storytelling changes from comics, to animation, to movies, and to TV series. The idea is to see variety rather than linear thinking. At the very least, it broadens our imagination for visualising the scripts.


And, still, the final result could be different!That can still happen, because non-creative people like you and I, go for the familiar, while the creative guys will go for new, different, and unique. But, the output won't come as a shock, rather an improvised version of what you already expected.

Anyway, our objective is to get the right direction, not direct the ad sitting in our armchairs.

Using Big Data for Strategic Communications

Once upon a time, the marketing department was data-starved and decision-making was largely about following the Marketing Head's gut-feel which in turn was influenced by 'trends' of the time.

Now, as the tsunami of Big Data shifts this decision-making to led-by-data and further to overloaded-by-data, strategy seems to take a backseat. But it doesn't have to be that way.

1. Find the Highest Common Factor, not the Least Common DenominatorMost upselling and cross-selling is based on what was searched and bought recently. This is standard data analysis and cross-tabulation at play. While that is good for incremental sales, it does little to grow large-scale business.

Instead, in a market like India, where the potential to grow the pie is still big, we can use data to solve larger business problems - to go beyond sales pitches, and find behavioural triggers.

For example, online retail seems to be battling slow growth beyond cash-on-delivery. Here, big data can help collate first gifting items purchased for delivery to other addresses - these purchases would automatically push consumers to go for some mode of pre-payment, instead of cash-on-delivery. And once they have experienced this mode, they are ripe for a complete shift away from COD.

Once these ideas are discovered, the appropriate ones can be elevated for ad campaigns too. For example: what if in this ad for Amazon, big data could provide the most correct item to purchase? Perhaps sales growth can see a steeper trajectory.

2. Redefine your segmentation criteriaIn absence of data, segmentation is usually done with geography and demographic variables - age, gender, etc. But with big data, these very factors can be challenged. What if, more than geography (small town / large town / metro), the 'life-stage' of the customer (single / married / married with kids) defined his / her purchase behaviour?

3. Redefine your competitionIn MBA classes, we were told of Coca-Cola's big growth story that came from redefining competition as 'all beverages'. Similarly, using big data, we can redefine our brand's competition based on time and money - instead of just product category. As brands move from mere products to experience (and want to charge a premium for it), this becomes interesting as well as critical.

What do you think?
Any stories to share on Big Data?

Weaknesses brand 'Patanjali' should watch out for

Brand Patanjali's galloping success is a rare case in the FMCG industry.
But, is it a brand with no weaknesses? Of course not. Here are some:

1. It's a founder-person brandWhile phrase is a made-up one, I think it explains best the category of brands strongly linked to their founders, like Richard Branson and Virgin, and Salman Khan and Being Human.

A large proportion of the brand's power comes from the person behind it, and that may very well cause trouble. We have already seen how the Lokpal movement died after Anna Hazare moved on. Questions were raised on the future of a brand even as strong as Apple after its founder's death.

In its advertisements, there are other endorsers - Hema Malini for biscuits, Sushil Kumar for ghee. But they are not strongly used to build the mother-brand, nor do they carry any past association with Ayurveda.

2. Product quality being questioned, especially in the food categories
When product quality gets questioned, losses pile up, and even loyal customers bid goodbye. Coke, Pepsi, Maggi... the list of strong brands facing PR nightmares is long. Only some, like Cadbury Dairy Milk, were able to bounce back strongly.

In case of Patanjali, its atta noodles product was highlighted in the news for all the wrong reasons. And with the product range getting wider, the connection with Ayurveda becomes weaker. A tomato ketchup from Patanjali may increase sales in the short term, but I have my doubts on its impact on Patanjali's brand value.

With the new announcement on jeans, the brand association seems to be moving away from 'Ayurveda', and towards 'Swadeshi'. While it will help the brand tap a larger potential, the association seems more 'inside-out' at the moment, and it remains to be seen whether or not consumers also make the same connect.

3. Consumer Dissonance
The biggest success factor for Patanjali is the association with a healthier way of living - Yoga and Ayurveda. This image / perception can trump Science, by evoking association with artificial, cosmetics, chemicals, etc., and can make consumers feel happy that they are moving towards a way of life closer to nature.

But habits are tough to break, and the newly built Yoga regimen will soon be given up in exchange for an extra half hour of much-needed sleep. Then, every purchase of Patanjali would increasingly remind consumers of their broken promises to themselves. Big risk!

If the 'Swadeshi' hook takes off positively among consumers, the 'Ayurveda' association can take a backseat, and perhaps avoid this dissonance altogether. However, with that, the food section of Patanjali's product range will lose its biggest differentiator too. Tough task ahead.


Of course, for now, these are mere theoretical possibilities, and Brand Patanjali can rest on its laurels, as its products continue to topple competition at retail counters. So for now, other brands would simply have to try to ride this wave of healthy living.

Or perhaps, they could stage a comeback using positive associations with science and technology, or by using rational arguments of superior product quality (like Heinz ketchup tried last year)?

What do you think?