The Branded and Gilded Life

Conversations between people meeting for the first time rarely gets off to a smooth start.

There is no formula.

Sometimes, you laugh too loudly at feeble jokes.

And search desperately for the next topic to bring up.

The use of the word 'awkward' by either one, in some ways, heightens the tension.

As if an acknowledgement makes escape harder.

If we accept there will be gaps in the conversation, the spikes of anxiety could be modulated.

The context literally defines what happens next.

The Indian 'arranged marriage' conversation foisted on couples is a classic case.

In just about 10-15 minutes, by playing 20 questions, judgements have to be made.

In most cases, this leads to completely artificial conversations.

Having to define sensitive points of view that would hardly ever be raised in a normal setting.

Both are acutely aware that the adults in the next room are awaiting a response.

And they also know that being truthful can be a deal breaker.

How does one answer a loaded question - Do you like kids?

If you say yes, does it mean you want to have many of them?

Sometimes, the awkward silences mean a lot more than the words exchanged.

Now, 7-11s will serve electricity as well

There are over 70,000 7-11 stores in the US

And they've moved into the EV charging game early on.

These stations don't require huge amounts of real estate.

As the popularity of EVs explode, people will be looking for more places to charge their vehicles when traveling far from home.

This works in two ways. Customers have to spend at least 10-15 minutes, if not more  to recharge their vehicles. And they'll end up purchasing stuff from the stores as well.

They become traffic and business generators.

A fresh source of revenue.

In the initial phase, they're looking to add 500 chargers at 250 stores and ramp it up over time.

Hopefully, the chargers from multiple brands will be compatible.

Unlike mobile phone chargers where you had to find a suitable point at airports to get a quick charge.

It looks like we won't have to wait for petrol stations to convert.

Several other networks of fast-food chains and restaurants will probably be roped in over time.

No one's going to refuse new revenue opportunities.

They will jockey for an advantage, of course but cars slurping up electricity may be quite profitable in the long run.

No puns intended.

Since when did repairs get controversial?

A couple of generations ago, we repaired everything.

Shoes, watches, bags, pens...

There was no question of buying something new until every last ounce of value was extracted.

Somewhere along the way, things changed.

Things like LTV (Lifetime value of Customers) and CAC (Customer Acquisition Costs) began to play a role in Planned Obsolescence.

In other words, people were strategically shifted to the replacement treadmill.

Spare parts morphed into sub-assemblies that had to be replaced fully, not in parts.

It began in a small way with Authorised Service Centres managed by brands themselves.

The friendly neighborhood mechanic would have replaced a broken tail lamp on your car. But in the company service centre, you had to get the whole set replaced.

Even if there was basically nothing wrong with the other light.

Of course, that was a lot more expensive than just one tail lamp.

Remember the time you could replace batteries on the mobile phone?

Now, it's been sealed shut and you have to buy it only from the authorised centres.

It's not that our behavior changed.

It was nudged in the other direction.

But the resistance from customers is now kicking into a higher gear.

The game is afoot.

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.

It had to happen.

From the automated Roomba that cleans floors and sold like vada pau during the pandemic, robots are chipping away at tasks one at a time.

At the high end, they're assembling cars and managing warehouses.

So, what's a robot doing painting nails?

It's quite a clever repurposing of the ink-jet printer.

Or at least that's the way it looks.

You place your fingers, one at a time and the jet sprays the preferred shade of nail polish in a matter of minutes.

The way they describe it is - No slip ups. No slowdowns. No small talk.

Another leisure activity, the one that women do in company or as a community has now become a 'task' to be automated.

Clinical efficiency needs to come into nail polishing. Too much time wasted is the admonition.

Couldn't they have focused on the fact that you can get patterns which can't be done by hand, for example?

Or trying out colours that you wouldn't do normally.

Why talk about saving time, when it's something women do happily?

I guess it's because robots don't have feelings.

And it's all about getting a job done - a man must have thought this up!

The long running fascination with bank robberies

It looks like banks have always been prized targets whether they were remote or centrally located.

The earliest film on the theme is 'The Asphalt Jungle' and it was made back in 1950. The success led to a new genre.

Dog Day Afternoon and the recent series Money Heist continue to make money by telling tales about robbing cash.

Now, which was the earliest known online bank break in?

You probably think it was in the early 2000s, but it went back to 1994.

Large companies and banks were on a global network run by X.25 protocol.

This was nowhere as friendly as the current internet and finding companies was a task in itself.

The dominoes started tumbling with a magazine called Phrack publishing the addresses of companies.

And hackers started surveying the systems to understand how it worked.

They got through to the money transfer messaging that banks used and managed to get some usernames and logins.

The first hack transferred $400,000 to an account in Finland by a Russian hacker named Vladimir.

But then, the affected bank struck back. They ensured that he was never able to siphon money out again.

A great episode from the Darknet Diaries podcast.

From the sun to Singapore via Australia

It's a cool idea.

Singapore wants to rid itself of its reliance on natural gas and switch to renewable energy.

But space is at a premium in this country.

So, it's struck a deal with Australia to supply power generated from a solar farm set up in the outback.

Through a cable running underwater, the power will be transmitted to Singapore to meet 20% of its needs.

Think of the sheer scale of the idea. Setting up a solar plant over 4000 kilometers away.

For Australia, it's a chance to make use of land that has no commercial value.

The solar farm will cover an area of 120 square kms and generate over 14 gigawatts of energy per year, making it the world's largest, by far.

On the Australian outback, this is among the most arid stretches of land and sparsely populated, making it the ideal location.

It's being built by a company called Sun Cable, which can then supply the power to several countries in South East Asia.

So, it's not the broadband internet industry alone that will thrive underwater.

Power generation and transmission are set to be transformed with this project.

Solar power is evolving in unpredictable ways.

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 first flat screen televisions were invented as far back as 1964.

Remember those huge boxy TVs that took up spaces in living rooms? They are now history.

It took decades before they were available at rates that everyone could afford.

But air-conditioners are another matter altogether.

They've moved from window to 'split'. And stayed there for ages.

Progress has been slow. The prices have stayed high even while power consumption dropped.

But if air-conditioners have to become as common as fans, they will have to be re-designed from the ground up.

Starting with the installation that makes huge unsightly holes in the wall. And precariously balances the outdoor unit outside on a clamped stand.

For high-rise buildings, it's like having stuntmen come in and do repairs whenever necessary.

I'm sure it's not due to a lack of effort or imagination. It's probably an engineering issue that does not have a solution at this point in time.

Look at the advances being made. Easing up the installation.

Or reducing the size so that it blends into the wall and looks slightly better.

TV manufacturers proved they could accommodate colour, size and clarity into a slim sheet.

When will air-conditioners follow?

Google made a big move. Quietly.

Google has started where customers are unlikely to notice the change.

The Nest Hub of products is being updated to the new OS, Fuschia.

And nothing will change, except the OS.

Why is that a big deal?

An analogy would be changing the foundation of a house without the owner noticing.

So, why is Google proceeding with caution?

Well, they got away by being the dominant OS on smartphones with Android.

Windows was late to the party and never managed to catch up.

So, Apple and Google have a complete lock on the global smartphone market.

But nothing stays constant.

As multiple devices get hooked up to the net, the underlying technologies are competing to come out on top. Lighting systems in homes. Smart buildings.

For most people, updates are a notification on the desktop or mobile.

And Google would like to ensure that the same happens with TVs, appliances or any future 'smart' devices.

An OS for everything. Keeping it quiet is smart.

Let the competition sleep on it.

Pipe dreams

We need pipes for much more than water and electricity in homes today.

But they remain largely unattainable!

Have you seen the size of the pipes that run electrical wires across your house?

There was a time when slim ones were enough.

But today, we need them to deliver substantially more.

Satellite cables snake through several floors and emerge on terraces with the dish pointed in the right direction to ensure you can watch Indian Idols sing or newscasters snarl at loud guests.

The broadband providers need to thread them to install last mile fiber for high speed Wi-Fi.

They have to be placed at the right point midway in the house or you'll have several 'dead' Wi-Fi zones within.

The pipes of a decade ago are no longer broad enough to accommodate our ever-bulging needs

We had a landline and the technician who came from BSNL told us he couldn't draw the cable through the pipe because there was no room to add the cable.

That's when land lines became the first sacrificial lambs of advancing technology.

You don't want to be tethered within the house if you can help it. 

But real freedom is a pipe dream as of now!

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.

In India, you're so used to asking for directions from people, Maps seemed unnecessary.

And in all the years I've driven to places, there was always the auto stand, the corner store or helpful pedestrians.

It's hard to find roads without people in India. There's someone to show you the way and sometimes, they'll go out of their way to help.

The directions may be confusing and imprecise but well-intentioned.

People want to be helpful even when they don't have a clue.

My first experience of using Maps was to find the entrance exam centre for my son in Pondicherry, a city we were not familiar with.

I was highly skeptical that it would actually show the correct way in the glorious mess of India's road names and roundabouts.

Now, an Indian voice guides you but at the time, it was obviously American. And the voice had a tough time with the street names, and it was amusing to hear the stumbles.

But we got the gist of the directions.

When we were guided through a narrow left and then led to the correct centre well in time, I became a fan.

What's better than being told 'You have arrived...'?

The significance of Blue ticks

Does your Twitter account have a Blue tick next to your name?

It doesn't? Tch. Tch.

Amazing how it's taken on several meanings and status connotations within the last few years.

Verified profiles have become sought after

Facebook also has the blue tick to verify your profile. But it does not have the same Twitter swagger for unknown reasons.

Why is a simple sign like this open to interpretation and misinterpretation?

The moment a differentiator is created, people want to get it for themselves.

Works in practically every category.

Double Blue ticks are another signal on WhatsApp.

Tells the sender you've seen a message.

A simple notification becomes increasingly complex through interpretation.

Some people don't want to admit they have seen the message, so they block off the signal. Allows for deniability later.

The other signal people block is 'Last seen'. It's a frequent flash point between parents and kids.

Kids don't like to be tracked. But parents want to know. And that sets up points of conflict.

Status, subterfuge, conflict. Any signal is open to layered interpretation.

It does not matter what the feature or the notification is. Once it can be interpreted, it changes.

Non-verbal cues take over and dominate.

There are singers. And there's Karaoke.

One of the great things about Karaoke is its inclusivity.

It doesn't matter of you don't know the difference between C Sharp and B Flat.

Or if the composition is based on Raag Yaman or Kalyani.

It allows you to sing off key, off pitch and still have a great time.

Karaoke literally means 'empty orchestra'

And what started off in bars and clubs has now grown to include reunions, weddings and anniversaries.

It originated in Japan and grown to have a market value of over $5700 million globally.

Not bad for the rest of us who can't hold a note beyond a point.

This includes the song systems, equipment and tracks that have steadily made inroads and probably stolen some market share from that evergreen Indian activity - Antakshris

You can buy entire sets of the background music of popular numbers and keep expanding the collection.

It has birthed apps like Smule which cater to the breed of talented 'bathroom singers'

May be they aren't pros but they can still dazzle their own class of Boomers or Millennials.

For a brief while, bask in the stardom that great singers take for granted.

And build a captivating acquaintance with soulful melodies.

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.

No one has to remember phone numbers anymore.

But retaining memories is a good way to build associations and ideas in the mind.

Apart from purely practical uses.

Passwords, for instance. Or where the important papers in the house are.

It's also a good indication of mental acuity. A tendency to forget common things is a sign of both age and slowing faculties.

We're also discovering that the ancients had much better memory techniques than what we have today.

One of the popular methods is the 'memory palace' where people are told to store items in certain 'rooms' in the mind.

Medical students have to remember a lot of obscure terms - and that leads to high stress, not just before examinations.

So, one group was taught the 'memory palace' method.

And the other was schooled in the aboriginal technique.

Which worked much better.

Makes sense. Much before writing originated, oral cultures had to rely on memory to retain knowledge for generations.

Naturally they found the best ways to pass it to their children.

For all of us who rely on the memory in our devices, it's an important lesson.

The critical backups should be in our own heads!

Ready? Let's begin

Happy Birthday to you...

How many times have you heard the song?

Over the decades, it's probably been a few hundred times.

It has mass appeal and the whole routine around cakes, candles and slicing up the cake has become standard fare.

It's probably the best known 'English' song

The lyrics are so simple and repeatable, they've been locked and loaded.

Apart from being associated with several pleasant memories, it's one of the clichés and markers of age.

Loved by children and not so much by adults, especially the ones who can no longer hide it with dye and dashing flair.

But a composer has done the unthinkable.

He has solid reasons for saying that 'Happy Birthday' is badly composed.

You wouldn't give it a second thought, but he makes persuasive arguments.

And once he points them out, you're forced to concede that the tune could do with a few modifications.

It's not going to change anytime soon.

We know how people hold on to everything dear to them.

Especially memories. And when associated with birthdays, its a sacrilege to change the soundtrack.

Listen to it without a bias - and then, may be your next birthday could sound a little different.

A TV sized Kindle

That's a stretch.

Kindle is available only in the regular book size

But a Chinese company Dasung is releasing a 25 inch monitor based on the tech that Kindle has been using all these years.

So, why release a B&W monitor so large? Does it have any potential at all?

For one thing, all LED monitors are unnaturally bright.

It's like looking into a light all day and that affects the vision of people who are glued to their screens long term.

If most of your work is on Word and Excel, or you're typing out code, imagine doing it on a monitor so easy on the eye, it's like looking at a sheet of paper.

The power consumed is also way below what traditional monitors require.

It won't work for the entertainment industry or for graphic design, of course. The e-ink technology does not have colour capabilities anywhere close to OLED.

However, that isn't the goal.

It is to provide a monitor that people can work on for any length of time with minimal eye strain

It's expensive right now and the main targets are companies where data processing or finance are part of the daily workflow.

The potential is massive.

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.

It's no bull. They're bison.

They don't need expensive firefighting equipment or gear.

And they possibly provide the best protection against natural wildfires.

As long as they are allowed to roam the land and eat.

Not exactly social animals.

But they have appetites that seriously threaten some 'eating contest' winners.

Up to 35 kilos of vegetation in a single day.

Anyone who says vegetarians are weaklings hasn't looked a bison in the eye.

These animals are messy eaters, so they trample grasses and create open patches of land.

In the process, they ensure that fires can't spread easily.

They crash through thick undergrowth in their hunt for food.

And that's really the most effective part.

Imagine having to set up large firefighting operations with trained firemen.

Not to mention the number of helicopters required to dump large loads of water.

Humans have got it backwards.

We remove the safeguards that nature installed and then devise expensive planning and infrastructure to do the job that nature manages effortlessly.

Will we ever learn?

Bison populations thrive in these conditions. The only problem could be too many of them over time.

But that's better than the expense of re-growing forests and resettling residents, right?

Hotter than hot cakes

Miners vs gamers.

In an earlier post, I had written about crypto miners competing with gamers to buy powerful GPUs amidst stock sellouts.

Bots are being used to buy up stock as soon as it hits the online market

The contest has escalated with companies taking preemptive action.

They have created high priced product bundles to deter miners from purchasing all available stock.

At stake here is a battle between customers who could disappear overnight and those who have helped companies grow - the gamers

Now, that's creating a fresh set of problems.

Miners are still aggressively stocking up because these processors have the power to guarantee profits in bitcoin mining operations.

And to recover the inflated costs they're paying, they are likely to dump the rest of the bundle components like processors, motherboards and SSDs on Ebay and similar auction platforms over the next few months.

Creating more headaches for manufacturers with prices for the components being higher in the online markets.

There's real demand. And there's unreal demand.

Nvidia is planning differential premium pricing to make miners pay more.

There's no timeout for games in the real world.

The company that grows forests

Not planting trees. Growing dense forests.

Terraformation is going against the grain.

And conventional thinking by attempting the impossible.

It's headed by a former Reddit CEO who tired of the promises made by technology.

He saw the light after spending decades inventing the next new thing.

Realized it wasn't worth it and went back to the basics.

Using low-tech but proven components to work at scale.

There's a short window available to counteract the effects of climate change

And that must be used to deploy solutions that work in a short time frame.

The first project was to validate two things - whether it was possible and whether it was economical and self-sustaining.

This is in Hawaii where the water required for the project was sourced from a desalination plant that required less than half an acre to set up.

It supplied all the water necessary by transforming brackish water into water available for irrigation.

They are proving multiple projects like this can be started across the world in parallel.

Once more countries and entrepreneurs come on board, growing forests across millions of acres is not a pipedream.

Planting trees is good. But growing forests is an even better idea.

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.

Cold chains in India have many gaps.

It's not easy to store things at a constant temperature, given how erratic electric supply is in certain parts of the country.

Especially in places where infrastructure is still basic.

If it's ice cream, the worst that can happen is that a batch will melt and go bad.

For vaccines, the tolerance is far lower - and they are no longer effective if they have been kept out longer than the recommended period.

While ice and insulated packs have been the norm, an Indian company is building a robust solution.

It's based on phase changing materials and they absorb or release heat depending on the outside temperature.

This helps to keep vaccines at a constant recommended temperature all through the transportation phase without having to be hooked up to a power supply.

A box can keep the vaccines safe for as long as 4 days or 96 hours and tracked all through the journey.

And ensuring that the contents are safe at the point where they have to be administered - at a hospital, for example.

Pluss has been around since 1994. Thankfully they've scaled to meet demand.

In the nick of time.

A showroom in every customer's home

The outdoor furniture business in the US is worth over $18 billion.

But it's quite different from indoor furniture which is about style and atmosphere.

It's more to do with weathering the elements and being durable.

And the target is the upper middle class who have sprawling backyards for family time.

The best place to experience the product is in the right setting.

So, Outer came up with an idea that simply sold itself.

They converted the backyards of willing customers into retail showrooms.

When visitors to the website want to check the furniture in its natural environment, they can visit the nearest 'showroom' in the customer's backyard and see for themselves

It serves two purposes - talking to audiences who were most likely to convert

And providing them with a product experience as close to owning it.

Durability is established because the products retain their looks over time in the open, not air-conditioned showrooms.

It's a great example of growing a product category by getting customers to be your best salespeople.

Economising on showrooms while demonstrating the products.

Outer is now one of the fastest growing companies in outdoor furniture.

Doesn't seem so surprising now, does it?

How many 'lists' do you actually use?

Amazon has a wish list for books - or any product you'd like to buy.

I go back to them a few weeks or months later and don't even know why they're on the list.

Is it just me because it defies logic?

When we add products or books to lists, the implication is that we consider them valuable enough to buy.

When conditions change a few months later, the book or the product seem to drop off the radar altogether.

What's happening here?

There are hundreds of apps promising help to get things done.

First you forget to download them.

Later, they end up in the sinkhole of mobile apps on your phone.

I suspect the way these things are developed is that one person discovers what works for them.

They assume the whole world, or at least a large part of the market thinks the same way.

But our approach to problem solving or even list management is so random, that it is hard to put down as a formula for success.

We all save up on bookmarks and articles to 'read later'

How many of them do we go back to?

What's your logical method of madness?

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.

Smart cities are all the rage.

For good reason. They are supposed to be the next big thing.

Driving higher efficiencies and generating large amounts of data for analysis.

We've seen that traffic, health and infrastructure planning helps to map out the ways in which cities should be developed.

Tech companies have also been advocates for the establishment of smart cities.

But cyber security experts are now lining up against making cities 'smart' in all respects.

They fear the risks of a cyber-attack increase exponentially when infrastructure controls get 'smart'

The current 'dumb' power stations are much harder to hack.

Data generated about the functioning of a city can also become a primary target for command and control.

A contract for a 'smart city' in UK was objected to for several reasons.

The National Cyber Security Centre pointed out that as more and more services were added to the 'smart grid', security provisions needed to scale exponentially to avoid determined hackers.

We're seeing ransomware attacks grow in size and complexity by the year.

So the kind of 'smart infrastructure' that needs to be built has to be examined in greater detail.

Smart or dumb cities? Tough choice.

The Facebook - Signal spat

Signal, the messaging platform wanted to run ads on Instagram.

But they weren't the regular creative executions. They told people why the ads were being shown to them.

Demonstrating how Facebook data drilled deep into people's interests.

And the keywords were highlighted in the ads.

It picked up interests and profiles of people to generate the ads based on their interests, their status, their circle of friends and may be things they weren't too comfortable about.

It's one thing to read an article about it. It's another to find out how much Facebook knows about you.

The deep drilling into the lives of people was on display

There's no mention of Signal in the ads.

It's like using an advertising platform to show people how targeting works and not to promote the product.

Facebook was not amused.

The ads were banned, and Signal immediately launched into a PR offensive to highlight the ban

Facebook struck back, saying that Signal never intended to run the ads but were only using them to seek publicity.

Signal claimed that the ads were never approved, and Facebook said that they had blocked it due to an unrelated 'payments' issue earlier.

You decide who's right.

We're shattering data record limits

From gigabytes to tera and petabytes

It's as if there is no limit to storage. But there is.

The NASDAQ in the US is close to reaching the edge of displaying a share record data value.

Class A shares for Berkshire Hathaway Inc. are flying close to the outer limit the exchange can handle - $429,496.7295.

And the share price is at over $421,000 per share

An upgrade will fix it, but you see where this is going.

We think computers can scale endlessly and data will magically organise itself.

Every system has to operate within a maximum and a minimum. In most cases, the maximums are projected for the several decades and there is enough room for growth.

That limit is so distant in the beginning as to be inconsequential.

In a matter of years, some property values could touch billions.

It's not just computing. 

In 1976, at the Montreal Olympics Nadia Comaneci became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10. All the judges awarded her full marks. And the system crashed.

Perfection is out of reach in the real world!

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 banks have them, it means they've lost a substantial amount of money.

When a family sports the tonsured head, they've gifted hair to the lord.

Actors and actresses have 'looks' in hit films that define trends for years.

The 'Sadhana' cut, with an even set of strands covering the forehead was the rage in the 60s' in Hindi movies. Now, social media makes the rules.

The 'Bob Cut' invented by Vidal Sassoon gave women not just short hair but a look that defined a generation.

Yul Brynner was the first to make bald look sexy

Hair styles have been not just about conforming but non-conforming as well.

Dreadlocks or 'jatas' are the Indian sadhu's stereotypical image. Needs no maintenance as opposed to the dreadlocks of American footballers. Two completely different worlds.

The frizzy hair or the Afro look is a complete contrast to the straight, flowing hair or the ones with salon styled curls and waves.

But when women cut their hair short in India, it's still a way to signal rebellion - and they're referred to as 'parkatis'. Literally translates as 'snipped wings' 

Through the ages, scissors have created enduring symbolic value.

And defined movements or alignments with causes.

Don't let the enemy know that you know

As war strategy, it was one of the most effective counters.

When the Enigma code was broken in World War 2, the team that cracked it drove home the point that the Germans should not realise their encrypted messages were no longer a secret.

If they reworked the system, the allies would be at a complete disadvantage again.

So tactically, they acted only when there was enough confusion about how the message was decrypted. Or created another diversion for attribution.

Turns out the strategy is just as useful in sport!

Andre Agassi and Boris Becker were at the top of their game.

But Agassi had figured out where Boris was going to serve.

All he had to do was look at his mouth.

Boris had this peculiar habit.

As he tossed the ball up, his tongue would be thrust out for a moment.

Either at the middle or towards the side.

And then, Agassi would know exactly which serve would be used.

But he never let on that he knew.

It would only be deployed to get the maximum advantage in a game.

And Agassi told Boris about it only years later.

Champions don't just play well - they are great tacticians!

The grass isn't greener on Mars

Mars sucks.

That's the title of a new campaign.

And it outlines all the problems that humans are going to face out there.

It's a searing way to let earth dwellers focus on the planet we already have.

A dot in the galaxy that we call home.

We don't want it looking anything like Mars.

That's for sure.

What you don't see in all those dreams of extra-terrestrial voyages is the huge difference between Earth and Mars.

You complain about -20 degrees weather? How about -117?

The dust storms on Mars don't last for a few days.

They last for months

And a year on Mars is roughly twice the number of days on earth.

So, you can grow old slower.

And celebrate your birthday once every two earth years.

But then, you'd have to survive and count the days, right?

No oceans or forests or mountains to explore.

Think of looking at Earth from Mars and wondering why you ever left.

Gives 'Buyer's remorse' a whole new dimension.

Earth is the most happening planet in the galaxy.

And we dream of barren landscapes?

We've all hit the galactic lottery in the universe.

And it still isn't enough.

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.

It was a simple launch from Apple.

But there are several theories circulating around it already.

Air tags currently have one function. To locate missing things.

Attach them to any object and you won't lose them

It's a beacon that radiates and lets you know exactly where they are.

So, if it's under a cushion, left on the backseat of a car or well just about anywhere, it's supposed to help you find everything from car keys to purses.

 The theory is that Air Tags will be the essential point for AR applications in future.

Wired writes about how tying digital information to physical objects is an important step for how AR will be deployed by future iPhones.

And Apple is building the ecosystem.

AR is not going to happen in one step but a series of mini-steps and each one of those will have to provide customers with additional value.

Otherwise, it won't be purchased.

The darker theory is that it will be used to track spouses.

By dropping them into purses

Apple, however, says that users will get warnings when they're being tracked by other iPhones.

Use and misuse seems to move in lockstep.

Close your eyes and hear the world

As I write, I'm listening to the sounds around me.

Paying closer attention to the layers

Birdsong erupts from trees.

A whipsaw grates from a construction site close by.

The whoosh of the spinning fan in the room. The background accompaniment of everyday living.

A wheelbarrow rumbles across interlocked tiles.

Snatches of words drift upwards as evening walkers go on their rounds.

The distant traffic sounds on the road mesh into one.

The intensity varies by direction and volume.

The staccato hammering of a drill mixed with birdsong.

The leaves whispering as hundreds of them sway in the gentle breeze.

The TV plays out in another room. A smattering of applause from crowds and the jingle during an ad break.

Canned laughter slips in like punctuation.

The wheelbarrow returns, this time moving in the opposite direction.

An autorickshaw without a silencer is on the main road hundreds of meters away and I can still hear it.

The click of a switch as a light is turned on.

And while I tune in and out, the keyboard keys play their own understated rhythm.

Soundscapes are less explored than landscapes.

Amplify it and you'll be amazed at how much more awareness you develop.

How do you handle annoyances?

One of the early viral protests against a brand was by a musician named Dave Carrol  in 2008

His $3500 guitar was broken by careless baggage handling

When he tried to get compensation from the airline, their response was a shrug

He should have carried it along with him on the flight

So Dave Carroll got back at the brand in the best way possible

He made a music video titled 'United breaks guitars'

And it went viral, naturally. Everyone loves a rant that's smartly done. Sung as a breezy 'country music' number, it has over 20 million views now

United had no choice but to compensate him. The guitar brand also jumped in and gave him a replacement.

Recently, saw 'Hathway? No way!

A Twitter rant about getting spammed by the call center.

It seems to be garnering sympathy. And people are coming up with their own Hathway stories.

Plus, the effort involved in stopping daily calls.

One of them went as far as to dial a senior executive everyday

How far would you go?

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.