Kiran Khalap's Blog

Kiran Khalap's Blog: Is it really necessary to walk the talk in India?
By on 02-May-11, 13:28 in Advertising |

Legend has it that the 17th century Maharastrian saint Sant Tukaram (also considered the inspiration for modern Marathi poetry; he was known to have used the word zhavaa zhavi or fornication in his abhangs those days!) received a request from a worried father: his nine-year-old son was consuming too much jaggery and some miracle from Sant Tukaram would help.

After hearing out his angst out, Tukaram asked them to return after a week.

On the appointed day, Tukaram affectionately patted the culprits head, and said, “Child, please do not eat too much jaggery, It’s not good for you.”

The crestfallen father, who was waiting instead for an ash-from-thin-air type of miracle, burst out, “This is it?!! But you could have said this a week ago!!!”

“No, I couldn’t have…I had to learn to stop eating too much jaggery myself!” said Tukaram.

Moral of the story?

Sant Tukaram believed he should walk the talk and practise what he preached

Should all animal lovers practise vegetarianism? (George Bernard Shaw said, “Animals are my friends, and I don’t eat my friends.”)

When I was twenty, after having met several saints and sages, I wrote down, three rules for identifying the genuine variety:

  • they don’t own anything (because they would have no sense of ‘mine’ vs ‘yours’)
  • they won’t charge money for sharing their wisdom (because that is what they exist for) and
  • they’d offer no prescriptions (because they know every human being has to follow their own path.)

Recent newspaper reports tell me saints and sages are worth several crores in India, own Rolls Royces and even behead followers who don’t fall in line!

When I asked several of my colleagues the question that you read in the title of this piece, amazingly, the vote was split 50% 50%!

Think of art directors in advertising. 50% of them dress like art directors. Coordinated threads, matching accessories (men and women;-)), manicured extremities: they reflect the artistic sensibilities that their work must reflect.

But there is a 50% who hang out in uncoordinated garage clothes, bedroom slippers and bidis: how does it matter, so long as their work is world-class, asked my 50% Against the Motion Colleagues;-)

Advertising agencies preach to clients that their brands must be differentiated.

Why? Because the two benefits of a differentiated brand are a price premium and/or brand loyalty (at a very basic level).

So do advertising agencies command a price premium? If not, should clients trust them?

( I am told Ogilvy India has a waiting list like the Hermes Birkin, and BBH commands a price premium; so maybe they are true brands!)

Brand consultancies preach to clients that brand names must be differentiated. (Eg: Google is better off for several reasons not being called WebSearch.)

But do brand consultancies have differentiated brand names? Most of them are BrandThis or ThatBrand or Brandxyz, just like PizzaExpress or PizzaMail or NowPizza.

I remember an ex-client and current friend of mine being visited by an agency with a four-letter prefix or suffix (like SSC&B or RSCG).

The agency suggested that their worldwide resources could build a better brand for the client than the previous (Indian) brand consultancy.

At the end of the 30-min PowerPoint presentation, my client asked them, “When we first met them, they explained why they could be called chlorophyll and nothing else…so if you don’t mind, could you at least tell us what those four letters mean?”

In the ensuing silence much was communicated, and much was lost.

Legend has it that on July 7th, 1896, just a year after the first movie was shown in Paris, the Lumiere brothers, showed their first film in Mumbai at Kala Ghoda. The movie showed a train arriving in a station, approaching the camera. In Paris, some members of the audience screamed and ran away. In Mumbai, everyone cheered.

Perhaps, we Indians have a higher tolerance for illusion.

We don’t need to walk the talk…just an illusion will do!

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Kiran Khalap’s Blog: Creative person or creative professional?
By on 04-Apr-11, 13:49 in Advertising |

Creative person or creative professional?

Which one are you?
Stupid question?
Give me 4 min 33 seconds at two words/second to clarify.
The shortest (three words), simplest and deepest definition of creativity was provided by Teilhard de Chardin, the paleontologist philosopher whose work has influenced almost all the 20th century thinkers on human evolution.
“Creer c’est unir”
“To create is to unite.”
Outside Andheri railway station in Mumbai, a vendor shouts, “Laal baraf khaao.”  (“Enjoy red ice.”)
He unites the coldness of ice with the redness of the watermelon to create an irresistible consumer proposition.
On TV, Rajanikant’s heroics unite with the speed of 3G to create the unforgettable ZooZoo Superman.
Advertising employs creativity for ‘problem solution’: it must deliver commercial results to clients by solving the problem of influencing their customers.
But creativity has not one but three roles: ‘problem-solution’; ‘self-expression’ and ‘evolution’.
My super-talented advertising friend Rajeev Raja expresses himself through his silver flute.
My brand planner colleague Vidya Damani unites her love of human beings and her desire to understand karma to create a community of seekers: evolution at a spiritual level.
While creativity is about uniting, management operates by dividing.
Management has to invent enemies where none exist.
Copywriter versus art director: till the early 60s, timid Indian copywriters slipped their gingerly typed copy sheets under the doors of the mighty art directors; then saw the final ad in the newspapers.
Creative team vs suits.
“You bloody MBAs…your idea of excellence is excel sheets.”
Agency vs client.
“The bloody marketing manager won’t recognize a good idea if it was shoved up his…nostrils or any other orifice.”
Client and agency vs competitors.
“Look at that advertising they produce…recycling ours without shame”
Pause. Step off the merry-go-round.
What if the creative professionals said to themselves, “I have this gift of finding solutions to the client’s communication problems…why don’t I solve the problems of the advertising industry itself?”
Here are some problems defined by the agencies themselves…they have been the same for decades;-)
Problem: finding the right talent for the advertising industry (refer to all the interviews of Creative Directors in Campaign)
Problem: clients don’t respect advertising agencies and therefore pay them like vendors of plastic spoons and therefore agencies are low paymasters and therefore can’t retain talent (refer to all the speeches by the Hall of Fame Award winners)
Problem: problem-solution is mistaken for self-expression (“What? You want me to work on an agarbatti account?”)
Problem: brands command either loyalty or a premium, so why don’t ad agency brands? (refer again to all the speeches by the Hall of Fame Award winners)
If you were a creative person rather than a creative professional, wouldn’t you love to prove yourself by pitting your problem-solving genius against such seemingly intractable problems…rather than against the creation of just one more TVC?
Are there creative people who are not in advertising and who already do this?
Of course!
Check out the creative people who work on the web.
Most allow others to finish their problems.
Most invite customers to solve problems.
Most important, they don’t mistake the commercial intent of their endeavour for self-expression.
Ok, my 4.33 are over.
Over to you.

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Kiran Khalap’s Blog: Please don’t read. Just listen.
By on 07-Mar-11, 18:46 in Marketing |
Recently, while conducting the ‘Creativity at Three Levels’ workshop for the top management of a global company, a participant asked me, “You say unlike other old civilisations like Egypt, the Indian civilization has an unbroken thread. Is there proof? If yes, is it visible in day-to-day business as opposed to in arcane cultural practices?”
My answer?
There are many unbroken threads. Let me talk about one.
I was a Creative Director in ad agencies between 1986 and 1999.
A Creative Director evaluates creative ideas every day.  In India, there were always two sets of writers: those who wrote in English, and those who wrote in ‘other languages’.
Every single time, without exception, when a writer (let’s say the redoubtable and ever-smiling Jaikrit Rawat) who wrote in Hindi came to me, he would say, “Kiran, listen to this.”
Every single time, when a writer (let’s say the wickedly humorous Rahul D’Cunha) who wrote in English came to me, he would hand over the sheet and say, “Kiran, read this.”
Every single car brand introduced in India, whether at lower end or luxury, has had its horn re-calibrated to a higher level.
Sony Trinitron failed in India until someone told them that in India, a TV is actually a music system…and they re-calibrated their sound system to a higher volume. Success.
Combine this insight with a retail shopping scenario where the 5-million-odd mom-and-pop shops do not display merchandise, and you realise how important brand recall is as opposed to brand recognition: the buyer must be able to pronounce your brand name rather than identify your brand packaging.
If these are not business effects of an unbroken culture, what are?
“These are indeed surprising insights, but would you know why?”
Yes. Because, for centuries, we Indians have trusted our ears rather than our eyes.
Every single slogan in Indian languages, whether advertising or otherwise, is a rhyme.
“Bari, bari, sab ki bari, ab ki bari, Atal Bihari.”
BJP’s slogan at a Lucknow election rally in March 1996.
“Jaat par na pat par, mohar lagegi haath par.”
P.V.Narasimha Rao coined this slogan for the 1996 elections.
Our classical music is not written on sheets, it is taken by heart.
Our dance is not written on sheets, it is taken by heart.
All our mainstream feature films are musicals.
Just in case you are going to attribute all this to illiteracy, listen to this: Captains of industry, worth many billions in market cap, enter Business Class on flights, and helplessly dangle their boarding pass. “2C?” Only when the petite air hostess verbally reassures them about the one-to-one correspondence between the 2C printed and 2C painted do they lower their expensive rears into the expensive seat.
“Yes, now I understand this propensity manifests in areas beyond business, but still, why?”
Because in Indian philosophy sound is at the crossroads of spirit and matter.
The eye can suffer from optical illusion, there is no such thing as acoustic illusion, therefore everything that needed exactitude (maths, ayurved, architecture) was preserved through rhymed couplets.
So from a deep philosophical belief to current business practice, an unbroken thread exists.
But.
Indrasabha, a film in 1932, had 71 songs;
Dabangg, 2010’s biggest grosser had six;
many others in 2010 have had no songs.
In several Indian cities, there are groups militating against the high level of noise during festivals and rock concerts, right?
So are we Indians winding down on our ear obsession?
Close to 30 million Indians live abroad: maybe they understand written 2C is written 2C?
Their eyes are taking over their ears?
Maybe in a couple of decades, Indian roads will be not horny, our films will not be musicals, and silence will become a virtue.
Scary or fun?
What do you say?

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Kiran Khalap's Blog: Dose it matter?
By on 07-Feb-11, 14:40 in Advertising, Media |

Dose incorrect langauge or spelling matter anymore in mass media communication?

1. The award-winning New Delhi airport signage says, amid cheerful arty swirls,“A New Delhi. Everyday.”

Clever pun, not-so-clever spelling.

2. Ajmera, a builder in Mumbai, has launched i-LAND, a city within a city.Its advertising says, “i-LAND. Where future lives.”

Maybe ‘future’ is a curvy female rock star I have not had the privilege of meeting.

3. The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, spends millions on the Department of AYUSH (alternative medicine).

Its advertising gives this url for their web site: www.indianmedecine.nic.in

Which means the poor sod who tries to log in will definitely need a homeopathic remedy to reduce hyperventilation and stress.

4. Several diet brand ads display men with six-pack-abdomens and invite me to loose weight.

5. All advertisements and packaging in India (and only in India) use the word upto. Actually I am exaggerating: roughly two in 1000 do use the correct version.

6. And journalists who can explain the difference between it’s and its deserve awards.

If by now you have not spotted anything wrong in the examples, you may want to stop reading.

Or you might join the Argument for Incorrect Language.

The argument goes like this: if the reader cannot spot the error, and if the communication is doing its job, ‘what goes of your father?’ or in plain English, why bother?

My reply is this: the common Indian may make several errors because using the language correctly is not of much value to her; but the mass media communication specialist is a specialist, being paid good money by the client to be correct.

And the argument is as applicable in other languages. Most of the Aarey Milk Booths in Mumbai spell doodh (correct) as dudh (incorrect): so neither copywriters nor the Government can spell correctly! This in a city that goes up in flames for the cause of Marathi.

Do I sound like a disgruntled old man desperately clinging on to old-fashioned values? I am not. I am a worried old man.

I am worried that there is a more insidious undercurrent in the AIL: I believe the AIL is one more symptom of a society that no longer values genuine quality.

Our bridges collapse, our roads are actually interconnected potholes, our ‘wrinklefree’ trousers are not wrinkle-free, our cashless mediclaim policy is not cashless…

And yet, when demanded of us, the same set of Indians deliver the highest quality:one of the brands chlorophyll had the privilege of redefining was re-named Exactus, because the organization actually had the guts to offer 100% error-free transcription to all their clients in the US!

On the Mysore campus of Infosys, while conducting a workshop on creativity, I notice that every single 1 cm X 1 cm tile near the swimming pool is perfectly aligned.

It’s not about ability; it’s about attitude.

There is now a new word associated with India.

Jugaad.

The positive association of that word is managing with frugal means; but the negative association is of trying to pass off poor quality (remember CWG?) because we hate to plan well or because we are in a hurry to sell something, anything, and become rich, future be damned.

That is worse than misspelling.

It is making a virtue of a vice.

If you don’t agree, write back: in any language ;-)

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