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.