The Branded and Gilded Life

He was told he couldn't even jump over a garden chair.

And in the beginning, he couldn't.

But at the Olympics in Mexico in 1968, Dick Fosbury would invent a high jump technique people laughed at. It looked far from graceful. 

As he approached the bar, he turned his back on it and when airborne, flopped his body across in an arc with millimeters to spare.

That was also the year the landing pad was replaced with rubber foam. Without the foam, there was no way to use the technique.

Even today, that jump looks wrong - like sailing over a wall backwards. You'll never attempt it instinctively.

Yet, this civil engineering student at 21 made the connection between a low center of gravity and arching his back to clear a 2.24 metres high bar without toppling it. Setting a new record and winning the gold.

Disruptors aren't welcome. And Fosbury never competed again.

He was no role model. A loner, with mismatched shoes, he would have been a nightmare as a potential brand ambassador. 

And yet, he changed the way every high jump athlete is trained today. The scissor technique is buried.

The Fosbury flop endures, over 50 years later.

Holi-ness!

It's all about colours.

Multi-hued faces and buckets of water poured on people caught up in the spirit of the moment

And the songs that reverberate in the movies.

Soaking heroines in rain and bursts of psychedelic colour has been a common ploy to escape the censor's vigilant scissors.

And so have energetic dances that capture the vibrance of Holi.

But the colours had begun to bleed a bit - the chemicals were irritating to the eyes and causing health issues.

That's when a small village in Jharkhand, Chonga,  discovered an opportunity that would catapult them into the centre of the 'organic' color business of Holi.

Through extensive manual labour, the villagers of Chonga extract a bright yellow from the Palash flowers. They are plucked and sun dried for a whole year.

The dry flowers are cooked in boiling water and the colour from the petals seeps  into the water. 

This base is used to create several other colours of the spectrum - and there's huge demand for the product, both within and outside the country.

The Hindi movie industry is a fan.

And probably the best off-season customer.

Nothing like Holi-ness to create an atmosphere that resonates with audiences worldwide.

Rail is the new Silk Road

It normally pops up in history text books.

But a new one is forming, working its way around all the geopolitical tension and undercurrents.

Container traffic already moves on railway lines covering distances of over 1000 kms a day - connecting Europe to China via Mongolia, since 2017

For centuries, ships were the dominant way to manage trade between continents

But there is significant progress being made in unifying railway line widths and connections right across Europe, Russia and China.

It's the same problem as electric plugs in one country not being compatible in another but at a different scale. The gauges in one country are not compatible with the neighboring ones.

As long as trains only moved within a country, it didn't matter. But if it loses out on trade simply because rail lines are narrow, change begins because every country wants a share.

It will take a few decades. Agreements that have to be worked out between nations as goods transit multiple countries on journeys.

New destinations will spring into prominence on land as they become transit hubs and reroute goods from rail to road and the seas.

These days, silk may only be flying Club Class

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Subscribe at ideascape.substack.com

In the 80s, it was a runaway success.

But the campaign 'I love you, Rasna' and the girl who was seen as cute and lovable have been eclipsed.

The rise of the colas and their deep pockets shifted consumption habits.

The soft drink concentrate powder had to be mixed into drinks - and the flavour seemed artificial to a new generation that was moving to 'real' fruit juices.

Even though they were just as sweet as the colas were

The 2-liter cola bottles could be stored in the fridges and brought out anytime. Cool, inviting and bubbly.

The birthday parties also evolved. They no longer revolved around light snacks and soft drinks. Event managers were hired to conduct games and keep the festivities going.

They were organised around themes and had lavish gifts in addition to layered cakes and pastries. And moved out of homes and into restaurants as guest lists expanded

Rasna got stuck in the middle. Competing with massive advertising budgets and changing middle-class aspirations.

When the market repositions a product, it's a much bigger issue - no easy solutions.

The kids of the 80s had grown up. And their kids weren't singing the same old song

The fish are knocking at the gate

Can fish get caught up in a traffic jam?

They can in the Netherlands - a country with the most sophisticated network of connected canals.

The water depth differs over stretches. To help boats navigating through the canals, lock gates were built underwater to maintain water levels steady, balancing flow and depth with the tides.

The fish swimming in the canals come up against the gates and for them, it's like hitting a wall.

A technical solution would have been to set up sensors to determine the number of fish waiting to get past the lock gates and then alert the person responsible for operating the gate.

Instead, the council placed underwater cameras to capture the flow of fish in real time and broadcast them to walkers along the canal.

When large numbers of fish crowd around the lock, anyone can ring the 'doorbell' to signal that fish are waiting.

When the gates are opened, the traffic jam eases.

The council decided that people participating in notifying the gatekeepers would drive higher awareness of marine species, get children and locals involved and be interwoven with life rhythms along the canal.

Ringing the doorbell for fish becomes a star attraction every day!

Did you miss a viral opportunity?

When the ship got stuck in the Suez Canal, what did you do?

Created a meme?

Scanned news sites and Twitter to get updates?

Wrote a post about it, like I am doing now?

Tom built a website - Is the ship still stuck?

He found the domain was available and had the single page up and running in a day.

In the 5 days that it made headlines around the world, he was getting as many as 8000 plus hits a minute.

He got 50 million views in that period, the equivalent of traffic to the New York Times

There were any number of shipping and logistics companies who could have created a website and got the traffic themselves.

But they didn't

There's nothing on the site beyond updates from Twitter and news sites.

All it required for the traffic to take off was one post on Hacker News.

There were thousands of comments on how the ship could have been unblocked.

The window for these opportunities is small - and one web developer found a way to put the whole thing together.

This opportunity is gone - but maybe when the next viral news breaks, who knows?

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The average human navigates away from a web page if it doesn't load in seconds.

The most studious kids can put in about 6-8 hours in a day but not at a stretch.

Think of what a Formula 1 driver takes years to achieve.

Unrelenting focus in 2 hour races with no break or lapse in concentration.

At speeds of over 200 mph (about 340 kmph), they can't afford a single mistake. Zero tolerance for error.

The fitness routines develop reflexes faster than those of fighter pilots.

They build unbelievable muscular strength to maneuver the car round those twisting and weaving bends - while keeping track of the clock and lap time.

The humidity inside the car can reach over 80% and they lose huge amounts of physical weight through sweating - as much as 2-3 kgs in the course of a single race.  

It's meditation at full speed - where they are completely in a zone. There is only one link they have - to the team engineer through a radio egging them on.

Superhuman? You bet. No other sport on earth comes as close to driving on the line between life and death.

Imagine training to become one

Live in million dollar homes online

Buying homes that cost the earth is on wish lists.

In practice, most people would accept that it is a distant dream.

But what if you could explore the interiors of homes that cost millions of dollars any time you like?

No restrictions at all.

Think of the most exclusive neighborhoods - and then just dive straight into the home that catches your fancy.

Linger by the view from the French windows.

Admire the ornate staircase and the mahogany bookcases with a lifetime of reading packed into the shelves.

Gaze at the view is from the front porch. Or lounge by the swimming pool.

With the immersive 3D walkthroughs now available, it's doubtful if a real visit will make a substantial difference.

It's all available on Zillow. Decide where you're going to spend the afternoon. Or the evening.

And no matter where you are in real life, all it takes is a laptop and broadband connection.

Covid has accelerated the need to provide the home visit experience virtually.

But in the process, it is just as easy for anyone to visualise what all that money can buy you.

Tomorrow is chateau time.

And you don't have to spend a cent!

Automation proof jobs

Are you worried that your job will be automated in future?

Today's most highly regarded jobs did not exist a couple of decades ago.

Digital marketer, anyone? Or the swelling ranks of growth hackers? And molecular biologists? And whatever happened to nanotechnologists? 

Instagram influencers? Or YouTube celebrities?

Physiotherapists don't have to worry about their jobs being automated.

But they do worry about doing the same thing for the next 30-40 years.

Here's one way to ensure that you stay ahead of the automation curve.

Expand your skill set to things completely unrelated to your current job.

Learn a new language.

Explore a subject that has no bearing to your field of specialization.

How will this help?

You won't know until you explore the possibilities.

True story. A friend's son has a unique gift. He can pick up a new language in less than 3 months.

He's been hired by an international bank which requires documentation to be translated into multiple languages.

They've retrenched hundreds of people doing regular bank functions.

But his skill is irreplaceable.

And the value of what he does rises exponentially every year.

There may be machine translations - but he beats what they do by miles.

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The ones that resembled phone directories are long gone.

They used to be a staple of the big chains for holiday shopping over the years.

The internet ensured that it was no longer necessary to print them.

So why did IKEA move out of a catalog into a podcast?

And why would anyone want to listen?

Put yourself in IKEA's position - catalogs are getting outdated but if they're your most potent marketing weapon, you have to find other ways to get the same traction.

So, how do you make it interesting?

Build it around subjects people care about.

Getting a good night's sleep, for example.

That includes turning off the lights and putting your mind at rest instead of worrying about what you'll need to finish tomorrow.

And throughout that experience of relaxation, product names and descriptions are inserted.

The bed for example. Or the mattress. The bedside lights you need to have if you wake up at night.

IKEA knows podcasts are hot. And rather than schedule an IKEA ad into popular shows, they're trying to create one.

You may not listen to a bland description of products.

But if the benefits are woven into the narrative, who knows?

The Kirana shop list goes electronic

The neighborhood stores were reborn in the pandemic.

Customers discovered they were the lifeline to groceries and vegetables at short notice.

Most are just a phone call away and all it takes to order stuff is  announce which house or apartment block you are calling from - and tell them what is required

The entire shop's CRM probably resides on WhatsApp or the contact list on the shopkeeper's phone.

They don't have the funds or tech bandwidth for anything fancier. 

The same holds true for the small restaurants in neighborhoods who have their regulars calling in on the phone to place orders

So when Google invests $27 million in a one year old start-up targeting this segment there must be a reason.

DotPe enables electronic ordering for Kiranas. The idea is to enroll every single neighborhood shop and then route orders to them through the app.

Like a Shopify on the mobile 

What's promoted on the website is discoverability and ease of use.

They are hoping that it becomes the one app through which customers order everything around the neighborhood.

With global giants courting small shopkeepers in India, the race has well and truly begun

No stone is being left unturned.

The lesser known Covid victories

In March 2020, alarm bells were already ringing in hospitals around the world.

They knew that this was no ordinary virus.

The news reports largely focused on the spread worldwide, vaccine development and clinical trials.

In hospitals, however, doctors were trying out new ways to counter the rampaging virus.

In  UK, Prof Martin Landray, a doctor and designer of large-scale drug trials, and Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, one of the world's biggest funders of medical research -  started a program called Recovery.

It launched within 9 days of their meeting and made it easy to evaluate, track, analyse and publish what was working - and what was not . So doctors could be aware.

Clinical trials are long, bureaucratic and take years before anything is implementable. That changed with the program.

At Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center phase 1 trials of a nasal spray, appear to have helped numerous moderate-to-serious cases of COVID-19 quickly recover from the disease. That could be another long-term solution.

The largest one underway is Solidarity by WHO - where nearly 12000 patients at 500 hospital sites from 30 countries are working together.

It may be the best thing globalization achieved

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Google and Facebook can only point you in the direction of an online purchase.

But Amazon is the place to fulfil it - at least a large chunk.

So, what happens when Amazon becomes an advertising platform?

In case you haven't noticed, there are now 'Sponsored Products' on Amazon.

And those ads are paid for by companies

The digital equivalent of in-store advertising in the real world.

You've walked into the store and you're about to pick up your favorite brand of noodles, when you see the competition making an attractive offer.

And you switch.

That's exactly how it works on the Amazon store.

Just when you're about to purchase, you get alternatives.

And marketers have been looking at this pretty closely - because it goes beyond intent to the actual transaction.

So does it make sense to allocate marketing budgets at that precise point and influence the customer? It's already earning Amazon huge revenues -  over $20 billion in 2020  

The interesting part is revenue comes from both, advertising and the sale.

And that's what the competition fears.

Right now, they just have to grin and bear it, while Amazon's advertising business mops up marketing spends as well!

An octopus tugs at your heartstrings

The tentacles reach out and grab you.

But not in the way you expect it to.

My Octopus Teacher is a documentary on Netflix. 

For Indians, the word documentary is equated to dreary. Documentaries from the Films Division of the government played out in all theatres in the 70s and 80s. Black & white and boring.

Sleep-inducing and even though they lasted for around for 10-12 minutes, it felt like hours had passed.

And when the main feature film came on, there were audible sighs of relief.

I don't want to spoil this wonderful film for you.

It is meditative and contemplative of the bonds we should build with nature. As opposed to a complete lack of it in our urban, tech-infused existence.

The emphasis in our lives is placed on how quickly, how easily and how much we  accumulate -  wealth, status or privilege.

It's films like this which show us what we can aspire to. And how it can be fulfilling for the soul.

Simply by revisiting the clichés about what 'wild' creatures really are. 

We talk of migrating to other planets when we've not explored the oceans in our backyard.

It's more profound than we can imagine

Here's something to chew on

In the 90s, it was part of a movie villain's menacing buildup. 

Singapore acted to make chewing gum illegal around the same time after it gummed up doors on the subway. People left remnants everywhere, including park benches, but now, it isn't the nuisance it once was.

So have we moved on? 

Since 2007, ever since the iPhone was launched, the market for chewing gum has shrunk every year.

It's no longer cool to sit in college canteens and move jaws mechanically while feigning disinterest in pretty girls.

Amazing how it reduced humans to bovine status.

Cows chewed cud. They brought up the stuff from their many stomachs and then ruminated over it for hours.

How it got adopted by a couple of generations as the essence of a casual attitude will remain a mystery.

After the smartphone launched, people have been more active with scrolling thumbs than masticating mouths. Plus, it tends to come in the way of clear conversations.

Wrigley's has introduced new flavors including sugar-free variants. But the downward trajectory continues.

Covid seems to have accelerated the slide.

Stuck at home, mouth hygiene has languished, much like party wear.

For those who've scraped it off shoes, it's good riddance.

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What is it with the internet and cats?

The 'original' of a digital pixelated cat creating a rainbow trail behind it sold recently for $500,000.

What's happening here? Digital work that anyone can access selling for huge sums of money.

Keep the focus on ownership.

Everyone can see the art. Ownership is another matter altogether

You can look at the Mona Lisa by walking into the Louvre. But owning it is a different ball game

Here's where the internet, art and blockchain are converging.

If you can establish ownership of any piece of art, you won't need certificates of authenticity from the powers that be.

And that's what sets the cat among the pigeons.

There is already a huge debate on whether NFTs ( Non-Fungible Tokens) will be short-term fads.

Or a way for artists and creators to establish ownership and get royalty for their work every time the work is traded or changes hands

Don't worry about the NFT bit. All it means is that you can establish which one is the original in a sea of duplicates.

It may be used to verify art and artefacts in the real world than the virtual one - but we'll see how that evolves.

Recycling creative ideas

They shine under the arc lights on highways. Or at strategic urban crossings.

Towering over the traffic and a prominent feature of every cityscape.

Stretching for tens or hundreds of feet and visible from long distances.

Billboards, or 'hoardings' are they're called in India have always been larger than life.

Over the last couple of decades, they grew high tech and glossy.

The old ways of painters perched on rickety scaffolding and painstakingly drawing the design is long gone.

In its place is the cold efficiency of mounting and stretching the pre-printed vinyl across steel frames in a matter of hours.

Until they are stripped away and the tough material goes on to provide shelters for slums. Or thrown into landfills.

Rareform in the US has breathed new life into old creatives.

What started from a fishing village in El Salvador, the printed designs are reinvented to make everything from surfboard covers to glossy bags - stylish backpacks  or duffel bags. Even mobile phone covers.

It's UV protected, waterproof and withstands harsh outdoor conditions. The bright colors and unusual designs make them attractive. 

The company claims it has reused over 3 million pounds of creatives!

Recycled ideas can be a hit.

The toothbrush that stuffs your mouth

They haven't changed much for decades.

The bristles can be soft, medium or hard and you can opt for a bamboo handle if you think your toothbrush should be sustainable.

But the basic shape with the angled head has stayed constant.

The motorised toothbrushes haven't quite innovated either.

Instead of moving the handle you simply have to place the bristles in the right position.

This new design won't win any awards for good looks. And it seems effective, using an industrial kind of effort aligned to the shape of your teeth.

Imagine a denture-shaped toothbrush.

It brushes all your top teeth at one go. Then flip the head and brush the bottom row.

The claim - that you can finish brushing your teeth in 10 seconds. As if it's is the biggest time-waster in a day.

And going from 2 minutes to 10 seconds, what are you going to do? Catch another 10 TikTok videos?

That's not a benefit, it's more time wasted

However, the unusual design is definitely a stopper. And like an invasion inside your mouth. Not to speak of the amount of toothpaste required.

Seems a bit kinky. But it could be an unexpected hit.

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Talk about coincidences.

The original brain behind Zumba, the world-wide exercise routine was built around a set of dominoes that started tumbling in Cali, Columbia.

A city familiar to most people who watched the Netflix series, Narcos.

Cali was the capital around which Escobar's empire grew.

But the first Alberto, or Berto was a 15 year old dance instructor in the middle of the bedlam. Dancing away and making others dance to his tune.

Zumba began with a mistake when Berto forgot the regular dance routine tape and improvised with his class to do a high-energy combo the class loved.

The name Zumba was a play on another dance form Rumba, which is now more famous as the robot vacuum cleaner

On a trip to the US, he decided that he wanted to find fame and fortune.

He sold everything he had and then moved to Miami. Where the second Alberto came into the picture and was the one networked to gyms

But the third Alberto taught the first one English because that was the condition investors placed - that the Zumba instructional video should be in English

And then, the wave of Zumba instructors just lined up for classes.

Be in several places at the same time

Architects may have multiple projects underway.

Even if things slowed down dramatically during the pandemic

Openspace AI enables them to supervise several sites at one time without actually being present

Anyone on site can walk around with a camera on the helmet and a 360 degree view of site progress is captured and transmitted to the cloud

The architect or project managers involved can track construction activity without being physically present.

Time and geo stamped, mapping the stages of the project as an overlay over the previous capture .

Over time, the changes in the site can be relayed to assess and monitor progress as per plan.

It won't eliminate the need for personal site inspection altogether.

On the Openspace Ai capture, annotations can be made of the view obtained and sent back to site for making the necessary changes.

Architects can also use it to brief clients and document project progress, since it reduces the frequency of visits required.

The traditional ways of managing construction with site visits may soon get to be the exception rather than the rule.

Little by little, the physical spaces we need to inhabit by compulsion is shrinking

Not just because of the pandemic.

What exactly does bootstrapping involve?

It's what startups do before they raise money. Or get customers, for that matter.

Investopedia explains 'It became a metaphor for achieving success with no outside assistance'.

People know Zappos as one of the largest online shoe stores.

But what was the starting point?

The excel sheets and market reports point to the size of the market and year on year growth. But for every company trying to establish a base, figuring how to attract customers is the biggest issue.

So what did they do? One of the founders walked across to shoe stores in the vicinity of their office and snapped pictures of shoes on display.

That went up on the site as inventory.

If they got an order, they simply walked to the store, bought it and shipped it off to customers.

What they were testing was whether customers would buy shoes online because until then, no one had ever done it.

There was no playbook or guide to fall back on. It was learning by doing.

Any business idea can only be evaluated by one parameter - do customers exist and are they willing to pay the price you're asking?

The rest are assumptions, not business plans for success.

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Most countries aren't anywhere close.

South Korea offers a glimpse of what could happen when practically the whole population is online - 96%.

Blazing internet speeds and high urban saturation 

In addition, the work culture follows the Chinese model - 996. 

9 am - 9 pm, 6 days a week. That leaves little time or inclination to go shopping on the one day people get off from work.

The company leading the pack online is Coupang. They invested early in logistics and delivery infrastructure getting a head start and built an advantage. 

Nearly 50% of the citizens order from the company everyday, or every few days.

Any other company entering the space will find it challenging to replicate the infrastructure and compete.

Customers can place orders until midnight and get goods delivered before 7 am the next morning.

While the pandemic has accelerated change, it is clear that people don't feel the need to go shopping at large stores anymore.

The weekly or monthly trips to get all necessities for the house may no longer be required.

Like Work from Home, Shop From Home could be a fundamental shift.

And that has big implications on how real world retail will evolve.

The food fight on Facebook

The New York Times has a group on Facebook built around food.

So far, so good.

It grew from a few thousand people over the years to over 77 thousand.

And a trickle of problems became a flood.

Turns out that even something as wholesome as food can become nasty.

And it isn't on account of spoiled food.

It's the way people respond and react to posts.

Fights break out on brand choices around mayonnaise - people are so passionate about their choices, they get into spiteful arguments and it spins out of control.

It becomes pretty clear that the clashes grow from differences in perception and points of view.

To maintain the peace, rules had to be made. But how do you impose rules in a group where no one is stopped from posting?

So arguments around food and presentation stray into politics.

And that is a recipe for disaster.

Even if no one on the group is discussing political beliefs, it hangs around like yesterday's dishes.

The moderators have to step in and defuse situations - and it has got to the point where the New York Times is asking for outside help to manage.

Food for thought?

Cut and slice. The new relaxation routine

Do you know how to cut a pomegranate perfectly?

A video showing an easy way to do it has over 3 million views on YouTube.

If you have never bought the fruit because of its complex structure, give it a second chance.

I have a sneaky suspicion that the popularity of fruits is directly proportional to the ease with which they can be cut and consumed.

Bananas are nature's best design example - from peeling to eating in just a couple of seconds.

Apples closely follow suit.

Surprisingly, dragon fruits with their thick interwoven bulbs are a piece of cake. Slice them horizontally and you get two perfect halves to dig into.

It may seem like a painful task but cutting fruits is a bit like listening to music while cooking.

The underrated benefit? Polishing your cutting and slicing skills.

You can let your mind wander and dwell on other things while you pluck grapes, slice papayas and skin the prickly pineapples.

And of course, your dexterity improves significantly.

Each fruit has it's own set of peculiarities.

So pick out different ones for each day of the week.

Instead of limiting your options to the most obvious choices at the market.

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Before iPods and CDs, there were audio cassette tapes.

Now forgotten in the lofts of old houses, you'll still find old collections gathering dust

The inventor, Lou Ottens of Eindhoven company, Philips has just passed away at the age of 93.

Another milestone in an audio journey that played out over a couple of decades.

Cassette tapes attained the heights of their popularity in the late 60s and by the early 80s, they were on their way out, having conceded ground to the vastly more popular CDs.

But in those 20 plus years, over 100 billion cassettes were sold. Like razors without blades, the cassettes were of no use without devices to play them on.

They were also temperamental. Tapes would suddenly unravel - getting sucked into a tangled mess inside the players was fairly common and pencils would be used to 'rewind' them, literally, if they survived intact

The change today is that everything has fused into one. The device and the music are no longer separate.

Chargers and wires are the new cassette tapes. Long after the device is replaced, they languish in drawers, separated like umbilical cords and cast aside.

Added to the debris of memories.

Here’s what the inventor of cassette tapes had to say: "I am not a psychologist, but that music experience is of course all nonsense. Nothing can match the sound of the CD. It is absolutely noise and rumble free. That never worked with tape. But who am I to say what's better, I'm over ninety and have old ears. I have made a lot of record players and I know that the distortion with vinyl is much higher. But some people call it "warm audio." I think people mostly hear what they want to hear. But there are always madmen who want to look back to the past. There is always a market for that.”

What if you gave politicians ranks?

New York is looking to vote differently to select its Mayor in the elections .

In India, you choose one candidate over all the others.

And that's where the difference lies.

The voters there will rank the candidates according to their preference, all the way from 1-5.

If that sounds confusing, here is a detailed explainer.

It isn't very new, apparently. Australia has been voting this way for the last 100 years.

The idea is to have various campaign approaches instead of merely putting one vs all. So politicians spend more time telling people why their ideas are better and try to convince the electorate.

There are parallels in branding - where you try and sell one brand over the others in the market by promoting a different set of benefits and customers vote with their purses every time they shop.

Packaging one set of benefits vs the competition. And if they're convinced, people give the brand a chance.

There are times when brands go head to head, like in the latest Sebamed campaign. Where pH became the selling point in a market that simply never considered it earlier.

But marketing isn't like politics, is it?

Can customers make money off the brands they buy?

Strange question, probably.

If customers are the reasons brands exist, should they earn a share of the brand's success? It doesn't happen usually.

There is a brand which put this into practice.

One of the most successful craft beer brands in the US.

Created by a person whose family had been in the beer business for decades - and knew popular taste centered around light beers, or 'water with froth' - the dominant ones that ruled the market for decades.

Beers with a deep, distinct flavor were rarities  - unlikely to ever succeed

Jim Koch launched Sam Adams, named after a patriarch among brewers who represented a 'beer revolution' and 'beer independence' for the United States.

In the early days, he went around from bar to bar with cold cans and tried to get owners to place orders for them.

It took decades but over time, Sam Adams became wildly successful.

And for the IPO, they put in a coupon on the six packs of beer that allowed customers to buy 33 shares at $15 per share. 

130,000 people sent in cheques that amounted to $65 million.

For once, customers also profited from a brand's success.

That's fair compensation!

Here’s the full podcast episode

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When Amit Mishra was jailed in connection with his wife's suicide, it was the worst thing that ever happened to him.

When he emerged a year later having proved his innocence, he had built a software solution jail authorities are now adopting across the entire network of prisons, starting with Haryana.

The problem he solved - helping people who had served their sentences to appeal for release.

In the earlier bureaucratic system that existed, prisoners languished far beyond the sentences they had to serve.

By putting the details of the sentence online, wardens and the authorities concerned could determine the terms of release without having to go through the layers of  existing procedures.

It's a rare story because requirements gathering usually happens in comfortable environments.

But Amit Mishra saw the deficiencies in the system and the havoc it was creating. And experiencing it first hand gave him a clear idea of how the problem could be solved.

The software, a prison management system is being used to frame guidelines for the future and implemented across all prisons in due course.

It's named Phoenix. About rising from the ashes.

A renewal of life and aspirations for others as well.

Do you sign with a flourish?

Do you keep it plain or follow what the star autographs do?

Arcing from the beginning to the end or taking one letter and dramatizing it.

If it has a 'G' or an 'E', it allowed for variations on a theme.

The 'G' could loop infinitely below and return to fly past the round head of the letter.

The signature used to come into play for opening bank accounts.

At that point, you did it self-consciously.

It had to be to be stylish but not so difficult to replicate that the bank would reject a cheque in future.

And this is where parental or star influence came to the fore. In most cases, it was modeled on the way a parent signed - mostly on report cards.

I admired the way my father looped the initial 'P' in his name and sloped the rest of of the letters before an underline that emphasized it.

That was definitely my inspiration.

These days, you almost never have to sign a cheque - just punch PINs.

But important documents still require a signature - everything from a driving license to a PAN card to passports.

Your last surviving trace of individuality in a digital world

Some YouTube stars are moving out

Imagine you have a great thing going on YouTube as a creator.

Millions of views, a growing subscriber base and money deposited into your account every month.

Life couldn't be better, right?

Now, it turns out that some prominent creators are building their own backup plan.

They don't want to be in a situation where YouTube dictates terms to them.

And they're a little tired of all the trolling and nastiness that seems to come along with universal free access  

So, they've built an alternative.

They didn't migrate to another video service but built one owned and operated only by creators.

It's called Floatplane and they know it will never be as big as YouTube.

But they can build and sustain their own communities here because only paying customers are allowed.

As YouTube stars know, the bigger their fan bases grow, the more dependent they become.

Cutting the connecting cord altogether will result in a complete loss of revenue.

So, they are hedging their bets. New episodes premier for their paid fans first on their own channel - and then the same episode goes up on YouTube a week later.

If this becomes an exodus, things could get interesting.

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