Demonstrating the Domino effect at Domino’s Pizza?

The power of a social media cannot be more apparent than what happened to Dominos Pizza and a couple of their employees. Like they say, bad news travels like ‘wildfire’.

You can’t have a real laugh at joke unless you share it. And Kristy and Micheal from dominos decided to do just that, they shared their silly little secret recipe for sandwiches with Youtube. Unfortunately for them, those who saw the joke weren’t those who were joking, but those where being joked at – their customers.

The video is so disgusting, I can’t put words to it. I think, the video is removed from the internet. But then, the rest of the media world takes over and here’s a report from NBC



For those of you who havn’t heard of the video made by two Domino employees, New York Times covers it adequately.
For a change, here’s a well done crisis management video that has been put up by the fast food company.

Attitude vs. Recall

By way of broad classification, there are two things one would want out of advertising: a) Viewers must remember it and remember as much of it as possible and b) The viewers must be favorably predisposed to the ad and by association, the object of advertisement. The first part of this issue is the related to memory and the second part is related to attitude.

A new research in psychology shows that bad weather can influence focus of people, leading them to recall information from that bad-weather period better. In short, people tend to observe and retain information better when they are in bad mood.

As one interested in psychology, its application in advertising and marketing communication and a predilection for gratuitous thought, I start wondering what it mean for advertising - how does it fit into what I know about memory and information processing. How do attitudes fit in here?

The obvious conclusion from the results of the study would be: if you want people to remember the ad and related information, they should be in a bad mood. This can be brought about in two ways – either they are already in a bad mood when they view the ad, which can be ensured by placing it in between a really bad show, or the ad itself should induce the bad mood, which can be done in n number ways, on way is by making really, really bad ads.

(One of the studies by the ELM researchers on effects of mood shows that, when consumers are asked to evaluate something when in a bad mood, they end up rating it more poorly than they would if they were happy. To know more about ELM follow the link)

Hence, by the ELM’s diktat of biasing effects of mood in information processing, the above mentioned method would end up causing you to intensely pay attention to information and form extremely strong and not so favorable attitudes towards the ad and the brand, which is a dreadful situation for an advertiser to be in. Now, to avoid this conundrum, if we decide to make the viewer happy, we must sacrifice some amount of expectation on memory. This means that viewers may have a positive attitude, but may not have adequate recall of information, that is, they may not really know why they think favorably about the ad and the brand. This in turn means that they can be easily persuaded to change their attitude.

Now, how can an advertiser handle this situation: should he decide that the viewers must have strong attitude with all necessary information and sacrifice some amount of favorability in attitude, or should he decide on retaining a high level of favorability and sacrifice some amount of recall?

Here’s another take on the research: http://exploring--psychology.blogspot.com/2009/04/here-comes-rain-again-falling-on-my.html

More on rupee symbols

Indians are complicated and elaborate - here’s the proof:

A poll by Times of India on the rupee symbols submitted to the ministry of finance.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/rupeesurvey.cms

Can you see yourself spending more time and effort trying to get the rupee symbol right than the amount it must represent?

To think or not to think: Elaboration Likelihood Model

Understanding persuasion is a matter of bread and butter for marketers.

Even so, when I did a really small survey about some basic models of ‘Persuasion’ among branding, research and advertising professionals, I found that they weren’t aware of them - and that there was a healthy interest on the subject matter.

Although academic literature is scorned among practitioners as theoretical, and therefore: unusable, I believe that usability of something will be known only on application. And in order to apply, one must actually know it. So, here’s an attempt to put some of the academic kind of thinking which can actually be used if an attempt is made.

I’d like to make a beginning with an extremely robust model in persuasion theory called the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM - Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). This is an offshoot of the information processing genre of literature which deals with how people process information in their minds. Cutting out all the nitty gritties of the research per se’, I’ll just etch out what the model proposes. To understand in further detail, how they came to form such conclusions, you can read up on their published papers available online at http://www.psy.ohio-state.edu/gap/ . As a precursor, I might add that, the task, if undertaken, would require some basic understanding of attitude theory, experimental methods and some basic statistics.

In a gist, ELM comes from a whole bunch of studies by Petty and Cacioppo and several other researchers of attitude, who contend that attitudes are formed when people process information and information is processed either centrally (elaborately, taking into consideration all information that is central to the issue in contention) or peripherally (using secondary clues such as attractiveness of the presenter of information). They contend that the central route produces stronger attitudes, more enduring than those produced by the peripheral route. This translates into an understanding that if you want viewers/ listeners to have strong attitudes, you must present good arguments and give them a chance to process elaborately. Attitudes here refers to ‘predisposition towards the object in contention’ – basically in terms of favorability - Do you like it or not like it, do you think it is good or not good etc…

Attitudes are said to be important because they drive behavior. If you like brand A more vs. brand B, chances are, given a choice, you would buy A.

The model further explains that when people have the motivation (interest, relevance of subject matter) and ability (knowledge of subject matter and context such as level of distraction) they tend to process information better. This gives us more fodder for thought - if the advertising message is such that it appeals to consumer personally – basically target correctly - and gauge their level of knowledge before making the pitch so that they actually understand, and provide it in a situation with as less ‘noise’ as possible, then, maybe you can cause strong attitudes. Hence, this model not only tells us when strong attitudes are created, it also tells us how to create them. And most of the logic of this model is pretty straight forward and we can’t really dismiss it as too simple – ‘cos the application is tough!

This model borrows heavily from cognitive psychology and is about how people actively process information. Hence cognition, aka, thinking becomes a central issue in ELM. While the central route is about thinking elaborately and high on cognition the peripheral route is more about appearances, with less amount of critical thinking which, in a way, can be translated as ‘feel’ factors. Although the ELM researchers don’t talk about feelings and emotion so much, they contend that these cause biases in processing information. The model is robust because it is simple and hard to dispute. When I first started reading up the large volume of literature and all the papers written in this research, I couldn’t find a thing to fight it with – they had an explanation for everything I picked bones with – one might argue that maybe I didn’t have the talent to find the bones, and they wouldn’t be too wrong. I am sure, one with more observation and logic skills could find a skeleton in the ELM closet.

Although ELM side of the story is only one side of a multi-dimensional issue - the cognitive side ( the other sides will be presented in another posts), what we learn is that, for advertising to be effective we must cause central processing which will lead to stronger attitudes, assuming they are favorably disposed.
And we know that in practice, we use peripheral cues (prettier models, unnecessary distracting humour, and incoherent information) all the time – to get attention – meaning we sacrifice strong attitudes at the altar of SENSATIONALISM. Maybe we do this because……hmmmm…. we don’t want consumer to hold enduring attitudes towards our brands?

Symbols and currencies

Recently came across this new magazine called ‘Open’, which goes by an ad line that says “your weekly mind stimulant”. It’s a current affairs and features magazine with an eclectic mix of articles. Find its weblink here: http://openthemagazine.com/

The very first piece of news following the editorial letter is one on the symbol contest being run by the Ministry of finance to replace our own ‘Rs.’ The magazine had got three popular artists, MF Hussain, Baiju Parthan and Abir Patwardhan to come up with some logos from the artists, below:

Having put up the magazine’s version, I had my graphic art background winking at me. So I pulled out my dear old Illustrator 10.0 (Thank you Adobe) and made some quick sketches of my own. I am a little rusty and not too clean with the software, but after a hiatus of 5 years from designing and using the software, this is what I came up with:

Would love to hear your suggestions on the symbols…what you didn’t like, what you liked, what is toooo much and what is too little, what to add, what to delete……

The little grammar book we swear by

As Indians, our education system has been predominantly British, until the American media chose to push over the stiff lipped English for the more conversational American colloquialism. Talk of our daily battles with Microsoft word and its penchant for crying foul on our spellings.

For those of us who remember the harrowing days of pouring over the Wren and Martin for the English grammar class, Strunk and White, the little grammar book was a revelation. I loved the book for its easy prescriptive ways, forgetting the oft repeated warning of our elders: Easy come-easy go.

But then, it was an addiction.

Apparently, its 50 years of Strunk and White and people are paying homage to the book. However, there was that little something inside me that said that all was not well with Strunk and White – A sort of uneasy feeling you can’t quite put a finger on - like you know you are supposed to be happy about your best friend topping the class, but you don’t quite...

And then, I found this article that kind of explains to me why I probably scored lower on my verbal part of GMAT than the quant part – an impossible task – I could never do better in quant than anything else!

Here’s to: 50 years of Stupid Grammar Advice

Asimov: Nemesis

Our solar system is one of the rare planetary systems that has a single star. Most planetary systems are said to be binary star systems. The star nearest to our sun is the Alpha Century, located at about 4.3 billion light years from is a binary star system (α Cen AB). However a third star called the Proxima Centuri is also known to be associated with this system albeit a little further than the distance between A and B. Taken together they are actually considered a triple star system (α Cen ABC).

The Background
Asimov’s Nemesis is one of his later books and is not part of his foundation, Robot or the Empire series. Nemesis is set in the 23rd century. The earth as we know it is completely crowded and polluted. Settlements have taken off on artificial space ships that orbit around the earth. Settlements handle their own research on space travel and one such settlement has learnt to travel space on a system called ‘Hyperspace travel’ which is space travel at the speed of light. While the settlements have generations of civilians living on it, earth attempts to keep a tab on them with spies and agents.

The story revolves around the discovery of a companion star for earth, that too a dim red star, which is discovered by a young astronomer (Eugenia Insignia) on a settlement called ‘Rotor’. Having made this discovery, the settlement which is sitting on its ability of ‘Hyperspace travel’ decides to take off into space away from its orbit around Earth, hoping that it would find another planetary system around the new red star. The commissioner of Rotor (Janus Pitt) is a man with an agenda. He wants to get away from Earth to make a world of his own where his belief of the ‘best of human’ species can thrive and build a settlement of a single race – almost a version of Hitler and his ideology. Even while ‘hyperspace travel’ had not been tested before and he knew not what could happen during the flight, he was still trying to convince his people that it was a good idea to try it. When Eugenia makes the discovery of the companion star, it gives him a reason to drive the settlement into space using the new untested technology – promising its settlers a new world.

Rotor survives the travel, with group of civilians who had voted to undertake the ‘hypertravel’, and reaches the red star only to find a single planet, Megas, which cannot sustain life. However, they find that the moon of Megas, Erythro can actually sustain life, although there was no identifiable life, except protozoa type bacteria which was spread all over the surface of the moon.

The plot:
While this is the background of the plot, the story is about the daughter of Eugenia and a Earthman (Fisher Crile – a spy from Earth), named Marlene who has a special gift – a gift of seeing through people and understanding them, which is quite unsettling. She is not a mind reader and cannot actually read someone’s mind, but has an uncanny ability to read the slightest nuances of body language and make out people’s innermost feelings and thoughts. She is not ‘plain’ to look at, at best, but has an incredibly intelligent and mature mind. The nemesis is a star which actually poses danger to earth as it hurling its way into the solar system, and can cause damages to the very existence of life by the disturbances that it would cause to the gravitational status of the solar system. The story is then about Marlene’s special attraction to Erythro and how her special abilities help to save Nemesis and the Earth. While that’s the crux of the plot, several human relationships and dynamics decide the fate of the world.

My take:
As usual a gripping tale by Asimov: complicated in its plot, amazing in its ability to simplify the most complex of science fiction – thanks to his straightforward narration.

Aside from the fact that Nemesis a beautiful science fiction, written in trademark Asimov style, what to me was amazing, was how humans remain quintessentially ‘human’ in their thoughts and behavior in any setting. Whether one is on Rotor, on Earth, or on Erythro, Freudian psychology hits the nail on the head. Marlene and her ability to assess inane human thought – repressions, regressions, projections, rationalizations and so on and so forth – and deal with it, is a an immutable talent that makes her valuable across time and space.

LMN vs. Nimbooz

Jonathan Swift had a point to make and I could sympathize, empathize etc., with Gulliver in Lilliput and the Brobdingnag land.

But what were they (who ever allowed this to happen) thinking! What I would give to be that dog, little kid and balloon man - uuuurrrggghhh!

For a lemon based beverage that's supposed to help you refresh, I find it incomprehendable. Compare with another contemporary ad for a similar product. I am at a loss for words - Comments on these ads are welcome.

The past never really goes away.

Harlan Coben’s books are a constant reminder of the fact that people do get past tragedies and personal crisis caused either by self or others. BUT the past never quite disappears without leaving scars - some of which may remain unhealed- unless it is reconciled completely. All of Coben’s thriller plots are about cases which were apparently laid to rest, at least several years before the current plot, but ‘not quite’ – the story was clearly not over. The problem resurfaces in for one reason or another and past evidences are almost all gone – sometimes even the connection to the past crime is not easily discerned.

While the plots hold the same pattern in almost every thriller he churns out, the books are a compelling read. I, for one, can read seven Harlan Coben’s in one week @ one book per day. He writes a series of thrillers, one featuring a sports agent called Myron Bolitor, while the other is more random, but just as good. Some of the characters kind of overlap, such as the personal secretary of Bolitor who is a beautiful hispanic woman with a colorful past – an ex-wrestler - the WWF type and has interesting sexual preferences.

I adore Myron Bolitor for his earnestness and I simply love the conversations and interludes with his friend Will who is a mostly unbelievable character – must read him to know him. I love the pace and intrigue of the plots. Definitely not the kind of books one would read for erudition and certainly not the kind one would read for spiritual and intellectual enlightenment. But for those days when you are so bored and lazy, even bungee jumpin’ sounds dull? These books can put the life back into you!!

I went through these books so fast, I started rationing them ‘cos I afraid I would run out of them!

For more information on these books, go to the official site of Harlan Coben. And here are some of the titles I’ve read and loved:

Stuff and getting rid of stuff

Amazing how much we amass and how much we get rid of. Over a lifetime, we probably get rid of more stuff that we keep – and we are still so cluttered. Although we seem so keen on getting stuff, we hardly ever think of where it comes from and where it must go. Consider the fact that no matter can be destroyed on this earth - the indestructibility of mass as we learn in physics - where do we get so much stuff from, that has no place to go? Amazing!!

We could get into specifics about how we manage to convert bio-degradable into non bio degradable - basically take all the good stuff and make them environmentally bad stuff - and about how we just keep creating matter, which we get and then get rid of (not really if we come to think about it)! But that’s not the point of this post.

We never think about where the garbage goes, do we? As long as we get rid of it….out of sight – out of mind – less to think about! We don’t think much of anything else we get rid of either – the TV, Refrigerator, the old cars and namewhatyoumay.

I was watching Wall-e (that really cute animation by Pixar) yesterday and even if the earth depicted in there is quite imminent and all those issues about earth is beautiful etc etc., is all well taken, what really caught my attention was the fact that as humans, how micro we are – We don’t really get ‘it’ unless ‘it’ happens to us - unless ‘it’ happens to me, me, me. Examples: Until the captain realizes that he could dance and grow pizza on earth, he doesn’t care about going back to earth. Until the fat woman starts looking around and sees the beautiful sky and actually meets a man (ahem) she might get interetsed in, she is stuck to her chair and monitor.

It’s always about “what’s in it for me", and always limited by how macro we are able to see in terms of “what’s in it for me”. As long as we have more people thinking narrowly about “what’s in it for me”, we are never going to see the really, really, big “what’s in it for us”.

The moot point goes back to how we relate to all this “stuff” on a very personal basis. The distinct interest and lack on the disposition behavior in academic research clearly shows that we care a lot less about getting rid of stuff than acquiring them ' cos then, its about us. Even when we do take getting rid of “stuff” seriously, it is only when we have some attachment to the object. Other times, we just want to “get rid of it” the easiest possible way - the less messy, the less painful, the less expensive the better – don’t care where it goes, what happens to it and what it does to everything else around it.

What I had to say, was about getting rid of stuff, but I think it’s closely related to how we relate to “stuff”. And on that topic, George Carlin says it much better than I can ever say it.

Get the video here:

His experiments

I wonder if God (if he exists) uses the scientific process in thinking through his operations.

Maybe he doesn’t. You see, all this may just be a really bad joke - How else would one explain this idea of making a planet full of dinosaurs and the wiping them all off the face of the planet, how would one explain the dark ages, the slave trade, the holocaust, terrorism…..?

Then again, maybe he does, use a scientific process I mean - in which case he must be making careful inquiry into the nature and causes of things. I can almost bet that he uses experiments to make his studies – look at the fact that there is almost nothing that you can know for sure without the existence of an exception to the rule, which means that several experimental conditions exist at any one point of time. So, assuming he uses the experimental method to study his creations......
Here’s my grouse: I am almost sure that I belong in the experimental group and am being subjected to all manipulations - and this, without permission. What happens to privacy issues and ethics when it comes to His dealings, I ask…….no answer!

Right now I am particularly cut up about being part of an experiment group which is being studied for its behavior when they are rendered suddenly incapacitated and jobless.

…….now, where are the members from the control group……need to see if they are for real………

We need to talk about Kevin

As a person who espouses marketing for a living, it's clear to me that its sacrilege to put a poor product in the market. But mistakes do happen and poor, defective products get made and placed in the market. Sometimes they hurt others and the marketer/manufacturer has the choice of taking it out of the market and making amends for his mistake.

The Woe:
But what if you were a parent? Can you recall your defective product – a child that has gone horribly wrong? And is it the child’s fault that it went wrong or was it yours? And then again was it the environmental context (society, culture, politics, etc.,) in which the child is reared? These are questions that are raised and left unanswered by Lionel Shriver in her Novel titled “We need to talk about Kevin” (2003).

The book:
The book is written in the form of a series of letters from the mother of 15 year old Kevin to her estranged husband, after the boy has been incarcerated in prison for killing 7 people in a Columbine type massacre. In these letters she explores herself, her aspirations, her marriage, the contrasting beliefs and attitudes of the two people in the marriage, how these differences affected their parenting as well as their marriage after they turn parents. She explores her own attitudes, values, thoughts and feelings with courageous honesty. From a larger perspective, she explores the issues of who gives up more when a couple become parents, what are the individuals perspective of the society they live in, how does the community view the mother, the father and the child? The letters unfold in a dramatic fashion, almost akin to a suspense thriller with a psychotic character as its central theme. At the end, the letters leave you with too many disturbing questions and very few ideas on how to resolve them.

My kneejerk reactions:
When I started reading the book, I felt that the letters were far too open, too candid and far too self deprecatory for it to be written to someone who could read it and respond to it. Just too unreal! At times it sounded like the narrator was desperately appealing to someone to tell her she was right or wrong and no one was coming forth with an explanation. At other times, she sounded like she was making excuses and everything else she said was just to absolve herself from the obvious monstrosity she had created - she was looking for sympathy. Several times I was left confused about whether the mother (narrator) is the monster or the offspring is. But I couldn’t put down the book for a second.
I couldn’t believe someone who could write all this to another person would not be able to work out the differences that led to the estrangement. As the narration climaxes, we know why she is forced to write and the answer is not pretty. By the time I got to the end of the book, I was so drained emotionally and mentally that it left me with a catch in the throat and cobwebs in my brain. For one who is predisposed to putting down a book when it gets too heavy for a shameless bout of weeping and sometimes even bawling, this book left me too stunned to respond.

Hmmmm...
Those familiar with psychology would identify the character of Kevin as one that matches an extreme case of anti-social personality: Extremely intelligent, absolutely no attachments, psychotic - twisted thinking and highly rationalized responses. Psychologists would also agree that such cases are hard to diagnose and hard to cure. The nature-nurture debate can be made here with no conclusive answers, as usual. But as long as we know that one part of that equation, the nurture part is left to us, we are never going to feel free of guilt and self doubt.
While on the topic of nature and nurture, here's another title by Ken Follet that handles a similar issue: The Third Twin. He seems to be arguing the nurture angle which is a more popular view in todays world. Here's a link that handles the topic quite nicely http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5986239.ece.

Although one might think that the book is relevant only in the American context, I would highly recommend it to anyone who is a parent or who might eventually be one. Simply Profound!!

A stitch in time saves nine.

Actually twelve, in some specific cases as in Yours truly.

Had I the good sense to get rid of that awful corn on my right foot a month or two back, I might not actually be killing my time and yours with useless posts.

One stitch on my right foot may have actually, virtually, practically, effectively and so on and so forth, saved me from acquiring 11 more stitches on both my feet.

By the way, ‘corn’ makes for a lot of corny puns, most of them only if intended, but I shall desist and save you some more aches and groans.

Pun

I was complimenting myself on the ‘clever’ title for my newly minted blog which came into existence today after months of procrastination….when I came across this article titled “Pun for the Ages”.
Not that I am an established punster or comic writer of any caliber, but I am a reader and listener of language…..and, Pun is Fun!!
Trite it may be, snigger it may cause for a response. It may not propel the extensive user of it to any great heights of regard by his fellow men and conversely may actually repel some.
But…it is spontaneous and witty. I agree with the author when he says that it is a, “non deadly sin, easier to excuse than resist”.