#Consumerism – 2030

So a lot happened in this week gone by. Two big brands got acquired  (Nokia and Vodafone). Smart watches were introduced in our lives. Google had a strategic tieup with an FMCG brand (Nestle), and then in a strange, yet very correlative tweet,  Nokia took a dig at its rival:

So alliances are being formed, and rivalry being defined. It would be interesting to see what the future would be like.

Looking into the future

2012 was actually an end of an era. The end of the world as we know it. 2013 is the year when we are being introduced to newer technology, newer interfaces to interact with different mediums, while the older products and brands are slowly receding to the background.

While a QWERTY phone was the new technology in the 1990s, we are now looking at Google Glasses which can record, review stuff and watches which will help us take calls now, and show us the weather and location apart from the time.

From a behavior standpoint, this is an important shift. Currently, We have adapted to a handheld device for accessing all possible requirements. Technology like Google glass and Smart watches will now, be able to provide the same functionality in a hands free format. This is the next step in technological evolution. We are literally gazing into the future.

Endless Possibilities

While Smartwatches are being touted as the future, they would still remain secondary to google glasses in one main aspect – Audio / Visual content. We are A/V animals. We love to watch rather than read. While a google glass or any similar product will be able to help us show and tell things, the smartwatches can only be used to see or click – like a remote. These two, in all probability, will be paired together in the future.

Since the glass is directly connected to our vision, we (and with it, the brands) will be able to monitor, analyze and capture all that we see. Things which used to go unnoticed, will now be available for analysis. Subconscious behavior would now be quantifiable. This is a golden opportunity for the brands. Right from where to place the billboards, the products in a store, to actually knowing what we are thinking along with it.

Shopping in the future

Lets look at the year 2030. I choose this year because 17 years ago, around 1995, consumer market started picking up the mobile phone technology. And look at where we stand now.

2030 would help us account for a saturated potential of this now futuristic, till then well adapted and well saturated technology. Lets call this super device as the glass. it would have changed forms by then. In all possibility, it would not have to be mounted on our face like spectacles. They might look something like this:

No, the people would not be becoming Saiyans, but this design of the glass allows the device to access not just the vision, but also the hearing (ears), speech and thought patterns (should not be impossible considering we can monitor our heart rates and other body activities from our mobile phones right now).

We, as a society would have changed into a much more consumeristic, and technology dependent one. And when I mean dependent, I mean a common 18 year old (born in 2012) then, could not imagine a world without a LED TV or a phone with buttons on them. They would not have the need to go to school because they could find all information about all possible subjects just by a voice command to this beautiful device, called the glass.

Wired internet would have ceased to exist with Wi-Fi connectivity available like the mobile networks. Phone would have latched on to our wrists by then. All calls would be free as they would be made over the net. Almost everything would be automated with a decline in the areas where manual labour could be used.

Print media would have ceased to exist, as almost all the content would be accessible online. 3-D printing would be a household thing like the paper printers. Manufacturing plants would have dwindled in numbers because of this. Services industries would be booming with every brand focusing more on customer service and post purchase actvities would see a lot of disruption.

Brick and mortar stores would be restricted to huge malls where we would find everything at one place. Most of the employment will be directed towards monitoring programs. Cyber security would be paramount, as all the personal information would be online.

And, we could shop just by thinking about it. Sounds futuristic? I guess not.

Where, at one time, we were scared of shopping online, we now shop using our mobile phones. This change in mindset is ever evolving.

To entice the consumers, brands and companies keep coming up with newer ideas to get the attention of the consumers.

Ebay recently launched an application to make the lives of online shoppers simpler. This smart browser application smartly notices your browsing behaviour and gives you different buying options depending on he product you are

looking at. You can check the app here: bit.ly/eBayCheck_Extention

Consumerism in the future

 Right now, we live in a world where even groceries are being delivered at our doorstep. We can look for price ranges online, browse through the brands, make payments using plastic money, and then get the product delivered at our doorstep. If we do not like the product, we can return it, and a replacement arrives in a similar manner.

Lets try to picture ourselves shopping in 2030.

In this world, wants and impulses would reign over needs. The basic needs would mostly be automated by monitoring the inventory levels of the groceries and automated timing for clothes being washed.

Imagine a common man walking down the street with his  ‘glass’ on. While walking, he notices a shirt a stranger on the street is wearing. From the emotion levels, the glass would be able to know that this ‘object’ is desirable to its master. In a SIRI like voice, it would ask its master whether it would like to know more about the object. If the answer is a yes, it would access online data and show the available options along with the brand, price, any offers and the delivery dates if purchased. Along with this, reviews of the product, what people have said about the product, who are the people in their network who are using the product, and other currently trivial, non tracable, but then relevant data, would be flashed on the screen.

If the man wants to buy any of available options, he simply as to say ‘buy it’, and the glass would automatically make the transaction using the fed in financial data in its system.

And all of this, would have happened while the person is walking on the street, without distraction.

So, in the future, we would be living in a world where just thinking about a product would show us alternatives of what we want to buy, help us get reviews from its users – either reading about it, or getting in touch with them directly, and then a simple voice command would buy the product for us.

In short, Life would be simple, and impulsive. Very implusive.

A brand’s Perspective

In these times, the most difficult part for a brand would be differentiation. Breaking the clutter.

For a brand or a company, targeting is the most important thing. If they know who wants their product, they can direct all their efforts to entice them. Thanks to technology, each of our behavior online gives a good enough description about us to tell them what kind of ads we like to see, what kind of products we have bought int he past, and would want to go for in the future. Now imagine these brands having data of all that we see, and listen to in our daily lives. They would be able to pin point our exact want at the exact time, just by a program in their system. Targeting would not be much of an issue, rather than catching the attention of the consumer.

For this, novel disruptive technologies would have evolved where gamification would be used to make the consumer involved with the brand. Disruptive strategic tie-ups like Google Nestle one, would keep them relevant and fresh in the mind of the consumer.

In the future, Word of mouth would be the key thing for a brand. The more and better talked about the brand, the more preferable it would be. The traditional media forms would have become irrelevant by then, as people would become more dependent on what others have to say about the product, than hear it from the brand themselves, who, obviously, would talk good about themselves.

Also, 3-D printing of the products would also be an option available, hence the brands would be concentrating their messaging on the raw materials used to make the products. Services industry would not be affected by this, though.

In the end, I would leave you with a video which, for a brief second, had actually given me a look into the future. This is a fictitious account of a scenario when Google and Amazon join hands to form what is called ‘GoogleZon’ and take over the world. Hope you enjoy it:

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The views and ideas are purely an extrapolation of technology present in today’s times and what it would lead to in the future. This article does not, rather cannot take into account any disruptive technologies which might crop up changing everything we know about our society currently.

#ZooZoo : The ‘real’ story behind the alternate universe

Note : All the characters in this post are real. Any resemblance with any fictional character is purely coincidential.

Everyone has seen them on TV. Everyone loves to adore them. Some compare them with the Simpsons,  some with the minions (Despicable me fame) and some.. well… simply look at them as comic characters created by the Famous Ogilvy & Mather for Vodafone.

Yes, they are the #ZooZoos.

When I was in B-School, professors often discussed about the strategy behind the Zoozoo campaign; how the need to promote the VAS services gave rise to the Zoozoos. Our marketing professor kept repeating in the class about the ‘Jujju’ campaign and how it was one of the most effective campaigns ever launched in the Indian Market. Launching it in IPL was a masterstroke.  This campaign was engraved into our heads. Ask anyone which was their favorite ad campaign ( an interview question for placements), and most would say ‘Zoozoo’.

However, towards the end of my days in college, I was one of the lucky ones to have interacted closely with one of the team members who created this campaign for the first time. And the facts are a bit further from the ‘story’ we are taught in the schools.

The story goes something like this:

Somewhere in February, Rajiv Rao from O&M, who was handling the Vodafone Account was bestowed the opportunity to come up with a campaign which would run during IPL, season 2. Vodafone had gone with the Happy to help campaign in Season one, and looking at the popularity, knew season 2 would be bigger. It wanted the campaign to encompass the whole series with 360 degree marketing which would touch the lives of Indians who would be drowned in Cricket fever, and remain in their hearts even after the series is over.

One thing was clear. O&M had to better their pug and the ‘happy to help’ campaign. Expectations were already running high.

Now, airing one ad for the whole season would have made them repetitive. Hence, the idea of airing a series of different commercials for the whole series was born. Now, the only thing in Vodafone’s artillery was VAS (the value added services), which could provide this kind of variety. As soon as this idea came on the table, the meeting room started buzzing with ideas of how they can showcased. They could not stop the creative wheel to stop churning!  Hence, the idea of coming up with featuring VAS as the theme of the campaign for the whole IPL series was born.

However, budget was a constraint. It would take a lot of ads to be shot for showcasing all the VAS. It was decided to use common characters for all ads. In the initial meetings, the idea of coming up with cartoon characters were discussed as something would automatically give the audience a humour quotient, and would be clutter breaking as very few animated ads had been tried on the Indian screen. Ogilvy experimented with several characters and finally went with ‘egghead’ characters that don the colour white (with black dots for eyes and a mouth), have heads resembling eggs, and disproportionately thin bodies.

Time was still a constraint. They had less than a month to execute the whole campaign. Bangalore based Nirvana group came to rescue when they came up with the idea of getting costumes made and shooting the commercials. IPL had been shifted to South Africa, and as the activation needed to happen there, the whole crew shifted to South Africa. The ads were shot on south African actors wearing the white ballooned quirky looking costumes.

The series of 25 ads were shot in a record span of 10 days, as well.. the IPL was beginning in a week!

This was the first ZooZoo ad ever on TV :

The ZooZoos were an instant hit! The media came running, asking who are these white creatures, what is their name? Rajiv Rao was sitting in office when someone told him about this. No one had thought of it as it wasn’t a task to popularise the name in the first place! He called a meeting. People thought of different names, and Finally, the name ‘ZooZoo’ was coined. . There’s no science to it, as Rajiv explained – the name just had to be something fun, memorable and catchy, and not a clever one that’s difficult to pronounce. (Source : http://bit.ly/18lLVRN)

And hence, came into existence the celebrities that we know now.

ZooZoos has given Vodafone an asset they can use for a long long time. Set in an alternate universe, these white humanoids mimic every human emotion in their quirky way, and inform us how Vodafone makes our lives better.

O&M has experimented with the character sketches a lot – A super ZooZoo was created for launching the 3G services in the later seasons. the newest ones have mini ZooZoos which talk about the internet services that Vodafone provides.

And to think of it, one accidental idea gave birth to so many case studies for the B-school generation. And how we lapped it up!