Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Why Brands Need Semiotics | Dr. Tanvi Gupta | Ep03

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Why Brands Need Semiotics | Dr. Tanvi Gupta | Ep03 · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_08: So I in fact I visited uh a village called Tulsi in Chattisgarh.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_08: Uh I went there in October.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_08: So that village is actually called as the YouTuber village.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I mean if you I mean Google it, you will see Tulsi is the name of the village.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_08: So there is uh as in that that entire village, everybody acts in YouTube videos.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_08: So there are a few youngsters there who have created their YouTube channels.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_08: Like stories and things like from the village.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_08: So they they're like acts, like they make stories, and then uh if uh for example they need an old woman's character, so somebody's grandmother will come and have okay.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_08: Like this entire village is like this uh theatre group kind of a thing, you know.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_04: So very interesting.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_08: Spend two days with them there.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_08: So I mean their channel is called Been Chattisgadiya.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_08: So Chattisgadi channel.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_08: So Chat much like a regional uh language channel.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they have followers and things like that?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, they have uh lacks of followers.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Lacks, is it?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_08: Thanks a lot, Swami.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_08: I'm really glad to be a part of this conversation.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so Professor Thanvi uh when I go back to uh you know uh your background, uh what I can see is that uh you know you did pharma market research and then you moved into uh you know uh the semiotics kind of a you know a change that you did.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: So where did this transition happen and where was this interest from uh you know your early age early age to look at marketing as a uh as a profession and specifically semiotics as an area that you wanted to pursue?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, yes, uh so I have I mean technically from childhood I have been really interested in advertisements and brands, like I've always been fascinated by that space right from my childhood.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_08: Uh and I kind of quite early, like right after my uh 12th, actually, I thought of moving into the space of uh marketing and business, and as in I come from a business family as well, so maybe that's why it might have also primed me at an early age.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_08: So I kind of did my bachelor's also in business management, and after that, I directly did my MBA at Maika in Amdabad, which is a communications uh like it specializes in communications.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_08: So I did my uh MBA and I specialized in marketing research at during my MBA, and Maika, I think uh was a you is a unique business school because it has very deep specialized uh subjects within marketing.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_08: So semiotics was actually one of the electives that was taught at Maica.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_08: So that was the first time I got exposed to semiotics as a subject, along with uh of course the classical uh subject like consumer behavior.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_08: So kind of combining these subjects really like that was the moment I felt like I'm that I this is something really I'm interested to do.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_08: So semiotics.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_08: I learned semiotics at Maika and then uh I joined uh market research.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_08: So I worked at uh Milwaukee Bron, which is now Cantar.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_08: So I worked there for three years.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_08: So at my job again, uh I worked on a lot of consumer research projects, and semiotics at that time was not I wasn't getting a chance to do semiotics that often because it was more mainstream uh consumer research, and then I really wanted to go deeper into this space, so uh and as and kind of I had this academic interest in you know understanding consumer behavior more deeply.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_08: So after working in commercial research for three years, then I uh applied for an M for a PhD program at IM Bangalore.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_08: So I did my PhD in consumer behavior from IM Bangalore, and the PhD process gave me time to go deeper and read study these subjects much more deeply, and uh kind of it opened up my learning with different methods as well.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_08: So my thesis was also pretty much in the space of visual design and perception and how it changes by culture, which again is rooted in semiotics, but uh also a lot of uh mainstream consumer psychology uh methods also was involved in this where we conduct experiments and like pretty much semiotics actually is a uh qualitative method.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_08: Uh but uh my PhD, my research was uh kind of looking at it from a from a quantitative lens as well.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_08: So basically, it's kind of uh semiotics is about the way your mind processes uh kind of content, either branded or unbranded, but basically it's about the way the human mind makes meaning of things that they are exposed to.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_08: And this could be either uh looked at it uh in a qualitative way or also it can be kind of tested in a quantitative way.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_08: So I've kind of uh tried to uh have an integrated approach when it comes to methods in my research.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: So uh see uh uh in a country like India, uh semiotics uh is not such a uh you know uh well-developed craft, if I were to speak.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: So if you uh you know if I look at the developed markets like the US or the Europe, uh you know there are uh really specialized uh you know companies which do semiotics.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: So uh so can you talk to our audience about what is semiotics?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, yes, so semiotics actually is a study of how meaning is created in people's minds.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_08: So it might sound very abstract, but uh technically, when it comes to especially branding, like I'm talking about marketing, the application of semiotics in marketing.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_08: So when it comes to creating a brand, a brand identity, it's all about uh it's like an engineering exercise, if I have to say it in terms of what Indians understand, right?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_08: So in engineering, tech we actually use real physical materials and objects, join them together to create a bridge or whatever, right?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_08: But uh in branding, also it's kind of similar thing, but you're working with conceptual and perceptual elements that are brought together.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_08: And when I say perceptual, it could be anything like visuals, like like if you're designing a logo, also there everything like your font or your colors, like the each and every element of the design, you it can be dismantled into its uh individual units, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_08: And the way things come together, uh it completely creates a very different uh meaning from the what the final product is, right?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_08: So it's perceptual and also conceptual.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_08: Like, for example, if you're uh creating a brand targeting uh mothers, you know, if it's a child, uh a product to be used by the child, then there's an it's an entire emotional space that opens up.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_08: So, what elements will bring, what kind of emotional elements can you bring together in your brand, even that's like a strategic decision that the brand needs to make.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_08: And usually uh designers uh tend to uh apply their intuition when they're designing things, when they say okay, this feels right or this doesn't feel right, or sometimes we tend to just use some taken-for-granted uh uh patterns, like we say, this generally works, so we just put it together this way.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_08: So, semiotics actually is a very systematic exercise where you kind of decode the entire space that you're trying to study.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_08: For example, if I take this motherhood space itself, uh, if I'm a brand trying to launch a product for catering to young mothers, I will in a semiotic analysis, I will actually take a systematic analysis of all the various products and brands that are out there in the same space.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_08: What kind of a structure are they following in their communication?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_08: What kind of emotions are they following?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_08: So you do this complete mapping of everything that is already there out there, and it's not that everybody will be doing it in one way, you'll you'll see this entire plotting or mapping, which uh you know in branding uh there is something called perceptual mapping.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_08: If I mean you would have seen that two by two kind of a uh quadrant and you plot things, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_08: So in semiotics, also we do a similar thing, but those quadrants also emerge from the content that we look at.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_08: So you kind of try to map that those quadrants and try to find out which of these spaces are maybe getting outdated or not relevant anymore, which spaces are really relevant and resonate very well with the audience, right?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_08: So you kind of do it in a very systematic way, and it's actually quite powerful because this really opens up the space and the category for the people who are actually working for the brand.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_08: So recently I had done one project where the entire team was like they told me that they had never thought of it this way, they had they used to think of the category in a very stereotypical way till now, but it's a fresh perspective coming from outside, it really opened it up.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_08: But yes, of course, in India it is still not a mainstream method because uh I think one thing is that there's not many uh people who are trained in it, there's not much awareness about it, and mostly I think people tend to what I said prefer to use their intuition and then uh uh trial and error and then try to get things right in the process.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_08: But this exercise actually I think would be very useful, and I think one main issue is lack of awareness, also.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_08: Not many people are are aware.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_08: I myself got exposed to it only at when I was studying.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_08: Before that, even I wasn't aware, so it's uh that I think awareness itself is something which is low, and once people are able to see value in it, then it can actually go.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: So uh so semiotics is a very interesting uh area where I think there is anthropology, there's sociology, and there is psychology, right?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a uh it's a craft where you need to bring all of these three, all of these three things together, right?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, say for example, you study culture, you study the society, you so you study the uh you know the behavior of people, okay?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh talk to me uh about how do you see these connections and how do you really discover these uh you know uh observations.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a very very important uh you know uh mix of uh skills that you need to bring in.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: So can you talk to me about how do you really uh connect this and uh give me some examples of uh you know how marketers or uh you know companies can uncover this for their products or brands?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, sure.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, so basically, if you look at culture as a like as a construct, right?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_08: So culture is basically a shared sense of meaning.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_08: So uh if you look at psychology, generally, psychology considers just one individual person and what's happening inside their mind.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_08: So that's psychology, and generally, if you look at uh kind of especially like the Western uh notion of psychology, they consider that all human beings on the planet have the same wiring of the brain, like everybody uh uh behaves the same, like everybody will think in the similar way.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_08: Maybe they differ by personality, somebody is an introvert, somebody is an extrovert, but it's just what is there inside one person's mind which replicates with across everybody's mind, that is like psychology, and then when you look at culture, so sociology and anthropology basically are subdisciplines which uh kind of study culture and they don't gen, they don't actually study one person's mind as psychology.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, so culture is basically saying that it's not that each one person is just independently has a certain thing in their mind, and and it's also not correct to assume that the entire world has the same type of wiring.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_08: Culture segregates uh you know the world into like groups of uh people.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_08: So, for example, if I say Indian culture, then it'll be that Indians, when they when you just look at Indians, there is something common way of thinking which is shared by all Indians.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_08: If I say, you know, like the culture of Bangalore, for example, as a city.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_08: So you say all Bangaloreans have one certain culture, which might be a little different from all India level, and also have like a culture at a level of an organization.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_08: Like I am Udapur as a culture, so we are a very research-oriented culture.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_08: So like everybody is talks a lot about research here, and whenever we think of anything, research is something that comes to our mind first.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_08: So, so depending on how you define your social group, there'll be a certain shared sense of uh blueprint in the mind, the way people interpret things, make sense of things.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_08: So, so when you're do analyzing culture, you're actually analyzing it at that collective level instead of analyzing it at an individual level.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_08: That's why in semiotics, as a method, what we what we do is outside in approach.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_08: So, so regular research, if you're doing like a qualitative research, you'll go and take an interview of a person, you'll ask them about what do you think uh which what type of brands do you like, what do you think about this ad?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_08: Tell me.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_08: So you take an interview which is inside out, you're asking the consumer to tell you things.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, in semiotics, what we do is outside in.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_08: So basically, it's that a person's mindset, uh, he has been socialized growing up in a certain culture, and while growing up in that culture, that individual has been exposed to so many things, whether it is the type of family uh upbringing and the type of maybe movies that they have seen growing up, the type of ads they have seen, whatever magazines, all the media, and even now, like YouTube and social media influencers, everything.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_08: So, all this which surrounds the people of a particular culture, we actually decode the content itself.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_08: So you look at patterns and structures in those content, and then uh you arrive at the potential uh uh you know wiring or the blueprint that stay resides in a particular culture.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, and uh what I have seen in the industry is that usually companies they tend to mix the two methods.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_08: So semiotics is outside in, and like ethnography or depth interviews is more inside out.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_08: So they do what we call as ethnosemiotics, where you do both, and usually it's what we call as triangulation where you use two methods, and both methods end up giving you the same results.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_08: So that actually increases the confidence that you have on your analysis.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_08: So usually that works well.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: So so uh so if I were a marketer and if I were a brand, uh uh you know, and I've never used semiotics, okay?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, where would you advise uh you know we should start?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and uh how do we start uh using semiotics in uh you know in in a brand problem or a business opportunity?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: So how should we start?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, sure.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_08: So if anybody is interested to learn like learn what the fundamentals of semiotics and its applications, so I mean I would recommend uh two authors, they have written books basically.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_08: Uh there's Dr.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_08: Rachel Loyes and Dr.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_08: Dr.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_08: Laura Oswald.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_08: So they both are basically uh marketing semioticians, so they are practitioners with a PhD.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_08: So basically, they have like they are academicians who then went into the industry and they have been kind of like pioneers in this space of marketing semiotics.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, otherwise semiotics as an academic discipline is there like like I don't know, like I think 1800s or correct.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_06: I saw that correct.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_08: It's quite an old uh discipline academically, but practically applying it in the modern uh marketplace, right?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_08: So Laura Oswald and Rachel Loyce, they have written a couple of books on this.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_08: In fact, even I found uh their books quite helpful for like when I'm applying semiotics in a consulting space, right?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_08: So so I mean I would suggest they could start by reading those books.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, and and I think I mean, like if you look at uh market research uh communities, right?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_08: Like you have this SOMR and MRSI.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_08: They have these conferences, practitioner conferences, right?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_08: So I've seen uh every year at least a few presentations made by companies where they have case studies where the application of semiotics has been shown.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so so where do I start, uh Professor Tanvi?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Say, for example, uh uh imagine I'm a uh I'm a sports brand.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh and now I want to uh look at uh you know, already there are these large multinationals, and you used a very interesting uh you know terminology saying there's a Indian culture, right?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so therefore, in fact, when I saw the uh consumer culture lab, uh you really were also as a group talking about uh what the West culture uh you know uh norms are are not really the norms of how the Indian uh you know uh cultures are.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: So if I were a sportswear brand and I was wanting to look at uh using semiotics to do my uh opportunity gaps, uh so how do I decode culture and how do I look at okay what appeals to this uh Indian mindset?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: So how how and where should we start, and what are the methodologies in semiotics that's used to get to this core?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, sure.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_08: So, like Isaac said, right?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_08: So semiotics basically it's an outside in approach, so you need to then uh kind of define your uh target audience because if it's a sportswear brand, then you can't define it as uh like you know ethnic wear or some other uh correct kind of category.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_08: And if you're looking at, for example, uh a particular demographic like so I would suggest one po one nice source of getting to know what is uh what resonates with a young uh cohort in India right now would be Instagram as one source.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, and so on Instagram you will have to then look at uh what are the in like who are the influencers that uh are work that are kind of resonating with this audience and what is there so you decode their sense of style and everything, which their content and find out what are the trending hashtags in this space.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, like for example, I haven't worked on this category, but for example, the mother category, right?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_08: So there are a lot of mom bloggers who have a lot of hashtags, okay.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_08: Moms of Instagram and all those, right?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_08: So they are these online communities, special interest communities where like-minded people come together.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_08: So when it comes to sports enthusiasts in India, what kind of content are they looking?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_08: Are they watching on a regular basis?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, not just like I mean, I mean, we can't look at uh just decoding a cricket match.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_08: I'm not talking about that.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: I got it, I got it.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you are saying the mindset to uh wellness, the mindset to health, the mind and the mindset to uh, you know, the rigor and discipline of uh you know going to the gyms, okay, the mindset to actually uh look at uh you know my own uh you know the way I look, okay.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you are you are actually talking about this kinds of this kind of deconstructing this is really what you are talking.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe we even can take a mom uh you know uh example that you are talking about.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, how would you deconstruct that?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because I already have a Johnson and Johnson, right?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Which is almost like a brand which you wake up and then you just say, you know, there is a Johnson and Johnson kind of a brand which is already there.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: If I have to decode the culture and then say, you know what, I have to appeal to this new mom, okay.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, therefore, how do you really then look at this mom?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, where do you look for this outside in insights?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you go about uh decoding that culture?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_08: So basically, uh when you have all your content with you, right, which we call as a corpus, which is supposed to be a quite a large corpus, like it's not just uh 10 images, at least uh like you know 500 images uh in front of you, and then it's uh it's uh kind of a the like a detective kind of a exercise, a very visual uh exercise where you try to see patterns emerging, and uh the most interesting thing, powerful uh lens that we try to bring in is what we call as binary oppositions.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_08: So, binary oppositions is when you see one uh two opposites coming out clearly in your corpus.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_08: For example, uh, like if you take this motherhood example, Johnson Johnson as a brand, and uh Dove as a brand, for example, right?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_08: Dove also is in the baby space.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_08: So, Johnson Johnson as a brand, when I looked at its content, right?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, so there's another thing which I look for are metaphors.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_08: So, what is this brand actually implying metaphorically to something else which is there, prevalent in our culture, right?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_08: So, for Johnson Johnson, like a metaphor that strongly stood out to me was this whole uh Jesus Christ and Mother Mary kind of uh metaphor, like the very divine child, and the mother is kind of the whole sacred uh responsibility of the mother, even one drop, nothing should happen.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_08: And and you see that glowing uh if you kind of see right the visuals very nice, very nice.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_08: Uh Christianity, the vision the entire cultural uh hues, yeah, as in uh like the technical term for it is uh myth, which is kind of uh Roll and Barth's uh concept where culturally there are certain scripts that are kind of there in our mind, either through movies or through religion or anything which generally over the ages has been there with us, right?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_08: So so Johnson Johnson is like that really divine child, and the mother is kind of also like almost a goddess, you know, has to not even one drop can go wrong.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_08: So so indirectly it puts a lot of pressure on the mom.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_08: Everything should be perfect.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_08: In a Johnson Johnson's world, there's not even one drop of dirt, everything is clean and serene, right?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_08: I think to contrast with Johnson Johnson, I'll pick up maybe surf as an example.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_08: So surf excel.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_08: You have seen that right.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_08: So that I think uh is a result of a very powerful uh analysis of the space, like you know, this uh the binary opposite.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_08: So da gache hai is actually technically flipping the entire uh metaphor, which is which Johnson Johnson is in, right?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_08: So the surfax shows kids playing in this dirty mud and everything is dirty, and then the brand comes saying the the brand says the there is the mother, don't worry.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_08: If your child is dirty, that doesn't mean you're a bad mother.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_08: Because in real life things are messy, exactly.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_08: So uh you know, so we're moving from that very ideal sacred space to a more realistic space without making the mother feel guilty about it.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_08: So that whole emotion of guilt uh kind of is uh released, right?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_08: So so so so you know in semiotics, what I was talking about binary opposites, if you were to visualize it, right?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_08: It'll be one axis is good mother, bad mother, the other axis is clean and dirty.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_08: So you have that quadrant, yeah, the space.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_08: So most brands will be in clean mother, clean and good mother.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_08: That space only uh and then bad and dirty.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_08: Basically, these are what culturally dominant thoughts as a brand.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_08: If you are able to move into that paradox, saying dirty yet good, then it becomes very powerful.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_08: This which is called myth as per the uh theory in semiotics.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, and this big this such spaces become really powerful for brands to occupy because they really become unforgettable.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_08: Even if you look at um fairy tales, the characters, most of those memorable characters up are occupying those paradox spaces, like the like the evil stepmother in Snow White, she's beautiful and evil, and the dwarfs like they are ugly and good, right?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_08: So they those spaces actually are very interesting.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_08: So you're because you're working with those conceptual spaces, right?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_08: But yeah, as in if if you're doing a semiotic analysis yourself, uh, I don't know, it's more like a meditative exercise, like a bit of autism helps where you transcend above the like the actual stuff which is there in the ad at a at an abstract level, what metaphors are they drawing from?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay, very interesting.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, one you said is the binary opposite.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, are there other concepts uh in semiotics uh which uh you know which will bring this uh uh you know uh interesting uh you know study alive?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Say uh what are the other ways of actually looking at these uh you know cohorts, right?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: If I were to call it.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_08: So I think usually it's the binary opposites and then plotting the spaces which opens up the category.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_08: Another exercise which is usually done is what we call as the code trajectory, right?
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_08: So it's your residual dominant and emergent codes.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_08: So actually a code also is like a separate concept in semiotics.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_08: Usually a code, code is more like uh when a set of things come together and every time they they're always coming together repeatedly.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_08: Uh like a very simple example would be like a dress code, no formal dress.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, so you know when a set different set of clothes or looks and styles come together, uh, so there you we understand that as a casual code, and then something comes together as a formal code, so it's similar depending on what your category you're analyzing.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_08: Each category will have its own set of codes.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_08: So we actually try to uh list down all the possible codes that are there in a category.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_08: Usually, maybe seven seven to eight codes we kind of uh bring out, and then we look at the trajectory of these codes because culture is not something static, it changes with time.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_08: Maybe it doesn't change on a daily basis, but if you see maybe in the next uh depending on which category you're into, uh it maybe a decade might it might take a decade or it might take a year, depending on the speed at which culture is changing.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_08: Uh so for a brand, it was well it's worthwhile to know what is emerging, possibly which will pick up uh speed in the next five to ten years so that they can be in that be the pioneers in that space.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_08: So so when we uh look at the codes, we see patterns in terms of what are the codes which are more outdated.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_08: Well, you know, like it has been there for a long time, and now the people who are using it as more not seen as the cool correct ones, and then you have the dominant, which is mainstream, which everybody's doing it taken for granted, and then emergent is there with some new things which are emerging now.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_08: The cooler uh trendsetters are bringing it now, and it's potentially it will grow.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like saying that uh if I saw LACME, it was my mom's brand.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and that's really the code of uh, you know, it's the last generation brand, but if it had to transform to the current generation, then the current cultural codes needed to be taken, implanted into the uh you know the visual cues and the branding cues of uh LACME, and then suddenly you move it from the old generation brand to a current generation while L'Oreal might be seen as uh you know a certain uh young uh current generation brand.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: But if I were LACME, then the cultural cues that come in are very very different, and therefore, how do I uh you know pick uh you know the cues, whether it could be the color, whether it could be the typeface, whether it could be the packaging, all this become very very important, and that's really how you uh really uh if you ask me deconstruct and then reconstruct the brand, right?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yes, correct.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_08: Basically, you deconstruct or like dismantle the culture, and then kind of once you know what's emerging, then you reconstruct.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_08: In fact, it was interesting you brought in beauty as an example because I had done a similar exercise for a beauty brand where in fact we found that you know, like brands like L'Oreal and Pantina and all are currently in the dominant space.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_08: So, because we are not looking only at uh you know like color or something like that, but it's what beauty itself means to women now in India.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_08: So earlier, like what could be the residual, maybe dom some of it is dominant, is looking beautiful or whatever beauty products are able to provide to a girl was uh uh uh better chance at the marriage market.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, so it was all about uh getting married, lived happily ever after kind of thing, and most of the advertising was also around that uh what we call as Bohemian goddess.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_08: So you had all your Priyanka Chopra and uh Ashwary coming, very glamorous, overly glamorous, you know, hair is flying and uh like like the really glamour uh beauty, right?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_08: That was kind of a dominant which has been dominant for some time now, but in our research, we looked at um like social media content and we looked at a lot of uh content coming out from young girls on social media on Instagram and other places about what they when they are talking about beauty or things, right?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_08: And even some recent recent movies that had come out at that time, like Dungal and other kind of movies, right?
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_08: So, well, we found that for women it was not that marriage market or that glamour attracting the other gender, uh, which had defined what beauty was, it was more about uh you know uh power, actually, what they were looking for.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it was more about confidence, it was more about power, and uh so what beauty gives me is more confidence, and therefore, uh you know, I'm able to express myself, could be a kind of a code that might come up, right?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_08: So basically it was about a very uh like you know, beauty as strength, inner beauty, and uh uh you know, like even products, you know, like you didn't want to have that overpowering glamour or things.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_08: It's like very stable, sorted uh sense of self and uh confidence, and actually, like women want to kind of focus on work, careers, and uh you know, and uh like your hair or whatever, produ hair care, skin care, and all should not come in the way of your work basically.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_08: So products are also then kind of about convenience and uh very nice, very nice.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_08: So then you know, as a brand working in that space, then they need to pivot to that side because that staying in that glamour uh beauty queen space after a few years, it you then you'll get outdated.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so in fact, the other uh cultural quote that I see is uh say somebody like Ariel uh doing share the load, right?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Which is again another dominant culture that's changing, right?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Which is uh not somebody uh you know who's probably uh you know a brand just cleaning white, but it's about sharing the load, okay.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's another cultural code picked up by the brand, and then they're trying to dominate that space.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really what you decode and then start connecting a brand to that problem, right?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_08: So laundry, for example, is a very uh otherwise a very mundane and a functional thing, but if but if you connect that act of laundry to your life in general and what it um how it is embedded in our culture, then the gender roles and everything will come in.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_08: And as a brand, you know, if you're able to abstract from your specific product benefit to a cultural space, yeah, it really helps to build that, uh build a brand.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, absolutely.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: For example, you never thought uh a brew advertising where the husband prepares the coffee for the wife is another cultural cue that you would not have seen in a brew advertising maybe 20 years back, right?
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: So again, your code trajectory that you talk about is this if I were brew 20 years back, the code trajectory was something else, it was actually uh the uh woman serving the coffee versus the code trajectory of 2020 is about the uh you know husband serving the coffee and yet having the moment.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that really is how you deconstruct and connect a brand to that culture code, right?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's really what you're talking, right?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_08: So, like just by sitting, like we're able to come up with these examples, right?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_08: So when you're actually doing a systematic analysis, you'll look at maybe like a 50 brands, okay.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_08: They're ads for maybe the last five years, and like how brew like that you might come across some seven, eight more ads like that.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_08: And then you'll also find seven, eight ads which are still using the old code.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_08: So you'll see those patterns in your data itself, and you'll be able to kind of and you'll know which is become becoming residual and which is emergent because we ourselves belong to the same culture.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_08: That's another limitation.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_08: Like if if somebody asks me to do a semiotic analysis of a German culture, I won't be able to do it because I don't know much about that culture.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_08: So that's why for me personally I kind of specialize on the Indian uh context and Indian culture, okay, which I think is growing because I actually get uh get inquiries from uh companies outside India who are interested to understand India because India I think is one of the biggest markets for brands now.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_08: So people uh companies who are not from India they really need that cultural understanding, otherwise they'll not they'll fail most likely with uh without understanding the Indian culture.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_08: So I think I mean in the international market, there is a good uh demand for semi-time.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of our examples on semiotics, uh, at least you know, for the last uh you know 15-20 minutes that we spoke about was largely on the CPG brand, so the FMCG, right?
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but imagine uh today, you know, there is technology, right?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I have apps, I have Uber and I have uh you know Swiggy and I have Zepto and you know all these kinds of things which are coming in.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: So if I were a technology company, okay, uh, and I'm actually building software, uh uh actually uh not enough thought goes into uh you know how do I even design the interfaces, the language, the uh you know the signs, okay, of uh you know a button.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh, so would that be useful for companies trying to do this?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: And are there some examples that you know you could pick up and talk?
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because these are I think sometimes uh technology is also about uh you know how you use a culture, right?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, in a culture, uh, you know, how do you really look at all these apps that are coming in and things like that?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you think there's a lot of uh opportunities for the tech companies to apply semiotics in their design?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, sure.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, uh, as long as there's a brand involved, then you need to build a brand uh story around it.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_08: So the branding uh semiotics is applicable across the board.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_08: In fact, when it comes to marketing, like they say, there are two types of marketing.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_08: One is brand marketing and the other is growth marketing.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_08: Brand marketing is pretty much about the perception that the image that you want to build about your brand in the long run.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_08: And it doesn't change on a daily basis, it's more like a quarterly, half-yearly, yearly.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_08: And you're building value for that brand and the images, impressions comes through more from communications, advertising, and those places.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_08: So, there what we have spoken so far is a direct semiotics has a direct application there, which is what uh what I what I talked about was social semiotics, where you understand social categories like gender and all those things.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, the other type of uh marketing, what is growth marketing, right?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_08: So that is more on the behavioral uh in changes of the consumer on a daily basis, okay.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_08: Like whether how many people are clicking, how many people are installing something, how many people are buying, uh the data-driven marketing, right, where analytics is involved, and it's a very quick uh it was it's more like this very transactional level uh thing.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_08: So there usually the abstract and the brand, those things don't play in that deeply in that space.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_08: Uh so when it comes to semiotics, so what I uh shared so far was more social semiotics.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_08: So there's another substream of semiotics called visual semiotics, which is uh very uh uh uh like a very concrete object-oriented uh thing where you look at specific things like color, shape, font, layout.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_08: So all the visual design uh features of anything is dismantled and looked at uh uh the effects of each design are looked at, what it means.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_08: And I think when like what you talked about, I think is a emergent space uh known as UX research.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, correct.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_08: Where they actually try to research and find out the experience of the consumer as they are not even consumer, they use the word user as they are using the app, correct interface of the app.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_08: So you I actually I haven't done UX research myself, uh but I I mean I'm aware that a lot of qualitative uh research happens in that space where they do a walkthrough where the uh user is using it and then they kind of discuss and understand the entire experience.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_08: So I think in that space also there is a uh possibility to do uh semiotic analysis, but it won't be like uh outside in like what I was talking about looking at media artifacts, it will be more about uh decoding the actual visual uh structure of that interface because there's a lot of for example color psychology.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_08: So, color generally we say red and blue, but actually color has three properties, right?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_08: Uh hue, saturation, lightness.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, so so there's like the like like the kind of work I did in my thesis, also, right?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_08: It's uh more psychology-based work where you understand what like my thesis was about what empty space means in different cultures in a design.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_08: So cluttered versus spaced out design, high versus low saturation color.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_08: So these are more as in it's a more mechanical way of looking at uh things, but visual semiotics is does that, like you break it into specific uh design features, not just visual, it also includes sound, symbolism.
• 43:10
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• 43:17
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• 43:24
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• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: And now back to the show.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, uh I would uh uh Professor Thame, I would think that uh imagine I am an app uh you know uh maybe doing a one-minute loan, or uh you know, I'm doing uh delivery, okay, like a Zepto.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh, but there are Also, cultural hues that can be uh you know uh fed into the app, right?
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: So a simple thing could be uh you know a hunger, and therefore, uh you know how do you really uh build notifications for it, okay, or sharing as a uh you know as a concept, and therefore, in the app it's not one transactional uh you know uh color, what you call as a visual semiotics.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I also believe that the cultural hues of actually saying that you know what uh you know you know is it a sharing weekend, then therefore, how do you really then bring in uh you know uh design that can help in that uh you know in that experience?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: My belief is that from what you spoke when you use uh social semiotics with visual semiotics, I think there's a lot of opportunities for even tech brands to become you know like a CPG or an FMCG brand, but not enough is being done, is my thesis.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: And would you agree with that?
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, that's definitely a very good example.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_08: In fact, when you talked about hunger, it was like it would have it'll be an amazing exercise to actually decode what hunger means in India, yeah, how hunger can manifest uh visually as well.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_08: Because I remember I came across one report, not in India, uh, where they had uh decoded what pain means, different kinds of pain.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_08: So things like pain and hunger, they are actually visceral, like they are associated with the body, but also psychologically, you know, they have it's a mix of embodied experiences along with emotional uh experience.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_08: So uh so when we look at some semiotics, right?
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_08: Like visual semiotics, there's material semiotics where the body also plays a role, the experience that you feel in your body, uh you know, like for example, um uh like a tall, uh the experience of height makes you feel powerful, and that's why you know a product, you know, like a SUV car, because it's higher, sitting in it, you psychologically you feel powerful, correct?
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_08: Right?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_08: So the way the body and the mind uh interacts with each other, and it can be same thing can be replicated through an extrinsic visual cue as well.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, and especially and uh especially when you are really talking about changing behavior through apps technology, uh, you know, if you don't take the social semiotics, okay, uh, and then start uh you know uh applying it.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: Say, for example, the normal example I give is uh you know, so my wife orders uh you know flowers for puja, and uh you know today the uh the flower vendor is actually uh you know getting paid by Jeep.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it's a very you know interesting example of the social code completely changing, and you know, so when I asked her, okay, how do you order?
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: She says, I just uh you know use the voice message, uh, you know, tell her that this is what I need because she can't read, but clearly, uh, you know, look at the social code of how this is actually uh an application has got transformed, and then how people use it, okay, in their lives, and therefore the understanding and decoding of the application itself can provide new features and opportunities for technology companies, right?
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, yes, that's true.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_08: In fact, I remember one of my early experiences with using online payment for a cab.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_08: I took an auto, I guess, and then it was the first, it was the his first ride in the morning.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_08: He refused to take a digital payment, he wanted a physical cash because that is what is Lakshmi.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, money that they receive, right?
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_08: So it was interesting that digital money is not considered as Lakshmi physical is so so the whole uh association of cash versus digital, right?
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_08: But that was like a few years back, so maybe now uh it's become different.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it has changed, or maybe you know that's the way uh the culture uh works.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, as a brand, then how can I build a new feature in my app where your first payment is basically cash in the balance or digital, right?
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly you're able to build a differential in your application, right?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because the technologist does not think culture code behavior and things like that, and that's really the opportunity for us to really uh take advantage of, and even uh use of fonts.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: Say some fonts give me a feeling that you're sophisticated, some fonts give me so.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: Can you throw some light around how it's decoded?
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, that'll be interesting because not enough uh you know uh uh attention is given uh to uh you know fonts, to colors, uh, you know, I would say to typefaces, uh, you know, these are some of the things to sound, for example, right?
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: So uh so can you talk to us about what uh you know uh uh hues that it creates in the human mind and how can uh you know brands take advantage?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, sure.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_08: So this I think links to visual semiotics.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_08: Uh actually, yeah, as in it could also be sounds.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_08: In fact, I think the theorist who we look at is uh uh Jacobson as uh like J, his name starts with a J, but it's not as Jacobson.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_08: So he actually uh came up with this concept that any uh kind of uh stimulus can be dismantled into the bare into those units like uh font again, font is one big thing within that font.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_08: You have serif and sans serif fonts, right?
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_08: So uh you know, like a serif font is which has those uh lines at the edges, protruding lines at the edges, sans serif is without that.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_08: That's a very subtle thing, but actually, serif fonts tend to be more formal.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_08: Sans serif is more casual and serif is more classical, right?
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_08: And then if you use capitals uppercase versus lowercase, also the uppercase is more authoritative and more formal, lowercase is more approachable and friendly.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_08: If it's just the as a brand, you know, if you're creating a logo, so if you see the Tata logo, all are all capitals T A T A Tata.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_08: Imagine if you just imagine all small letters in the Tata logo, nice, as in it's it's an odd, it's a podcast, so I'm not able to show it to you.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_08: Like, but if you just imagine it in your mind, you will suddenly feel that you know it's like a junior Tata or something, then it's correct, correct, correct.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Lovely, lovely.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, imagine a set of semioticians working in a technology company, decoding culture, bring it bringing it back into the applications because a lot of innovation happens there, but not enough consumer insight goes into these companies.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I think there's a lot of opportunities from semiotics, is what I can pick up from this conversation, and not just the CPG companies and the marketing companies, but probably a whole host of other uh you know opportunities is something that you uh that we could look at, right?
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: So uh that's really what I think.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and especially we can build a new uh semiotics uh you know uh line of thinking given our culture, right?
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's really what I think uh uh that I believe.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_08: Culture offers so a lot of fodder to do semiotics and because it's very complex as well.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_08: Like I've seen paper, I've seen a paper where they actually looked at intracultural diversity across different countries, and if you see, for example, US uh within the US the diversity is very less.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_08: But if you see within India, the diversity is very high, and uh you can't uh even think like language.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_08: Like in the West, generally there's one language spoken in the entire country, but every state has its own regional language, correct?
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_08: So that diversity is also so high and the complexity is so high that I think it's important to for brands who are working in India to and have that pulse, especially on the diversity.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_08: In fact, there was one project I had worked on for a uh big uh uh FMCG company where uh we decoded the difference between North India and South India.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_08: So it was a very interesting exercise, like like me personally, like I'm actually a North Indian, but I've always lived in South Like I'm married into a South Indian family, so that kind of more like a personal exploration, also it was for me.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_08: So uh it was a very interesting exercise because that brand basically is uh headquartered in Delhi, their ad agency is in Delhi, and they've they have been making ads which do very well in north, but they fail miserably the south.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_08: They were not able to understand why.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_08: So we actually decoded uh South Indian movies, we decoded the ads of other categories that have done well in the south.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_08: For example, the brew ad, which you talked about, was a part of the analysis.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_08: You know, the whole gender dynamics are very different in north versus south within India also.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_07: True.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_08: So it was a very interesting exercise.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_08: So something like that, right?
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_08: Diverse even at a regional level, like if you're looking at I don't know, like a Maharashtra level and culture versus a Bengal level.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, absolutely, absolutely.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, which is why you see a lot of regional brands, right?
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: In India, uh, you know, when you go to a channel, you see a lot of regional brands, and they may not be national brands, maybe they appeal to a certain regional culture, which a national brand is not able to really uh you know.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, even when you look at uh brand portfolios, maybe what you do uh internationally in the west versus what you need to do in India, okay, may be may need to be very different because you know what I like uh in the south may not be the same what the people in the north like, and therefore, I might have to have a house of brands or a house of regional brands, and yet how do I deconstruct it?
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe there are you know semiotics provides a lot of opportunities, right?
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yes.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, so uh one thing I wanted to talk to you about is uh you know, uh I am Udaipur has got this consumer culture lab.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was very intrigued.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, what uh what do you do there?
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: What are the kind of research that you do, and you know, can you share with us some learnings around the Indian culture, the you know, the tribal culture?
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: You talk about the uh you know how Indians uh really have suddenly taken interest in uh you know history-based movies.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so there's a lot of things that you decode, right?
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, what do you do in the uh you know the uh consumer culture lab at IM Wodaipur and talk to us about what do you explore and discover there, and talk to us uh about what you have learned about the digital lives of Indian consumers.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of things that I've saw I saw there.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: So talk to us about it.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, yes.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_08: So the consumer culture lab, uh we started it in November 2020, almost two years back.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_08: So basically, I joined Ayam Mudapur like in January 2020.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_08: So I was very lucky to being a like a new assistant professor to get a chance to set up my own lab.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_08: Like it's not it's quite rare uh you know to get a chance in academia so early, but I think our director was really open to it, and Ayamudapur has had uh what we call a startup culture, so it's like not like uh most of traditional schools where generally there's a level of bureaucracy or slowness, right?
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_08: So here uh so there is uh professor Julian Kellak, who is an associate professor at Nanyang Business School in Singapore.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_08: So Julian actually is uh I mean he's from France, but uh he has I mean many years back when he did his PhD thesis, it was on India.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_08: So he's all from beginning fascinated with Indian culture.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_08: Uh in fact, he's half Indian in a way of like he's uh married and into an Indian person, married an Indian person, and so he lives in Singapore, so so he always wanted to set up uh like no to encourage cultural research coming from India.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_08: So there is this field called consumer culture theory in academic research where uh qualitative cultural research coming in the marketing space in academics, it gets published.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_08: So in CCT research, uh right now it is completely dominated by US and uh Europe because from decades you know the academicians have been trained in those methods and they have been doing it.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, so within India, I'm talking about academic research now, not the uh the commercial industry side.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_08: So, in academic research within India, my own PhD journey has been that.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_08: So I was always interested in the qualitative side, uh, but uh the like where I did my PhD, right?
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_08: In I am Bangalore again, it's a quant-heavy institute.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_08: In fact, most uh institutes across Asia are quant focused, qualitative you'll find very niche here and there, kind of so so systematically, and I think that's also because most of the academically or inclined people in India go into engineering.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_08: Science is preferred over arts or basically uh it's humanities, right?
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_08: Cultural and the arts actually.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_08: So arts, we know we grew up say thinking arts is like the used to be placed lowest in the hierarchy, right?
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_06: Correct, correct.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_08: Most of the people who end up becoming professors will come from that science, i IIT and engineering tools, right?
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_08: So that they're really good with numbers, which is of course very important, and uh kind of that's where the what I was talking about growth marketing, right?
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_08: That's booming right now.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_08: So so most of the research is coming from that.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_08: If you see Indian authors publishing, but we know that the Indian context has so much rich cultural uh uh things to study, but nobody's doing it.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_08: We haven't been we haven't generally received enough training, theoretical training, to be at par with the what it is in our counterparts in the West.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_08: So the lab's motive was actually to create that space, at least to start that conversation, where uh anybody who is interested in understanding or doing academically uh cultural research about India, we can create that platform and get people together.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_08: So technically, uh in I am Udapur, a lot of my colleagues in the marketing area, we all are interested in uh this space, political research, cultural research, along with quant.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_08: Also, we are kind of mixed uh methods people here.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_08: So, so it's kind of a nice community cohort that we have.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_08: So we pick up uh topics and then we have started working on it.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_08: And technically, I am Udapur's like our department is a quite a young department.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_08: So most of us are uh uh as in like three, five, three to six, seven years post-PHD.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_08: So we don't like we don't have like really uh very very senior okay faculty here.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_08: So so Julian is kind of the senior faculty who he's also our area advisor, so we have this concept here.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, so Julian uh kind of guides us on this.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_08: So we as the as through the lab, so it's me and then there's Professor Rajesh Nanarpura, who is my colleague.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_08: So both of us are kind of primarily involved in the cultural uh lab.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_08: And Professor Julian is our advisor.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_08: So we through the lab basically we foc we are focusing on doing one key academic research project per year.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_08: So for this year uh we are working on this project which is called as the digital heartland of India.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_08: I mean we have called it like that, and it's basically uh understanding uh content creation from small towns and rural India.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_08: So because when I was working, like I worked at uh Qantar for three years, right?
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_08: So uh when I was working there, also I I noticed that the major chunk of research that we used to do, primary research, was focused on the metros.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_06: Exactly.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_08: It used to be Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, sometimes Kolkata.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_08: Pretty much we keep revisiting the same, and then also additionally, maybe some neighboring uh town like Lucknow and uh uh Cohen Batur uh kind of a correct correct but uh we never did any deep dive in small tier like tier three and rural unless it was a very specific rural uh like agricultural product or something, otherwise mainstream understanding wasn't there.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_06: Exactly, exactly.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_08: And even academically, as in there's not not much published, like there's only one faculty called uh Professor Rovit Varman, who was earlier at IM Calcutta.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_08: So he has published uh a few papers, but uh except for him, there's not been any other from India.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_08: So so that's why we thought it's a very open space for us to explore.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_08: And uh for this digital heartland project, we are also collaborating with uh an agency called Stripe Partners, uh which is uh headed by uh Dr.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_08: Simon Roberts.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_08: Again, he's again a PhD anthropologist who moved to the industry, so he has I mean they have he's quite uh one of the role models of in this space.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_08: So he they do business anthropology, so he has worked with uh branch like Intel and Google, Spotify, and all the tech uh companies, right?
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_08: And pretty much we we felt that uh this is there is a need even among tech companies and in general to for people to understand this whole uh digital expansion which is happening from small towns and rural India.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_08: So this project we started off uh with that, and then as we were pro progressing, we thought we'll go take a little more narrower focus so that we can go deeper.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we focused on content creators, so it's not just uh like talk generally looking at people using the internet, but people actually creating their own YouTube channels and you know becoming so so what you're saying is if I were in a small village, there could be somebody creating content.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are the primary drivers of that person creating content?
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: What are the reasons and uh and what then uh you know drives the community to then uh follow them, and therefore you you are decoding that behavior and the need, right?
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_08: So we are basically this particular project is not a semiotics project because this is actually uh it's an ethnographic uh project.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, okay.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_08: Actually going and talking to people and going to the towns and villages and to spending two or three days there, understanding people's lives there.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, what have you discovered uh in terms of uh while I don't I don't even want to you know uh preempt the research, but things that surprised you, you know, that I think is something that if you can share, that'll be great.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, so I think one thing which I because I have uh been uh born and brought up in a metro, uh I think right now I'm living in Udaipur, but I was born and brought up in Bangalore.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_08: So Udaipur is a small town, yeah.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_08: But even in general, when I see Udaipur, the adoption of digital is so seamlessly uh people are so comfortable with it, like your digital payments and all.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_08: Even in Bangalore, I have not seen street vendors uh use it that easily.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_08: Whereas in a smaller town, I think uh you know people are much more uh adaptive.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_08: In fact, I have actually seen you know this whole concept of Jugad, what we have, right?
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_08: The more rural you go, the more people are self-sustaining, like they are they'll quickly pick up things and learn.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_08: And uh one interesting thing is uh the language barrier is not there till some time back, internet used to be in English, yeah, but now YouTube has videos in all languages.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_08: You have Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, yeah, every language, right?
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_08: So if anybody wants to learn anything, they'll just watch a YouTube video and learn it.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_08: Is it so yeah, in the local language, right?
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_08: So so I in fact I visited uh a village called Tulsi in Chattisburg.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_08: Uh I went there in October.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_08: So that village is actually called as the YouTuber village.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_06: What are you saying?
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_08: Is it?
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I mean if you I mean Google it, you will see Tulsi is the name of the village.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_08: So there is uh as in that that entire village, everybody acts in YouTube videos.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_08: So there are a few youngsters there who have created their YouTube channels.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_08: Like stories and things like from the village.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_08: So they they're like acts, like they make stories and then uh if uh for example they need an old woman's character, so somebody's grandmother will come and act.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_08: Like this entire village is like this uh theatre group kind of a thing, you know.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_04: So very interesting.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_08: Spend two days with them there.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_08: So I mean their channel is called Being Chattisgadiya, so okay channel.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_08: So Chatt, you know it's like a regional uh language channel, and they have followers and things like that.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, they have uh lacks of followers, you know.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_01: Laksh, is it?
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, in fact, they they also were invited by the Chattisgarh chief minister to perform on stage for some ceremony and things.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: So my interesting.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_01: So so what impact does it have, uh uh Professor Thanvi on the community, on the business, on uh you know uh the uh you know the overall society, so a behavior like this, uh what what what changes happens in a place like Tulsi, right?
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_01: So what happens?
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, so uh actually I don't think the the there's too much money being earned through this, as if that uh exorbitant amounts of money is not being earned, but uh it is something they're doing out of passion, and uh and for them, why they're doing it is basically they want to put their village on the map.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, they have in a way done it, right?
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_08: So uh and trying to bring out uh you know like Chattisgarh's local identity upfront.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_08: So that's what I was talking to about that regional identity aspect, right?
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_08: I think one of the key uh findings like in my in the studies basically uh when like you know, if if we are if you're staying in the metros, generally you associate your you might associate yourself with being an Indian, but you might not, and you're in a very cosmopolitan space, right?
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_08: So you might not that strongly uh say, okay, I know I want to do something for my state regional level, right?
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_08: It's more at the level of country, unless maybe I don't know, maybe like a state like Tamil Nadu is has a very strong regional uh correct identity.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_08: But if I say a state like Chhatisgarh, technically it was a part of Madhya Pradesh still, some recently it has got it doesn't have a very distinct identity of its own.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_08: So we went to creators across India actually, like saw the same pattern.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_08: We went to a creator in a small town in Maharashtra in Sanghli.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_08: And even and he's he kept comparing himself with other other creators from Maharashtra.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_08: And he wanted to put his village or everybody should know about Sanghli.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_08: So it is uh kind of uh that regional identity is what is uh you know driving them, and they want to bring that out through their uh content creation and their to through the platform.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so so when you uh when you really uh want to link it back to probably what you have always done, which is really your you know you have decoded brands, your decoded uh you know uh cultures, your uh you know how a brand needs to get connected to a culture.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you think a regional identity kind of a uh you know uh say a myth if I were to call it, okay, a brand, how do you think uh you you will be able while you are doing an ethnographic uh study, uh, do you see connects between how brands can take advantage of this and maybe uh what what are brands missing?
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because they may actually paint every Indian consumer as one kind of uh model, right?
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: But suddenly what you are telling me is that so much of regional identity is there that there is a there are advantages that the brand can take.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see did you see some misses that uh you know when you see it from the other mirror that you have always been?
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah, no, I think it is a very uh interesting space, but I guess brands might be also like the more regional diversity they bring in, the more uh fluid then their brand becomes.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_08: Generally, in branding, they try to have a very consistent if it's if you're a national brand, so they'll have to see how they can localize.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_08: But I think when it comes to regional identity, uh, in fact, it I was surprised, you know, when I was talking to these creators in uh Chattisgarh, they were telling me about Kantara, the movie.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_06: Correct, correct.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_08: Uh like they have watched it, watched the with the dubbed version of it, and they were talking about uh you know that it's such a good movie.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_08: So I think even regional content, right?
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_08: Uh it's not that only people from that region are only appreciating it.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_08: So instead of uh you know it's more like the granularity or the richness of the region which can come into the content, otherwise, you try to standardize it for the entire country, then you lose the details.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_06: Correct.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_08: Use whatever that lowest common lowest common formula is open in, right?
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_08: So, which is what I think Bollywood is now losing out because they are trying to use that formula which will work across it, then it becomes a very uh thing.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you are saying that the the uh you know the content is becoming fluid across geographies.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something that you are saying?
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah, as in the content is getting richer and more rooted in the regional uh space.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_08: In fact, uh as in this village, uh, an interesting thing is that uh the people involved in this, right, they come from a family which was involved in the Ram Leela in their village.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_08: So technically, if you go through the villages in India, it is theatre or performance has always been a part of our culture.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_08: If you go back generations, Ram Leela, and I don't know if you have if you have seen Kantara, the movie there, it's a dance form, right?
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_08: So like Yakshagana community.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_01: I have not seen Kantara, but I've uh kind of seen the uh you know uh the trailer of it.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_01: The trailer of it, and uh there is there are enough conversations around it.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_01: But but clearly uh you know something like a PS1, okay, of from Tamil Nadu, uh you know, again, uh you know it's again a big uh grosser, but but clearly again it has got similar uh you know uh you know hues with say a cantara because it's a typical Chola kingdom and things like that, which actually uh you know is what it's built on, right?
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah so your roots, right?
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_08: Where you came from or whatever, like it uh going back to the history and the roots of that region.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_08: That is something uh I think is kind of coming back in India also right now culturally.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_08: And uh, I mean I'm not sure why it is happening.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_08: Like one of one of the based on what I've I have been reading, uh I see that uh you know, like it's basically uh after we got India got independence, and then when uh like Nehru uh became like the first prime minister, and then they had to set up India as a country.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_08: So what mod at uh they had a choice, they were there are two models.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_08: First model was to go back to the pre-British era of India, use that as the identity, as the raw material to build India's identity based, rooted in that heritage and uh history.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_08: The other option was to ignore everything before that, start afresh, make India forward-looking and align it with at that move forward, modernize India so that it becomes at par with the West from that point onwards.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_08: So these two routes were there, and these two routes are what divides the uh political ideology space.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_04: Correct, correct.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_08: So at that time they went ahead with the modernizing route.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_08: Uh and then, but this other route was still kind of dormant dormant in people's minds, and uh, I think now you know people are now kind of moving back to this, the other idea.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting, very interesting, very interesting in all five facets.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_08: In if in fact, even the current uh uh ruling party, right?
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_08: BJP has always been in that ideological space of use using the uh older uh traditional routes as the source to build the identity of India, correct, which is now I think now become the dominant uh ideology.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Very nice, very nice.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_08: So see this repeating even in movies and other places, I guess.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant, brilliant.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So if you were to uh you know have uh one message as a semiatry to marketers, uh what would you think uh uh you know you would want them to do more, given that it's not so developed in our country, right?
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so what would you think uh is an important thing?
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_01: What would you want them to do?
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if you were to give three pieces of advice, what would it be?
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, okay, I'll have to think no problem.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_08: I think one piece of advice I would give, especially for uh marketers who are looking for brand marketing.
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_08: So, as I talked about brand marketing and growth marketing, right?
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_08: So, in a growth marketing context, you're in this very high speed uh results-driven uh mindset.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_08: But brand marketing requires you to slow down and take a one step back and look at the larger goal of your brand, right?
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_08: So, one step I one suggestion I would give is to you know at some intervals to try to slow down and uh step back and look at you know what your brand means itself in the marketplace.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_08: So sales and pushing uh the numbers is there.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_08: Generally, I think when you're a person who is in in charge of marketing has that pressure to show the sales and the PL and everything, but uh as in I've seen big brands do it where they focus uh at the abstract uh image that their brand has, right?
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_08: So even for any any brand, even if you're a B2B brand, also right, you can try to take a step back at times and just understand the identity of your brand and what is this brand doing in culture.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so enough enough of that is what you are saying needs to be done.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_01: So take uh take uh you know slow down, understand, and then uh reconstruct if and add a few uh elements to your brand and start to do that, is what you are saying.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, so this because semiotics is a slow process, it's a deep process, more like soul searching kind of a process for the brand.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_08: So that at least once a year, if they can do it, it'll be a good exercise.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant, brilliant.
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, uh, if I was uh uh in the marketing department and I was a young marketing uh you know uh professional joining the marketing world uh into a company, I it might be a uh brand, it might be a research company in an advertising agency, you've been a planner yourself.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so uh so what advice would you give them from a semiotics, uh you know, because I think this is something this is an art there which I don't see too many agencies or too many companies practicing, right?
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, uh you know, if you were to look back and then say, Hey, here is something interesting, try to do it like what you said, uh, you know, do this for a year once in a year, try to do a semiotic study.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so if I were in a marketing department, uh, how do I build the skill and what would you urge them to do so that you know this merging of culture, society, behavior is very important for a brand, right?
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, uh, so how do you suggest they uh they adopt this?
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, sure.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_08: So I think if a new uh young person is joining our marketing department, I think it might disadvise my being general to any person joining a job would be that uh usually organizations have a very standardized or set way of doing things, and uh when on when you're joining a company, you generally tend to kind of get tuned to those uh uh methods and those structures, right?
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_08: But I think if you're looking to make an impact, then uh I think don't lose or let go of the creativity or those uh pathbreaking ideas that you might have.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_08: So, like for example, when I was working, also I always tried to go out of the template, you know, like to do things differently.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_08: And in and it always worked, like like I was in research, so uh there was one uh presentation where we had to generally uh the data was presented as saying the consumer said this, the consumer says this.
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_08: So I actually created the entire presentation in first person.
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_08: So I am the consumer, I am speaking, you know.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_08: So it's like just some uh uh subtle things, but it uh really created that.
• 1:20:12
  SPEAKER_08: In fact, there was one study which was on the youth culture, so I was technically part of that target group, so I presented the entire thing in first person, so that came out very impactfully.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_08: So I think uh it's just that as a young uh professional, especially in marketing, I'm saying because marketing itself as a field is so dynamic, and you know, like digital marketing and all these things.
• 1:20:39
  SPEAKER_08: So youngsters are technically better at it than the older people in the space, anyway.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_08: Like they understand Instagram much better, they understand social media much better.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_08: So uh the you know the intuition that they have culturally, which they are a part of, I think they should draw from that.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_08: And also, in case if you're working in a category which is targeting some other uh uh demographic, like you know, which you don't belong to, then having that empathy uh towards the consumer will be important because otherwise, like what I have seen, especially you know, like students who have gone through engineering and the type of education we have gone through, we tend to uh look objectify things, numbers and things.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_08: So we stop looking at uh customers as humans, and these are the softer aspects of it, right?
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_08: So as in they might get exposed to it in an MBA program, but uh still like some most of the students still continue to have that uh more like a quantitative.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_08: So I think people who are able to have both like a quantity, they should understand numbers of like there is the category of people who are scared of numbers, like they just that's you know that they are bad at uh quant, that's why they are doing qualitative.
• 1:22:06
  SPEAKER_08: So, like you know, don't be in that category.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_08: Uh like you know, being good in quantitative is I am I think now kind of like a hygiene thing, like you should understand the metrics, but also if you are if you carry that um uh uh cultural muscle, right?
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_08: To understand culture, look through things, uh, that will be helpful, and I think that is there naturally as humans, but we tend to subdue it when we are in a formal uh company kind of a space.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Great, great, brilliant, brilliant.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so thanks, Professor Tanvi Gupta.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was a very, very uh refreshing conversation.
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the idea of actually looking at sociology, uh, anthropology, psychology, the fact that this is a missing art, and uh there are so many things that semiotics can help uh uh brands uh understanding consumers, decoding culture.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think this has been a fantastic conversation, and thanks a lot for uh you know sharing with us your ideas, and I'm sure this is going to be a very interesting episode for our audience.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks a lot.
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_08: Thanks a lot, Swam.
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_08: It was an amazing experience for me talking to you today.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to this episode.
• 1:23:27
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