By Our Staff
Our offices will be closed tomorrow, Tuesday, October 24 for Dassera. There will hence be no edition dated Tuesday, October 23. We’ll be back on Wednesday, October 25, 2023 with all our scheduled updates.
We wish you the very best for Dassera.
By Our Staff
Our offices are closed tomorrow, Wednesday, October 5 for Dassera. So there will be no scheduled update or newsletter.
We’ll be back on Thursday, October 6.
Our best wishes for Dassera and Durga Puja.
By Our Staff
Our offices are closed on Friday, October 15, on the occasion of Dassera. Hence there will be no scheduled update and newsletter.
We will be back on Monday, October 18, 2021.
We wish all our readers a Happy Dassera, Shubho Bijoya, Happy Vijayadashmi…
By Sanjeev Kotnala
Is the Digital Termite disturbing your festivities? I would believe that just like my WhatsApp timelines your timeline was also overcrowded with Ashtami and Dassera wishes rendered in different ways and formats.
Sending greetings to near and dear ones has been a tradition. Traditionally, calling your friends and relatives and meeting them has been a norm. I fear the coming generations may remember it as a useless ritual. And someday the ritual of forwarding greetings will die its early death. Darwin’s theory of evolution will strike again.
Our numbness to the festival wishes and greeting delivered in the most non-personalised way is leading toward extinction of that excitement and collective euphoria during festivities.
Why go when you can call.
Why call when you can WhatsApp.
Why send an individual message when you can broadcast to the list.
Why even bother about creating when you can forward the greetings.
In the process, we are merely loosing out the purpose and relevance of these festivals. We are getting slowly but surely desensitised to festivities, emotions and collective euphoria of celebrations. We are ourselves getting nearer to what we express and explain as the REAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WITH TEMPLATIED EMOTIONS.
THEY COME IN EVERY SIZE.
The greetings are carelessly forwarded. Some of the messages are simple and do their job of exchanging greetings.
Some messages are evolved explanation and thematic nudge for you to understand the meaning and apply it in your life. Rest be assured the sender neither complies with the message or stand guarantee to the social reaction.
Some then try to be witty. These are the one where the audience may get again involved with the message, forward it and not remember who sent it.
Some of the forwarded messages try to be the Yellow Rose on Valentine’s Day. They try too hard to stand out. Unfortunately, in the process, they no longer remain a greeting and morph into some intellectual Gyaan on the platform.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS MESS?
The era of cut-paste from various formats and platforms on the digital ecosystem is leading to forward with a lack of patience and engagement. We are busy playing fastest finger first, and yet we do not remember which group and the friends wished us and who did not.
It does not matter.
Because you still call people who matter.
It would be reflective of the real network and touchpoints in your life.
One can safely hide behind silly quotes like “People who matter don’t mind, and people who mind do not matter”. However, we feel disengaged and uninvolved with people who fail to enclose them in their ecosystem of information, greetings, sharing’s and invites.
In the current era of non-evaluative forwards and cut-paste, people should not mind. Touch your heart and say, which side do you fall. You do mind, and you matter or You do not mind, and you do not matter.
Remember we can not hold our so-called hectic busy overloaded lifestyle for this slowly creeping cultural numbness. Machines and platforms are not responsible for it. If there is anyone accountable, it is you. If there is someone who can still turn the tide- it is you.
THE DASSERA GREETINGS FLOODING TIMELINES.
Here are some of the Dassera greetings that landed in my WhatsApp timeline. Check how many greetings in your timelines are from the numerous bouncing boards across groups and individual well-wishers.
Your numbness is increasing.
Now you easily swipe/click/ignore greetings that do not engage you and have zero impact in your life.
The sender is not expecting replies to every greeting.
His dharma is to send/forward the greetings.
The sender is in the game of just sending and ticking a box of having wished people who during the day will safely ignore or flick the greeting out. An excellent creative message will find engagement with the communication and not necessarily the sender. I presume that was not something you planned.
I would like to know and see messages that someone took exceptional care and pain in crafting it, especially for you?
By A Correspondent
We’re closed on Tuesday, October 8 for Dassera. There will hence be no scheduled updates or newsletter. We’ll be back on Wednesday, October 9 with our usual mix of news and analyses.
By Sanjeev Kotnala
In all likelihood, over the next few days, you will buy some item on the ‘Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale’ or the ‘Flipkart Billion Days Sale’. And at the end of the sale period, one of them will claim some astronomical figure of realised sales.
Through the years, Amazon and Flipkart have successfully redefined ‘the biggest sale’ in Indian festival calendar. It is now nearer to Dassera than Diwali, an attempt to sweep the market before the traditional sale period.
Sales in India on a single day are nowhere close to the eye-popping record $30.8 Billion ‘Single’s day’ sale of Alibaba, which was more than the ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Cyber Monday’ sales combined. But we are getting there with growing e-commerce, better logistics, infrastructure and some help the banks and payment gateways.
STRAIGHT FIGHT BETWEEN AMAZON AND FLIPKART.
Ladies and Gentleman, the man/woman with a high-end mobile and slow connection and the laptop babu with a fast connection. The fight is opening soon. Guaranteed you will benefit in this ‘diwalia hone ko tayyar‘ (Ready to get bankrupt) sentiment associated with such sales.
In the red corner of this ring of festival annual sale fight is the Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale with its very cultural centric motif that is scheduled for September 29 to October 4. Amazon Prime members can try it out from September 28 itself.
In the blue corner is Flipkart, which has mastered the art of sale throughout the year. Its Big Billion Days Sale will start on September and 29 and end on October 4.
This is a straight fight no consumer worth his or her last spending INR wants to miss.
The banks are joining the fun with further cash backs and easy EMIs. Somewhere there is a hint of cashback within 72 hours of sale! Additionally, to keep the excitement, there is a promise of new additions on hourly sale, which is expected to boost repeat logins. And the exchange offers are not missing from the sale. Don’t have money, well, there is some 1,00,000 credit possibility with Flipkart.
Both Amazon and Flipkart want you to keep your wishlist ready. No doubt this is the best sale one can aim at. But as per the earlier pattern, one can see additional Dassera sale, Electronic sales, Diwali sale online and offline. Maybe the only issue is too much option for the consumer that may delay decision-making.
CONNECTING WITH THE CONSUMER.
Now both the e-commerce sites have upgraded their systems and made arrangement to smoothen the consumer experience. But the campaigns by Flipkart seem heavy and lacking conviction. There has been a Billion Day Sale for production and media. It is overloaded.
Deviating from ‘children acting like adults (adult kid)’ theme that predominates Flipkart as a brand, it seems to have gone back to the safety of celebrity advertising. Flipkart has cornered and employed every possible top celebrity interested in selling the idea of getting ready for the sale. Virat as a Cop and Deepika as a Lawyer, Amitabh as a Godown owner and Alia as a newsreader. Regional skew and for every region worth as a priority market, they have a regional star selling the Big Billion Day sale. Don’t know if the celebrities came in some sale.
Meanwhile, Flipkart continued with the strongly associated Adult Kid format borrowing the characters of Circuit and Munnabhai for its Rewards Programme.
Amazon is playing on the brand pull and the past experience of the family as the purchasing unit. And whoever I have spoken with, seems to have a strong perception that the discounts- delivery- experience at Amazon is far better than at Flipkart.
This, in fact, will be a more significant factor in deciding which way the match swings. Because, people know in India that sale and discount is one thing, delivery, service and protection is something totally different.
THE COMMUNICATIONS.
AMAZON GREAT INDIAN FESTIVAL SALE
FLIPKART BIG BILLION DAY SALE.
In the past, Flipkart has used their strong Adult Kid format for the Big Billion Day Sale.. But for some reason, most likely it not giving then enough ROI, they have opted for the celebrity safety net.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FHD_yTkx9Dk
Presenting The Wizard of Words with Das ka Dum. Day Five of the Third Week.
And do come back on Monday for another thoughtprovoking week of Q&As . If you want to access the archives, please go to the Das Ka Dum tab on the website’s top navigation bar..
Q. Dassera is a few weeks away… any media evil that you think should get killed on D-Day?
A. I know of a demon thait is sector-neutral. The demon is called EGO: acronym of Edging God Out, as a saint said once. Social media has further accentuated it. My personal preference is to burn this hydra-headed monster for ever. But can we? Will we not get enervated by ego emaciation? It’s a personal journey and collective wisdom will never come handy.
We are closed on October 11 on account of Dassera. So no content updates and newsletter. But we’ll be back on Wednesday, October 12…
See you then.
It’s Dassera tomorrow. So there will be no updates or newsletter tomorrow. But of course we will be around in case something noteworthy happens. We will be back on Friday, though we are aware that a lot of you will be taking the Friday off to make it an extra loooong weekend.
But we reserve those long ones for Diwali. This year, Christmas (Dec 25, you know it, don’t you?!) falls on a Friday and Jan 1 is a Friday once again.  But we have planned some special editions.
Meanwhile, see you Friday.
And, yes, Greetings on Dassera, Bijoya Dashmi…