Illusions of the mind

This figure below is an optical illusion created by Prof. Akiyoshi Kitaoka who has been studying the reason why such illusions occur in humans. If you look at the figure below, you'll see it rotate continuously, but if you fix your eye on any one spot, the rotation stops. Why it occurs is not completely clear yet, but it teaches a lesson in perception.  Prof. Kitaoka has been gracious to allow the use of this image in Decoding Communication to explain the Third lesson of Perception.

Optical illusion of Rotating Snakes by Prof. Akiyoshi Kitaoka, 
Department of Psychology, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan

 

Action - the first fundamental

(Inspired by the recent swift shift in economic policy action by the Indian government with inputs from the chapter on Brand Appeal from my book Decoding Communication)  

Keep pushing

Action is life. Action is doing something with a commitment to achieving an objective. It, unsurprisingly, is also the first fundamental of communication. This implies that every other aspect of communication, like transmission, interpretation and response, are founded on action. This draws from the timeless concept of causality - cause and effect, connecting the now to the future through Action.

And, for action to have a positive impact, not just any action is enough - it has to be the right action. Right action is itself quite ambiguous, and has been central to philosophical, scientific, sociological and religious debates without bias. In a broad sense, right action could be interpreted as that which is done at the right place, at the right time, by the right persons and with the right intent. While the place, time and people are the locators of right action, the correctness of intent is measured by collective values in a given cultural context.

Action is often seen as different from communication, though in fact, they are the same. Every action is communication and every communication, action manifest. Action is also the basis of Goal Achievement, one of the four drivers of human behavior. It displays a direct commitment to achieving goals, something that benefits society as a whole.

Action is imperative in building Brand Appeal, the positive attraction that many brands display. Its importance is evident because it features in all the four quadrants of Brand Appeal -  Rational, Emotional, Communication and Aspirational. Action is the seed of Rational Appeal, the appeal of logic, by displaying Conscious Effort and Utility bettering the ability to achieve a desired goal. It is also at the core of Emotional Appeal by adding Positivity and Hope to any situation. Positive Action is as essential in building Trust, the most important aspect of Communication Appeal. And, Action is also core to Aspirational Appeal by giving Winner's Attributes to the doer, often seen in sportspersons who train for years just to compete in an event, the outcome of which is completely indeterminate.

Action is life and if the etymology of the word 'inanimate' is any indication, it shows how connected life and action are. The word inanimate means 'without life' and is built from the words that mean without action.  At every level we perhaps instinctively understand that only by the use of correct action does our future comes more in our control, something that man has always wanted. Though we may often miss the obvious concatenation that sews thoughts and words to our future through the forces of positive action.

Trust in an online buying experience

Decoding Communication

What makes you trust a brand, and why does that brand sometimes miss the mark?

Among other things, it also has to do with an ability to fulfill expectations, but when that ability is delivered with  sense of dedication, trust is a natural outcome. If you make your customer's pain areas to be your delivery points, your brand's greatness becomes evident. Let me take the case of my book and its launch as an example to show how.

When you launch any product the first rule is to ensure reach and availability. With a book this becomes crucially important because a good book to a reader is like candy to a kid with a sweet-tooth. You need instant gratification. One day extra feels like a lifetime and in some extreme cases, depression takes hold if you don't find the book in time.

When several readers wrote to me saying that they had ordered the book from flipkart, I was thinking that it might have been a better experience if they  felt my book in their hand and saw it on the shelves much like the experience I enjoy myself (yeah, yeah - I've been called old-school before too). But I guess what I learnt can put me in the new-school bracket now.

My book  launched recently (and though I had slotted 3 weeks for it to reach major stores), flipkart had the  book within 3 days of my distributor sending them the books. That was fast by any standards! Then I noticed that they exercised care with respect to uploaded reviews and only verified ones were put up (something every reader expects). It only when I went on some rounds of book stores that I realized how important the flipkart experience is to a book-lover. When a book is sold-out in stores, it  can take between 7 to 10 days to reorder. Using flipkart, though the delivery is 3 days the reordering is almost instantaneous.

flipkart does two other things very well to make it a great online experience for book buying. First, like an on-ground book store, it is a good judge of books and takes a calculated risk of ordering a higher number of copies from the distributor if it thinks it will do well. Secondly, it thinks like a book reader and ensure fastest delivery by making the distributor a partner in the delivery (often picking up the book from the local city office of the distributor to ensure upcountry delivery faster).

I personally think that flipkart has a sweet-tooth for books, and when someone feels exactly what the customer feels, it is easy to trust them.

Background score of communication

(extract from the forthcoming book Decoding Communication)

No background music

If the force of attraction of a brand is a natural phenomena, why does it need to be embellished? Why can’t its natural attractiveness get results?

To answer that, I must share an anecdote about a friend from the world of movie-making who showed me the deep-rooted relevance of communications.

An animated raconteur (he was often invited to give story presentations to producers), he not only was involved with the film industry for a living but he also seemed to watch movies for sustenance - seeing two or even three a day. His personal life had been tragic – a victim of a broken family, drug-addiction and a difficult recovery, and failed attempts to prop the family business of renting movie equipment. His cousins were prominent actors in the fan-crazy Hindi film industry, which did not make his life any easier. Now a volunteer-speaker at Narcotics Anonymous, he devoted all his non-movie time in convincing addicts why they should quit, using his life as an example. He is funny, selfless, and a complete stoic.

One evening he invited a few friends to watch a movie - a regular family-drama, on the larger-than-life screen in his house. The movie was an over-the-top Bollywood masala  and we watched the movie like friends do - opining on every aspect of the movie using our half-baked knowledge of the movie-world, taking jabs at the director, actors and everyone else. Throughout the movie, my friend stayed glued to the screen, never even once partaking in our digressions. And, he was crying unabashedly. Copious tears flowed even at the smallest emotional scene. We joked about it among ourselves, but he almost did not seem to notice us. The movie over, he washed his face, and was transformed back to the friend we knew, back to his former self - funny, and yet without much sign of emotion.

Much later, his father, who he loved dearly, passed away. My friend did not show any pain or emotion, though everyone knew how much he felt the loss. When I met him a few weeks later over coffee and compared the two situations, the movie and his father’s demise, and asked him why he did not cry or express any emotion in the latter, while the movie had made him cry uncontrollably. He answered spontaneously, “It is because life does not have background music.” He also admitted that he was himself only when he watched movies - it transported him but also allowed him to be himself.

I thought much about what my friend had said, and realized one thing. The embellishments of communications are necessary to transport the audience to an experience of the Brand. Our relationships with different people and things force us to behave in different ways, so much so that we often mask our real selves. And it takes the background score of communication to make us 'see' our true selves better. Good communication from any source actually helps one communicate with oneself better and is like communion with oneself. 

Brands - Ideas with soul...

Living ideas

An idea is a 'memetic' system analogous to the genetic information system. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from person to person through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable actions.

Richard Dawkins, the originator of the term meme, wrote in his book, The Selfish Gene, “Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes, fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.  Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.  If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students.  He mentions it in his articles and his lectures.  If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain.”

Memes rely upon stored memory to create new memories through experiences of different kinds - physical, psychological, experiential, transactional, ethical, metaphysical, spiritual, social and cultural. Memes self-replicate and respond to selective pressures following genetic principles like natural selection, variation, mutation, competition and inheritance.

To give a more philosophical interpretation to the Brand, imagine it as a living idea - an idea which has a soul. The Brand is the soul that gives animation to the idea - its non-corporeal essence, its vital-breath or life-force. The Brand is embodied in, and acts through, its physical and non-physical extensions. Every state of the idea expresses its brand-soul and the concept of Brand is present in the smallest thing that the idea represents, as much as it is evident in the whole. It is something that emerges from the conscious and subconscious interaction with the complete entity.

As soon as an idea has been conceptualized or it begins to transact, the Brand’s journey of life has begun. The Brand may be visible or invisible, it may be understood or not, but the Brand is born with the birth of the idea itself. Such a 'living' idea carries in it a natural ability to spawn and inspire generations of brands. 

(Extract from the author's forthcoming book 'Decoding Communication')

Difficulty of printing black on your book cover

Printed covers ready to be loaded

 For a book to be right, the printer has to be perfect. And there are many things that can go wrong, because there are several stages and people involved in it.

Knowledge of printing limitations helps on planning your book from the beginning. The biggest problem that Decoding Communication faced that it was in black. We came to know that black and blue are the most difficult colors to deal with, and the extra time this color took for drying was some of the more benign ones.

First test copy on the forming machine

Test of the initial copies before final run

As every woman knows (and no man does), there are hundreds of shades of black and only the most experienced printers can get 'your' black correctly. One more problem with black is even the smallest mistake in printing will show up like it was highlighted. If you have lamination on the cover (which if it happens to be black and white, like in the case of Decoding Communication), any extra pressure leaves a white mark, making the mistake very evident.



In the case of this book, the white had to look like chalk on blackboard, so it had to be having a light feel. One thing very difficult to imagine is how 'light' the white will feel after a matt lamination. From my experience with cover laminations, I would suggest that you leave the white 10% sharper than what you want the end result to be.

While designers suggest some standard colors that compliment black, the one I found to work best was the unadulterated yellow and black. If the writing is in this 'specific' yellow, it will not take away from the white (the face in this cover for instance). But if you get the yellow wrong, this color can draw all the attention.

Finally, we have what we want, and as I have been ranting ever since I saw it, the baby does look dark and handsome. 

Two liners that give you a picture's worth

Some two liners often use convey more than the proverbial 1000 words. Here are some I use:

"Don't use your last resort before it is due."

"To get anything done faster, seek out the cynics and convert them first."

"If you don't worry about the value you are giving to your customers, you'll have a lot more to worry about." 

"As you traverse from doer to viewer, trust goes through distance dilution. Involve the viewer in the 'participant' circle to lessen trust dilution."

"Visualize your long term plans. Analyze your short term plans."

"Cement your success with humility and bridge your failure with courage."