Namita Liz Koshy on LinkedIn: Real life. My Uber driver - a young man - is patiently giving cooking… (2024)

If we were in the pre-science era, it would have been impossible to see the progress we are seeing now from AI to cleantech to getting to Mars. And this is especially the era of neuroscience (most of it in my lifetime!). Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett is very articulate on what she has discovered about the brain. She was first a psychologist and then all her questions got her curious in retraining in the field of neuroscience. And she has become my definitive guide to neuroscience. It’s a very heavy subject that needs constant reading and following. But what we have all have processed about the brain, is most possibly wrong in terms of the big picture. There are so many nuances to it. If you’re interested, I recommend watching all seasons of Natgeo Brain Games (which got me curious) and the educational podcasts by Dr. David Eagleman. Dr Lisa Barrett has also written a few books which just clarifies the fundamental concepts. I also have watched a DOAC podcast with Dr Tara Swart. Imagine if you were living in Freud’s time. It’s just the hardware version of that era. I borrow that reference from a friend in the past, who turns out to be a neurosurgeon. This education totally changed how I think about advertising. That’s a topic for another post.

1

Functional creative example in India. Also the real use case for internet and empowering individuals. Love to read stories like this. Simple yet so powerful.Source: The Economic Times, June 6th 2024

3

Buried deep in our fears and memories are days of being ruled over (read: oppressed). I feel it lesser than my parents’ generation. But we haven’t forgotten our colonial past. We haven’t forgotten casteism (which can still show up). We haven’t forgotten feudal lords. We haven’t forgotten evil kings. We haven’t forgotten mafia dons. We haven’t forgotten sexual violence. We haven’t forgotten that there are villains all around. It’s in the stories we grow up with. It’s in the cinema that spoke in our native languages.Is this conscience or trauma?

1

Recommended watching for today. This is just the trailer of the movie that released 10 years ago.

1

My heart to heart conversation with my creative partner yesterday where we both agreed: It’s so funny that the entire creative industry has a dedicated department called creative. Everyone who works in the industry should be championing creativity. It’s like people saying I work in the tech industry, but I don’t know/care about/sell tech. Or the airline industry, and I don’t care about transporting people or the safety of an aircraft. How does a creative idea come from anywhere when creativity isn’t known, understood or appreciated by the people you work with? I have a long learning journey to appreciating creativity. My father is a consulting editor (while in the development sector). So the whole playing with words was exposed to me, very early on in life. I’m going to digress only to illustrate a point: But I was equally good at logic and math, and managing, leading and organising. On one side, during school, I was handpicked by Infosys for a Catch Them Young summer session based on my aptitude in math & logic, and they exposed me to programming in C and C++ which was the rage then. On the other side, I was given the Leadership award in (a business) college. My academic records with anything related to math, statistics, accounting were A+. At the same time, I was using camcorders and point & shoot cameras to satiate my need to capture perspectives. There was theatre and music (singing) as well in my life. There was sport. There was definitely a lot of socialising. At the time, the dominant view was that you could develop a passion in only one area and you must excel in that. But as most parents are finding out today, a growing child is multifaceted and depending on encouragement, exposure and curiosity, that child can develop competence in many areas. And she/he doesn’t have to follow the journey of previous generations - they can leap into what’s trending at the time of their growing up. Cut to my journey with creativity, it was during work and from reading and growing up with the internet, that I absorbed the obscure concept of creativity in an empowering way within the corporate/consumer system. It’s not a department. It’s a whole philosophy. It’s the difference between Lego and word games. In India, we are a more functional creative culture. We are definitely creative and intelligent, cue ‘jugaad’ and most of our engineering that solves for specific discomforts. Our storytelling creativity solved for generational education or increasing acceptability of products (or polio vaccine) since liberalisation of India’s economy. Definitely storytelling in cinema for emotional relief or building aspiration, because adversity is just so normal for us. From the potential we have seen across the world, there is a lot more of creativity that can be deployed. And the field itself is proving to do a lot more than previously explored worldwide. From neuroscience, it’s also been established that creativity is a basic human role in civilisation.

5

I agree. Though it’s also an art, not a pure science. A lot depends on the context you are operating in and how primed your audience is. Hence why you need researchers to constantly read the room and creative artists to create meaningful art for the audience given that particular phase of their life (art here = a key message put forward in a manner that the audience won’t resist and instead store in memory).

1

Today's Economic Times had quite a few good stories. Sundays have always been a good read. I didn't have to attend any classes today (which is what happens most Sundays), so I got to enjoy the paper a bit. This is one news story that is crushing me. Mobility is the backbone of any country. And Indian truck drivers have a special place in our hearts - What comes to mind is the Nokia (3310?) ad. The truck drivers have carried our country out of scarcity era on their backs. It's a difficult profession anywhere in the world, but especially cruel in India. And like every other system in the universe, if it isn't nurtured and kept alive and thriving, the system will degrade and decay - entropy. On YouTube, there are some cool content creators driving around trucks - my dad has watched their vlogs as they travel around the country, as a family. But the data that is being reported in the news, tells us things are not good there. The profession is in trouble. And it won't be long until we are literally paying a higher price for our neglect.

There are really only two choices when working with or even at an agency:1) Ratecard mode2) Mindblowing Value modeI just stick to these two because it helps manage expectations all around in Indian marketing. The need of the hour for the entire Indian business community is to decide on a mix of ratecard vs mindblowing value. It doesn't matter who you bring on board to do this, or do it in-house. Start with the decision that how much of marketing will be done in ratecard mode (which means you get basic, standard, obvious results) and how much will be done in mindblowing value mode (which means you have added risk and creativity into the mix). In contrast, western countries and brands encourage a lot of risk-taking. It's just ingrained in them. It's a highly competitive culture which eats, sleeps, dreams global domination and total ownership of the future (I’m not judging if this ambition is right or wrong - They have given us great things in life. So I refuse to label it bad or good. It’s just what it is. It could have easily been any other culture like China or Russia or Korea or Japan). Hence ratecard mode is not even in their consideration list. Plus they are much richer companies and can afford to park budget to take high risks and get high returns.

3

Undercover Boss stunts are nuts - This is one with Gordon Ramsay from pre-COVID. One day, there could be a series when there is a camera-off variation on video calls. Or worse, AI! I'm just messing, don't freak out. I honestly just think it's the best idea to have an ongoing dialogue with your leaders/people - Do skip levels, do corridor chats, have lunch with different groups. And likewise, for everyone to learn how to exchange points of view with the right balance of emotions, comfortable for everyone to have a safe dialogue. It's possible to communicate without being emotionally charged - This goes for all levels as I have learned first-hand. In India, we're a very emotional culture, but can increase our intelligence when handling our emotions. Speaking from experience again.