The Moment Already Passed. Were You Still Asking Permission?

When you move between categories in your career, you notice something quickly.

I have had the good fortune to pivot between three key ones:

Mobility, that teaches you how to build the pressure to sell something in a sea of products that are very similarly priced, designed and marketed to each other. 

FMCG, which gives you the rigour of a category where brands need to remain memorable, because despite the high rate of repurchase, when the customer enters the aisle and sees a discounted price on the competitor’s packet, he forgets everything. 

And then the automobile, currently led by motorcycling in my case, built on the premise of being a unique voice in a sea of products, staying ahead of the game by keeping the customer at the centre and never talking spec sheets. 

And what this exposure has taught me is that brand teams don’t all treat their audiences the same way. 

Some invest seriously in understanding the full person behind the purchase. Consumer research, live conversations, psychographic studies that go well beyond what someone buys and into why they buy it, what they believe, what they are quietly aspirational about. These are the brands that know their customer is a runner and a parent and someone who cares about where their food comes from, all at the same time. 

And then there are the brands that built their position on exactly that kind of instinct, got there, and stopped. Not out of arrogance. Out of protection. They have a cult following, films that perform, analytics that validate, and a community that reliably responds. So they shelter. They narrow the conversation to the things they know will land. And slowly, without anyone deciding it, the audience’s world keeps expanding while the brand’s world stays the same size. 

That is not safety. That is the beginning of a slow drift apart. And this is where aspiration starts to leak. The cult brand, so focused on protecting what it has built, stops reaching for what it has not yet earned. The younger brand, the lifestyle brand, the one with a fraction of the heritage and none of the history, steps into that gap. Not because it is better. But because it is willing. It shows up in moments the established brand left unclaimed, speaks to parts of the person the bigger brand stopped being curious about, and quietly begins to own the aspiration that the cult brand assumed was permanently theirs. Cult status does not transfer automatically to the next generation of customers. It has to be re-earned, in their language, in their moments, on their terms.

Cult status is not a destination. It is a pressure to keep earning. The same instinct that built the following is the same instinct that has to keep shaking the category, finding new ways in, new mediums, new angles of communication that make a person feel something about the brand in a context that has nothing to do with the moment of purchase. Your analytics will tell you what is working inside the world you have already built. They will not tell you about the world you have not entered yet. 

The brands that understood this did not wait for permission. Ariel’s Share The Load did not come from a detergent brief. It came from someone asking a completely different question: what does the person doing the laundry actually carry, beyond the laundry? The answer cracked the category open and made a washing powder brand part of a cultural conversation about gender that people are still talking about years later. 

Apple’s work around accessibility did not come from a product feature checklist. It came from a decision to show the world through the eyes of people the world usually ignores. One film. One day. An audience that felt genuinely seen, and a brand that earned something no campaign budget can manufacture directly. 

Neither of those moments came from community feedback. Neither of them came from watching what was trending and deciding it was safe to respond. They came from a brand deciding it had something to say, and saying it before anyone asked. 

That is the difference. Not budget. Not production value. The willingness to move first. Here is the part that nobody talks about enough. The brands losing ground right now are not losing it because they stopped caring. They are losing it because they started waiting. Waiting for the community to surface a moment. Waiting for a topic to gain enough traction that acting on it feels safe. Waiting for the very people they should be leading to tell them where to go. 

That is not community building. That is followership with a logo on it. The brands that built genuine cult status did not get there by reading the room. They built the room. Supreme did not ask its community whether a limited drop was a good idea. The Grateful Dead did not poll their audience on set-lists. These brands understood something that gets lost the moment a brand becomes successful enough to have a brand guardian: the job is not to reflect culture back at people. The job is to add something to it that was not there before. 

A brand that only speaks when the community has already spoken is not a cult. It is an echo. A good marketer is the one who observes multiple categories and challenges the norms of the system they are working inside. And a great one keeps asking the right questions, time and again, even when the resistance is loud, even when the answer is not yet yes. Because the marketer who gives up on the cause altogether is the reason the next generation on that brand stays in fear. Stays safe. Never builds on the cultural moments that could have taken the brand somewhere it had never been before. 

Some of that ownership sits specifically with the social and content teams. Not because they post the most, but because they are the ones closest to what is actually happening. And that job demands more than tracking trending formats, trending audios, hook steps and viral templates. It demands a depth of observation that most people underestimate. What is the customer feeling right now? What are they pivoting towards? What fears are they expressing, not in surveys, but in the comments, in the content they share, in the creators they are suddenly following, in the silences between the things they used to engage with and no longer do? 

Social is not a broadcast tower. It is the most honest focus group that has ever existed. And the brands that treat it that way, using it to listen as seriously as they use it to speak, are the ones that find the adjacent moment, the unexpected conversation, the cultural shift worth owning before anyone else has claimed it. 

That is where restraint becomes the enemy. Because the easiest thing a brand team can do is show up on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Children’s Day, every year, in the same format every other brand is also showing up in. It is safe. It is expected. And it is exactly how a brand trains its audience to stop paying attention. 

The job of a great brand team is to keep people on their toes. To find the moment nobody else claimed. To take the brand’s values and express them through a conversation that surprises, that feels instinctive rather than scheduled, that makes someone stop and think about the brand in a context they were not expecting. Not because it is provocative for its own sake. But because that is how you reach the person who is not thinking about your product category at all right now. The person who is thinking about something they noticed in culture, in human behaviour, in the world around them, and suddenly your brand becomes the thing that articulates it for them. 

That is the adjacency. Not a product extension. A moment of recognition. And sometimes that recognition comes from the outside in. A collaborator, a creator, a community that exists adjacent to your brand’s world, who sees a version of your brand that you have not yet allowed yourself to see. The brands that stay open to that are the ones that find new rooms to grow into. The ones that don’t, protect a universe that is quietly getting smaller every year, while calling it consistency. 

A well known brand, used well, becomes a sounding board for the cultural shifts its audience is already living through. That is a different ambition than selling a product. And it is a much harder brief to write. But it is the brief that separates the brands people talk about from the brands people simply buy. 

Social is where you test whether you have found that moment before you bet everything on it. Not to do what everybody else is doing on the same days in the same formats. But to try something that feels genuinely yours, watch what happens, and let that teach you where to go next. 

These are the questions I bring to work every day. Some of them still don’t have easy answers. That’s usually a sign they’re worth asking and pushing the envelope :) 

Fashion Magazines Aren’t Dying. They’re Just the Best Marketing Scam Ever Run

Confession to start. I grew up on the tabletop of my mother’s salon, surrounded by every fashion magazine in circulation, with a hair mask on my face and zero idea that I was watching my future profession being assembled in real time. My mother worked with the likes of Javed Habib, Blossom Kochhar, Shahnaz Hussain, Ambika Pillai. The covers changed every month. I flipped through them religiously, less interested in the celebrity interviews than in the fabrics, the cuts, the strange little editorial garnishing tucked around the edges of the page. I was eight, ten, fourteen. I was being conditioned. I just thought I was reading.

And then, in 2006, in the first year of my graduation, I saw The Devil Wears Prada on a big screen. I came out thinking Miranda Priestly was cold, terrifying, and probably just a thinly fictionalised Anna Wintour. I have rewatched the film an embarrassing number of times since then. I have now seen the second one too. And somewhere along the way I realised I had been rooting for the wrong woman the entire time.

Both films keep asking the same question. Are fashion magazines dying? The newsroom is shrinking, the parent company is restless, the editor-in-chief is fighting some scrappier, faster threat. The plot wants you to believe she might lose. The plot has wanted you to believe she might lose since 2006. She does not lose. She has not lost in twenty years. The films cannot quite say why, because the answer would dismantle the films themselves.

So let me say it.

A fashion magazine is not journalism. It is the single most beautifully constructed marketing engine the consumer economy has ever produced, and the reason it doesn’t die is that nothing else has been built that can do the same job.

Here is the job, in case you’ve been living under a thoughtfully sourced linen rock.

The job is to build a voice. Then sell that voice to literally everyone.

Not a writer’s voice. Not even an editor’s voice. A Voice. Capital V. A single, season-by-season, top-down ruling on what is in, what is out, what we are wearing in 2026, and what we shall pretend we never wore in 2019. The Voice is the entire product. The photography, the columns, the cover star, the perfume samples that fall out and stain the carpet. All of it is just packaging for the Voice.

And here is what the Voice does, in order of audacity:

1. It sells quiet luxury its quietness. A beige cashmere sweater with no logo costs $2,800 because the Voice has decided, on your behalf, that beige cashmere is what taste sounds like in this decade. Without the Voice, it is a sweater. With the Voice, it is a *signal*. Signals can be priced infinitely. This is also, by the way, why “quiet luxury” is the most expensive trend of the last twenty years. They literally removed the logo and charged you more for the absence of one. Take a moment.

2. It sells luxury brands the right to charge what they charge. A handbag that costs more than a small Honda costs that much because the Voice has spent fifty years building the cultural scaffolding that makes the price feel earned and not, you know, deranged. Strip the magazines and the editorials and the cover stories away, and Hermès is leather and hardware. The price isn’t in the bag. It’s in the apparatus around the bag.

3. It sells fast fashion its entire roadmap. Zara, H&M, Shein. None of them invent a single trend. They xerox the Voice at industrial speed. The magazine declares oversized blazers, and ninety days later there’s a Zara version in 2,200 stores at €49. The fast fashion shopper isn’t buying a blazer. She’s buying proximity to the Voice, at a price she can survive. I should know. I am the case study. I started life as a Sarojini Nagar thrift girl, and today over 70 per cent of my wardrobe is Zara, with the rest divided between Mango, Superdry, Nike and Onitsuka Tigers. Zara has become the dictator of what is trending and fashionable for me, but I started by first finding those silhouettes in magazines, paired with the key pieces of their times. The magazine taught me to see. Zara taught me to buy. There is no daylight between those two sentences.

4. It sells the fast fashion shopper a lifetime spending plan. This is the genius bit, and the bit nobody calls out. The Voice doesn’t just feed her cheap blazers. It teaches her, slowly, patiently, year by year, what she’s supposed to graduate to next. The contemporary brand. The accessible-luxury bag. The “investment piece.” The first real designer item. By forty-four, she’s in Loro Piana and doesn’t quite remember when that became normal. The magazine isn’t selling her a sweater. It’s selling her a trajectory. A lifetime ladder of spending, with the Voice gently steering her up it.

If you are a marketer reading this and you are not slightly aroused, you are not paying attention. This is the cleanest funnel ever built. It runs across forty years of a customer’s life. It works on income brackets that have nothing in common. It costs the brand essentially nothing because the magazine is doing the heavy lifting and getting paid for the privilege.

Full disclosure, the ladder did not work on me, and I think I know why. I come from an middle-class household where the cost of something was always equated to its value. My mother was not particularly fashionable. My grandmother was, beautifully so, in saris and Ray-Bans, but that was a grammar of style I could admire and not inherit. I just received my first Coach bag last month, and only because someone gifted it to me. I have never bought one for myself. My motorcycle riding gear is more expensive than several of my most expensive garments combined, and I take more pride in it than I ever have in any piece of clothing. I wear pyjamas to the office sometimes. The ladder is not built for women like me. The ladder is built for the rest of the funnel, which is everyone, which is the point.

There is one more thing the Voice does, and this is the part the obituary writers really, really miss.

5. The Voice operates across time. A fashion magazine writes the history of a brand while the brand is being built. Twenty years later, it archives that history into legacy. Twenty years after that, it celebrates the legacy as if the brand had simply existed forever, the way a mountain exists, with no author. By the third pass the seams are invisible. The brand appears to have always been The Standard, because someone wrote down, on heavy paper, in 1962 and 1989 and 2014, that it was.

No brand can do this for itself. Hermès cannot credibly publish Hermès Was Always The Standard. Vogue has to do it for them, decade after decade, before Hermès can quote it back at you in a 2026 campaign. The legacy isn’t invented by the house. It’s commissioned, gradually and expensively, from the only institution with enough cultural authority to grant it. The houses are the monarchy. The magazines are the church that crowns them. The crown does not legitimise itself.

I watched this mechanism work in real time and did not recognise it. I grew up in the era when Femina was bigger than Cosmopolitan in India, and then watched Cosmo outnumber Femina. I watched the heroines of our times slowly disappear from the covers and get replaced by influencers. From a salon tabletop. With a clay mask drying on my face. Truly nobody had a better seat than me, and I still managed to miss the trick. 

And none of this works without the editor.

I have been writing as if the Voice belongs to the publication. It does not. Vogue doesn’t have a Voice. Vogue under Anna Wintour had a Voice. Vogue India under Bandana Tewari had one. Elle India under Nandini Bhalla had one. The masthead is the building. The editor is the load-bearing wall. Take her out and the building doesn’t fall right away, but it starts to settle. Within five years it’s just paper.

This is the part the publishing industry has been the slowest to admit, because admitting it changes the math. If the Voice is portable, if it lives inside a person and not an institution, then the editor isn’t really an employee. She’s a piece of irreplaceable infrastructure being leased at, frankly, a discount. Anna Wintour is not famous because she is Vogue’s editor. Vogue is famous, in the form it currently takes, because she is. Read that sentence twice.

The mystique, by the way, is not vanity. It’s an operating requirement. The sunglasses, the short sentences, the refusal to over-explain. Explain the choice and you reveal the mechanism. Reveal the mechanism and the spell breaks. The mystique is what allows her to keep deciding without ever being audited. It’s the working condition of the role.

So when the next think-piece arrives announcing that the September issue is thinner this year, that print is dead, that Gen Z has moved on, read it the way I do. Politely. With a small smile. The way you’d read a weather report from a city you’ve already left.

The middle is dying. The mid-tier titles, the celebrity weeklies, the mall catalogues with serif fonts. Good. Most of them were never any good.

The titles that operate the Voice and the archive, the ones whose editors carry forty years of memory in their heads, those are not dying. They are consolidating. They are doing what every maturing oligopoly does, which is tighten the apex, drop the middle, and quietly raise their rates. Most of them have also moved to Instagram, which is the platform that was supposed to have killed them, and is now the platform they use to keep crowning the next generation of brands. The form is more elastic than the obituary writers think.

The fashion magazine is not a media business. It is the most profitable, most invisible, most elegantly disguised piece of marketing infrastructure the modern world has ever built.

The magazines aren’t dying. They were never really magazines.

And Miranda Priestly, twenty years and two films later, still has her job. Obviously. I have been watching her take it home for two decades. From a salon tabletop, with my face full of clay, learning the trade by accident.

What next for payment apps, appointment booking apps and likes of Urban Company, Google business and Facebook marketplace?

A Covid-19 perspective: Thinking SMB growth and substance 

It's Jun 2021, we’re already in the middle of year 2 of lockdown. Life has not been easy, managing health and well-being has been difficult, keeping small businesses alive has been worse. 

India thrives on mom and pop shops. The jugaad country. The country of a billion-plus population, where everyone has learned to survive and dreams of growth by hard work. We’re conditioned from childhood how government jobs are safe, and how good grades, hard work and consistency will ensure you have a well-settled life and success in any endeavour we apply ourselves. That by saving enough, anyone with even small ideas can turn their dreams into big businesses - by working the grind with consistency of course. 

Covid-19 changed that. Not just for uber drivers and retail shop workers and food delivery agents or business owners, but more severely for the service industry. 

While payment and UPI apps were the next big thing in 2019 when everyone was out and about their one business and the worry of the hour was how to make payment fast, secure and convenient for fickle customers. And let's say an added layer of bookkeeping and making saving easier for everyone from a Kirana store owner to a local salon owner. Once covid hit, properties changed. 

Then with a sudden knee jerk reaction - like a flip switch even - literally overnight - we saw the rise of platforms like zoom, voice and video chats in 2020 and 2021. 

2020 - saw the rise of reels, live streaming and video lead workshops and teaching - Perfect for people who were at home, and were able to channel their energies and drive business growth and reach by using these mediums. We saw people start self-help reels, give workshops online and engage in live sessions. Everything they could do using a simple mobile device and internet from the comfort of their homes - just to ensure that their business stays relevant in the mind of customers. The one hope that remained - this phase was temporary and it was a business revenue hit everyone had to make way for. Nothing else needed to change. 

Come 2021 - We're still in lockdown. We’ve learned to live with ourselves and we're tired of waiting, losing patience. Small business owners are also humans after all. But they're growing sceptical, they can't step out and they can't take the risks they planned as optimistic SMB owners. The virus after all has evolved as well. But 'risk' is something Indian's specialise in taking. 

'Peth paalne ke liye karna padta hai babu' is the undertone of our 'jugaad' mindset after all. 'Calculated risk' is something one never really plans for like an extended vacation. Nor is it that much fun. So what now? 

We're slowly but surely getting vaccinated, and that instils a lot of misplaced encouragement and hope in the SMB owners who have mouths to feed and rents to pay and have waited it out patiently for a year. Once the government imposed lockdowns being to fade, people will risk et all, and open shop, period. 

But we can be smarter about this. There is a gap that wasn't really there actually, but a place that Paytm's of the world and Gpay's of the world (in coalition with their Google Business listing) can solve for - 'paid risk'. 

Two categories that have already perfected this is medical consultations and dining out - Practo and Zomat's of the world have set them up for success that it's not even occurring. as a problem to them. You can book find a slot in their calendar and book a time to visit a hospital to a restaurant and pay up for consultation for the time booked in case of medical tech - which is post covid ready and actually serves as category operational hygiene. 

If an SMB owner is told that today he can open shop and entertain customers, be it in a custom tailor store or a beauty parlour or a gym instructor for that matter - by ensuring that they book slots, and limit crowd in-store and get users to pay a fee as visitation charge redeemable against product or services in-store - then surely it makes sense for them to indulge in 'paid risk', right? 

If a service can be offered in the shop but with the guarantee of customer visit and purchase, who will not take this risk? 

Yes I know, one can critique that:

1. For paid order pickups from a grocery or Kirana shops  - one can set up an order on call and payment on UPI or Paytm. 

2. For selling clothes and taking custom measurements - one can set up a shop on Amazon or Instagram using Shopify or in some variation of that with a phone call. 

3. For selling home installation, maintenance and repair services, and home beauty and wellness services one can set up usage of urban clap. 

But these are very centric to individuals who sell services and not the business that sells services. Have you seen the verbal war salon aunties unleash in opposition to the usage of beauty services via Urban Company that comes home and do the same thing? 

The problem comes when we acknowledge that there are already existing businesses who need a selling solution right now, we're not planning for an audience that will come into existence to do this: 

Use case: Beauty salon

Step 1: The salon owner is able to list staff and their available timeslots as per various jobs that can be booked in the salon. 

Step 2: Payment against these services can be taken in advance. 

Step 3: Basis time and slot hold - the salon owner can define the working hours for the staff for each day. Keeping the business closed on days there is no business or having them wait for a walk-in customer. 

Step 4: Booking date and time changes can be made in-app, ensuring optimal safety of staff and customers as well as facility and resource management efficiencies. 

Step 5: Bonus if this can be done on their listing page in an app or better yet on their google business listing! (as we usually search for these things in the vicinity) 

Use case: Tailor shop or boutique

Step 1: Tailor shop is able to account for each tailers time and list out available time slots as per various jobs that can be booked in the shop. i.e.: Taking measurements for various new garments, fixing existing garments, rush jobs, elaborate dress planning and measurements, fabric shortlisting etc. 

Step 2: Payment against job type can be taken in advance for a fixed timeslot. 

Step 3: The boutique owner can align pick up dates for finished garments, for checking fittings and rework at time of the first visit and move same basis customer interaction. 

Step 4: Let a chat start between boutique and customer on progress thereon. Additional payment can also be made mid-conversation and job delivery.  

Step 5: Bonus if this can be done on their listing page in an app or better yet on their google business listing! (as we usually search for these things in the vicinity) and also helps travel to the same using google maps. 

Some context why this gap needs to be filled for consumers: 

So business competes with individuals who offer the same jobs. Businesses set benchmarks for hygiene and service quality, and as they do it in a secure vicinity, it is easier for them to sell the fact that their staff is not visiting homes for business that may have explored them to covid. 

Also, not everyone wants to get a Seema aunty at home who only uses Kasmara products to do facials and pedicures because Urban Company complies them to do so terming it as standardisation. 

Who can diversify or expand their existing universe into this space right away?

1. So either like of Urban Company can quickly add this to their portfolio. 
2. Or the likes of Paytm who already offer multiple other similar devices and brand store set-ups. 
3. But overall I think Google business listings or Facebook marketplace can do this pretty well, and to the advantage of SMB businesses - but we all know the larger the giant, the slower it walks.

But in a post covid world as well - this gap evolves SMB businesses to be more digital and eventually spend on digital to get sure shot business and should become a norm in these unregulated service industries in India as well. And if it works here, LATAM, APAC region is an easy implementation of this business case! 

What will serve as a paid risk forsaker for the Indian economy if the lockdown continues this year will surely become a use case for future business starters as hygiene. Who knows how long Covid-19 is here to stay. 

Who know's how long we can only believe people spend on advertising without being able to guarantee return via digital? 

Evolving Ideas - When you 'really want to sell' your old gadgets..

If I found a tech team on the ready and 6 months worth funding, i would defiantly build out a "web' product of the below idea!

Why web? When the world is going mobile? Well, the younger generation is, they are smarter, they take risks, but even they believe that when things have to be done seriously, one needs to pull out a laptop or a desktop to get to work. And of course, the 25+ are usually at work and have more access to web via their work stations than through their mobiles..

TG for the product; 
MF - 25 +
All metro cities first.
Web friendly.

This idea is expansion and combination of the existing 4 modules of; 
1. Price discovery for old gadgets such as those available on rebloge.in, sahivalue.com, attero bay.
2. E-commerce efforts and deals for gadget refresh cycles, i.e.: apple, snapdeal.com, flipkart.com
3. Editorial reviews and crown sourced reviews carting to audience like 'rotten tomatoes' is to movies.
4. Price aggregation sites such as junglee.com

Envisioning the UI;  
To cater to both young and old the entire UI will have to be very visual, making or keeping all options as visual heavy and text light as not to over whelm the user.


Future possibilities; 
1. To function as an independent website and tool, review site and editorial platform that ''does not lie'.
2. Pluggable tool for eCommerce websites, bank services, wallets.
3. Scorecard plugin for editorial websites, wallets, e-commerce websites.
4. Insights tool for electronic giants for betterment of their products.

Disclaimer: If Amazon, Google, Times or the likes chose to explore it further, I'd simply ask to be part of the project. 

Product Idea 4: The FourSquare for Drunks, Foodies, Shopaholics and Blind daters

Hey, i really don't get the advantages of declaring ones arrival on a separate platform, but that's just me. I mean, we're very much in the technological age where a Facebook or a Twitter (or even a Google+) might just begin churning out profits from similar integration into its base apps - well du-hu;

1. Both have status updates and location Geo targeting available?
2. Both have made them selves critical for Big brands engaging with its audience in real time to own their own fan page.
3. After i update that I've 'Arrived' on Four Square - I do share it across Facebook, Twitter and at times Google+ as well.

Hence that makes its a;

1. Double Go for Facebook which tries to seek out user payment information and most likely to have users already have photos to tag along with updates as well.
2. Double go for Twitter since it literally mirrors Four Square but only people talk way more within the similar word limit updates about other things as well.
3. And a double go for Google+ which due to its Google Play app stores integration any how has a very large base of user payment details in its records.

So hey, if you want to give real time discounts, you might as well do them where people are engaging actively in conversation about their lives.

= WAIT, before i go any further, let me just clarify that i pick these platforms since they have already earned dominance in the market and brands are very dependent on them today despite heading down a more holistic and native engagement approach themselves to re-capture the audience that already eats, sleeps, breaths on these platforms. =

But what connects these four platforms in reality anyway (FourSquare included)? At least philosophically any how.
The re-assurance that you aren't the only one trolling the internet or streets alone at any given point or day and night or time. When we see a acquaintance also partying... or a fellow social media friend also updating a new post or status update while we are, we feel a sense of belonging. That being said, think to yourselves, do you actually know all your twitter followers personally? Or the people who begin following you on Four Square for that matter? You might relate to them because you might belog to the same city, or have the same content consumption interests, or even simply cause you both like beer. 

Yes, strange as it may seem its the truth for many. (and whats not to celebrate about liking beer anyhow?)

Beer remind me of one such event that is actively using this as an opportunity to really create an organic buzz out there. Kingfisher beer! Every heard of the KFC Beer Fests (secret events)? Random people from across the internet and geographies co-create the buzz and then meet up in person on the day of the event! And how do they engage or why do they enjoy these events?
- Because they love beer,
- They interact as their Twitter handle names and much less as real people,
- And because they all managed to get on the invitation list of this secret event with free beer, food and beer chugging competitions.

What does the brand do in turn?
1. Gets lots of meaty posts, videos, photos and usage of their handle name and brand name across internet through these events.
2. Great brand recall, greater brand recommendation and WOM.
But that's just the start.
More can be done. Much more.

Lets begin by identifying the key take always from KFC Beer Fests;
1. They manage to engage with their online audience offline.
2. They reward their online fans in real time.
3. They manage to connect and unite beer lovers of each city they carry out these events in.
4. They strengthen their audiences emotional connect with the brand.

I have a feeling i get over excited about concepts sometimes and talk too much about one subject or topic. Moving forward.

SoDelhi recently also organised a treasure hunt across Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi, India using Social Media. Another win.
In turn it managed to accumulate a large number of foodies and city dwellers from Delhi to follow their page.

But here, these brands are creating a burst of events that really gather audiences and not necessarily engage them in real time. A hit campaign sure but a hit app or platform?... 

The idea: imagine being able to connect with the drinking community of a city or multiple cities in real time. Maybe lets say digitaliz the concept of car-o-bar. If I'm alone and i want to drink, what if i could connect to my foursquare and ping my location and what I'm drinking to the world and get real time feeds of people in and around my city drinking the same thing at rhe same time? Yes yes legal hassles in setting up something like that for a new player, but what about the Carlsberg and Heineken's of the world? 

Will it really mean too much effort to integrate with any one such existing platform for lets say the winter season, when everyone is celebrating, no ones wants to be alone and everyone enjoys a party. 

How about letting people start it? 

What it will potentially take? 

On foursquare's part - a section division of arrivals to eatires, gyms, pubs, shopping centres to name a few as broad categorization. (feed viwing division is as it is down as per how close or nearby another person) 

On part of the brand - lets say Carlsberg; to own that section for specific key cities and rewarding their fans for every pint they buy from a pub. If more than lets keep a benchmark numner of 100 people are updating their drinks update in a specific city 'drinking or celebrating with a Carlsberg', maybe an instant party or invite-an-extra-friend along with yourself to a spontanious jam event can be organised? Rules: get your bill stating your drink, plus you get only Carlsberg drinks at the venu. 

Ok, lets take another example. Imagine all these young shopaholic girls updating their location to a mall of a city. If more than 50 people tweet their arrival to a certain mall, maybe the brands in that mall can own up too a flash sale. The details of which can be visible to the users of FourSquare on the (currently non existant but easily manageable) brand pages. 

And what's more. You actively get users to use your platform for real time rewards. You let users or the masses to create the need and brands to supply for these needs. Social likes and brand mentions go up, you spend less on paid publicity and you get better word of mouth. 

Lets say maybe this is phase one in such a direction. Maybe lets say you want to create a positive word of mouth (WOM) for a destination or product or maybe you want to increase sales of certain outlet or product on a certain weekend. What do you do then? 

User journey mapping can go something like  this - 

- Check into a location. 

- Brands send you ongoing contests for exclusive flash sales. 

- WOM camping - you put up your next update on why this is a great store for winter wear and share it across your FB, Twitter and Instagram pages using a certain hashtag. 

- Go to the store in real time. 

- Show this to the billing counter post shopping. 

- Cashier varifies and gives you a special additonal discount. 

- You get a personalised shout out from the brand pages across all mediums for visiting. (this also makes sure that those who dont know about the event, also find out) 

A happy and suprised customer always follows brand pages in 80% scenarios. You don't even need to force them or be suggestive. 

Maybe you raise your own bench mark next time by increasing the numner of check-ins required to generate these kinds of events. Over time gathering larger footfalls. 

For general do gooders - such platforms can be part of the safe drinking initiatives. (park to the side and inform fellow drinkers where the cops are located at night) hey? it can work, people try being heard on Twitter like this all the time. While wenting their frustration and also being allies to random city dwellers also on the same platform. Its a network that counts. 

Oh i almost forgot the blind-daters. Imagine drinking alone or wanting to go out on a safe party night. But having no one to do so. What do you do then? 

You update your status. You send an open invite a friendly mob for company. (A fellow drinker it always a friend, expecially post a few drinks.) You basically end up with a dinner with strangers night which is self generated by users rather than a community. All a brand needs to do is use the gender and location filters to validate and make certain a ratio of men and woman is in place and thay there are updates from more than 7-10 people at a time. Output: You meet new people, you make new friends and it remains safe. And its totally up to you to stay or leave post meeting the people who show up, :) win. 

Product idea 3: What next for Gaana.com

Without quoting numbers here, lets me being first by showcasing some observations.

Smart phones are on the rise.
So is cloud computing.
Lower segment phones with comparatively lower in built memory but additional service to store data in a cloud account is the 'new in thing'.
Not only does a brand get to capture user data, it now helps services like Google, Hotmail or Yahoo really find out who you are, how active you are and what your interests are more  actively.

Hey, it doesn't end there, mobile operators also accumulate your data, are you a smart phone or a feature phone user? How much bandwidth you consume, where you consume it, fortunately enough; i cant really comment much on coordinated efforts between the mobile company, mobile operators and mobile platform builders. And thank god to that! Or thank god at least for now.

With players like e-commerce giant Flipkart launching its very own Mp3 buy and download app and Times Internet investing and creating its very own music streaming platform, one can safely assume that two things:

1. People are quickly adapting to 'technology on the go'.
2. We're consuming and growing more and more dependent on the internet services than our phone capabilities.

Which brings me to my subject of the next evolution of Gaana.com.

Hey, personally i love that app. A bit annoying at times when you are looking for certain songs and they haven't managed to procure the licenses for hosting and playing the same. But the buffering speed? Phenomenal. (yes i use a Nexus and I'd rather use my storage space to download something else, even if it means in app songs download to listen on the go. Cause du-hu. Stop defeating my purpose of using you in the first place.)

At this point thanks to non song availability i would like to talk about another app i am heavily dependent on; YouTube. Yes I don't mind the usage of data for buffering an entire video when its the song I'm really interested in. (i don't get why they cant just make that version of the existing app, i really really would like the segregation. Especially since its one of the largest co-created depositories for music as well.)

Now when it comes to good Internet connections, which we have plenty of today, with network reach and towers even in the remotest corners of the city, state and country, combine with my heavy mobile consumption habits, especially in regards to Music, it brings me to sincerely acknowledge one last type of app. Yes if you've guessed it by now, you've guessed correctly - SoundHound or Shazam's of the world. Ok frankly they are the only two i know. Hehe.

But arguably, my life depended on all three of these apps! What binds them is Internet usage. And mediums being available in app formats across all mobile platforms. All smart phone mobile platforms anyway.

But i don't get why, just why we aren't seeing a collaborative amongst a music streaming and music discovery platform. Or at least a realistically EASY one?

Sound hound pairs up with YouTube and Google particularly to throw back simultaneous search results for other versions of a song you find on the go as well as the the option of looking up the lyrics using the in app browser. (not even going to discuss its e-commerce platform integration at the moment which allows users to buy and download songs they like on the go)

Gaana and Youtube independently as apps on the other hand give you the ability to bookmark favorite tracks as well as sort them in various play lists. Preferably customized by longtail searches.. Ok well Gaana does an additional piece of creating playlists for its users of popular songs and genres of music to smoothen out the hassle of having to go to a platform and looking for what you want to listen to -- in turn reducing app consumption. And also at the same time building user habit of mindlessly just playing one of the playlists and slightly disfiguring ones own music preference.

But heck, its convenient.

While users may flirt constantly with the idea of downloading a Savan, Gaana, Hungama Music app or plain YouTube.

One thing they always keep on their phone and preferably on the first screen of their phone is either a Shazam or a SoundHound. (as per personal learning, Shazam is better for Hindi songs while SoundHound is better for English)

I firstly feel that - being on the first screen should be the new bench mark for apps. Being able to be as important to users, which in turn of course already means better recall and higher consumption. (which also means - why are people making so many bad apps to begin with? Those that don't only not make it to the last scroll of a users phone but hardly ever get downloaded at all either)

OK OK. to my final take already.

Gaana should look at capturing 'long tail' music searches, based on specific user interest, based searches by integrating or collaborating with a partner like Shazam or SoundHound.

Further to this as soon as a person has identified a song he/she likes (assumably on the go), they should have the option of adding it to their playlists (instantly). This gives Gaana an all rounded approach of actively engaging its users and aiming for the first screen placement on mobile phones.

Further to adding to designated play lists they should collaborate with a music streaming engine like YouTube if they cannot license all the songs to their banner. This solves the classic problem faced by SoundHound and Shazam at a certain level where users tend to use them as music finders ONLY. (and who the heck is purchasing songs off them anyway? Their financial model should solely be revolving around new innovation integration and thinking in the direction like they did for the end title track for the Superman movie earlier this year.. Or was it last?)

All in all, this should be an extension app to the classic Gaana app. Preferably a 'Mobile Only' version to being with. Since there are always music adopters and music evangelists. Same goes for people who are new technology adopters and evangelists. If this is not possible, the same should be integrated to the first screen and then on second scroll the playlists should appear. Hence pushing down the current layout by 1 screen for all scrolls.

Similarity between - Product Management and the Jetsons cartoon

So at one end there was the Flintstones. And the other the Jetsons. One based way back into the dinosaur era and other way ahead into the future.

If you ever saw both the cartoons as a child, you'd see or even feel that its our current era that holds on to too much clutter.

This I can animatedly conclude from the fact, that if we take the following in perspective and consider it our actual past and future - The Flintstones era didn't have quite as many inventions as we do and the Jetsons era was always depicted as or anticipated as clean, compressed and as being minimalists.

When we look at the symbiotic relationship of global news industry and the internet. We quite see the same in transition.

We started with news dissemination via papers. Now we have papers, TV, radio and a growing majority that uses internet for the purpose of finding and reading news. Too much clutter. or we can say, the current ear is in transition. It is the only era where everything can coexist. We haven't really short listed the one medium we will become dependent in the future on.

The Jetsons did use TV and Radio as prime means of communication. Or we can attribute that to the fact that maybe the emergence of the internet was not nearly well portrayed or was secluded to keep the cartoon series focused and simple?

What ever the case, if we draw 2 curves one for innovation and another for adoption and improvement, they probably meet at the point between the flint stones and Jetsons where our current rate or innovation in technology is being driven my minimalism.

Hence the arrival of the product managers to businesses. And the growing relevance to cutting the clutter.

The jetsons might have chosen Tivo or Radio. But when we make our clean minimalist future, rite now as we evolve from the flintstones era and evolve steadily - we might short list on mediums of technology and mediums of dissemination as key areas for reduction.

Want for the words "less is more" evolving from fashion to technology making a steady rise.

Busines Idea 1: Traveller cafe and not just namesake!

This concept is Delhi, IN centirc. 

1. For whom: Travel company / independent hospitality industry person looking for a new venture / cafe concept. 

1.1 Will need three key people - a travel partner, a cafe partern, a marketing / digital partner. 

2. Catering to whom: anyone keen on traveling to India / various parts of india 

2.1 Primary audience - foreigners 

2.2 Secondary audience - local travel / photography / food junkies. 

3. Name: Traveller's Cafe 

3.1 Ironically this name is vacant, at least in Delhi NCR scenario!? Checked Zomato / googled 

4. Business model: to create an secondary opportunity/market to organize and cater to forgein clients and travelers for a travel company but thought a more legitimate approach while simultaneously also earning revenue from a cafe business. 

5. Cafe positioning: Location! location! location!: Pahardganj

5.1 To catch the market where they feel most comfortable.  

5.2 Also giving them a feeling of being self initiated rather than being duped by being dragged directly from airports and railway stations by traver agency 'cutters'.

6. Why: most travelers coming to Delhi read the lonely planet guide which specifically tells them about the places to stay (Pahardganj) and what to expect for cheap travel (cost) and how to bargain etc. 

6.1 Hence opportunity of creating a non hostile environment for capturing travel leads as the positioning is of a cafe. 

6.2 Agent can take them there rather than bring them to the travel shop from airports / railway stations to 'freshen-up'.

6.3 Also travelers who go stay there are otherwise smart / difficult to cater to or capture. 

6.4 As large traveling groups the over all cost of the trip also goes down which can again be shown as a 'USP' of the cafe.

7. Cafe concept: to cater to:

7.1 basic finger food from all over india i.e.: chats and snacks - conversation starters. 

7.2 Secondary menu to be world cuisine based (pricing according to Paharganj market pricing). 

7.3 Cheap alcohol. 

8. Back up model: even if the cafe fails as a travel company, it is an independent business model which can sustain itself to the catered market in that area.

9. Marketing model: For testimonial based reinforcement - that others have done this and come back alive!

9.1 Interiors to have walls on contributions from group travels of visitors + comments.

9.2 Polaroid photo shots for all paying customers with comments on how their visit to India has been so far. 

9.3 To hold small relics from all the visits with dates of visit / journey. 

10. Social page: Can work on 'powered by' model. 

10.1 Front end to be called: Traveller's Cafe on Facebook, Tumbler, Pinterest, Blogger and Zomato. 

10.2 In details / about section of the pages the same can be called 'powered by _ _ _ _ travel company. 

10.3 All articles and photos to be back linked to the travel partner site pages. Help with site traffic flow / building. 

11. Trip models: 

11.1 To host group travels for locals as well as forging groups. 

11.2 To make customized journey's - crowd sources destinations. 

11.3 Invite photo walk groups, adventure sports enthusiasts and related audiance for monthly, quarterly, half yearly trips.

12. Major marketing spend: 

12.1 Online: Zomato / bookmyshow / FB ads / google ad words / seo / mailer's /social media intern / depending on chosen rout/partners. Can use step by step or in phases expansion model. 

12.2 On ground: newspaper brochures and mats with updated upcoming travel plans to be put under class of the table or as mats. (to act as news letter's.)

13. Business model suited for: Travel company, someone enthusiastic about food and beverage industry.

14. Challenges :

14.1 Finding rent-able real estate in Pahardganj on long term lease. 

14.2 Ways of not letting other travel agents and brokers enter the cafe or breaking away client. 

14.3 Licensing - would it need only food and beverage or also travel company permits? 

14.4 Cracking MyBar concept for cheap booze and liquor!?  

14.5 Other unforeseen challenge from investors point of view. 

(i.e.: - will he be comfortable disclosing it as his own business to partners? (If any) 

- Will new partners be chosen for this venture? 

- Tie ups for further business to near by hotels and guest houses will he earn or travel company?) 

I guess i'm just a enthusiastic traveler? This should work! Comments / Suggestions anyone? :)