I found the interactive print ad announcing the launch of Flipkart Minutes charming. Something the family could do together as the ad worked twice! You can see the wipe-to-reveal ad here. Great targeting as not just adults but no-phone kids also want everything “right now”. You may remember that I sashayed out to the Durga Puja Pandals in Kolkata dressed in a Blinkit sari. It’s like an Aladdin’s lamp – the genie appears and delivers your wishes.
Is easy living ruining our resilience?
We had to wait a week for a tin of Amul cheese to reach our little village after we ordered it! Two weeks to hear back from a penpal! Three days to cash a cheque! At least an hour and much persuasion to get an unplanned snack! The old have always sneered at the conveniences of the young. Whether it is the telephone, television, the internet, computers, cars, someone intelligent always dissed it saying “no need, we’re good”. Even the co-founder of YouTube, Steven Chen, said there were only so many videos he wanted to watch. His claim to fame is uploading the very first cat video… Many of the inconveniences I suffered were the result of scarcity rather than any high minded strategy, of course. I’m a psychology buff and it turns out resilience is built by repeated doses of small, bearable, predictable stress. You learn that the stress can be tolerated and you will be happy again in a little while. You learn coping mechanisms to deal with the delay and the pain. Done right – as in, the stress is properly tritrated to the individual – education and sports deliver a lot of good resilience training too. Digital reduces the wait time for so many things that today we don’t get as many doses of strength building stress. Could that be why we fly off the handle so easily at setbacks?
Community is a cushion
The rapid shift to a nuclear family – 50% nationally and 69% in the southern states – changes the dynamics of how we relate to our spouses, and children. We are now reliant on them almost exclusively for our emotional support. Neighborhood shops, banks, markets, ice cream parlours, insurance agents, bill collectors, even workplaces are now not necessary functionally, and the social connect that they once fostered has been ripped apart. Humans are social animals and we need to see and touch and feel other people. In evolutionary terms it wasn’t that long ago that we lived in tribes.
Zomato’s “social” recruitment
Zomato’s founder is looking on X.com for a new Chief of Staff who will pay Rs 20L ($30K) to work for a year with him. The money will go to charity, and if chosen for a second year the person will make more than double and also get a huge chunk for charity. This sort of “paid internship” has been popular in the big business families for years – as community connects dwindle and we find new ways to build our networks – should we perhaps praise this democratization of the silver spoon.
Depression is Deadly
Research covering over 8500 students in the age range of 18 – 21 indicate that 18.8% and 12.4% of students had considered suicide over their lifetime and in the past year, respectively. This is incredibly sad. There are of course a number of factors for this – but amongst them are declining resilience as the pressure is too much or too little, lesser sources of family support, less in person interactions.
Will businesses put the genie back in the bottle
Of course not. However, just as digitization takes away our traditional coping mechanisms and insulating structures, it opens up the opportunity for new businesses to fill these gaps. Livestreams where the audiences interact with each other is one such idea. Whether it is to buy toy turtles in a frenzy or to interact with fellow marketers in a session with me 🙂 There is a rise in private clubs, gyms, spas. There is an opportunity to help these deliver more on the community angle, and to democratize access. Facilitated “family-of-choice” building opportunities like group camps and hikes are gaining popularity too. Digital platforms like Calm and Headspace are tapping into our need for “solace” that used to come from different in-person sources. Every business has the chance to tap into the need for humans to connect with each other – not to buy more stuff – but to build community.
How can we get better at this?
I had already planned to write about quick commerce and how it is removing yet another training routine for easy stress – retail lag. But the news of a distressing teen suicide in Bangalore brought more emphasis into this week’s newsletter. If you are interested in learning about trauma an excellent starter book would be Oprah Winfrey & Dr Bruce Perry’s “What Happened to You”. Understanding the brain and how and why we react is essential for every human. When people ask me to recommend a book on marketing, I of course suggest my own, Marketing Without Money 🙂 but also that they study psychology. I was totally blown away by a review of my book by Mr Nand Kishore Chaudhary, Founder of Jaipur Rugs.
Suicide Helplines:
If you have a young person at home please do take the time to give them the number of a helpline that they can talk to any time. India does not have a well publicized national helpline so it would be best if you called and checked that it worked and was nice before you handed it out. You could start with folks like the Vandrevala Foundation. In Singapore the Samaritans are at 1-767 and global hotlines are listed here.
