This September I completed my sixth year of working in Saudi Arabia as Planning Director for DDB. Through the years I have come across many different perspectives and researches on the country and it was not so long ago that I tried to assimilate my learning and chalk out a point-of-view. It was triggered by the need to give an “outsider” – a client based out of Saudi Arabia an inside scoop on the market. The presentation was never made for whatever reason. Not seeing any use for it just lying around offline I decided to put it in the public domain online and share my perspective with the world.
Simply stated I believe Saudi Arabia is a very distinct country from a social and cultural context. It is unlike any other society where there would be minor extremes on both ends with a large majority in the middle. The parameters could be anything like the divide between modernity and tradition, rich and poor, from being culturally exposed to being culturally deprived etc. to name a few. For simplicity however, let’s just say that white is on one end, black on the other with gray in between. To my mind Saudi Arabia is one of those unique places in the world where there is a large white and a large black on either end, with a small gray in the middle. This is what makes Saudi Arabia a society of paradoxes, a society with extreme opposites co-existing together in large numbers. I cannot say if Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world which is so but I can surely say it is one of the few!
Below is my effort to put this perspective in a presentation form with supporting facts. Hope you find it both interesting and useful.
Update: On Sep 23, I learnt from the SlideShare editorial staff that they really liked this presentation and decided to feature it on their homepage! Despite many prior efforts this was the first presentation that I had ever posted publicly on SlideShare. Hurray!
The world is moving at a zipping fast space. While you read this post the world have tweeted away at about 2200 Tweets per second, Tumbled (is that what it’s called?) about 333 posts per second, Facebook’d about 12,000 status updates per second and sent about 280,000 emails per second. Not that these are a REAL measure of the pace of things but they sure are indicative of the life we live are embracing with each passing day. The real question to ask at this point….does the world need to slow down?
I don’t know if it does but it clearly is feeling the need to. You often hear people complain that life is moving too fast and that time is passing by very quickly. So I decided to do what any savvy marketer would do, conduct some solid research and put an end to all the heresy. I went on Twitter to do my research and here is what I found. A New Jersey Girl, a Las Vegas dude, a Singaporean God Lover and a politician from Kosova all saying the same thing. Yes my dear readers this phenomena is truly global!
Is it time to slow down? If people from three continents are saying the same thing then it better be true! Right? I mean these people represent a good three-fourth of the world population don’t they? Isn’t this how we do research these days?!
Looking at a more expert perspective (yes I looked into those as well, I don’t call myself a strategist for nothing eh!) Carl Honore wrote a book on the subject “In Praise of Slow, How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed”. Speed is not always a bad thing I mean some places could really use speed like certain Government Offices that I have come across not pointing fingers or anything (Did I tell you I work in Saudi Arabia?).
But by and large ‘Time Poverty’ – the inability of a large number of people to embrace the present and optimize their experience at that moment has inspired what is known as the ‘Slow Movement’. Even a mock organization – the International Institute of Not Doing Much (IINDM) has been setup to champion this cause. It is a huge philosophy that encompasses many dimensions of our life from Slow Food, Slow Parenting, Slow Travel to Slow Art and beyond!
Being an ad man I guess I notice and look up only when something has implications on branding and advertising. They say advertising is a function of and is inspired by popular culture. It seems “Slow” is becoming the new BIG even in advertising, if not globally then at least in Australia. It’s either that the ‘Slow Movement’ has gained momentum to the point that it is spilling over to brand communications or it’s just some creative guys taking random inspiration. Whatever the case, seeing some commercials inspired by this idea is enough for me to see smoke even when there is no fire. I am sure the flames are not far behind! Check out the videos below to see my pick of ‘Slow Advertising’:
No this post is not about the 2012 VW Beetle that was launched earlier this week in three cities around the world. This post is about a profound idea that is changing our world – “Small is the new Big.” The magnitude of this concept is not so apparent at first look but when you think about it our world is becoming smaller in every way imaginable. Being an ad man the earliest example of this phenomena was seen in the 1950s when Bill Bernbach engineered the idea of “Think Small” to introduce the Beetle which was relatively a smaller and a simpler car than it’s competitors.
At the time this was a radical idea where big was always better than small. Soon however small became the norm. The concept was here to stay as it evolved from something that was undesirable to something that signified technological innovation. Today for everything from the iPod Nano with multi-touch to the latest Intel microprocessor small is the new big.
Then something else happened. Small took popular culture by a storm. A concept that was largely limited to technology and the manufacturing industry started to impact everything from entertainment to communication and even business. The longer way of communicating through letters changed to shorter instant mail. With the advent of YouTube the way we consume video evolved to include everything from the 60 minutes plus content to short clips sometimes as small as 30 seconds. SMS has become a part of global communication culture both at a business and a personal level. Teens have even created their own short hand language which they use while they instant message over the internet. Blogs have redefined the publishing industry. While people still read a lot of books (and e-books), a lot of them read content online on blogs and they are far smaller than other types of published material. Twitter has taken this one step further by introducing us to micro-blogging and limiting what we share at a time to 140 characters. The world has becoming a really small place. Science is proving that we are separated to each other by only six degrees. That means all six billion of us are connected to each other in as many as six steps. Those who are on social networks like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn for example. a connection can be made in only one small step.
And now Rory Sutherland on TED. talks about the power of small to have a really big impact. He introduces an interesting grid about how certain big things like ‘Consulting’ cost a lot of money but have little real life impact (he does not think highly of consultants…sorry folks!) Similarly ‘Strategy’ is about big actions that create a big impact (Yess!) But what was really interesting was this unnamed quadrant – how some really small actions can have a really big impact. These are usually tactics that seem trivial and counterintuitive as a solution to certain big problems but they work. At this point he is not sure about what to name this concept but he makes a strong case for these certain type of small actions. They could be the key to solving a whole bunch of social, economic and even political problems. Profound. Check out the talk below.
I am not sure if he has managed to coin a name for this yet. Sure would like to give it a crack! Ideas anyone?
What better day to write this post than a Friday! You know Friday? The day before Saturday and the day after Thursday! Well in case you have not heard Rebecca Black has taken the web by a storm through her lesson on the days of the week, among other things. For a 13-year old she has gone from unknown to infamous in a matter of days. Her music video for the song “Friday” has raked up more than 80 million views at the time of this writing and a record 1.6 million “Dislikes” beating the old record holder Justin Beiber. Besides YouTube Rebecca Black kept trending on Twitter for a full week like there was nothing else going on in the world!
Among the many ways to get famous this is certainly not one of them. Besides the anger and disgust this video has arisen it has also created a lot of ridicule and humor that was simply too good not to share and that is probably the only reason I decided to write about this. Now the question that perplexes me is whether to show you the fun stuff first or the original video. Should I even bother to embed the original video or leave it as a link? The song Friday can have this effect on people I guess. Oh my friends are here and I have not even finished my cereal! Anyways I think I have figured it out. Watch the original video first (I hope you can watch it to the end) before watching the parodies to truly appreciate them
Rebecca Black – Friday (Official Video)
Unofficial Sequel to Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” – Saturday
And my most favorite – Thursday by the Great Conan O’Brien
JWT Mumbai’s Diamond Bride Campaign is a great example of rock-solid strategic thinking. It demonstrates how a deep consumer insight can lead to a major change in behavior. It shows how something as rooted as tradition can be challenged and how a new paradigm can be created. De Beers India came up with a very challenging brief “How to get Indians to use more diamond jewelry instead of gold at their weddings?” A question that had no easy answers. It’s like asking women in America to wear a black dress at their weddings instead of a white one!
This meant that the battle had to be fought on a higher ground. The inherent symbolism of security, well-being, tradition and value that came with gold jewelry was not going to be easy to overcome. To win this cultural battle, the planners decided to explore the modernity, status and glamour of diamonds and give them a whole new context with respect to weddings.
The power came from personifying a gold bride and an imaginary diamond bride. The research gave clear cues of the differences between the two:
Gold bride
Traditional mindset
Aspires to be a dutiful wife
Feels financially insecure
Someone who is apprehensive of her in-laws
Will not raise her voice
Diamond bride
Well-educated
Forward-looking
Elegant
Casual
Cheerful
An extrovert who speaks her mind
Not nervous at all, even though she is getting married.
It was this personification excercise that helped place diamond jewelry for weddings in a larger context. While diamonds stood for high status, the diamond bride symbolized something much larger. She symbolized the aspirations of Indian women who wanted to be more happy than simply married. If she chose to be a diamond bride she would be able to shun all the cues of a traditional, subdued, insecure woman and be able to embrace this image of modernity, express herself freely and make her wedding day truly her own. This was the insight that the creative took forward and did a brilliant job in its execution (see TVC below).
So what is the key learning that we can draw from this as planners? For me I think it is the power of context. If we can put something in an entirely different context and yet be relevant we can uncover some big insights and inspire dramatic changes in behavior. So the next time you want someone to use more of your product or service, I think it would be a good idea to get out of context, experiment with something fresh, bounce it off with consumers and then see where it takes you!
