Google is passe, so is flipkart.

-

Humans are animals of habit. If we sit in a particular seat in any forum, we will automatically gravitate towards it the next time, if we walk on one side of the road, it will almost always be the same side every time. We lessen the use of our brain by using more of 'muscle' or mechanical memory - the known and comfortable route we know to be safe.

Marketers bet on that. Whenever marketers bet big on a campaign, they know that there will be a 'trial' spike in sales after which the cliched 'new normal' will settle at a higher base because of the  neo-converts. Once you've become a convert, another change is not easy. So not only do you make a convert of one through a campaign, but the brand also ensures that this customer  has been blocked from future conversions. We have evolved to believe that if we've tested a method/product/service out any new experimentation is an unnecessary waste of effort.

However, in the new age, nothing could be further than the truth. New offerings are better than the old ones, newer companies serve you better than age-old ones to make you their partner. Two such examples came to light during our experiments with 'Decoding Communication'. The first is the search engine Bing and the other is the online bookseller HomeShop18.

Unfortunately we were so programmed to using the usual Google and Flipkart that we never even noticed that there could be a better deal. We just chanced upon Bing when for some reason Google was not working, and this suddenly showed us how much better Bing was than Google. A simple search for the term 'Decoding Communication' showed up so many more relevant results that we began to think that Google was passe.

Then it was time for another providential intervention. Someone wanted to buy 3 copies online and flipkart had only one in left in stock. So this enterprising person tried HomeShop18 (which was also offering a super discount of 33% on the book as against zilch on flipkart) apprehensive about the delivery time. But guess what? The book arrived in 3 days flat. And in great shape (and a free pen thrown in for good measure).

We were fortunate in having discovered this. Now we'll be recommending these to everyone for a long time to come. After all, we're creatures of habit.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why magazines are even more relevant today

-
Image
If there's a commodity that perishes as swiftly as it is created, it is news.  The longer it takes to create, the higher its longevity and by corollary, news produced by the second, dies by the second.  We want our gratifications without any waiting period, we want to gulp down our food, build instant abs, get rich immediately and also know everything now.  We are also anxious to know more and more, and information has become a status-according social currency.   Fortunately, acquisition of knowledge does not have a finish line and so it behaves quite differently from instant abs or instant noodles.  In this hurried age, magazines play an important role by balancing societal myopia with perspective; need-for-speed with understanding, and anxiety with patience. The magazines analyze and opine like the elders of society - and hence also play the role of elders in the information society. In an age when every new opinion becomes news, magazines bring perspect...
Read more

Science of Apology in Communications

-
An Apology in all crisis circumstances is the most important tool that rebuilds the perception of positive intent. This in turn, forms one of the three most important pillars of rebuilding (corporate) 'Trust'. For an apology to be impactful it must have three important components. Firstly, it must be honest (and must also seem as genuine as it really is). Secondly, it must show self-sacrifice (which implies that the company or person making the apology must make a statement for the public good). And lastly, it must be done with the right attitude (which implies that it must be made in time & in the right manner). Even if one of these three aspects is missing from the apology, the apology becomes counter productive and often deteriorates the image further. When organizations willingly or unknowingly commit errors, the act almost always erodes the trust the stakeholders have painstakingly built and placed on the organization. This is because such errors question two more...
Read more

Killing Them Softly…

-
Image
The Essentials of Managing Ethics in Financial Public Relations The world has woken up to ethical issues in corporate governance & accounting practices. Corporate heads that were not guillotined were forced hang their heads in retrospective shame. The heads that fell were the victimizers, and the axe that fell, fell too late, and the punishment received, was way too little compared to the suffering, pain and financial losses that the organizations’ stakeholders suffered. Trust of millions of investors was lost overnight. Ethics in governance is one part of the story, the other link in this dubious chain of deceit is usually the professional services like auditing, legal and public relations which work closely with the organization. Such large scale deceit becomes possible only with the active collaboration of these so-called ‘professional’ services. Hardly professional, really! The Indian investor has been victim to a lot of companies attempting to make a quick buck in the markets....
Read more