Book Review: Phantoms in the Brain

A Brilliant “Sherlock Holmes” of neuroscience reveals the strangest cases he has solved – and the insights they yield about human nature and the mind. Using such low-tech tools as cotton swabs and mirrors, and working with patients whose neurological symptoms range from hallucinating cartoon characters to thinking their parents are impostors, Dr. V.S. Ramachandran uncovers answers to deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address, including why we laugh or become depressed; how we make decisions, deceive ourselves, and dream; why we may believe in God; and more. This is inspired medical sleuthing that pushes the boundaries of medicine’s last great frontier: the Human mind.

He introduces patients with strange, sometimes extraordinary symptoms – a man who experiences orgasms in an amputated, or phantom, foot; a woman who is convinced that her own arm must belong to her brother; stroke victims who insist they can move their paralyzed limbs; an accident survivor who believes that his parents are imposters; perfectly sane men and women with hallucinations of animals, objects, even cartoons – and then offers his ideas about what is going on in the patient’s brain that would explain such symptoms.

Often he devises ingenious experiments involving mirrors, gloves and helpful graduate students to test his ideas. The results are a new understanding of how information from different senses interacts and how the brain forms new connection and updates its model of reality in response to new sensory inputs. The wide ranging author also looks into the brain for clues about the mystery of autistic savants, human laughter, multiple personality disorder, religious experiences and the very nature of the self. Besides informative drawings and images of the human brain, the text contains numerous illustrations demonstrating optical phenomena that demand reader involvement.

I was very pleased by author sober discussion of “qualia” and his careful treading on the question of religion and the mind-body interaction in general. His argumentation is overall very balanced; he comes across as an open-minded scientist who isn’t pushing any particular agenda, but is simply driven by curiosity. I didn’t find his elaborations on the nature of consciousness too enlightening but I guess consciousness is to neuroscience what the cosmological constant is to physics, everybody’s got an opinion about it and nobody finds anybody else’s opinion convincing. Altogether, I learned quite a lot from this book and especially the section on denial has given me something to think about.

Documents and Accounts to link with Aadhaar

From getting a mobile connection to conducting financial transactions, you just can’t escape Aadhaar. Here is list of accounts and documents which have to be linked with Aadhaar mandatorily, and those where linking or quoting is not a must but doing so can make your life easier.

Bank Account – The govt. has made it mandatory for banks to verify and link their customers Aadhaar’s with their savings accounts.

Mutual Fund Investments – It has been made mandatory for financial institutions like fund houses to get their customers Aadhaar numbers and link the same to their respective accounts.

PAN Card – The govt. had earlier notified that income tax returns filed after July 1, 2017 would be accepted only after the assesse linked his PAN with Aadhaar.

Social Security Schemes – To avail benefits of social security schemes such as Atal Pension Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, the Aadhaar is mandatory.

Pension Account – The Employees Provident Fund Organization has made it mandatory for its pensioners to provide either Aadhaar or enrolment ID to remain beneficiaries of social security schemes.

SIM Cards – Aadhaar based e-KYC verification for all mobile phone subscribers are mandatory.

Faster Provident fund claims – Although it is not mandatory to link your Aadhaar number to your PF account, doing so will allow you to apply the claim online and get it within 5 days.

Direct Benefit Transfer – It is advisable to provide your Aadhaar details to get benefits under the government’s DBT schemes even though it is not mandatory. Doing so you safeguard against duplication or fraudulent activities and ensure that the money transfer reaches directly to your Aadhaar linked bank account.

Death Certificate – DC will need to have the deceased person’s Aadhaar number. The person applying for the death certificate for a family member needs to furnish his or her Aadhaar as well.

Driving license and registration of vehicles – The govt. is planning to link driving license and the registration of vehicles with the owner’s Aadhaar number. This is being done to prevent the insurance of fake licenses and registration of stolen vehicles.

Entrepreneurship in India

Demographics trend in India, the second most populous country in the world, suggest that a million people join the labor force every month. This amounts to 12 Million Indians joining the labor force every year, which is more than the entire population of Sweden. With millions of young people joining the labor market every month, the question is if there will be enough jobs for them.

India produces too few entrepreneurs for its stage of development. The pace of creation of new businesses and new start-ups in India is low compared to the rest of the world. A slow pace of entrepreneurship is associated with a slow pace of job creation. There is huge heterogeneity in entrepreneurship within India, with new establishments concentrated in a few places. There is extensive evidence of agglomeration economies.

Supportive incumbent industrial structures for input and output markets are strongly linked to higher establishment entry rates. For a city, start-ups are more frequent in industries that share common labor needs or have customer supplier relationships with the city incumbent businesses. However, strong agglomeration economies and supportive incumbent industrial structures will do not explain why heterogeneity in entrepreneurship within India should be much bigger than what other countries have experienced.

The differences in the spatial location of entrepreneurship are not a result of the differences in entrepreneurial returns. Anticipation of abnormal returns is not the driving force. Demographics have played only a limited role. The two most consistent policy factors that predict overall entrepreneurship in a district are its local education levels and the quality of local physical infrastructure. These patterns are true for both manufacturing and the services industry.

Good physical infrastructure is essential to supporting entrepreneurship, economic growth and job creation. Goods and services can’t be produced or jobs created, without access to roads, electricity, telecommunication, water, education and health. The link between education and entrepreneurship has strong roots. Education improves skill and spreads ideas more quickly. Programmes that promote education in poorer districts can increase the supply of potential entrepreneurs, provide boarder benefits to the communities and enhance equity.

The jobs challenge faced by India will be shaped not just by How India invests in physical and human infrastructure, but by global trends towards increasing use of digital technologies. Heavy manufacturing is likely to start shedding jobs first. Light manufacturing still has the potential to create some jobs. Many more new jobs will be created in modern services. The future of jobs will be driven more by education and skills than in the past. Policymakers will need to introduce innovations in the content and delivery of education. The potential of technology enabled solutions, supported by a stronger foundation of digital literacy will go a long way in putting the future of jobs on a stronger footing.

The future of jobs remains positive, given that India is starting from a low base in entrepreneurship. India’s strength in entrepreneurship lies in its small enterprises. They are now well integrated in global supply chains. Last but not least, women headed entrepreneurship will become the new driver of job growth in future. Districts that have a higher level of local education and better quality of local infrastructure will attract many more entrepreneurship and create many more jobs.

Facts about Bitcoins

Bitcoin’s supply is limited to 21 Million – a number that is expected to be reached around the year 2140. So far, around 16.7 Million Bitcoins have been released into the system, with 12.5 new ones released roughly every 10 minutes via a process called “mining” in which a global network of computers competes to solve complex algorithms in reward for the new Bitcoins.

These mining computers require a vast amount of energy to run. As the price increases, more miners enter the market, driving up the energy consumption further. A recent estimate by tech news site Motherboard put the energy cost of a single bitcoin transaction at 215 kilowatt-hours, assuming that there are around 300,000 bitcoin transactions per day. That's almost enough energy as the average American household consumes in a whole week.

If you want to buy bitcoin, you do not need to buy a whole one. Bitcoin's smallest unit is a Satoshi, named after the elusive creator of the cryptocurrency, Satoshi Nakamoto. One Satoshi is one hundred-millionth of a Bitcoin, making it worth around $0.0002 at current exchange rates.

Bitcoin has performed better than every central bank-issued currency in every year since 2011 except for 2014, when it performed worse than any traditional currency. So far in 2017, it is up more than 1,400 percent. If you had bought $1,000 of bitcoin at the start of 2013 and had never sold any of it, you would now be sitting on around $1.2 million. Many people consider bitcoin to be more of a speculative instrument than a currency, because of its volatility, high transaction fees, and the fact that relatively few merchants accept it.

More than 980,000 Bitcoins have been stolen from exchanges, either by hackers or insiders. That's a total of more than $15 billion at current exchange rates. Few have been recovered. Despite many attempts to find the creator of bitcoin, and a number of claims, we still do not know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, or was. Australian computer scientist and entrepreneur Craig Wright convinced some prominent members of the bitcoin community that he was Nakamoto in May 2016, but he then refused to provide the evidence that most of the community said was necessary.

It is not clear whether Satoshi Nakamoto, assumed to be a pseudonym, was a name used by a group of developers or by one individual. Nor is it clear that Nakamoto is still alive - the late computer scientist Hal Finney's name is sometimes put forward. Developer Nick Szabo has denied claims that he is Nakamoto, as has tech entrepreneur Elon Musk more recently.

Until earlier this year, it was thought that Chinese exchanges accounted for around 90 percent of trading volume. But it has become clear that some exchanges inflated their volumes through so-called wash trades, repeatedly trading nominal amounts of bitcoin back and forth between accounts. Since the Chinese authorities imposed transaction fees, Chinese trading volumes have fallen sharply, and now represent less than 20 percent, according to data from website Bitcoinity.

The total value of all Bitcoins released into the system so far has now reached as high as $283 billion. That makes its total value - sometimes dubbed its "market cap" - greater than that of Visa, and bigger than the market cap of BlackRock and Citigroup combined. Bitcoin is far from the only cryptocurrency. There are now well over 1,000 rivals, according to trade website Coinmarketcap.

It is already possible to short bitcoin on a number of retail platforms and exchanges, via contracts for difference (CFDs), leveraged-up margin trading or by borrowing bitcoin from exchanges without leverage. But a number of big financial institutions - including CME Group, CBOE and NASDAQ - have recently announced that they will offer bitcoin futures, which will open up the possibility of shorting the cryptocurrency to the mainstream professional investment universe.

Many fewer than the 16.7 Bitcoins that have been mined are actually in circulation and accessible, because of forgotten passwords, accidental losses, hoarding, owners forgetting about coins or even dying. It is impossible to know for sure how many Bitcoins have been permanently lost, because those that have are still in the system, in dormant addresses. But according to a December 2013 research paper by the University of San Diego and George Mason University, 64 percent of the 12 million Bitcoins that had by then been mined had never been spent. Bitcoin developer Sergio Lerner estimates that almost 1 million unspent Bitcoins belong to the crypto currency’s mysterious creator.

There are 5,638,155 Bitcoins in the 1,000 biggest wallets - more than a third of all Bitcoins in circulation. That makes the 1,000 biggest wallet-holders worth a collective $87 billion, at current rates. The average fee paid to process bitcoin transactions has soared over the past year, outpacing even the staggering price increase of the cryptocurrency itself. Each bitcoin transaction now costs around $7.30 to process, up from around 30 cents at the start of the year, according to trade website BitInfoCharts.

If you owned Bitcoin prior to Aug 1, 2017, you also own Bitcoin cash – a clone of the original. That is because on that date Bitcoin underwent a so-called “fork” in which the underlying software code was split into two. One unit of Bitcoin Cash is now worth more than $1300. That adds roughly another 135 percent to the returns from a bitcoin investment at the start of the year. 

World’s best Tech Headquarters

Apple New Spaceship Campus – Apple Park, the company new 175 acre campus was envisioned by Steve Jobs as a centre for creativity and collaboration. Located at Santa Clara Valley, the campus ring-shaped 2.8 Million sq. ft. building is dressed in the world’s largest panels of curved glass. With 17 Megawatts of rooftop solar, Apple Park will run one of the largest on-site solar energy installations in the world. It is also the world’s largest naturally ventilated building.

Uber Campus – The first renderings of Uber new headquarter at San Francisco Mission Bay neighborhood not only looks futuristic, but is also going to be designed with a lot of transparent glass panels. Employees will be able to cross between the office’s two buildings on angling glass and steel bridges. The app-based taxi service company hopes to open the buildings on about 423,000 sq. ft. land by early 2018.

Tesla Gigafactory – The Gigafactory is being built in phases so that Tesla can begin manufacturing batteries immediately. The current structure has a footprint of more than 1.9 Million sq. ft. which houses over 4.9 Million sq. ft. of operational space across several floors. Yet, it is less than 30% complete now. Tesla expects the Gigafactory to be the biggest building in the world.

Googleplex Campus – Housing the largest number of Google buildings on 3100,000 sq. ft. of space, the Googleplex campus in California is designed keeping the future in mind. It has offices, outdoor café, fitness centres, tennis and volleyball courts, organic gardens, EV charging stations, self-driving cars, an Amphitheatre and more.

Facebook Community Campus – The social media giant unveiled its plans to develop a 59 acre site near its headquarters in Menlo Park. Facebook wants to add office space for more than 11,000 new employees, as well as 1,500 housing units and a retail corridor (125,000 sq. ft.) complete with a grocery store to accommodate many of them.

World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day is observed on December 1 every year to create awareness about the symptoms, causes and preventives of the pandemic diseases HIV/AIDS that has taken unprecedented number of lives. Like every year, World AIDS Day 2017 was celebrated with a new theme “Right to Health” including a range of interactive activities, campaigns by distributing posters and events that are endorsed by governments, people and organizations.

According to UNAIDS report, by June 2017, around 20.9 million people had access to the life-saving medicines. This is a far cry from 2000, when only 685,000 people living with HIV had access to antiretroviral therapy. In 2016, around 1.8 million people were newly infected with HIV, a 39% decrease from the 3 million who became newly infected at the peak of the epidemic in the late 1990s.

Since its inception in 1988, World AIDS Day is celebrated after the consultation of foremost global health organizations. To mark the event across the globe, HIV/AIDS activists wear a red ribbon which is a symbol of solidarity and support towards the people living with HIV.

One of the objectives of World AIDS Day is to create awareness on what is AIDS. AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is a medical condition caused by HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) that sabotages the immune system of a person making it vulnerable to infections including opportunistic infections. HIV can be transmitted in many ways such as sexual transmission without a condom, use of contaminated syringe or drug equipment, blood transfusion from an infected person and from mother to child during giving birth or breast feeding.

Awareness camps are held on World AIDS Day to enlighten people about the signs and symptoms of HIV/AIDS. An infected person would look normal in appearance but certain symptoms can be noticed. Study has identified certain signs and symptoms of AIDS that include: unusual mark on the tongue, fever, dry cough, pneumonia, fatigue, nausea, and headache. This disease can be diagnosed when the number of immune system cells (CD4 cells) in the blood of an HIV positive person declines below a normal level.

Celebration of World AIDS Day is symbolically a call to enhance social protection mechanism for people with HIV and alert governments in framing unbiased policies for vulnerable population so that they enjoy equal status in the society. UNAIDS and numerous social welfare organization are constantly striving and taking initiatives on AIDS awareness and to reach both urban and rural areas. 

On the eve of World AIDS Day, internationally acclaimed sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik created the world’s longest red ribbon on the Odisha’s famed Puri beach to generate awareness about the fatal disease. Pattnaik attempt to recreate the ribbon on sand is 800 feet long and 400 feet wide, an immense sand art which could only be captured with a drone camera. The Limca book of records took cognizance of Pattnaik feat and his name has been registered in the world record for the longest sand art ribbon.

Net Neutrality and Why does it matter?

The TRAI is all set to issue recommendations on net neutrality. The regulator’s recommendations to the telecom department will form a vital component of the government’s policy on net neutrality, a principle that guarantees consumers equal access to all Internet services, with no discrimination on the basis of tariffs or speed. Here is a look at what the developments mean for consumers and companies.

Net neutrality is the principle that internet providers treat all web traffic equally, and it’s pretty much how the internet has worked since its creation. But regulators, consumers advocates and internet companies were concerned about what broadband companies could do with their power as the pathway to the internet – blocking or slowing down apps that rival their own services.

In US, big telecom companies say they don’t want the stricter regulation that comes with the net neutrality rules. They say the regulations can undermine investment in broadband and introduced uncertainty about what were acceptable business practices. There were concerns about potential price regulation, even though the Federal Communications Commission had said it won’t set prices for consumer internet service.

Internet companies such as Google have strongly backed net neutrality but many tech firms have been more muted in their activism this year. Netflix, which had been vocal in support of the rules in 2015, said that weaker net neutrality wouldn’t hurt it because it’s now too popular with users for broadband providers to interfere.

FCC Chairman distributed his alternative plan to other FCC commissioners in preparation for a vote. Although the FCC two Democrats said they will oppose the proposal, the repeal is likely to prevail as Republicans dominate 3-2. The vote for net neutrality in 2015 was also along party lines, but Democrats dominated then. The TRAI fought a battle in 2016 against plans that promised select Internet services to poor people by offering them free of cost. The regulator issued differential pricing regulations by which it banned what’s known as zero-rating plans.

Book Review: Mentally Tough

Some days, you are better. You are quicker. You are stronger. You see more. You accomplish more. Solutions come to you. You are on a roll. You are better. Why are you so much better on some days than on others? It is only happenstance, a quirk of fate? Or is there some controllable way for you to perform consistently at the upper reaches of your abilities? There is a way to be at your best whenever you want or need to be, and it is based upon your ability to control your emotions.

Mentally tough is having the ability to control your emotional state in order to be focused, relaxed and confident in the workplace. It means you don’t get bogged down by stress, anger, fatigue, petty problems, or your workload. It means accomplishing your goals, unlocking boundless physical and mental energy, and discovering an enterprising, creative and vital you.

By utilizing the strategies in this book – the same techniques professional athletes use to attain their Ideal Performance State on command. These techniques – including Attitude, Visualization, Motivation, Exercise, Diet, and Performance ritual, Breath Control, Ritual, Humor and more are applied here to the world of business.

This book describes certain peak performance feelings such as -

Mental Calmness – This is not the state of a great performance. During the white moments, there is a very real sense of internal calm and quiet – almost a sense of performing in slow motion.

Physical Relaxation – Physical tenseness ruins performance, whether you’re trying to hit a tennis ball or you’re delivering a speech. During your finest hours, the muscles are relaxed not taut.

Freedom from Anxiety – Anxiety leads to physical and mental tension and provokes an undesirable shift in focus from the performance itself to its outcome or possible repercussions. Sometimes Anxiety will provide a source of energy. But anxiety is a negative energy, and no performance fueled by anxiety will be as good as one fueled from a positive source.

Energy – It is the energy that comes when you are loose, calm and free of anxiety. Every top performance is propelled by a seemingly boundless supply of mental and physical energy drawn from the positive emotions.

Optimism – The Optimism during top performance comes from a strong belief that whatever the challenge, the performer will find a way to meet it. Top performers never run out of options, and their optimism reflects this knowledge.

Enjoyment – When you find joy in work, you perform well. When it ceases to be fun, performance suffers. This state of fun is all-important to good performance; it represents a limitless source of positive energy.

Effortlessness – When the biochemistry is right, achieving great goals and overcoming major obstacles seem nearly effortless.

Automaticity – During great performances, the action is automatic, almost intuitive or instinctive. The right responses come naturally, without hesitation or deliberation.

Alertness – Finest hours always include an extraordinary awareness and a heightened sense of self. An executive will sense accurately the pulse of the surroundings, but simultaneously stay riveted to the task at hand.

Focus – The importance of concentration is no surprise, it is essential to any good performance to be able to focus on a specific target and resist distraction.

Self-confidence – It is nothing more than the strong internal belief that one can meet the challenges. This provides calm when the circumstances might otherwise evoke panic, anxiety anger or tension.

Control – This is simply the feeling that you are in control of yourself and your responses to events. You are not a passive victim of circumstance. You can’t always control events, but you can control your emotional responses.

If you’ve ever had just one day where everything flowed smoothly – you feel relaxed, yet everything and more gets done, problems are dealt with quickly and efficiently, and you’re more creative than you’ve been in months – then you know what it’s like to be Mentally Tough. And once you are Mentally Tough you have days like this on command – making the difference between success and failure in today’s tough business world.

Challenges in E-commerce

E-commerce spending has risen to $2.1 Trillion in the past few years and will reach $5 Trillion by 2020. Such rapid growth promises a great future for the Indian E-commerce industry signifying a strong market and increased customer demand. Despite these growth trends, many e-commerce businesses fail to take off within their first year. It is worth exploring the various challenges which the ecommerce industry faces today.

Borderless Economies – Mobile technology has empowered consumers in myriad ways. It has opened doors to a digital economy, taking globalization to a new level. Traditional boundaries are clearly blurring, with online retailers expanding to new geographies. This leaves companies to deal with government regulations, geopolitical status and extensive local and international competition. Modern E-commerce businesses are in race to provide the best premium services to their consumers while finding the right balance between globalization and localization.

Building Trust – Building consumer trust and brand loyalty is essential for any business to succeed. The traditional brand building exercises are mostly irrelevant in the current E-commerce sector. It is easy to lose an online customer. Failure to deliver on any one aspect of customers’ demands would lead to failure in retaining them.

Disparate Systems – There are various data management systems such as – Point of Sale, Enterprise Resource Planning and CRM systems. These systems differ tremendously in their architecture, deployment and usage, usually built on dated technology and are prone to stagnation. A great deal of your resources is being spent on separate systems, interfering with internal business demands and distracting the focus from the core tasks.

Lacks of Collaboration – There are four key divisions in E-commerce – Technology, Data Curation, Product Delivery and People management. Modern companies face the challenge of collaborating between different departments, some geographically isolated and present in different time zones. Marketer’s merchandisers and E-commerce managers need to learn to strategically operate through one integrated channel.

Personalization – Modern E-commerce thrives on delivering the best personalized experience to their consumers. Managing a repository of customer data is a challenge in itself, added to that e-commerce companies have to understand how to use that data. Delivering customized content in the form of advertisements, special offers etc. are some of the methods which can be employed.

Ease of Technology – Ease of use and technology have given consumers more power and increased global competition in the e-commerce sector. Omni-channel retailing is the way forward for e-commerce. This places pressure on companies to deal with technical issues of running an online store like server issues, bandwidth issues, dynamic IP address, data privacy and security issues. The transition from a multi-channel business to an omni-channel is another aspect that is not easily adopted by many companies.

Managing logistics, seller registration and inventory accounting present bigger challenges for the e-commerce companies. To overcome these challenges would require greater deployment of manual resources and can’t just be solved through cloud services.

National Education Day

November 11 has been celebrated as the National Education Day since 2008. The date has been chosen to commemorate the birth anniversary of independent India’s first education minister – Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

Post India’s independence, the learned turned their focus to education as they knew it would be a fundamental pillar in nation building. Speaking at All India Education on January 16, 1948, Abul Kalam said, “We must not for a moment forget, it is a birthright of every individual to receive at least the basic education without which he can’t fully discharge his duties as a citizen.

An academician and a freedom fighter, he was given the charge of the Education Minister for Free India. At the time, India though free, was reeling through the years of exploitation and the nation was suffering from widespread illiteracy.

Understanding the fundamental role education plays in the development of the nation, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad as the chairman of Central Advisory Board of Education, gave impetus to Adult Education and Literacy. Not only did he lay emphasis on elementary education but also propagated diversification of secondary education and vocational training.

The freedom fighter and visionary was responsible not only for streamlining the education system in the country but also foreseeing the start of the first ever Indian Institute of Technology, IIT in India in 1951. The man was also responsible for setting up of The Central Institute of Education, Delhi which later became the Department of Education of Delhi University.

The setting up of the University Grants Commission in 1953 is all credited to his vision. He was also the primary propagator of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Faculty of Technology of Delhi University and a founder of Jamia Millia Islamia University.

Evolution of Video Consumption

First released in 1979, the famous tune went on to top 16 International music charts. Ironically, when MTV was launched two years later, “Video killed the Radio star” became the first song to grace television screens in a new format that would change the industry forever: music video.

Forward thinking brands and marketers can take advantage of unprecedented access to consumers where it matters most. We are rapidly entering a new golden age of video, with more consumers on more devices watching more video content than ever before. The number of Internet users continues to grow, as does time spent online and content consumption is shifting toward mobile, which now accounts for nearly 70 percent of digital media time.

Think with Google research reveals that 56 percent of “Gen C” users took action after viewing ads on YouTube. While marketers worry that mobile internet content consumption will reduce their impact, the truth is that mobile digital video is quickly becoming the best way to reach an audience. Mobile video is not only rapidly becoming the preferred type of content, it’s also better at holding an audience attention than television.

It is very important for a brand to build a winning video strategy. This begins with a big idea that cuts to the heart of a problem that the product solves, or a vision of the brand and its role in daily life. Once this ‘story kernel’ has been developed, brands can build on it by articulating how they solve the problem or overcome the challenge. Where you tell a story can be just as important as how you tell it. Situating an ad in a context where the product value is clear increases the ad’s conceptual fluency. Contextually relevant ads are less intrusive, and they lower the mental strain on the viewer. They can also benefit from the halo effect.

One of the most obvious constraints of the new form is length. Instead of compressing content into even smaller parcels, brands should synthesize a story system that links discrete content vehicles into a broader narrative. Each piece works independently, encoding specific brand values, while also speaking to an overarching vision of the brand. Consumers can then interact with the content that is most relevant to them without losing sight of the brand’s overarching vision.

Brands need to choose the metrics that best evaluate the components of their strategy they want to improve and how they want to improve them. Once selected, these metrics need to be continuously re-evaluated as part of a perpetual learning system, where new knowledge informs the path of future research and experimentation. Measuring views will help a brand increase viewership, but leaves consumer attention entirely out of the picture.

Viewability, impact and context are good places to start, as they are fundamental to successful campaigns, but it’s also important to understand whether the message is clear, whether viewers are attentive, and if this attention is translating into action: sales or brand equity increased. Brands must become increasingly responsive to consumers, and the way they interact with media, by building a strong experimental framework that allows for an increasingly focused evolution of their video strategy.

Evolution of Phone Marketing

While 1983 big breakthrough was a far cry from the iPhone X, it was a harbinger of things to come, a personal telecommunications device that could be carried outside the hardwired home. It took another 10 years to make cellphones that you could comfortably carry in your hand. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that SMS as well as access via mobile browsers took off. With these factors now in play, connecting with consumers via handheld devices began to really take hold as a viable mass marketing tool.

It took until the 1970s before call centers and what was quickly dubbed ‘telemarketing’ emerged. The industry exploded as technology made it cheaper to set up outbound call centers. By 2000, the 10 biggest telemarketing agencies were making a million or more calls per hour. It was also by the turn of the millennium that essentially all businesses had now equipped themselves with toll-free numbers and braced for the rise of inbound marketing.

Having the data is one thing, but doing anything useful with it is quite another. And it depends what your interpretation of the data is. A single click can be meaningless without context without scoring it and extrapolating what it means about that specific customer journey. One way to make sense of your data is with channel attribution, based on customer touches or clicks. There are a number of models for doing this – First Click, Last Click, Position based, Linear and Time Decay.

Each of these models has pros and cons, but none is fully effective with incomplete data. Even though we’ve moved into instant, digital everything, some very significant parts of buyer’s journeys still happen offline and offline actions rarely get credit in any attribution model. Offline data efficiency gaps can widen due to the very tangible differences between various marketing channels, some channels are simply more wide used by specific demographics during specific legs of their journey.

For example, Facebook is a great place to build awareness and create a community, but it’s not typically where consumers go to make purchases or to gain deep knowledge of your products or services. If you’re not measuring phone calls, you’re likely missing a big chunk of the data. This is true if you’re using a last click model that would be giving calls a huge share of credit, if only you were tracking them. Even though the integration of the web and smartphones into everyday life has done away with phones that flip, phone calls are still alive and well in the marketing process.

In fact, the evolution of phone technology has created a mobile first world, where mobile searches result in immediate calls and conversion from the same device. Measuring which search queries, ads and content make those calls happen, therefore, is key to building and refining a winning overall strategy. Predicting which new technology or device might emerge as the next big marketing tool is a tough endeavor. 

Rise of Purpose Driven Marketing

Cause related ads seem to be everywhere. There’s much industry debate about what works, what doesn’t and whether it’s even worth the risk. Brands are tackling a wide variety of issues, ranging from safe driving to equality and healthy living, but there are certainly a few issues that brands seem to gravitate toward more than others.

Over the past year, among all cause related videos created by the top 100 brands, women’s empowerment took the cake. In Fact, 24% of the top 100 brands purpose driven videos were about women’s empowerment. From Nike to P&G, brands are finding a way to create empowering ads for women that don’t just generate impressions, but leave them. Purpose driven ads garner more views; they also drive more results in the form of engagement rate.

Dove is a great example of a brand that employs purpose driven marketing. Their mission is to improve the self-esteem and confidence of women around the world through their #speakbeautiful movement – a campaign that highlights the concept that beauty is skin deep. They want to be seen to be making a commitment to women’s wellbeing and for consumers to see them as so much more than soap and moisturizer.

We all like to feel a part of something bigger and we like to feel we’re making a difference in the world. We’re in the midst of a major change in how and why consumers connect with brands, and those that are driving social change are bang on trend. Today, brand values are equally as important to consumers as the functional benefit they can offer, and meaningful brand action is vital for building relationships and gaining customer loyalty.

When purpose driven ads are done well, brands have the opportunity to not only stand for something they believe in, but also deeply connect with an audience. I believe this will become an increasingly important method to build brands at a time when people are increasingly choosing brands that align with their values.

Tips to build a Rewarding Career

One should be able to learn, share, contribute and discover one’s true potential. After interacting with lots of professionals, here are certain tips on how to build a meaningful and rewarding career.

Have a Hunger – There needs to be a constant enthusiasm and hunger to learn, unlearn and innovate. You should be fearless in the pursuit of excellence and making a difference. It is crucial to soak up as much knowledge as possible and apply it in your line of work.

Communication – An ability to work with diverse groups and respect divergent views is important. Effective communication and influencing skills, hanging ambiguity, managing diversity and leading multi-generation teams – these are the qualities that tomorrow’s employers will look for. Being able to communicate effectively is half the battle won.

Feedback – Be sure to regularly engage with your manager and proactively ask for feedback. Conversations with your manager can revolve around those capabilities you have how the world of work is changing and whether or not your career goals are realistic. You also need to ask how you can accelerate your learning.

Company Help – Everyone has different aspirations and it’s important to keep the organization in the loop via your people manager and your career coach. Be sure to speak to senior leaders on learning opportunities that are available and take help of mentors to action feedback based improvements. You can also ask for options to work on different assignments, products, geographies or work. These will help give you a professional edge.

Think Long term – While it is a good idea to experiment on choices to formulate a direction of your career, it’s also equally important to see those choices through and consider what they mean in the long term. It’s not just about the next job, it’s about the whole of your career, so it is crucial to have patience and take a holistic view of what each decision could mean.

Impact of Blockchain on Search Marketing

If you’ve heard of Bitcoin then you most likely have heard of Blockchain, the technology that enables Bitcoin and other crypto currencies to exist and function. The technology is forecast to disrupt many industries as it allows users to conduct transactions without a middleman in a secure and transparent format.

Some of the industries that can potentially be disrupted are car sales, voting, ridesharing, real estate, insurance, sports management and loyalty cards. If Bitcoin is adopted by large companies such as Amazon or Walmart, it will certainly have an impact on the future of payments between search marketing agencies, website owners, advertisers and others. Contract agreements will also be impacted, as the Blockchain could be leveraged for more transparency and accuracy.

Blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value. It’s like a Google Doc spreadsheet that is shared with the public which displays transactions and is tamperproof. Many are considering Blockchain to be as impactful as the Internet was in the 90s.

In the digital marketing world, many central authorities, such as Google and Facebook, connect advertisers with website owners. For Example, Google is a central authority in programmatic ads, where it helps advertisers run ads on websites via the Google Display Network. Google essentially is the middleman that helps advertisers and website owners trust each other. If they already trusted each other, they would not need Google as an intermediary taking a cut of the profits.

Enter Blockchain, which can verify that every user is genuine with 100 percent accuracy and that the website owner is only charging the advertiser for genuine clicks through to their site. Then the website owner and the advertiser don’t need a middleman to arbitrate their agreement, which would save them money. Blockchain presents a big threat to Google’s Display Network revenue.

Blockchain being the unhackable distributed ledger is going to also help reduce online fraud. It will provide transparency for persons involved in a transaction without giving away their personal details, essentially proving they are a real person. Ad fraud is a big problem. It cost advertisers over $7 Billion in 2016. A number of players including Microsoft, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and DMA are already working on Blockchain based digital identification system.

As companies start to adopt Blockchain, they will need to integrate it with their websites. This involves the web developers as well as the SEOs, if they are trying to gain organic search benefits as well as display the information from the Blockchain transactions. This will present both technical issues and opportunities in which SEOs will have to work alongside developers to resolve compatibility issues with different content management systems and website platforms. As new Blockchains are developed and it is more widely adopted, it will certainly disrupt the search marketing industry in many other ways. For now, search marketers should pay close attention to Blockchain as it grows.

Diwali Ad Campaigns 2017

Brands across categories have rolled out festive ad campaigns to celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights highlighting the importance of family, love, hope and light as their core theme. A look at some brands Diwali Campaigns that have struck a chord with viewers.

Nokia – In its first comeback festive campaign executed by advertising agency Dentsu One, the smartphone maker has highlighted its global brand philosophy of ‘Unite For’, urging customers to take a break from their phones and spend quality time with their loved ones this festive season. The company is also providing a gift box in which one can place their own phone and give it to someone close or, just set it aside for a day as a gesture of committing their time—and themselves—to them. The integrated campaign is being promoted across television, retail, activation, social and digital. The film, uploaded on YouTube on 29 September, has garnered 17 million views so far.

Nestle Alpino – Nestle owned premium chocolate brand Alpino brought a Bollywood twist to create a Diwali Ad which features actors Sonali Bendre and Jimmy Shergill. Made by advertising agency JWT Delhi, the spot positions the chocolates as the perfect gift for loved ones this Diwali.

Coca-Cola – No festival is complete without siblings, and beverage brand Coca-Cola’s campaign highlights some of special moments that a brother and sister share even if it means picking up fights over the most trivial things. Made by McCann Worldgroup India, the Campaign is being promoted across television, radio and digital. Coke has also partner with Paytm to offer festive discount codes to consume with each bottle of Coke.

Pepsi – The beverage brand has extended its ‘Festive Moments’ campaign under which it has created over 80 of the popular words printed in eight regional languages on the brand’s packaging. The new packaging with festive slogans like ‘Dhoom Dhadaka’ in regional languages aims to create a much stronger connects with the consumers. Made by JWT, the campaign also comprises a Digital film along with a series of interactive on ground activations.

Lenovo – A heartwarming campaign ‘Gift them a future’ created by Lenovo India narrates a story of a banker struggling to keep himself busy after retirement. His son, who is back home for Diwali, decides to give him a little nudge in form of a notebook which will help him start his own entrepreneurial venture. Uploaded on company’s YouTube channel, the video has garnered over 2.6 Million views so far.

Hike Messenger – Mobile chat platform Hike Messenger gave a fresh take on the often used theme of homecoming during festive advertising. Created by JWT Delhi, the “No Formality” campaign features a young man who goes back home only to find his parents choosing to go on a holiday on Diwali. He then decides to celebrate the festival partying with his friends. The campaign is being promoted across digital, social and traditional media including television and radio.

Ghadi detergent – Continuing with its ‘saare mael dho daalo’ proposition, Ghadi detergent’s Diwali Ad urges people to stop judging strangers according to the pre-conceived stereotypes that exist in our mind. Created by advertising agency ADK fortune, the Film shows how policemen are often associated with trouble and corruption. The ad shows a policeman visiting a family who are selling their electronic items online. Interested to buy some of these items for Diwali, he not only pays them money in advance, but also makes the full payment, much to the relief to the owner who doubted his intentions.

Robin Hood Army

They take from the rich for the poor – but unlike the legendary outlaw Robin Hood, they are not after money, and it’s all above board. A band of merry men and women called the Robin Hood Army (RHA) has been seeking to feed the poor by distributing surplus food from restaurants and weddings to the hungry in the subcontinent.

Its volunteers, mostly students and young working professionals, call themselves Robins. Dressed in green, they go out in the dark, pick up food and distribute it among the homeless and others. When India and Pakistan celebrated 70 years of Independence, the RHA from the two nations joined hands to fight against a common enemy – hunger – and fed over 1.32 million people across 48 cities.

The group was started in August 2014 with six Robins in Delhi who served about 150 people on their first night of food distribution. In three years, it now consist of 12,350 volunteers who have served over 34,36,531 people. The RHA has some 50 chapters in as many cities in the Indian subcontinent. It started in Pakistan in February 2015 with its first distribution in Karachi. It also has volunteers in Sri Lanka and other Asian countries.

Ghose thought of starting RHA when they heard about an organization in Portugal called ‘Refood’ – which picked up and distributed restaurant surplus. He talked about the initiative with its founder Hunter Halder, and then decided to launch a similar programme in India with partner Anand Sinha, who works for an e-commerce site. The third partner, Aarushi Batra, is in Business.

A particular city chapter gets in touch with restaurants and wedding caterers in an area. Robins keep in touch with those who are ready to donate food and collect it at the end of the day or the time of distribution. The food is packed into meals and then distributed among the homeless and others who need food in or around that particular area. There are some very helpful restaurants that don’t just package and give away excess food, but also donate freshly cooked food.

All expenses, such as transportation costs, are met by the volunteers. With the help of Social Media, a large number of people have joined the army in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, apart from India and Pakistan. There are six chapters in Pakistan – four in Karachi, one in Lahore and one in Islamabad.

Though food is still its main area of concern, RHA takes up other initiatives and projects from time to time. It is now looking at ways to distribute clothes and help poor students. RHA Chennai is crowd sourcing school bags from city schools for sending to a school in a remote village in Odisha, where a Robin is a teacher. In Surat, classrooms are being built under a bridge from waste material for underprivileged children with the help of other organizations. In Hyderabad, they are building new toilets and renovating old one in schools.

When northern Gujarat was hit by floods, two Robins travelled 1,100 kms after collecting 10,000 kgs of food grains and 2,000 kgs of clothes to help 39,000 people. The team bars anybody from collecting money in the name of the organization. RHA has also started a Robin Hood Academy in 19 cities, where they teach slum children to help then join schools. Anyone can help RHA or join RHA community.

International Day of the Girl

International Day of the Girl Child is an international observance day declared by the United Nations, it’s also called the Day of the Girl and the International Day of the Girl, October 11, 2012, was the first Day of the Girl. The initiative supports more opportunity for girls and increases awareness of gender inequality faced by girls worldwide based upon their gender.

Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Sukanya Samriddhi Account, One Stop Center Scheme, Mahila E-Haat are few measures undertaken by the Indian Government towards the upliftment of women. Over the years India has shown incremental improvement in gender inequality indicators. October 9-14 is also celebrated as the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Week.

The day is marked by all events over the world, from India to Kenya to Washington to Paris, put on by humanitarian organizations, nonprofits and governments alike. With 1.1 Billion girls in the world, the United Nations aims to help those girls that face disadvantage and discrimination on a daily basis and wants to highlight their struggle.

The Indian constitution provides a powerful mandate for human rights in its Preamble, Fundamental Rights and Duties and specific provisions for affirmative action. The government has instituted laws and policies protecting the rights of girls and women, including a ban on dowry, pre-birth sex determination and child marriage.

For the fifth year in a row, the youth-led movement is being recognized (the United Nations declared October 11 as “day of the girl” in 2011). This youth led movement fights for gender justice and youth rights, believing that girls are the experts on issues that affect girls. This year the theme of the International Day of the Girl is ‘EmPOWER girls: Before, during and after conflict’ in humanitarian emergencies gender based violence increases which means girls are more likely to be subjected to sexual and physical violence, child marriage, exploitation and trafficking.