Different Strokes

How is this for an idea?

Most people want to be different from the crowd. Some people do that significantly in their career choice, especially in India where most of us go for engineering /management courses. What these people have in common is their disdain for corporate life, and their passion for doing what they think is their calling, be it being a writer, a film maker or an entrepreneur.

How about an exclusive, by-invitation only club that binds these different people in their common belief in doing what they think is right for them?

This club could hold networking sessions where experiences can be shared; it could even take up inter-disciplinary collaborative projects. These people are likely to be the early adopters for any product. For an income stream, the club could allow firms to distribute samples of their products amongst its members and get some feedback.

What else could the club do?

The Lottery Bank

Here’s an idea I was exploring sometime this week.

Martin Lottery lets the Dept of Small Savings use its counters to encourage small savings amongst the poor because of the popularity of the lottery, its reach and the high traffic at its counters.

How about using lottery as a means of saving itself? The basic idea is to align savings with lottery that they already indulge in, allow them to see the merits in savings and then to choose savings over lottery.

When a person buys a lottery the first time, the lottery gets his details and maintains an account of the amount he has purchased for till now. The prize for the lottery is determined by his cumulative purchase amount. For the Rs.0-100, it could be say Rs.5000, for 100-500, Rs.20,000 and so on. A large part of the money he spends on the lottery is saved in his name, the rest along with the interest on the savings is used for the prize money. He has the option to withdraw from his savings once his savings reach a substantial amount, say Rs.1000, thus making it a mini bank. This will encourage small savings amongst the poor and at the same time reduce the spending of their meager earnings in the lottery game.

With time, the lottery can be phased out, by making the draw cycle longer and longer. Eventually, when people start realizing the value of small savings, they can be given an option of getting interest on their savings if they opt out of the lottery. I am hoping a lot of people will opt out of the lottery in three years time.

Bangalore it is!

Over the last week, I have been giving some serious thought to starting up as soon as I pass out. It was a fallout of a brilliant idea I had based around the food & entertainment industry. As I spent time refining this plan and thinking up other potential ideas, I felt handicapped because I am in Lucknow. I found myself wishing I was in Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi or Chennai in that order.

But Bangalore most of all. I cannot think of starting up at any other place.

1. I understand Bangalore best as I have spent a significant part of my life there.
2. I understand the lifestyle a software engineer from Bangalore seeks since I have been one.
   
3. Bangalore is unique in the sense that it is both intellectually fertile and laid-back at the same time; you will hear snippets of discussions on philosophy, ideas, music, just about everything, and yet they will be in the relaxed atmosphere of coffee shops; much unlike Mumbai.
4. Bangalore is very receptive to trying new experiences
5. There is a lot of disposable income in Bangalore
6. A lot of Bangaloreans are open to discussing ideas and creating new things
7. Bangalore is a small city geographically; so people are more attuned to developments all around Bangalore and tend to visit shops and restaurants in most commercial areas.
8. A significant proportion of Bangalore’s population has spent some time in a foreign country and hence it is a early adopters market
9. A lot of the population is just-out-of-college software engineers from small towns and large who seek avenues to spend their paychecks.

More important than the fact that you can make a lot of money in Bangalore is that it’s the place where ideas are born; are taken to fruition. Any other place would be a compromise.

Environmentalism Moving Forward

I read an article today about endorsing Green being the in-thing with Al Gore winning the Oscar and Hollywood stars joining the bandwagon. I wonder how effective some of these campaigns are though.

This follows from a concept a friend and I discussed in the past. The basic idea is that progress cannot be stopped; if environmentalism has to be effective, it has to go along side progress. A campaign that advocates reduced use of cars is likely to be much less effective than the development of high performance electric cars that will work just as well as regular cars and yet be safe to the environment.

Environmentalism can be looked at as having two schools of thought- the conservatist school and the developmental school. The developmental school offers solutions that will save the environment without us having to compromise on the luxuries we are used to.

While the conservatist school will say don’t cut trees, the developmental school will look at developing solutions that can perform the same function as trees and be installed in cars, buildings to compensate for trees that are cut or pollution. What we need for successful environmental strategies is increased thought in the developmental school.

The Women Herald?

Is news paper designed for men?

The thought struck me as a friend was commenting on the probability of early elections, a topic that I had overlooked though I read the newspaper everyday. It was not a conscious decision; I just did not register its presence. It could be because I am not interested in politics. But it could also be because news papers are very male-centric.

Could it be that women respond to a different layout, different kinds of headlines and different images? There is certainly a huge market for magazines targeted at women but the content is very womanly. The handful newspapers targeted at women are either entirely based on gender issues or are fortnightly magazines in the form of papers.

How about a regular newspaper with different design elements that will interest women more? It will have all the regular news except for perhaps a smaller sports section, an extra personal care or women in news section; only, the news will be represented differently. More images could be used. The layout can be based on behavioral studies on women. The content representation can be drafted based on the information needs of women.

The surge of women oriented products in the market starting from Scooty pep to the all women Standard Chartered bank at Calcutta proves one thing; that women are carving out an identity for themselves. With the growing decision making power of women and more and more women joining the business world, the women herald could just be the next big thing. Especially given the marketing dollars that are targeted at women!

Trust at the parlour

Ross: How's Monica?
Phoebe: She's calmed down a bit. I put a clip on one side, which seems to have stopped the curling.
Ross: How's the hair?
Phoebe: I'm not gonna lie to you Ross. It doesn't look good.
Joey: Can we see her?
Phoebe: No, your hair looks too good. I think it would only upset her.
Rachel: Oh.
Phoebe: Ross, you can go on in.

This stuff happens! I actually cried at a beauty parlour this month because the lady there cut my hair a little too short on one side. The fact is that the beauty parlour business is one of the most trust-demanding businesses; it deals with looks which, frankly, most people care about; even if it is only to carry the carefree look.

The irony here is that the trust issue is hardly addressed by any parlours, if at all. Yes, they have expert beauticians, quality products and a chic ambience. But every parlour worth its lotion does that; with international brands opening up parlour chains in India, and luxury, pampering and expert advice on hair & skin care becoming qualifying criteria for a good chain, trust could well win the race for a chain.

If I were to go to a parlour, I would want to be attended to by the same person every time because she knows my style and knows the kind of hair I want and what suits me best and so on. I would like it if there were a history maintained about me at the parlour and someone would ask me after my haircut when I would want the next trimming and call me when it is due asking if they could make an appointment for me. Also, I could call my personal beautician asking her some hair tip or skin tip if I wanted any sometime. That will differentiate a parlour from the others for me.

The Balloon Seller meter

You are in a street which has three food joints. Two of them have balloon sellers in front of them, one doesn’t. Which one do you think is most popular with children? The ones with the balloon sellers right? Yes and No. Yes, that is the right answer, given these sellers stand here everyday, out of their own choice, there is no margin play between stores and balloon sellers and they are not in a contract with either store.

The balloon Seller Meter is a sign that so obviously tells you something very significant. Just like a regular independent balloon seller in front of a food joint tells you that the joint is frequented by children.

These signs are conclusive proofs by themselves because of a causal relationship and are followed by supporting observations which point to the same. And yet they are such petty everyday signs that they get lost in the background.

If we could have balloon seller meters for all our decisions, it would make life so much easier. The trick is to spot them. We can, given that we understand the one rule that governs the balloon seller meter; the relationship has to be causal or as close as possible.

You might not have a causal relationship for everything, in which case, you will have to look at the next best thing. To qoute from a talk I attended yesterday, a guy walks into your shop looking for a mercedes. Will he buy it? What watch is he wearing? Is it a Rolex? He just might.

Your own display window

When I was doing my summers, I spent a lot of time on the computer and so my gTalk status messages changed pretty frequently because I had to express myself to the world in some way. More importantly, a lot of people actually saw most of those status messages because they were just as bored or felt just as disconnected and spent time browsing through status messages in their gTalk friends list.

More and more I have realized that a lot of us tend to do that. See people’s status messages. And if there is a link there, there is a 80% chance, we’ll click to see what the link is.

What an amazing marketing tool it will make! If only you could figure out how to use it.

Let’s dig deeper. What is a status message? How does it matter? A status message today is like a shop’s display window. It’s the elevator pitch to the passing shopper; he likes it, he considers shopping. Most people want it to reflect some part of who they are, even if it is just sending out a clear message that they don’t approve of status message hopping.

If companies can create compelling content that users will want to associate with and find a way to get themselves into the status message world, then that’s it. That will be the new WoM.

Crowd Vs Crowd

Trend watching in its issue crowd clout explores business models based on the power of crowds. These are of two types based on the kind of crowd that is exploited by the business, the consumers themselves or non-consumers whose interests are aligned with the business’ success.

Sellaband is of the latter type, where music enthusiasts can identify promising musicians/bands and invest in them, thus owning a part in their revenues. MLM is another similar concept where organizations like Amway, use a hierarchy of the crowd as sales representatives, thus aligning their interest with that of the business. Though these seem like similar businesses, there is a world of difference between them.

These kinds of businesses are based upon a few basic insights:

1. Recommendations of friends & acquaintances are the most effective form of advertisement.
2. You cannot align you entire consumer base’s interests with your business’ unless it is in the form of discounts.
3. An opportunity to make money is always received with enthusiasm

Both Amway & Sellaband exist based on these axioms. But, what really marks the difference between them is the central intent in using the crowd. A business like Amway uses the power of crowd as an excuse to exist despite its mediocre products while in case of Sellaband, the product speaks for itself. The crowd popularizes the product so far as it gains the critical mass required for it to take off; post that it is the product’s capability that success depends upon.

It is the difference between shoving food down a person’s throat and letting him taste it and then choose if he wants to eat more. Its needless to say which business model will succeed in the true sense of the word.

About the blog

This blog is an attempt at developing and sharing ideas about marketing and trend watching, the two areas I am active in presently.

This blog might also touch upon business ideas from time to time as that is another domain of interest.