To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird, will remain on top 10 lists of "best-sellers by first time authors" for years to come. Like Margaret Mitchell and Arundati Roy, Harper Lee managed to write a nice tale of a messy affair. Apparently based on her personal experience as a child in Alabama, a southern state in the USA, it is both witty and profound. Lee believed in writing what she knew - as honestly as she could, and the sincerity of the narration is the book's strength.

My favorite dialogue sequence, right from the mouth of babes (Dill and Jem: Age:10, trying to get their eccentric neighbor out of the house) and couldn’t be more profound:

“Dill, you have to think about these things,” Jem said. “Lemme think a minute…..it’s sort of like making a turtle come out…..”
“How’s that?” asked Dill.
“Strike a match under him.”
I told Jem if he set fire to the Radley house I was going to tell Atticus on him.
Dill said striking a match under a turtle was hateful.
“Ain’t hateful, just persuades him – ‘s not like you’d chunk him in fire,” Jem growled.
“How do you know a match wont hurt him?”
“Turtles can’t feel, stupid,” said Jem.
“Were you ever a turtle, huh?”

That made my day and sold me on the book.

The most amazing aspect of the book is that it deals with a sordid plot – a lawyer fighting a case defending a black man accused of raping a white woman in the 1930’s, in the deep southern state of Alabama. A very grown up story narrated in the voice of a 6 year old and as seen and comprehended by the eyes of completely innocent children who know no race or creed – just humanness.

This style of narration has two effects. A, an adult story told with an innocence that makes the reading feel, Oh So Clean! ….and B, the contrast of innocence in children who have no baggage and the irrational prejudices of grown-ups who carry too much unnecessary baggage, works brilliantly to bring out what the author intends – the irrationality of racism and importance of being human.

I read this book right after I wrote the post on how I could never fall in love with narrators of the story and I almost had to eat my own words. I loved the little girl, 'Scout' Finch, who narrates the story, but unfortunately she didn’t become the first to break my belief about narrators, ‘cos I loved her dad even more. Atticus Finch is older than dads of 6-year olds usually are: about 50. He complains about not being upto the kid’s rambunctiousness, but he is the perfect gentleman who does the right thing even when stuck in a tight spot and brave in a way that really matters. He is a talented shot, but an even better lawyer. Above all, he is a great dad. He’s awesome because he doesn’t feel the need to color the children’s thoughts – he let’s them make their own judgments and see the right from the wrong, helping them along when they can’t make sense of the facts. Above all, maybe the image of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in the 1962 movie stuck in my head.

Identifying Differences vs. Identifying Similarities among Consumers

As marketing students/teachers/practitioners, we know the mantra of “Segmentation-Targeting-Positioning” for developing marketing strategies as well as we know our ABC’s for reading and writing. In order to segment a market, we are really looking for segments or groups of consumers who are different from others. Now, the question is: how far do we take these differences – I am sure we can find individual quirkiness – quirkiness so individual, that the marketer must address consumers one at a time. Taking this kind of thinking further makes concepts such as Mass Customization very appealing. At the end of the day, a large scale manufacturer attempts to provide customization for every individual by just making superficial changes on the same basic product – like color of a car and some design on newest model of motorbikes. Really, it’s just sprinkles vs. chocolate chip topping on plain vanilla ice-cream!!

The whole point of industrial large scale production and efficient marketing to a large number of consumer’s is lost. This stream of argument is not to say that all markets must be treated as one huge homogenous market and that targeting and positioning make no sense! No, that’s not it at all!! The point is: do we really have differentiated products that are required by different sets of consumers owing to the fact that the product is REALLY different? Or else, why not just focus on the entire group of consumers.

Yes, the problem then would be: How do we sell it to them? How do we “position” it if we don’t view them as different? Look at similarities. Why do marketers find it so hard to look for similarities? Similarities can include customers, making the market bigger. Differences only serve to exclude consumers. One great example of how we can do this is by looking at Rituals.

Apparently, BBDO worldwide has done a study on consumer rituals. They define rituals as a series of actions that transform people from one emotional state to another and are developed over a period of time. According to them, Rituals make people feel good. They believe that brands that are embedded in consumer’s daily rituals have a better chance of “stickiness” and make them “Fortress Brands”. Their study done across 26 countries with feedback from more than 5000 people has provided them some rituals that people follow across the world: ‘Preparing for Battle’, ‘Feasting’, ‘Sexing Up’, ‘Returning to camp’ and ‘Protecting yourself for future’. Each of these stages has sequence of steps. According to them, rituals are followed by everyone, its execution may differ.

Sometimes looking for differences doesn’t work, especially in an over-segmented market. Maybe, its time to consolidate and look for similarities! Here’s another clip from my favorite stand-up, George Carlin, who speaks of how we are more alike than different.

Dead Poets Society

I haven’t really been the poetry loving type, but I think of late I have developed some appreciation of ‘the rhyme and rhythm’ in literature. This story about an English teacher in rigid formal school for boys really touches me every time I watch some of its scenes – I don’t know if that’s because I love reading and can see what Keating means, or if it’s because I am a teacher……

Some beautifully made scenes with meaningful performance by Robin Williams:

And here's a rendering of O Captain! O Captain by Walt Whitman

Jazz turns Blue at Madison Avenue

All in a day’s work: says the final rolling credits!

How the change in the mediascape is causing tumultuous growing up pains for the young uns who chose to get into advertising – a fitting ode - couldnt have said it better!!

On narrators and others

I sometimes smile and LOL with them (Bridgett Jones from her Diary book), nod my head at some profound observation on life or people (Alex from Roots), completely agree with injustice doled out to what I consider “My” type of situation (Kate Reddy from I don’t know how she does it), empathize and sympathize….. but I never have and never will, fall in love with first person narrators of stories, who also have a role to play in the book.

Looking back in time, I am quite unabashed at letting out that I have had a string of love affairs with one or the other of such characters – some more torrid than others. Starting with Tom Sawyer, my first crush, the list would typically contain Jupe (Julian) from the three investigator series, Rhett Butler from Gone with the wind, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, Francisco Domingo Carlo Andre Sebastian DeAnconia (Frisco) from Atlas Shrugged and so on and so forth, and a couple of wayside flings with Captain James Kirk, Sherlock Holmes and Huck Finn (These make the list because these were the more enduring than some of the fly by night ones).

For some reason though, I have never found Jim from Great Expectations or Mrs. DeWinter froim Rebecca or even Rahel from God of Small Things, amazing enough to admire them. Sometimes I wonder if Ms. Mitchell had decided to narrate Gone with the Wind with Scarlett O’Hara, would I have found her mean and selfish, which she was, rather than willfully strong, wonderfully self-absorbed and bullheaded, making it ‘ok’ for Rhett to be in love with her?

The way I see it, writers of stories might have, I am sure, seriously pondered over whose voice they must use: their own ostensibly impassive third person voice or that of one of theicharacters from their yarn. If they were hoping for credibility in borrowing the voice of their characters, hope they realize, the character is as good as written off from anyone’s favorite list and sometimes they might even get hated for ‘telling’.

Although “The Kite Runner” is a beautiful story, quite heart warming and shocking at times, Hassan, to me, was the hero, which is quite likely what Khaled Hosseini wanted to achieve with his first person rendered tale - I really didn’t like Amir at all. Not sure if Hosseini intended THAT effect though! My grouse with Amir was his audacity to get all judgmental about his father with his new found western mindset and the fact that he hoped he could redeem his awful character by bringing back Hassan’s lovely child from the hell-hole he was instrumental in putting him, in the first place. And let’s not forget, the child did more to save Amir's life and soul than the narrator did to save the child.

End of rant!!

About Saving the World

There was a time, long long ago, when I was an idealist youngster in search of meaningful life. Hard to imagine – nevertheless true! The question was typically, how can I save the world?

If I was more mature, I would have asked a) Save from what? b) Does it really need saving?

Obviously, my little mind knew something was wrong, but count quite figure out what it was.

Now, I know there is a whole lot that’s wrong with it (the world, I mean) and that I am perfectly happy not doing anything about it. Selfish – true! Happy – Yes!

Call it selective attention if you will, but here are two things that convinced me that I am right on track.....

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson – I learnt that I am too insignificant for either the universe or the nano particles and if I was taking on humans – I was just too insignificant for Einstein type contributions. AND
2. The following “gyan” from George Carlin:

What can Metaphors in an Ad Copy Do to Consumer Beliefs?

According to this research, nothing! Apparently metaphors for metaphor’s sake don’t change consumers preexisting beliefs. The premise for the research rests on investigating whether metaphors have an impact on consumer belief and if they do, is it simply because of the cross-domain comparison or because of artful deviations in presentation of the topic.

The study, done in the context of ‘exercise’ as a consumer product, identified 6 metaphors from content analysis of advertisements and internet forums of popular fitness magazines in the US: Exercise is heat, Exercise is a journey, Exercise is work for pay, Exercise is construction, Exercise is sculpting and Exercise is combat. After a Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) exercise from data collected among a student population, three metaphors were identified for the study such that they were the most dissimilar on the semantic space: Exercise is a journey (Exercise provides roadmap for my life, Exercise is a step in the right direction), Exercise is work for pay (exercise provides job training for my life, Exercise is a matter of putting in the time) and Exercise is heat (exercise provides the flame for my life, Exercise is a way to turn up the heat).

Without getting into the specifics of the research design and data analysis – it would suffice to say here that study was done using experimental designs and the data was analysis was a simple Generalized Least Squares (GLM) – Repeated Measures ANOVA.

The study has shown that Metaphors by themselves do not have an impact on the beliefs of consumers, but those metaphors that are considered more deviant than others (in this case “Exercise: Flame for life”) helped to change the belief more than the other ad statements in the form of metaphors. Further, it was seen that some consumers with a high ‘metaphorical processing ability’ are more persuaded than others who score low on the trait.

What does a study such as this mean for copywriters? Do they consider the impact of their words and metaphors when constructing their clever copy? Do they consider the eventuality that the metaphors suited to the rural audience in India may sound quite insipid and inane to the urban consumer and vice versa? Do they even wonder about the impact of metaphor vs. a pun vs. a rhyme or are they just looking to sound clever and witty? How often have hackneyed metaphors been used to connect with the consumer?

Maybe a look-see into some of the so-called impractical academic research might help practitioners make more learned decisions?