The Branded and Gilded Life

We've all seen the grainy footage from newsreels long ago.

Everyone looks as if they're starring in a Charlie Chaplin film comically moving at a fast trot.

Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy turned his attention to real life events a few years ago.

In 2018, he released a documentary edited from over 100 hours of footage of the first world war from the Imperial War Archives.

The film was called 'They Shall not Grow Old' and received a BAFTA nomination for the best documentary that year.

When you see the trailer, it's hard to believe that the film was not shot recently. The colour palette and the movement have been restored to a pristine condition and the film takes you back to what it meant being a soldier in the barracks in 1914.

The audio was restored as well and it's an amazing trip back in time.

Jackson has now put the spotlight on the most iconic music group of the last century - The Beatles. Comprising of footage shot from nearly 60 hours of their music recordings in 1969, it captured the magic that the creative process involves.

We often think about what it took to make the creative leap and while it is hard to document, music offers a glimpse - with all the camaraderie, the controversy, the backbiting and the egos clashes involved.

And we see the nuts and bolts of a classic come into being. Something a time machine allows you to do.

Be in the studio during a recording and in the trenches during the war.

Hacking diabetes treatment

For those patients diagnosed with diabetes early on, managing the condition is a challenge.

They can swing between low and high blood sugar levels over the course of a day, depending on the diet intake and exercise. 

In most cases, it involves taking blood samples from the finger several times a day and calculating the precise amount of insulin that needs to be injected.

An open source project - Automated Insulin Delivery (AID) systems automatically adjust the insulin doses required by the body and keeps it steady.

The problem is that this is not a standard measure and has to be calibrated for each person depending on their condition.

And among the several issues involved, this delivery system was created by people who weren't medical professionals or by certified labs.

In what is possibly a medical landmark, these systems have been approved by a team of medical experts from Kings College in London.

While there are blood pressure and glucose monitors that have been built into smart watches, this is the kind of progress that will have far-reaching impact.

There's even a term in the report which describes it - citizen led science.

Traditionally, this kind of research could have taken years because of the regulatory controls that are in place for good reason.

No one wants the process trivialised or patients falling victims to scams.

While it could help patients with severe diabetes manage their condition better, there are significant risks from overdosing and needs to be used with abundant caution by patients who know the risks involved.

Pass the salt, please

It is the first thing that doctors ask people to cut from their diets to counter blood pressure or a cardiac issue.

But salt is far more essential to life than we can fathom.

It may be the least expensive item on the kitchen shelf, but it has fueled wars and revolutions when access or supply was restricted.

The largest consumer of salt in the world is the US but it's not related to diets at all - salt is the only way to keep roads navigable after snowstorms.

It's used to de-ice roads and keep traffic flowing.

Salt domes are what geologists look for in the hunt for oil reserves. Salt rocks are impenetrable, and the organic matter trapped within gradually becomes oil over centuries. The US emergency reserves of oil are stored in salt mines.

And here's the interesting bit. The amount of salt in the human body at 0.4 % of body weight is roughly equal to the salt concentration in seawater.

At 70 kgs of body weight, we have roughly 280 gms of salt. And when we lose it through sweat, it has to be continually replaced because it plays a key role in many functions, from the quality of blood to transmission of nerve signals.

And the simplest way to beat dehydration is to replace the salt. All those electrolytes are mostly sodium. 

Let's not forget our own tryst with salt - the Dandi march by Mahatma Gandhi was a shrewd and game changing move because the English underestimated the power it would have.

The salt of the earth is the salve of our lives.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

This will remain one of those hard to decipher phenomena.

While India's UPI has recently crossed $100 billion in digital transactions a month, the amount of banknotes in circulation in India has reached an all-time high as well.

This from the DNA newspaper: RBI data revealed that the currency amount with the public stood at a record high of Rs 28.30 lakh crores for the fortnight ending October 8, 2021. This is up 57.48% or Rs 10.33 lakh crores from a level of Rs 17.97 lakh crores on November 4, 2016. Cash with the public has shot up 211% from Rs 9.11 lakh crore, recorded on November 25, 2016.

So, a surge in digital transactions does not seem to be cutting into the cash economy. They are both galloping.

In case you thought this was curiously Indian, it's global.

The Economist article about $75 billion in pound sterling floating around in the global economy out of which the central bank only has a clear view into about $25 billion.

The rest? No one has a clue.

While the local paan and tea shops are now accepting UPI, cash is finding new friends. But no one knows who they are.

And curiously enough, central bankers don't seem unduly worried or concerned with the amount of money being printed or the notes in circulation.

Like smiles, the value of money only seems to increase, no matter whether it is exchanged in digital bits or little pieces of paper.

How lazy is your file saving method?

It should be simple. 

A file name should accurately describe the contents of the file, so that it can be easily retrieved later. That's the theory.

The practice is something else altogether. People have their own individual logic that makes no sense to anyone else. For example, save file names by date, and put it in a folder pertaining to a subject.

That's as good as not having a file name at all because a few days later, everyone has forgotten the date on which it was created and opening up several files to check is frustrating.

Maybe the old systems of physical files were better. Since retrieval was physical, you could quickly go back years (provided the people managing the system were organised) and find what you wanted.

But now that you can save files without thinking, that is exactly what happens. It is absolute chaos when you have to find anything at all.

In the digital world, we're far less organised than we are in the real one. And we are under the mistaken impression that 'Search' will find everything we need at short notice.

There should be a logic that applies - and a system. But trying to get everyone in line to follow is a losing battle.

In physical archives like newsrooms and libraries, you can easily go back decades. That's because a few trained people managed the filing system.

It seems to be a trivial problem. But if everyone decides to follow their own conventions, which is the case, it is a recipe for chaos.

And there's little chance of good sense prevailing anytime soon.

The forlorn daily newspaper

It was one of the early casualties of Covid.

From March 2020 onwards, anything that came from outside was viewed with suspicion, disinfected and sanitised before being brought in.

The pile of newspapers collected outside the front door during the lockdown.

We asked our delivery guy to stop, but he didn't. A habit formed over decades can't come to a screeching halt. And newspapers themselves were trying to navigate the fog.  TV and digital sources became the favoured dispensers for those with access.

Every single newspaper knew that this was going to be an existential crisis. They had to figure out a way to survive. And the end of a habit would mean the end of long-held relationships.

They knew that if people stopped reading newspapers, they would not return to the daily routine.

Too many distractions were already available. Perhaps the local aspect of the news was the only thing that kept some of the big names going.

But the cuts were deep in terms of people who lost jobs, news agents who had to find new ways to get from one day to another. A system that had braved and beaten floods and the weather had found a hard to defeat foe.

We still get the newspaper. But it goes into a rarely read stack that gets weighed and sold to the friendly neighborhood recycler every few months.

He confirmed that his own business was now down because people had stopped buying newspapers altogether.

The advertisers on the front page now include crypto exchanges promising heady returns. And like the currency, the returns too will be ephemeral.

Covid didn't just hit people. It infected long-standing business models and left them gasping.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

We remember school days with nostalgia.

But we also remember those days for another reason - time seemed to move so much more slowly. Each period in class stretched like it would never end, especially the ones with teachers who made subjects a dreary bore.

We envied adults who had independence and they went about their day as they pleased - even if we never quite understood why they seemed harried at times.

A scientist has come up with another explanation.

His theory is that as we age, the size and complexity of the neurons in our brain increases. With age, the accumulated damage to our neurons increases resistance to the flow of electrical information and we process everything slower. 

Think of it as a camera firing at a rapid frame rate when you're young. So, you see much more of what's happening and time seems to flow slowly.

But as you age, the frame rate slows down and time speeds up. So, in your mind, events blur and everything seems to rush past.

Ultimately, this is rooted in our perception. The passage of time, or the speed at which it moves doesn't change.

But there is a flaw in this reasoning. Because once people retire or get back to a life less eventful, time slows down again.

Or is that a mirage? Does time simply ebb or rush depending on how interesting or insipid life is?

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

We're changing the search engine that changed us

We don't see what happens in the split second after entering a search query.

There are millions of search terms being fed into Google everyday and it has become, whether we like it or not, the pulse of our digital existence.

Right from the beginning, Google showed people the sites that other people favored - Page Rank is collective intent, graded by popularity.

As opposed to keywords, which could be easily gamed, Google watched traffic flows and graded websites accordingly.

It created a hierarchy of authority - at the top were government and educational domains. The sites that these linked to got a bit of the authority trickle down to them.

From 3.9 million searches a day in 1999, there are now over 6 billion searches a day on Google. It shows the astounding range of subjects that search has expanded to cover.

Our questions shaped the directions in which Google's algorithm evolved.

Before Google, the questions remained in our minds. Now, Google knows the trends in the world as they form and spread, rippling through the digital universe and uncovering hidden hopes, dreams and aspirations.

There are positives and negatives, much like the vagaries of human nature. The idyllic world of 1999, where we thought the internet would only be a force for good is long gone.

In it's place, we have the best and the worst traits rise to the surface and fight for primacy. And we're still trying to understand what the long-term consequences will be.

Google is the genie we built from our wishes.

Is nuclear power making a comeback?

In 2021, two countries have announced that they will significantly ramp up nuclear power plants.

China announced that it would be building over 150 new ones and France has followed suit, saying that new reactors would be built.

This goes against the grain of how the world sees nuclear power, especially after the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters significantly impacted public perceptions.

India is already the world's 3rd largest renewable energy producer with 38% of its power coming from renewables.

Germany generates over 45%% of the power it consumes from renewables and that percentage is rising

But that model does not seem to be universally acceptable. Some countries have decided that they will move from coal or fossil fuel to nuclear power instead of renewables.

As climate change begins to have a real impact on economies, countries are reacting differently and their goals are to keep energy costs low. And since it is among the largest components of keeping economies going, there is no wiggle room.

So a dark horse, namely nuclear power, is coming to the fore when all possibilities have been considered.

It's not what the environmentalists would have wanted but each country is jockeying for energy independence. They have seen how energy can become a political hot potato with rising prices leading to inflation.

Another aspect that comes into play is energy dependence leads to compromises having to be made on various other fronts, which may not be apparent or ever enter public discourse.

And countries want to hold their own aces when they negotiate at the head table. 

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

Anyone who has worked on images knows the titan - Adobe Photoshop

Used by experts, pranksters and hobbyists, Photoshop gives you immense control.

You can darken or lighten complexions, change backgrounds, introduce fresh objects and do much more.

The photo 'retouching' that used to happen in studios decades ago had skilled artists physically restore old prints and faded photographs. 

Studio artists now use Photoshop or GIMP if the business is oriented towards open source and does not want to pay for expensive licenses.

Of late, there's a trend of one single feature in Photoshop becoming a plugin or a product all by itself.

RemoveBG, for example, removes the background that people have been photographed against and a new background can be added. That's it. One of the problems with removing backgrounds was cutting out the irregular edges around hair. That used to take a long time in the early versions of Photoshop.

Now, it's just a single click.

Cleanup has launched recently - the promise is that it will remove objects, people, text or defects from pictures. 

Instagram started a billion dollar business with nothing more than fancy filters to be applied to digital photographs - and that was enough to get millions of people hooked.

It's quite an evolution - from black and white to color to digital to transformation of images. Then, the setting up of companies that simply store and transmit images for ecommerce sites, like Imagekit. They serve over a billion images a month.

This was a change few saw coming - and how it will evolve is anyone's guess.

Update: The speed with which AI is changing these short-lived business models is to be seen to be believed in 2023

Photo Courtesy: Reynier Carl on Unsplash

In business, nothing is a 'sure thing'

You can have a great track record.

And be a stock market favourite without a pause for years.

Spend months on projections that play out elaborate scenarios.

And then, find that things don't go according to plan, or even close to what was predicted.

Zillow is a well-known listings site for homes in the US.

And they had built enough market credibility for a plan that seemed simple on the face of it.

Buy homes available on the market using AI to determine the best options, make the necessary improvements and sell it for a sizeable profit.

It has been done by smaller operators who could manage a few homes a year and they earned much more than a commission on broking.

So far, so good.

They raised a war chest of $450 million from hugely interested investors.

There were even articles in the media that Zillow would drive up prices for everyone with this move. Like brokers slowly but surely kept prices going up in the high demand neighborhoods.

The company moved aggressively ahead and bought up available homes across the country in a massive spree that lasted for months.

Then, all of a sudden came the announcement that Zillow had paused purchases. A few days later, that they were letting over 2000 people go.

And they're writing down purchases of over $300 million.

What just happened?

In a market where the demand for houses goes through cycles, Zillow found that managing everything from buying to refurbishing to selling took a lot longer than estimated.

On a small scale, it looked like a massive business waiting to be tapped.

But then, the gap became too hard to bridge during the pandemic. The 'sure thing' became the impossible.

Telegram tries old style advertising targeting on its channels.

Even the holdouts seem to have switched gears.

Telegram is now open to brands advertising on specific channels with over a 1000 members.

But they don't allow external links or tracking.

So how does it work? In the good old way, by contextual targeting of the channel and ads limited to 160 characters.

That is a hard to sell proposition. 

It's not enough to get through to 18–25-year-olds. You need to be able to target 18–25-year-old profiles who play a certain set of games, visit Starbucks twice or thrice a day and live in a particular geographical area - just saying. It is a lot more granular than that.

Facebook has spoiled the game for general purpose advertising where the audience is loosely defined and served.

Apple put the brakes on them by preaching privacy. But going back to advertisers spending money hoping for a connect with a small percentage of viewers is over.

And digital platforms only have themselves to blame for having defined audience segments so narrowly. They're stuck in a groove that gets deeper by the day.

Telegram has also raised the entry level for brands by setting $ 2,000,000 as the minimal spend per year. And if advertisers don't spend the money in the time contracted, they don't get a refund - at least that is what one of the comments states.

The attraction, of course, is that base of over 500 million active users. But clients who spend millions of dollars are a lot more demanding.

Telegram may have to climb down from a high horse to make this work.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

We first experienced it at the hostel.

Bored with the predictable fare served every day, we would escape at least 3-4 times a week to the little shack beyond the gates. 

The omelets dripped in oil and were sandwiched between two crusty slices of toast. Yet, we'd wolf it down and be back for more.

The shack was owned by Guru and he taught us how business could be run with a customer base of mostly broke college kids.

He knew what we liked and cooked everything on a small kerosene stove, making omelets one at a time. We were in no hurry, dawdling over idle conversations.

Anything fancy to whet our appetites was far beyond reach on the measly pocket money parents allowed every month.

It had to accommodate snacks, soft drinks, biscuits, movies and cigarettes. 

We had a 'running' account at Guru's much like students across the country would have had their own saviors.

Extended credit and collections at the beginning of the next month.

Now I wonder how he made ends meet. With over 100-150 student regulars, I guess there was some business logic that kept things going.

He would even come up with unusual concoctions like 'Cabbage Vadas' - it tasted a lot better than it sounds.

We were never curious about how Guru managed to survive. He was an ex-bank employee trying to get by. But there was no self-pity or hard luck story - he liked the anonymity.

It's probably more commonplace than we think. 

Unless Zomato and Swiggy have now taken over the omelet economy.

Image source: https://cookpad.com/in/recipes/14831641-kolkata-street-style-bread-omelette-dim-powroti

Why do we find mimics funny?

Most of the time, the routine involves film actors or politicians.

And unless the actor is popular, the connect does not work.

So why do imitations make us laugh?

In a sense, mimics are like cartoonists performing live.

Caricatures capture and exaggerate aspects of a person's features. Longer noses, wider foreheads, steely jaws are all tools of the trade to tell a joke through illustrations.

Mimics rely on your awareness of the actor's or the politician's mannerisms. They observe and latch on to things that the actor repeats - sometimes unconsciously. And when it is played back, the realisation makes us laugh.

Mimics pick on male actors practically all the time. There aren't too many routines involving female actors. And that's a bit of a mystery.

Take the actor Taapsee Pannu. Observe the way she talks - her mouth moves slightly off centre and it is quite noticeable when you watch her on screen. Those are the things a mimic will concentrate on - the deviations from the normal and push it even further.

Akshay Kumar speaks in a slow drawl, even when he's making mighty threats. Now that's comic gold, because all the mimic has to do is to slow the drawl and build a situation around it.

As babies, we learn by mimicking the people around us. And that's a lifelong fascination - when we soak into the mannerisms and behavior of people we admire.

Haven't you looked into a mirror and tried walking or speaking like someone else? I rest my case.

Is too much information a dangerous thing?

There's information abundance today - but the side effects are terrible.

On Kindle, the estimate is that there are over 7500 new books being published everyday! Not to speak of millions of blogs, social media posts and videos being uploaded every minute.

The fact that anyone can publish has opened the floodgates for 'creators' with no restrictions whatsoever.

The editors and publishing houses were the gatekeepers of an earlier age.

To a large extent, they controlled and channeled public taste.

The same thing has happened in news, politics, fashion, movies and sports.

The results of this abundance?

Public taste and norms are splintering. It's hard to build a consensus around anything anymore.

Take, for example, vaccinations. There's a tremendous amount of information around the subject. Right from how they were developed, tested and the rollout of vaccinations being undertaken around the world.

But there's no such thing as a unified point of view. People who believe in an opposing stream of thought will find supporters, no matter how extreme.

The simplistic view is that we need gatekeepers. We cannot make up our minds about something unless we have trusted sources.

But trust takes time to build in a world governed by the immediate. There's nothing called instant trust.

Naively, we believed that abundance would only be for good. But it's equally true of deliberately false information. And that is leading to subversion around core human values, both in thought and action.

We're experiencing the limits of our abilities to judge and make choices. And algorithms cannot be the solution.

Maybe information diets need to become a thing!

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

When Hertz signed off on an order for 100,000 Teslas to be delivered within 14 months, it sent the company's stock soaring to over a trillion.

This single order is worth $4.2 billion, and it marks a shift in thinking.

Having an electric fleet changes the game for car rentals.

Hertz would have factored in the savings on fuel, maintenance and the charging network before making a commitment as far-reaching as this.

And it proves that EVs are now moving into the mainstream.

It is an acknowledgement that Tesla can deliver at scale as well.

While other major car manufacturers have committed to an all-electric car lineup by 2035, this is one of the goalposts being shifted along the way.

For a company to place an order of 100,000 cars on one manufacturer shows a level of confidence that should help to drive consumer confidence as well.

And that will lead to faster adoption. Once more people experience EVs, they are likely to make the shift faster. Nothing like driving a rental for a week to thoroughly get a feel and decide if this is going to be your 'regular' car.

That's good news, not just for Tesla but for the entire universe of EVs.

One of the hardest bridges to cross is the mental barrier. The next one is to create the infrastructure. And the third is to 'normalise' purchase to the point where buying an EV becomes a matter of choice, not a statement of being environmentally friendly, or anything else.

Update: Hertz placed another massive order with GM for 175000 cars The market for EVs, at least for rentals, has its foot on the accelerator.

Why 'Thank You' works, even in email

There are several customs in the real world that are part of normal social interactions.

When people help out with anything from carrying groceries to checking on friends and neighbors when they're unwell, or holding the door open in a public place, saying 'Thank you" comes naturally.

An app that aims to increase email productivity says that it works even on email.

Which is surprising because you assume that anything impersonal may not have the same effect.

Apparently, ending an email with Thanks gets the most response.

And the least responses? 'Best' and 'Regards'

Now, skeptics will immediately jump in and ask about messages that don't warrant a response.

The app did factor this in and looked only at emails that were meant to evoke a response, not just an acknowledgement.

Another clarification was about the exchange between strangers and known people, so saying 'Thank you' came more naturally.

They checked on this as well and said students were more willing to help strangers with a response when the email ended with thanks.

Some of this could be triggered simply because we're happy to help people who are polite and not pushy.

There's no solid reason for why this should work better but it is probably conditioning. We tend to accommodate requests when people ask pleasantly and then acknowledge the help.

What was more revealing is how the common salutations we tend to use, like Your Sincerely, and Faithfully seem to have practically no effect at all.

But the best way to figure out if this works for you? Try it and see the results!

A degree in social engineering

It isn't taught at any university.

But certain hackers specialise in it. They have ways of earning the trust of people in person or on the phone to get valuable information out of them.

Bank account numbers. Passwords. Social Security numbers.

The victims don't know it is an attack or that their company systems have been compromised until it is too late

In a social engineering attack, a person working in a sensitive position in a company could be approached by a friendly stranger who strikes up a conversation.

For example, they could be told that the company's network has been compromised and no one knows about it. The helpful person shows them a replica of the company page on a screen and they are invited to login.

If they make the mistake of entering company credentials on an unknown machine, they're enabling a hack.

When the login and password is entered, a blank page could be displayed, proving that the site is down.

But in reality, the hacker has managed to secure the credentials by playing on the person's trust.

And once hackers earns entry through a trusted source, they can simply ensure that future access can happen, even when this particular one is blocked off.

Fraudsters posing as bank officials or in positions of authority can get people to provide details simply by playing on their fear, or greed, with the lure of big money to be made in minutes.

Social engineering preys on the vulnerable, the technically challenged and even technical experts by appearing to come to their rescue.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

Read that carefully again.

There's a mountain of difference between being stupid and looking stupid.

And that's the focus of a great article in Hacker News.

If you're willing to ask 'dumb' questions that look obvious to a lot of people, you end up learning things they don't.

Here's an example. At a discussion on disposal of nuclear waste, everyone was focused on the harmful effects it had on the environment and people. Until someone piped up and asked "What's good about nuclear waste?'

On the face of it, a stupid question. But it opened the doors for thinking in a different direction on treating the material.

When it comes to losing at a video game, he gives the example of people blaming everything from screen lag, to teammates, to glitches. And he goes on to say how he improved at the game by examining where he went wrong, instead of making excuses.

There is a huge incentive not to 'look' stupid. Right from asking questions in class to questions at work that may seem stupid on the face of it but is valid when people stop to think about it.

The number of processes that large organisations follow is set in stone - good luck with changing that because no one wants to ask the questions that will expose shortcomings.

In any case, the most likely answer people get if they ask questions? That's the way we've always done things around here.

People hate looking stupid. And they'll do just about anything to avoid it. 

Photo by Artem Maltsev on Unsplash

A step to solve supply chain paralysis

Mainstream media is full of stories on how shipping has been disrupted around the world.

Everything is taking longer and the slippages in the chain are cascading in unpredictable ways.

Ryan Peterson is the CEO of Flexport, a logistics platform, and in the thick of trying to find a solution to cascading and knotty problems

He took a three-hour tour of the port in Long Beach to see firsthand what the problems on the ground were.

There was practically no unloading going on because of no vacant spaces available for containers to be unloaded and transported.

He identified the point at which the jam could be cleared.

The zoning at the port allows only 2 containers to be stacked at a time. He suggested that this be increased to 6 for the next 120 days. This increases the space availability by 300% right away.

He also suggested that the government create a temporary yard over a 500 acre area within a 100 kms of the inland port.

Smaller container ships and barges can be unloaded there, rather than add to the congestion at the main port.

The great part of these suggestions is that it is applicable to any port, anywhere in the world.

And if they are temporary requirements, getting government approval for processes can be achieved much faster.

He even offered to lead the effort for federal or state governments, if asked.

A Twitter thread casts light on the supply chain issue than all the handwringing and assumptions I've read so far.

Now, let's see if this spurs people into action.

Egos drive greater change than motivation does

The year? 1983.

India won the world cup for the first time and created a flutter in a sport dominated by England and Australia.

That was a time when Indian journalists were not permitted to enter MCC.

And even when India won the world cup, the top officials at BCCI found they could not procure the tickets they required.

The egos of all the top office bearers of BCCI were bruised and they decided that India should host the next world cup.

They faced resistance when the English establishment said that the sub-continent did not even have the required number of stadia to hold matches.

Another point of resistance? The number of overs had to be reduced from 60 to 50 because of the smaller daylight hours in India as compared to English summers.

Prudential refused to budge until Jagmohan Dalmiya doubled the money that would be paid out for holding the tournament in India, which dissolved all resistance.

India and Pakistan pooled their venues to jointly host the World Cup in 1987.

The fancied teams did not make it to the finals

Even then, a capacity 90,000 crowd at Eden Gardens turned up to watch the face off between England and Australia. That firmly established us as the cricket-crazy nation and marked the beginning of the English reluctantly ceding authority and control.

It was the egos that drove change, more than the lofty goal of making India the fulcrum of international cricket.

Even if it was the players who wrote history and brought home the world cup in 1983.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

Chart above copyright by FT

Facebook has been locked out of Apple's ecosystem for targeting.

And that is impacting their ad business.

Just like it is for Google 

Now, here's the sting in the tail. Apple's advertising revenue has tripled. No guessing where that came from!

By playing up the privacy angle, Apple has secured a lucrative market for itself.

Brings to mind what Amazon did a few years ago - introduced ads that almost looked like product placements and now makes over $10 billion in revenue from advertising alone. Adding to the commission it makes on sales anyway.

What Facebook and Google see now is that it is important to be a destination and not just the conduit.

That power and traffic was an illusion.

Apple has to protect that market. What was dominant play by the search and social media giants has now become a four way race for revenue.

Expect fireworks because there will be no quarter given, only taken.

Once companies get used to a stream of this level of revenue, they begin to erect all the safeguards they can, from policy and market strategy because these are high-wire games.

One fall and the valuation as well as the share price get hammered.

A four cornered contest is better than two. Expect Google and Facebook to align with Shopify and scan markets for fast growing segments to either take over or ally with.

The advertising revenue roller-coaster has been set in motion!

The product that gets around every ban

If you ever needed proof advertising works...

In this particular category, even after it has gone off the airwaves altogether.

Cigarette advertising has been banned in several countries for decades now, but it continues to attract fresh followers.

Countries have tried everything from horrendous images on packs to obscuring the brand names to removing them from mass media advertising altogether.

But the number of smokers has not dropped dramatically.

In India, every time an actor smokes on screen, 'Smoking Kills' appears.

And yet, the perception of smoking as a cool way to flash independence and rebellion has drilled deep into the human psyche.

How else does one explain the aura that smokers seem to create around themselves and the habit?

Recently, a quiz question was asked in a WhatsApp group - why did cigarette companies spend the most money on advertising in the month of January?

The answer, it turns out is that they wanted to weaken the willpower of people who would resolve to quit on January 1st!

Wikipedia bears this out by showing advertising spends peaked in Jan. So, the pressure on smokers to return to the 'club' was immense.

Like drinking, social groups tend to follow certain customs and habits - drinking buddies and smoking breaks were the norm. And with all the backlash, smokers still congregate in groups where they find their social standing enhanced by their habits.

What Duke's American Tobacco Company started out in the early 1900 became the marketing template for every other brand to follow.

And with all the legislation, medical evidence and outright bans, nothing has stopped smokers from continuing to puff away.

"Nothing will happen to me" wins the day, every time.

A 4-year-old signed up by Arsenal?

The BBC says that Arsenal has signed on a player, who has barely learned to talk, but he dribbles like a champ.

With a real football, not into the bib around his neck!

It's time for a check. No matter how good, being hunted by a talent scout and put into the fast track of a Premier League team is about being able to handle pressure.

Even if Zayn Ali Salman is God's gift to football, let him be.

He needs to enjoy the game and freewheel for the next decade, without a care in the world. Even if he's far better than all the kids he plays with, he needs to hang out with them after the game is over.

And by marking him out as a special talent, he won't be able to build the relationships that matter. A normal childhood is hard enough. Being stalked by talent scouts who interpret every move critically is more than that little head can bear.

There's a ton of money riding on the teams' performances. They're looking for every little scrap of advantage they can get. Whether it means signing on a 4 year old, who's naturally gifted and locking the competition out

But it will play havoc with ordinary lives. The kid now has to bear the expectations of not just his family and friends but of one of the major League teams.

FOMO is not confined to social media wannabes. And in the race to stay ahead, we're taking the fun out of sports.

And putting a price on kid’s years before they are ready for the limelight. 

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

We've all got the WhatsApp forwards.

Exercise routines that need to be followed. Strengthening everything from the abs to the pectorals to the biceps.

In most cases, this degenerates into a barely comprehensible routine and for the most part, it's simply people going through the motions.

This site, Musclewiki, has managed to simplify it to the part you are interested in with a solid UX tweak. Instead of words, it connects the part of the body you need to work on to the recommended exercises.

They have a different set of graphics for men and women.

And once you click into the exercises, you're taken to a video demonstration of how it is done.

It is interesting to see these sites evolve, from a collection of exercise positions to GIFs to videos and even animations.

Question is, does this address one of the biggest problems?

Getting people to continue exercising and making it a habit.

That still seems to require a one on one with a trainer. That is the best UX of all and unlikely to change because we aren't looking for clarity alone.

We're looking for encouragement, motivation and validation that we're doing the exercises right.

And for that, a trainer is still the best way to go.

The evolution of the UX is welcome, but that's where it stops.

You have no way of knowing if you're doing the exercises right. That still requires professional oversight.

The crossover from virtual to real is still the hardest bridge to get across.

Indian midwives are possibly better than Dr. Spock!

It's not an old wives’ tale.

Scientific evidence is emerging that tummy rubs and massages for infants is a good way to keep babies growing and glowing.

We've grown increasingly suspicious of any of the traditional forms of early infant care. Which is a pity because hundreds of centuries of native expertise has been relegated to the background because - well, there's no data on it!

We require qualified doctors to put their stamp of authority and tell us what we're doing is good. 

Gary Darmstadt is professor of neonatal and developmental medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. When traveling through villages in India and Bangladesh, he saw several mothers and grandmothers massaging their newborns for hours.

And a study proved that there was a 40% reduction in the infection rate and a 20-25% reduction in mortality rates. This was on a set of nearly 500 babies.

A much larger study is underway and hopefully, it will dispel the suspicion that new mothers have.

Today, protecting children and bringing them up in a highly sanitised environment because they are seen as fragile is the accepted norm. Even though they need to build resistance to several allergens as well as bacteria and it may not be wise to keep them insulated all the time.

But that's a hard story to sell. Children with gleaming oil on their bodies and long massage regimens to be followed is not exactly convenient. 

As it is, young couples struggle with the early rigors of managing infants. And massages for the baby aren't a priority, no matter what the promised benefits are.

The fragility of startups

There's an early stage every startup has to get through.

The point from idea to product.

And discovering along the way whether customers will buy into it at all. Several hard knocks and disappointments later, the outline of what the product will become forms hazily

There's still no guarantee it will work.

Remember blowing those millions of soap bubbles that stream out looking brilliant and they burst with a single touch. Disappear completely.

People have worked on the idea for several years and evolve the concept they originally came up with.

How do they keep going through all the rejections and persist?

There's no single answer to that one. It's often about not wanting to do anything else because their belief is strong.

For instance, a story about a naval architecture graduate who thinks that boats running on solar power are the future.

He's managed to persuade a couple of ferry owners to implement it in Kerala.

There are several interests working against him. The existing engine boat manufacturers don't want their business to dry up.

And he's proven that a 20 HP solar boat can go up against the might of a 50-75 HP engine.

Add to the fact that they save tremendous amounts of money on running costs and it becomes an attractive proposition for owners.

But it is a long haul. Convincing people to put in the money, delivering to expectations and finally, establishing a market can take decades.

And that, curiously enough, seems to be the attraction that draws entrepreneurs in.

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

The posters freeze Bond in pivotal moments.

Or enhance the aura.

What most viewers never think about is that the movie posters and other shots of the cast are never derived from the footage.

There are still photographers assigned to the set and they are the ones who create the images that go into practically all of the publicity material.

The question is why?

Movie and still photography are completely different from a lighting point of view. When cinematographers light up a scene, they are looking at a moving canvas and the role of the actors in that situation.

The still photographer has to build relationships with actors to get them to repeat some of the action or do stage it with completely different lighting.

Nicola Dove specialises in still photography for movies and she's the one who was brought on board for the last 'No Time to Die' Bond film starring Daniel Craig.

She had to be involved right through on all shooting days at all locations. Her job was to capture pivotal scenes from the movie and shoot it with the actors involved.

Movie sets tend to be chaotic, even though there's a tremendous amount of time that goes into planning each schedule.

The still photographer has to blend into the scenery when the action is filmed and then, using the same set and props, work out what could be used later in publicity shots or posters.

It may look glamorous but like everything else behind the scenes, creating the perfect illusion involves patience and getting the moves right.

Even if they are frozen in time.

Above the waist dressing becomes the pandemic style

The CEO of Tanishq noticed a change.

With video calls and interactions gaining traction during the pandemic, people were forced into picture squares.

One of the ways to stand out was by opting for unusual backdrops.

But unless you had a green screen setup, the background option was 'iffy'

Every time you move your head, there's a wave of fuzziness around your hair and clothes that looks messy. People know that a simple bedroom background is being camouflaged and the glorious sunset or fancy office backdrop is just another illusion.

However, you can shine with great-looking earrings and a bit of makeup. Or even a gold chain designed to attract attention.

Tanishq has been seeing a spike of interest from people who look to combine jewelry with workwear.

The number of social occasions with friends and family on video calls has also increased.

And people are paying attention to how they can look good on the calls with different pieces of jewelry to match clothes.

Cartoonists and stand-up comedians have mined this 'above the waist' look to make jokes about pajama suits, or coats and shorts as viable combinations.

However, this is a window into how people want to come off looking good in family interactions and are making efforts to do so, without being obvious.

As a result, Tanishq is creating a special drive to promote earrings and jewelry worn around the neck.

The 'video-call' look is set to hit the mainstream.

Even after the pandemic has passed.

Are you a zero or 100 percenter?

100% all the time?

Or, do you feel insecure if your battery charge drops below 30% on your mobile phone?

A whole new set of behaviors have developed around batteries and charges. It seems like a trivial thing but there are people who don't like the charge to drop below a certain point. Others will let it run down to less than 10% and even run out before they use a charger.

There are no explanations or even a clue on why people treat batteries so differently.

What battery pundits will tell you is that it isn't good for batteries to keep getting charged from a low start point. Keeping it close to 100% all the time is not good either.

As long as the battery is charged to around 80% and then recharged around the 35-40% mark is the way to get the best out of it.

But that's a stretch. People unconsciously fall into a habit. And they go for the most convenient option that fits their life.

Which is, plug in at night and disconnect the next morning - and the battery goes from a low charge to staying full on standby for hours.

Modern smart phones have created an auto switch-off when the battery is fully charged but if you want batteries to last longer, there's no option but to change behavior.

Resist the temptation to keep it fully charged all the time. Or let it run down to zero as often.

As far as batteries are concerned, like in life, the middle path is best way!

Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.