Where's tomorrow?

I get asked a lot of times what are you doing to get future ready? My answer is always the same, I’m trying to look ahead. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, because we humans are not programmed to do that. We are schooled to learn from the past. Our predictions are often based on what we see when we look back and examining the patterns that lead us to where we are. The age we are in doesn’t work that way any more. In these times evolution is just as likely to be created by discontinuous change as it is by steady progression.

Take for instance, Youtube, Facebook or Twitter. Did anyone see that coming? And what did those instruments of social networking evolve from? Or did they just spring up from the fertile earth of the Internet, shattering old notions as they took root?

Here’s a small part of what’s happening. The consumer is not only consuming media, he has become a medium. His life, his opinions, his antics can now be broadcast to the world and be followed by similar minded people. No experience is so trivial that you can’t Tweet about it. ‘Dozed through a meeting. Yawn! They should get my colleague’s blood sample and use it to create a sleep medication.’ Stuff like that populates the ether and is gobbled up and commented upon by connection hungry folks. We have discovered that the ordinary lives of other people like us are extraordinarily entertaining.

These days you don’t have be a star to have a following. You just have to offer up something of yourself, of your life. Not just anything, but that something which can add value to someone else’s moments. A joke. An opinion. A review of your new stereo system. A heart-rending confession. A discovery. A problem that you need help with. Anything that stimulates either the heart or the mind of the reader/viewer. Anything that pays dividends on her investment of time and attention.

All this is nice to know, but what the heck does that have to do with how brands are built? With advertising? Nothing and everything.

If you gaze at the past you will find little of relevance to the subject at hand. The past has taught us to create communication that answer questions that aren’t wrong, but they aren’t the right ones either?

Will all our consumers get the message? Is the ad likeable? Will it cut through the clutter? Is it memorable? Will it build preference for the brand? And so on.

You might have noticed that all these questions are about what the brand’ s marketing needs. They aren’t about the consumer at all.

In a time, when the consumer is also a narrowcaster and word of mouth is fast becoming the most powerful word of all, should we be thinking about what our communication gives our consumers. You wouldn’t expect anyone to buy a product that doesn’t offer a benefit, why then would you expect him to consumer a message that doesn’t offer any?

Maybe the first questions we ask of the idea should be the following.

Will the ad stimulate the heart or the mind of the consumer?

Will he share it? Or better still comment on it?

Now there are some who will say that this applies to the West. India still lives in its villages and status quo is the only status that matters. If you look back for a second you will notice that India has changed more in the last five years than it did in the last 50. And it will change even more in the next two. That’s something that you can bet your business on. We have. (The author is the Chief Creative Officer of the Mudra Group)