During my marketing days with S.C Johnson, I learned something interesting. The small size of traditional retail shops protects market shares for brands that are market leaders! Since the small retailers can only afford to stock 1-2 (max 3) brands in a category, they are likely to keep brands that sell more – namely the...
During workshops, team meetings and lectures, I often write on the whiteboard to emphasize a point. A few years ago, I started noticing frequent spelling errors. It had a pattern. I was mostly missing one or two letters while writing. It was as if my mind was racing ahead even as my hands wrote out...
A cricket fan since the ’70s growing up in army cantonments across India, one country always held my attention – Pakistan. Especially envious of their fast bowling armoury, like many youngsters, I too slogged in the nets, hoping to be India’s first genuine fast bowler! It hurt our masculinity that our quicks were no match...
Around 2004, we won the advertising business of a new ready-made apparel brand to be launched by a very large Indian company. Our agency had suggested a space around ‘confidence’. The client very rightly asked us to come back with a sharper, more compelling narrative on confidence. As the planner, I started engaging with the...
Interesting how studying for ‘consumer insights’ often results in understanding ourselves. Did you know that we humans have a ‘negativity bias’? It means we not only overemphasize what’s bad around us, but also take what is good very quickly for granted after a short window of gratitude. Notice how quickly, the resort that felt breathtaking...
Yesterday MS Dhoni made 18 runs and the social media went delirious with happiness. If like me, you’ve been a die-hard Dhoni fan, you were probably part of this euphoric crowd. But there’s something interesting that this response tells us. The belief, that our superstar of yesteryears is still a match winner he used to...
Do you sometimes feel guilty about being ‘lazy’? The list of what you ‘know’ you should do, getting much longer than what you actually manage to do or sustain? The reason is not lack of ‘character’ – nature has designed animals to conserve energy (or being lazy, if we must judge). Not just physical energy,...
I must have been 4-5 years when I saw Abhimaan, hardly understanding much (mom being a movie buff, I saw many movies with her, completely clueless as to what was happening in the story!). It’s a fascinating story of male ego fragility in dealing with women’s success in professional fields. Couple of decades later, with...
A common and seemingly ‘reasonable’ question you might face when you present an idea/concept. Examples and case studies help us visualize the solution and give us the comfort of proven success. Do you see the problem with it? If brands have done it, it is not a new idea. If they have done it in...
Over the last decade, our studies on him have painted a picture of a conflicted, tormented being.What? Men, in a patriarchal society like ours? Kidding, right? Not if you asked him: Guilty as a son for living in a nuclear setup, away from parents when they need him Stressed at work with rising performance demands...