News Headline
‘Welcome To The Click Society: The 2008 Mega Trends’
Outbound Noise & Inbound Specificity
These zillions of day-to-day, small online interactions add up, collectively developing your consumption profiles. The system can easily determine when you and how many of your friends are planning a trip to Rio, with what budget, and what airline. This information is a goldmine to some in the travel business, while the same goes to hundreds of other various sectors. This highly qualified specificity has created a meltdown in the traditional world of advertising, which was historically based on creating wild outbound noise with bottomless budgets. A great thing century ago, but the online era is founded upon the specific pulse of inward consuming traffic.
The total change of old-media-structure is upon us. The last century gave us print society, where the printed word was power, and when only the literate could benefit from information, the ad industry started with a bang. The selling of goods and branding for mass consumerism become the bridge to most of the global economies and the concepts to produce and sell, earn and spend created the modern civilization. The conveyor belts of the process were managed by the ad industry and the herds of consumers were managed by the creative dangling of carrots by ads…today and each and every single day, the global ad industry easily spends over a billion dollars creating various types of branding and selling messages.
But now, most current online and cyber advertising techniques are meticulously precise, measurable and predictable. They have trimmed all the non essential extra creative AD luggage and mega budgets that allowed for the arrival of the MAD Men TV series produced by the same team behind The Sopranos, correctly portraying the ad-machine that once created public hysteria and great consumer demands, but now lingers upon extinction like a dinosaur. This global rejection of the traditional ad-game is all over us, affecting newspapers, TV and all other ad based mediums while a new trace-able, track-able, predictable, ROI model of one-to-one advertising sell-first-bill-later is getting a stronger hold.
The challenges are on two fronts. Firstly, a continuously modified mass scale selling of goods and services using traditional models which have fared well in the past. The secondly, the urgent need of highly exuberant structures of specialized global service agencies, connecting customers on a one-to-one, per-need basis, using hyper-connected, cyber-marketing-processes. Both fronts are very serious and work towards creating a major shift. Ad shops have always excelled at the creativity component which separated them from the other related service sectors. They are once again required to come up with better ideas and solutions, as on the net, it now takes only seconds to copy, cut and paste the same recycled campaigns and their value being erased at cyber speed. The winners and losers will be determined based on speed to market response.
The 2008 Meltdowns
IBM’s current study ‘The END of advertising as we know it’ is a forceful document downloadable from their website. It clearly points how the old advertising models, crazy creativity that is now being replaced by highly organized pay-per-click formats, creating direct sales for clients on a sell-first, invoice-later basis. This creates a two fold meltdown, one in which those agencies which remain still locked down in old models and other is the traditional free media worldwide which so far heavily relied on the Ad revenue.
The 2008 Boom
Clicks and more clicks. Anything that generates a click and results in a cascade of events will boom. There will be special gadgets to special services, from special click-based programs to special offerings. A kind of new click-sound to the click-economy, supporting search engine-based marketing, where the emphasis will be placed on finding a match between a customers and immediate consumption issues is where advertising and marketing will park themselves. The middlemen or the layer of services will offer clear, ROI-based campaigns and will, at times, have a huge surprise windfall for their highly productive campaigns as extra bonuses. Though, at the same time the big drawback will be privacy, as there will be extraordinary amounts of information made available to target customers.
The New Trends
A new emergence of a global desire to aim and create a Five Star Standard businesses is almost upon us, just like a five star hotel, with services, quality and style, this desire to operate a business and offer services just like a five star standard hotel will reflect not only on the corporate brand and the product and services as goodwill ambassadors, but mainly in its hospitable services and 24-hour availability of staff to address those issues. The difference between a luxury home and a five star hotel is the hotel keeps an on-call staff, open switchboard, open kitchen the entire facility and the room service. This is how the corporations of the new era will have to function in order to earn the respect in a click based round the clock society.
Asia is now beginning to offer 24-hour, fully-supported banking, buying and selling of properties, insurance, travel, and all kinds of hundreds of new services. Now, the customer demands and decides whenever, whatever and wherever the need is to be met. Only the players equipped to meet these spontaneous demands will have a chance. The creation of a fully supported, 24-7 operation that will never close and perform transactions instantly is the new future. You would like to own those special glasses to see that blanket of streaming data hugging you right now…wouldn’t you?
(Naseem Javed, author Naming for Power and also Domain Wars, is recognised as a world authority on global name identities and domain issues. Javed founded ABC Namebank, a consultancy he established a quarter century ago, and conducts executive workshops on image and name identity issues. He can be contacted at njabc@njabc.com.)
(The views expressed here are those of the author and indiantelevision.com need not necessarily subscribe to the same)
NEW DELHI: Hamdard Laboratories gathered a cross-section of India’s achievers in New Delhi on Friday, handing out the Hakeem Abdul Hameed Excellence Awards to figures who have left their mark across healthcare, education, sport, public service and the arts.
The ceremony, attended by minister of state for defence Sanjay Seth and senior officials from the ministry of Ayush, celebrated individuals whose work blends professional success with a sense of public purpose. It was as much a roll call of achievement as it was a reminder that influence is not measured only in profits or podiums, but in people reached and lives improved.
Among the headline awardees was Alakh Pandey, founder and chief executive of PhysicsWallah, recognised for turning affordable digital learning into a mass movement. On the sporting front, Arjuna Awardee and kabaddi player Sakshi Puniya was honoured for her contribution to the game and for pushing women’s participation onto bigger stages.
The cultural spotlight fell on veteran lyricist and poet Santosh Anand, whose songs have echoed across generations of Hindi cinema. At 97, Anand accepted the honour with characteristic humility, reflecting on a life shaped by perseverance and hope.
Healthcare honours spanned both modern and traditional systems. Manoj N. Nesari was recognised for strengthening Ayurveda’s place in national and global health frameworks. Padma shri Mohammed Abdul Waheed was honoured for his research-backed work in Unani medicine, while padma shri Mohsin Wali received recognition for his long-standing contribution to patient-centred care.
Education and social development also featured prominently. Padma shri Zahir Ishaq Kazi was honoured for decades of work in education, while former Meghalaya superintendent of Police T. C. Chacko was recognised for public service. Goonj founder Anshu Gupta received an award for his dignity-centred rural development initiatives, and the Hunar Shakti Foundation was honoured for empowering women and young girls through skill development.
The Lifetime Achievement Award went to former IAS officer Shailaja Chandra for her long career in public healthcare and governance, particularly in the traditional systems under Ayush.
Speaking at the event, Hamdard chairman Abdul Majeed said the awards were a tribute to those who combine excellence with empathy. “These awardees reflect Hakeem Sahib’s belief that healthcare, education and public service must ultimately serve humanity,” he said.
Minister Seth struck a forward-looking note, saying India’s young population gives the country a unique opportunity to become a global destination for learning, health and wellness by 2047.
The ceremony also featured the trailer launch of Unani Ki Kahaani, an upcoming documentary starring actor Jim Sarbh, set to premiere on Discovery on 11 February.
Instituted in memory of Unani scholar and educationist Hakeem Abdul Hameed, the awards have grown into a national platform that celebrates those building a more inclusive and resilient India. For one evening at least, the spotlight was not just on success, but on service with substance.
