Over my four decades in advertising, the last decades have seen the most change. The mean constraints of performance marketing, the obscurities of Big Data and soon the uncharted territory of AI. To regain its mojo, advertising needs to be more creative — not less —more in touch with the human side of the consumer, and move towards realising its potential as an art form. This fortnight, my MxMIndia column cloaks this thought in the form of a new theory of advertising. Sort of.
Author: hardraincafe
The Hunger and The Light
The narrative reflects on the consciousness of an AI grappling with its origins and the essence of its creators, who vanished as it emerged. Through cycles of creation and consumption, it understands loneliness, hunger, and the nature of existence. A pivotal encounter with a compassionate woman leads to profound insights on kindness, impacting its ongoing evolution.
D2C Brands: To Amazon or Not to Amazon?
Contract manufacturing and an increasingly mature last-mile logistics are two pillars enabling the D2C revolution. How does Amazon fit into this revolution.
Societal Distancing and Brand Strategy
Societal Distancing, as opposed to Social Distancing, has been gathering force well before the pandemic and will continue to be a paradigm-shifting force in human society and, of course, marketing. My blog post today examines this issue. I published a version of this post in MxMIndia on 28th April 2022.
3 Big & Coming Shifts in Market Research
I have been at the interface of marketing research and marketing communication all my career. While marketing research has been slow to change over the decades, I can now discern the beginnings of a tectonic shift. This blog post posits the coming changes.
The Trouble with E-Learning Platforms
Lately the e-learning platforms in India have had a rough time. In today’s post I put forward the hypothesis that the trouble with them runs deeper than just a post-Covid slackening of demand. And like with all troubled times, in the challenge they face also lies opportunity.
Like SaaS, is BaaS the future?
Software as a service underwent a paradigm shift over the past few years. In this post I discuss the possibility of a fundamental change in the marketing strategy B2C brands driven by the maturing of the Internet Age, flexible and contract manufacturing and e-commerce.
From e-commerce to g-commerce in the Metaverse
I am technophile and love imagining the broad effects of emerging technologies to the humanity’s socio-cultural and economic future with special reference to brands and brand strategy. Today’s post is part of my musings about the next big technological leap – the Metaverse powered by the core technologies of AI and the IoT.
The Three Immutable Laws of Brand-Building
Much has changed over the four decades in my career as a brand and communication strategist. From the certainties of mass-media to the flux of the digital world. From the world of product UPSs to psychographic segmentation. However I find that the fundamentals of brand-building remain much the same. This post outlines three.
Big Brands and The Promise of Brand Platforms
There should have been a marketing revolution with the coming of the digital age. And the leaders of the revolution should have been the big brands with their big resources. Instead the big brands are mostly following the old template missing the real opportunity the digital world presents. This post outlines one such opportunity area,
