In an interview, Nitish Kumar Reddy of Sunrisers Hyderabad shared his mantra: ‘look at the ball, not the bowler.’ It’s a wise approach, especially when facing an intimidating bowler of high calibre.
Authority bias occurs when one assigns undue weight to the opinions of esteemed individuals, even when those opinions may be flawed. Elizabeth Holmes employed this strategy, stacking the Theranos board with former heads of state, prominent business leaders, and a secretary of defense. Many assumed that if so many high authority figures were on the board, she must be doing something right.
Given the abundance of self-proclaimed experts across various domains, separating the opinion from the person giving it becomes a necessary skill.
Saw a very eye-opening interview with actor Fahadh Faasil by noted film critic Baradwaj Rangan. In one part, he speaks about the role of a movie in the life of a moviegoer. He says (paraphrasing):
“I’ll make the film watchable. Don’t take me seriously outside the theatre. Cinema is not beyond the theatre, there’s more to do in life than discussing cinema.”
Baradwaj Rangan then tells him that it’s not always possible to do that as people discuss what they are passionate about, be it sport or film and Fahadh agrees that it’s a tall order.
We sometimes do spend an undue amount of time discussing things like movies and sport, which have no immediate bearing on our life. But if we spend all our days doing that, it’ll spell trouble.
Marketers can take something away from this. You may believe that the customer is spending a whole lot of time analyzing your brand and debating it and waiting for what you have to offer with bated breath.
Hint – they aren’t.
Add to it the echo chambers that make it hard to look outside the self-imposed walls and it’s easy to fall into a trap.
While some brands are more loved than others and building a brand takes effort and is time-consuming, it’s easy to lose track of the fact that most brands at best play a minute role in a person’s life. And customers don’t really care for brand purpose or story. They want the brand to solve their problem when they interact with it and want to be entertained when they come across its marketing.
If you had a minute with a user, would you give them something to remember or regurgitate information that is forgettable?
The late Dan Wieden said it best:
“make me laugh, make me cry, just move me dude.”
PS: The most recent movie of Fahadh Fassil’s that I saw was ๐๐ข๐ค๐ฉ๐ถ๐ท๐ถ๐ฎ ๐๐ต๐ฉ๐ฃ๐ถ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข ๐๐ช๐ญ๐ข๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ถ๐ฎ. It’s highly enjoyable.
The word ‘storytelling’ is bandied about a lot without understanding what it is. But when you look at the journey of CSK, you’ll understand storytelling a little better.
People have tried to understand what makes the Chennai Super Kings so beloved.
It’s hard to wrap your head around how a player from Jharkhand found his cricketing home down South. Chennai is always known to defy logic when it comes to its stars and worshipping them.
Here’s a team with bright yellow jerseys that stand out from the rest. At inception, they managed to get MS Dhoni, who had by then already cemented his legacy as the first World Cup-winning captain of the T20 World Cup.
They go about building their rabid fan base and win the IPL in 2010 and 2011.
Then in 2015, catastrophe strikes. The team is banned from the tournament for two years when its owners were alleged to have been associated with spot-fixing.
When they come back in 2018, they win the IPL.
In 2019, they lose the finals in heartbreaking fashion.
In 2020, they seem to have lost their way before winning in 2021, not playing very well in 2022, and again spectacularly winning in 2023.
That arc of triumph, disaster, and loss makes for a fascinating story. Add to it a team culture where players who are average elsewhere suddenly find their feet and a captain who has been with them since the start.
Unlike Royal Challengers Bengaluru (the men’s team) where the story never seems to move to the triumph side and is stuck on tragedy, Chennai has seen triumph and disaster, which makes it all the more fascinating.
When Rajasthan Royals won the first-ever IPL, it made for amazing storytelling as they had the least amount of money in their purse and bet on unknown players.
This is why when the Australian men’s team keeps winning the World Cup in clinical fashion it’s boring, and we remember finals that were thrilling (2019), or the underdogs coming up triumphant (1996, 1992, 1983).
Greer Grason won the Oscar for best actress in 1943. Apparently she droned on and on in her acceptance speech is one of the reasons for the Oscars having a time limit. While a winner has a lot to say, not everyone around finds it interesting.
When you are very close to a project (it can be anything), you tend to make certain assumptions:
a) the other person is as interested as you are
b) the other person cares as much as you
c) the other person has a lot of time on their hands
This is why presentations can sometimes go overboard or there is too much information on a piece of marketing collateral.
It isn’t as if the other person isn’t interested – just that they might not be as deeply invested and interested as you. And that’s fine.
This doesn’t mean a lowering of effort as much as meeting people where they are.
FTX spent a truckload of money on Super Bowl commercials with ads featuring Larry David, one of the co-creators of Seinfeld.
A year later, FTX was revealed to be a massive fraud and collapsed like a house of cards.
When the term ‘it’s all marketing’ is used, it’s usually in a negative way. It’s one way to say that it’s the marketing that is making an otherwise dubious product look good. It’s true. There are times where the marketing overshadows a product or service (and sometimes people) and makes it look way better than it is.
But when a genuine service or product is marketed well, it does not always get the benefit of the doubt. And marketing doesn’t just include advertising. It’s everything from customer service to content to PR and a bunch of other stuff.
Good, genuine marketing is often taken for granted.
The musician leaves the stage but the crowds don’t leave the venue. The wait around, chanting for one more song. After sometime, the musician fulfills their wish and comes out and plays another song. The audience’s night is made. Even if it is scripted, the encore is a beautiful way of saying “we can’t get enough of you.”
Outside music, encores can take the form of:
a) Repeat customers
b) Being asked to make the same presentation to a different set of people because it was enjoyable
c) A contract being renewed
Not everything compares to a musician holding thousands in sway. And not every repeat order is because someone can’t get enough of you.
But on the occasions when that happens, it’s to be treasured and cherished and valued.
Fandom is a strange thing. It’s rarely logical, highly subjective, and often delusional.
The Royal Challengers Bangalore lifted the WPL trophy last night. For fans, lines blurred between the men’s and women’s teams. The line ‘ee sala cup namde,’ which had become a meme of its own after the trophy drought faced by the men’s team for 16 years, was erased by Smriti Mandanna and her team. At the end of the presentation ceremony, she said ‘Ee sala cup namdu’ (it is ours).
Fans were tweeting about how a 16-year drought came to an end with the victory. But the WPL has been in existence only for two years. As sports journalist Venkata Prasad pointed out in a tweet:
“It is not a 16-year wait. They have won a title at their second shot. RCB Women are not carrying the baggage of the men’s team.”
So true but something most people ignored last night. The women’s team didn’t break any drought – they won in their second attempt. But fandom doesn’t look at the nitty gritties.
The first season for the RCB women’s team was a nightmare. The side went on a losing streak and didn’t make the playoffs. Given that Smriti Mandanna was the costliest player in that season meant she got more flak.
But in the second season, she is the winning captain and the first season is a distant memory.
If you jog your memory, you’ll recall that even the men’s team endured a horrid first season. Then-owner Vijay Mallya behaved like a terrible twos toddler and sacked Charu Sharma, who was the CEO of the team. He wanted to sack the coaching staff, and captain Rahul Dravid put his foot down. In the second season, Dravid was dropped as captain and Kevin Pietersen was handed the role. Owing to injury, Anil Kumble took over as captain and in a remarkable turnaround, the team reached the final where they lost to the Deccan Chargers (today known as Sun Risers Hyderabad).
In short, the bad times can get erased in an instant by something good.
More than RCB winning the cup, the distance women’s cricket has travelled over the last decade is one of the greatest sights to behold.
Fandom is a bit extreme, whichever the team. But these traits exist in all of us and they can’t be plotted on a graph and won’t always show up in research.
That’s why marketers who deal only in excel sheets and data struggle when they come up against real emotions.
While making presentations, one question reigns supreme (second only to “can you hear me?”) is “can you see my screen?”
And yet, despite our best efforts at preparation, glitches persist. The video plays, but the audio remains silent. Or perhaps the audio is crystal clear, but the video freezes mid-stream.
These technical hiccups serve as helpful metaphors for the complexities of human interaction.
The other person can’t always perceive what you do or interpret it in the same way. Their perspectives are shaped by unique conditioning, biases, worldviews, and experiences. Sometimes, this works to our advantage, but other times, it presents challenges.
If you can get away by spending most of your time with people who see things the way you see them, great. But for most of us, that’s not a viable option.
Understanding that people see things differently is a crucial starting point for modifying your interactions.
When asked what motivated him to give a hundred percent every time he took the court, Michael Jordan said (paraphrasing):
‘Someone in the crowd is seeing me for the first time. It’s my job to put on a show for them.’
Sure, this may sound like a clichรฉ quote from a legendary athlete about work ethic, and it might be.
Yet, if you remove the hyperbole from the quote, there is a valid takeaway. In marketing, assumptions are made that people know many things because everyone has access to the same information. But that’s never the case.
Assuming everyone knows about a brand, software, or term is a misconception.
Someone is always encountering you or your message for the first time.
There is no rule or law that says someone can’t fake their death for a marketing campaign.
But that doesn’t make it right.
Even if some claim that the disaster has helped spread awareness for a genuine cause, it’s a pitiful way to go about it. Public anger helps to put an end to something stupid but by then it’s too late.
Rules are external. They are set by an external entity and penalties can be imposed when a rule is broken.
But ethics are internal. There is no external authority to fine you when you do something idiotic. Yet, trust and respect are lost which are incredibly hard to rebuild.