by Anand Halve

Most of us have seen that regions shown as part of India in maps published by the Government of India, are shown as parts of Pakistan, or China or merely ‘disputed’, in other maps.
Clearly, both sets of maps cannot be correct… and the map is not necessarily the territory. In fact often, one knows that the map does NOT reflect the territory.
The problem however, is that often the lack of congruence is forgotten and decision makers focus on the map, not the territory.

Such confusion is also common in the marketing and branding landscape.

Testing advertising
Consider pre-tests for commercials. The industry has created various models of how advertising works. The models assume that consumers receive, process and respond to advertising in a certain way. This ‘map’ becomes the basis of creating pre-testing methods for ads.
The key thing is that the pre-tests measure the performance of an ad with reference to these metrics.
Over a period of time, the metrics gain a life of their own, become the bell that triggers the salivary glands of the Pavlovian ad-creator. And unfortunately, the people who write the scripts start writing for the test.
The ‘map’ that was initially created as a surrogate for the territory, becomes an end in itself, and eclipses the territory.

You do the math
The same problem gets multiplied (if one may use a mathematical pun) in exercises using spreadsheets.
Take the drive towards ‘aggressive targets’. I remember a marketer involved in the launch of an international beverage brand telling me a story about how this can make things go awry. The international marketing head of the company was not happy with the sales targets worked out by the Indian JV, and wanted them to be “more ambitious”. He suggested increasing the targeted per capita consumption target from ‘n’ to ‘n plus 1’.
My friend said, “I don’t think the guy realized that with a casual change in one cell of the spreadsheet, he was adding a billion bottles for us to sell each year!”
But on the ‘map’ it must have looked so simple and logical – unhampered as it was with the heat and dust of the marketplace.

Differentiation on paper
The other big danger of confusing the paper reality with the real article is that we see differences –and differentiation – magnified manifold.
When concepts are tested, they often are couched in language that is consciously and one-sidedly complimentary to the concept. For instance let’s look at a concept for a new product to a consumer, say about “a new shampoo with the goodness of natural herbs that will stop hair fall and keep your hair looking great”.
Now, this is a no-brainer in its obvious appeal. So the research will show a high “willingness to try” this product. Ignoring the territorial truth that there are perhaps a few dozen products offering exactly the same cocktail! And while the concept may get high scores, it really doesn’t have much of a chance in the real world.

Valuation
The paper-mirage is of course at its finest in the valuation game. The facts of the case, if one only were to step back for a moment, would clearly show that several business ideas have NO hope of ever making money. (One good test of this, which often seems to be ignored, is this simple question: Will anyone ever pay anything for this thingybob?)
And yet the businesses attract high valuations. One can only see this as a Ponzi scheme where hope lies in the expectation that one can pass this hot potato into someone else’s hands.

Provability and Truth
There is a truth articulated by the renowned mathematician Kurt Godel that offers a way to see things more clearly.
Godel’s first Incompleteness Theorem states that, “for any consistent… formal theory… there is an (arithmetical) statement that is true but not provable in the theory”.
In short that there are truths that are obvious, but are not ‘provable’.
But you know that in your gut, right? Now if only we didn’t let the ‘maps’ guide us into the valley of death.

by Anand Halve

Advertising is often out of touch with reality.
Of course this is partially intrinsic to the profession. After all, it is the job of the ‘Dream merchants’ to suggest to prospects that Brand X tablets will give them Bipasha Basu’s figure or that a pair of shoes is the road to success.
Indeed, the prospect shares this suspension of disbelief, as he imagines how a particular deo-spray or shirts from a certain store will turn women into helpless victims of passion who will hurl themselves at him.
In normal times one takes these exaggerations as acceptable, but recent events in the financial arena – when words like ‘tsunami’ and ‘meltdown’ have become commonplace - compel us to take another look at this phenomenon of exaggeration. And see that financial services make advertising professionals look like amateurs in the game of ‘hyper-reality’!

Caveat emptor v/s relentless urging
It is a cliché that customers must be watchful and take well-considered, rational decisions. But we know that humans are not rational in the face of the relentless combined actions of marketers and media. What else can explain how anorexic, emaciated women with dissipated expressions are considered the definition of ‘beauty’!
Similarly, is rationality at work when people acquire dozens of credit cards or go to foolhardy lengths including taking loans, to play the stock market game?
But then people are being urged not to be reasonable.
This doesn’t cause too much harm, if it’s only a DTH service saying “thoda aur wish karo”, but it takes on a different dimension when a financial service urges you to continually seek more and indeed that it is not a worthwhile life if one doesn’t follow the principle of “karo zyaada ka iraada”.

The fine print
Mutual Funds (MF) and IPOs not only fan the flame of greed, they turn disclosure into a farce. The unreadable manner in which caveats at the end of MF or IPO ads are presented show clearly there is no intention of following the spirit of the law.
And of course there’s the escape clause in the fine print at the bottom of ads saying: ‘Past performance is no assurance of future performance’ (never mind that the bold headline proclaims the advertiser’s track record!)
The reality shows up when you discover that a brand that promised you “Kal par control”, had no control over its own NAV tanking.

Unfortunate timing
For some brands though, it’s just unfortunate timing.
For instance, it’s strange to see TV commercials and print ads from a new player in the financial services area, saying “Make it happen”, when there are enough news items in national and international media informing you that what this company has been forced to ‘make happen’ is a massive bailout, and the part-sale of ownership to the Government.
Meanwhile, intense newscasters gaze out penetratingly from TV screens, discussing financial markets in incomprehensible terms, making it necessary to help the layman understand the meaning of the verbal confetti being tossed around.

So here are some frequently used terms and what they really mean.

Going forward: A meaningless term, used to suggest that they also considered the options of going sideways, backwards or off at a tangent but chose, after deep thought, to ‘go forward’.

Market sentiment: The actual reason why share prices move. To be used only when the prices drop. The term to use when the prices are going up is “strong fundamentals”.

Highly leveraged: Fancy term for “took on commitments way beyond what we had any hope of fulfilling, but we thought there were even more greedy people around, which would allow us to get away with it”

Profits under pressure: We are getting whipped, and we will not make the obscene profits we (and breathless reporters) thought we’d continue to make forever.

Consumer confidence is low: People don’t seem to be spending like drunken sailors.

Integration /Uncoupled from the world economy: To be used on the day the Indian share prices DO or do NOT mirror the fall in international stockmarkets respectively.

Risk management: An oxymoron

And now, may I request you to observe two minutes of silence for all the stock options that have died in the not so recent past?

Thank you