Incito MentisA blog by Syed Abdul Karim

Why do some ideas go mega viral? Why did Gangnam Style get over a billion views on YouTube? Why did “Harlem Shake” move the world? Don’t know about you but if there is anybody who DOES know the answers then it’s the Heath Brothers. Viral hits or pretty much all great ideas are simply about “SUCCESs”! Sounds easy doesn’t it? Not quite. What is “SUCCESs”? Is it some kind of secret formula that can help you cook up that magic one hit wonder? Well I seem to be asking more questions than giving answers! So here goes…

I have used the “Harlem Shake” to illustrate SUCCESs in an attempt to explain both the concept and the reason behind Harlem Shake’s success! What the…!

• Simple - First and foremost simplicity trumps complexity every time. It’s no different for an idea as absurd as the Harlem Shake. It’s brutally simple. You don’t need any skill whatsoever (even I could do it…in fact I did!). It needs no choreograph artist to tell you what to do or nothing like that. Simple works. As Albert Einstein once said “Simplicity is the purest form of genius”. That’s probably why simplicity is hard. Steve Jobs too was known to have been a strong believer in simplicity. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” he said. Although the Harlem Shake was not a deliberate attempt at making something go viral. It is inherently a simple idea.
• Unexpected – The kind of ideas that change the world and get noticed are also ‘disruptive’ by nature. They challenge the status quo. They surprise, amaze, shock, whatever it takes to break our schema of what something is. They explore the boundary of what is possible and then go beyond. Harlem Shake too is unexpected. Of all dance clips in the world. The unexpected context, and rhythm have the power to surprise and engage the audience. So it did.
• Concrete – Big ideas are concrete. They are not a myriad of abstractions. Although mystery is a key tool to impart information and tell engaging stories, they are still however concrete at every step! So what is concrete? A sweating glass of iced tea on a hot summer afternoon is a more concrete description than saying a hot July afternoon. Or the imagery that comes to mind when saying “currency” vs. “a crisp five dollar bill”. In the same way the Harlem Shake is very concrete. For one it is 30 seconds long. Nothing more. Nothing less. It has a set beginning that reaches a crescendo at a certain fixed point where it goes from one person acting crazy to everyone going crazy. It’s vivid. It’s clear. It’s concrete!
• Credible – Source of an idea matters. Who’s saying it matters! That’s why celebrity endorsement works. There is more to driving credibility than that. A powerful demonstration also works. Remember the iconic anti-drug ad that used the analogy of eggs to show how drugs affect the human brain. Raw egg = Brain. Fried Eggs = Brain on Drugs. It worked! The same way anti-authority also works. The no agenda nature of Harlem Shake was the source of it’s credibility. It all started with a couple of friends recording their crazy antics. That’s it. It is authentic.
• Emotional – During the last five years if there has been any research on the human brain it has all pointed out to one simple fact – our emotional brain drives 95% of all our decisions. We are creatures of emotion. Another popular analogy is Homer Simpson vs. Spock. Despite many denying this reality we are in fact a lot more like the impulsive, free-spirited Homer than we are like the calculated, self-restrained Spock. So anything that tugs at our heart strings is going to move us into action. Music is by nature emotional and therefore Harlem Shake inherently has that going for itself to a certain extent.
• Storytelling – We all love a great story. From Aesop’s legendary fables to the kind of stories told in a 3D Cinema Theatre today. Stories are not just entertainment but a truly human way to impart knowledge and information. Unfortunately storytelling has been largely limited to the entertainment industry. But in fact stories are powerful means to change the course of a nation, a generation and even an organization. The Harlem Shake story is probably a bit of an over-analysis on my part. But I do see a story here. Not just one story but many stories. One of them is a story of transformation. A story that starts with a loner, a loser, who is  acting crazy, not getting support from anyone! To a story where the protagonist becomes their leader, their inspiration, their guide as everyone joins him as one! (I know I pushed it here but maybe this was a subliminal message that perhaps was a key driver to it’s fame!)

So there you have it! The formula is yours. If you are intrigued to learn more. I suggest you go and pick up a copy of “Made to Stick” right NOW! It is the source of the “SUCCESs” recipe and it is a great read for anyone looking for their next BIG IDEA!

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Finally! After months of trying to figure out a platform for publishing my paper on Real Time Marketing I decided to publish it as an iBook! What a platform it is!

It was a whole lot of fun using iBooks Author to turn this idea into a reality. It took a lot of time but it was certainly worth the effort. I reckon I would be doing more of this in the days to come, Inshallah (God Willing), so watch this space!

So what is this paper all about? Here is a quick intro!

The world is changing. We are moving from an offline era to an “always on” 24/7 era. Consumers both young and old have embraced this lifestyle. Brands also need to engage with their consumers in these virtual spaces to stay relevant. Marketers need to evolve from a static campaign driven approach to a world of real-time conversation and engagement. This e-paper aims to introduce the reader to this new world of “Real Time Marketing”

You can download it as an iBook from here or search “Real Time Marketing” on the iBookstore to read it on your iPad. Otherwise, you can read it in PDF format below. Enjoy! Feedback is always appreciated.

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Another year comes…another year goes! Back in 2011 I had an initiated an idea for the blog. To cover the defining moments of each year across three areas: Ideas (creativity pertaining to advertising or marketing in general), Insight (discovery around a culture, segment or simply human behavior) and Technology (something that can impact our life – anything from a device, a conceptual innovation or a new way of doing things). Why these three areas? Because this is what I love to do! My world and my work revolves around them and that is why they form the core purpose of this blog. To inspire your mind (i.e. Incito Mentis) with anything related to ideas, insight and technology!

However, I must confess. I didn’t too well! Back in 2011 I wrote only one post out of the three, covering just the insight of the year! This year again I am going to write about just one category as well – the idea of the year! But what an idea have I got for you…

Before I share the winning idea I must say that the selected idea is based purely on my opinion. I am no authority. There is no Cannes jury here backing this selection. Just these three criteria that I came up with:

Content vs. Messages

The era of messages is long over! People don’t care about advertising anymore! They never did! But now they have greater choice and greater control to avoid these messages. More importantly, 360° bombardment of advertising just doesn’t work! It is simply white noise – ineffective and ignored! The dynamics of media have changed. Interactive media gives viewers greater control about they are going to watch. They need to be engaged. Instead of messages, brands need to create content. With about 11% of the world watching YouTube every month (i.e. 800 million unique users per month) it will become the most popular TV channel in the world if it hasn’t already! This is not to say that video content is the only type of content that can be or should be created but the winning idea certainly gets this right!

Emotional vs. Rational

I think Daniel Kahneman proved this about 10 years ago through his seminal piece on Behavioral Economics that we are largely irrational creatures who base 95% of our decisions using our Emotional Brain (i.e. the right side of our brain). Unfortunately the profoundness of this discovery is largely not understood in the marketing and business world till today, although it is changing in some parts of the world (especially in the Scandinavian countries for some reason! I hope to look into that in a future post). The implication is simple. Rational messaging will not change our behavior. As a marketer the purpose of all communication is to drive action, to get people to choose our product over another and that is not going to happen if the emotional brain is not engaged! This is another criteria that the winning idea lives up to! It is largely emotional and coming from a bank brand, it is a welcome change from the typical functional messages or cliched emotional messages seen in financial sector communications.

Real-Time vs. Planned

This criteria is the game changer. Many marketers have evolved from messaging to content. Take Skittles, Nike, Old Spice to name a few. At the same time and going hand in hand is the use of emotionally driven creativity. This too is also something we are seeing many brands incorporate in their communications. But are all those ideas real-time. Do they have to be? Definitely not. But real-time brings with it a whole new level of engagement and surprise that is big on impact. Really big! Why? Because real-time ideas are “disruptive” in their approach. They usually go beyond conventional use of media and sometimes create their own media unique to that context. A good example is the “Response” campaign by Old Spice which involved taking people’s tweets, updates and comments in real-time and crafting a creative response in a very short span. The key to such ideas is social listening, crafting an engagement based on what is heard and executing it at the spur of the moment.  The winning idea is not “real-time” from a digital context but it is clearly a personalized engagement created in an “instant”!

What is the big idea for 2012 then? Without further deliberations I present the award for the Incito Mentis “Idea of the Year 2012″ to National Australia Bank (NAB) for “Honesty should not go unrewarded”. WOW! is all I can say. Watch the video below to see what the hype is all about.

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Another year comes…another year goes! It’s amazing how time flies. So many people came and so many went. It’s seems like yesterday when Incito Mentis was born. It is now three years old! Learnt some new lessons along the way and forgot some old ones I thought I had learnt well. What am I talking about? My content strategy for Incito Mentis. But first…

The big downers!

Lost all my posts once! Everything. All of it. Back-ups were too old to really help. Don’t know how I
managed to find cached copies from all over the web and piece it back together! Really painful! But kudos to Google and their caching of the entire web…managed to copy/paste my way back to just the way it was! Thank you so much to whoever came up with that feature. It saved my life…literally!

Related downer. Lost my Technorati ranking in the process. I had gotten in the 70′s when it came to Business Authority. It’s back to 1 and not able to get it back up. Perhaps with time…

Another downer. Got hit by a virus on my host server. Facebook blocked me for malicious content (The reason why there is no Facebook share button anywhere on my site!). Although the problem has been long resolved Facebook simply won’t let me back in. I have tried everything. Searched everywhere to solve this problem. Even got in touch with Facebook Security staff on LinkedIn through premium “In” mail. No luck whatsoever! In other words, I have been blocked from marketing myself on the largest social media platform in the world. It sucks. I know!

The big ups! (or the lessons learnt over the years)

Really enjoyed writing. Wrote some big posts that continue to be key drivers of traffic to the blog to date especially this one about “Why is it an insult to tip waiters in Iceland!” It’s my all time number one post by far! But it wasn’t enough! I needed to get better…

Then somewhere along the road I learnt about balancing between stock and flow content!

Stock content is the real deal. The type of content that is truly original. Signature stuff that makes you stand out for who you are. The problem. It takes a long, long time to develop. It requires a lot of hard work to understand a topic deeply enough to contribute something original. In the beginning I was doing very little of this so the frequency of posts was much higher. 2-3 posts per month was quite possible although that is still not frequent enough. Now I just do stock posts. Highly rewarding and satisfying but I am barely managing to post once a month!

On the other hand, there is flow content. This is all about curation than creation. The quick stuff that allows for a higher frequency of posting. It drives engagement and traffic. People need to see as you an authority on certain topics. The go-to-guy when it comes to something. Here it’s all about speed. Be the first to know then share with your network faster than anyone else. It can be fun but one can get carried away and not make enough time for stock content! I don’t want to fall in that trap again!

The big challenge for the year ahead – Truly balance between stock and flow!

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It’s been a long time since I wrote a post inspired by a TED Talk and each time I do I make a mental note to do this more often. So here goes. This time around I am going to cover a bunch of talks on the subject of learning and education. There is some profound thinking done on these topics and here I would like to share some lessons that I believe call for a paradigm shift in how we approach learning in the 21st century.

The digital revolution has impacted many areas – from publishing to media to entertainment and more. One other area that does not quite make it to this list is the area of education. Why? For one the implications of the digital revolution on education are not so obvious. Digital pretty much forced itself upon any industry which could be digitized. With the inherent speed, cost savings and convenience of digital alternatives analogue players had no choice but to realign themselves or risk being marginalised into non-existence. The same cannot be said for education. Unless there is a conscious effort to adapt this paradigm for the betterment of learning change will not occur naturally. There is good news though! Thanks to some of these thinkers the implications of not changing are being brought to the forefront challenging us to re-think our way of approaching learning and education!

Lesson #1 – Experiential not Informational

Diana Laufenberg in her talk presented a strong case of how the teacher’s role is becoming irrelevant if they are not going to gear themselves to 21st century challenges. In a world of information scarcity the teacher was the key portal of knowledge, through them information was disseminated to the students. The paradigm of information has been transformed. We no longer need to depend on one source for our knowledge and information. With internet and device ubiquity a wealth of information is at our fingertips. The need to hold information in our heads is becoming increasingly irrelevant for real world success. Although this point is highly debatable I for one am choosing the uncomfortable side of device and network dependency for knowledge.

So what are teachers to do in a scenario like this? They need to evolve their role from information based learning to experiential learning. The scenario assumes equal access to knowledge by all and that would be the case for an overwhelming majority. Therefore, teachers need to build on this paradigm. Kids today will get to the information one way or the other. The challenge now is to structure learning in a way that inspires them to use this information and apply it to solve problems. This inherently also implies that standardized testing would no longer be applicable. Genuine problem solving means discovering a new way of doing things and therefore falls in a subjective realm that is hard to measure through a standard process. More importantly as anyone in the creative field can vouch, room needs to be given to try and fail, only then can a breakthrough be achieved. This is another paradigm that needs to be accepted. In a world of experiential learning failure has to be accepted as a norm to enable true innovation.

Lesson #2 – Conceptual not Computational

Conrad Wolfram also spoke on similar lines. Being a mathematician his point of view focused on the same point as above but from a math perspective. His point of view challenges our understanding of math to begin with. Mathematics is not about calculating. The role of math is far greater than what is taught in schools. The entire curriculum is focused on teaching computational skills and measuring this ability. Math is about solving real world problems. The computation is something machines can do far better and quicker than humans so why waste their time teaching them this skill. Apparently we have spent 106 average lifetimes teaching computation. That’s a lot of learning for something that has no real world implication.

In the real world computation is done using technology. The skill that needs to taught instead is the ability to conceptualize a problem. Most of the times people don’t get the question right and therefore ending up getting the wrong answers. Now with all the calculating skill in the world if the problem was not framed correctly the effort is wasted. And that is the point. Identify the problem, turn a real world problem into a math problem, then solve it using computers and finally take the solution back to the real world. That is what the world needs.

Lesson #3 – Divergent not Standardized

Ken Robinson in his very animated TED Talk tackled learning from an economic perspective using the eras and how the needs of the era defined how education was imparted. The education needs of the industrial area were driven by the factory mindset. Standardized production of students produced in batches ranking them in an intellectual hierarchy. The smartest became the drivers, the white collar workers and the lowest rung became the blue collar working class. This system worked because the social structure that this kind of education created is what the industrial age demanded.

The economic paradigm has changed. The needs of the 21st century call for a system rethink. The economic challenges demand a different skill set. This is the aesthetic age where sensory experiences and creativity hold economic value. With all the innovations in technology and media, value creation in this era requires creativity and divergent thinking. The ability to think creatively, to believe and come up with multiple answers to a problem, to break away from this mindset of “only one right answer”.

Unfortunately our current education system is designed to make us think in the just the opposite direction – to think unilaterally, to think standardised, to think that there is only one right answer to a problem and that they have to learn it to pass the test. In the same way working together in a system like this would be cheating. In the real world of today the concept of working together takes a whole new meaning. It is referred to as “collaboration” which is crucial to creativity and growth and that is something completely absent as a way of learning.

To conclude, looking at these viewpoints it is obvious that a lot needs to change in the education and learning sector to gear us up for the coming years. We need to move from being informational, computational and standardized to being experiential, conceptual and divergent in the way we learn and teach! And this needs to happen NOW!

What do you think? Feel free share to your point of view in the comments below.

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