Why the bloody hell are you here - how communication is decoded

 It was 2006 when I had first seen the Australian tourism ad and I remember it to date. The bold copy caught my attention and it also was quite unlike any overly-crafted-full-of-beautiful-things tourism ad.

This is what my mind registered of the ad since the precursor to this ad was an article titled - curse at them, they will come? The title of the article was the lense through which I perceived that ad. Having done that, I started spinning my own yarn.

What a quaint way to get people to their country…compare this to the effort launched by the Indian tourism authorities, preaching all and one to treat the guest as God, this was rather bold !!!

Why would someone go to their country I wondered? They are a plain-speaking and friendly lot. Maybe that is what they wish to project through the advertising.

And that is how most communication gets decoded.

A thought experiment on communication decoding

Fast forward 17 years, yesterday morning I randomly watched the Rajasthan tourism ad (complete coincidence it was about tourism again :)

After a few seconds of watching, the thought that crossed my mind was

Pehle woh giri, ab yeh bhi girega (First she fell, next he will). I couldn’t stop laughing. I wanted to change the Monday morning mood for a few of my friends and sent it to them.

A fitness enthusiast said

“This guy has to be incredibly fit to carry her all through the honeymoon”

A senior citizen said

“40 years after marriage, you’ll start wondering…Aisa bhi hota hai kya?!!

A brand-led growth specialist said…

TG: Rich NRIs, so they got that right.

It begins with her ankle breaking so you get hooked on. And they’ve stitched different parts of Rajasthan nicely in the story. Showing how he cares about her brings up emotions. Music and lyrics are typical and boring in Rajasthani style, but people will remember khamma ghani which is the signature they want people to remember.

Tg part- by showing an NRI girl with a white guy, they’ve made it relevant for NRIs, white people and Indians

Someone who works with underprivileged girls to restore agency said…

I think the ad only caters to people who want to splurge and get married in Rajasthan. And it doesn't quite capture everything Rajasthan offers. The art is missing entirely, it's only romanticized as a 'love destination' which is so reductive.

Of course, there's the damsel in distress and saviour narrative too, which is cringy, but theek hai, at least they look like they're in love and nothing wrong with that too. Bachara itna mehnat कर raha hai.

Tourism का ad kam, Made In Heaven season 3 का ad zyada hai.

A storyteller and a documentary filmmaker said…

Bandish Bandits

Do you see the connection between the ‘who’ and the ‘what was said’

Bottom line - we see the same stimulus using the lens that matters to us the most and we spin our own yarn  And that is how most communication gets decoded. This lens might change depending on the shift in values, what is top of mind or a trigger situation or an unforgettable memory and the same person might think of the same stimuli differently at different points in time depending on which fragment of thought he/she pulls out of his/her subconscious mind at that moment. I have seen this happen even when people read print material - books, posters etc - the same message gets interpreted differently. 

Memory is not static, memory is constructed - subtly different each time you recall an incident. Likewise, reality is also not static, but a construct of our mind. 

In my case, I had a foot fracture on a holiday a few years ago while walking down the steps! And my mind could not ignore those steps in the Rajasthan tourism ad.

Why I say most communication and not all, is because there is another interesting way in which communication gets encoded - which is playback. But that takes a big fat media budget and the same message being heard/seen over multiple exposures. That is why we still remember   

Sunday ho yaan Monday roz khao Anday - a tagline from the 1980s when life and media vehicles were uncluttered.

I have seen the instrument of ‘playback’ working very well these days, not in the context of communication but in the context of narrative building that happens through the informal flow of information that moves across social media vehicles, endorsed by celebrity opinion leaders and regurgitated by individuals who simply buy into that story without verifying the fact. Since that is the beauty of playback. Superfoods that come as pills and capsules - remember Ginseng?

When a big company tells its unsuspecting consumers that its bottled spread is full of the freshest fruit with the goodness of vitamins, most of India believes it since subliminally the message seeps in and gets reinforced and hardwired over and over again - unless you have reason to doubt or question it.

Coming back to the Australian tourism ad which I misinterpreted. It was actually something like this…

The ad begins with characters saying: "We've poured you a beer and we've had the camels shampooed, we've saved you a spot on the beach ... and we've got the sharks out of the pool."

A bikini-clad woman then asks….

I hope this is a story you will not forget. So the next time you are planning to use your communication budget, if you know in advance whether it is a playback you are expecting or a spin-a-yarn in return, that could change the way your communication is designed.

Town Mouse City Mouse

Last month en route to Goa, I spent an evening in Unkal. The contrast between the children I encountered in these two places was stark. 

Meandering through the town streets, I happened to enter a church. I expected it to be empty though was pleasantly surprised by a group of children old and young sincerely practising for their dance & skit performance. I asked them if I could sit and watch for a while. They were warm and welcoming. They made eye contact and smiled. 

We also had a brief conversation about what the kids were doing there late evening. I learnt they were part of the VBS (Vacation Bible Class). The church was a safe space for the kids to learn something useful and not fall into the wrong company. It made perfect sense. During my recent research conversations with mothers in Kanpur and Indore, almost all the moms I spoke to lamented about the lack of a safe space where their kids could hang out in the company of other children. The small townhouses open up on busy streets and that makes it not just physically unsafe but also exposes their children to language and behaviour that may not be age-appropriate. Hence most children stay indoors devoid of same-age company and free play. By contrast, the Unkal church kids spent their mornings and evenings at the church. The hot breakfast at church was a bonus. The church functioned like a community centre, welcoming even strangers like us. A few mothers were hanging out there too after their day's work. Posters made by the children, with empowering messages, adorned the walls. A whiteboard with the exact count of children across age groups who attended the VBS each day signalled to me that this was not a casual activity. 

The children (mostly 8-10-year-olds) were remarkably calm and less fidgety. The sincerity to learn something new was apparent on their faces. When their instructor asked them to observe her, I did not see their attention flitting here or there. They were all eyes on the instructor. “They are so distinctly different from us”, pointed my city mouse. “Many a time the city mice are constantly fidgeting, fiddling around with themselves or others and are easily distracted”. We explored why and came up with a hypothesis that this could be attributed to their lifestyle and environment that was not flooded with stimulation. We also observed a lot more independence and risk-taking in the town mice and their parents doing their own thing and not hovering around them. 

The next day at Goa was a completely different experience. There was a wedding to attend. My city mouse was looking for some same-age company. I assured her, going by my old memories of weddings that there would be lots of children to play with and even if we don't know them, they’ll end up befriending each other in no time. George Ball, an American diplomat, said “Nostalgia is a seductive liar”. Like a talented seductress, nostalgia will rope you in and cause you to lose sight of reality. And so it did. 99% of the children at the venue, irrespective of age had a personal digital device they were glued to. They hardly ate, ran, or even looked up and away from their screens. The adults around them chatted away amongst themselves. What was worse was even when these children were not with their devices they would not make eye contact with others or smile. Conversation with them was a distant dream. 

I wondered, how would they learn the art of making conversations that the town mice were so easily adept at. What would be the long-term effects of social ineptitude or a lowering attention span on their life, health and future? Is there a tipping point beyond which over-exposure does a disservice to a child rather than making him smart? In a generation growing up with devices, would simple skills like connecting with other humans, being able to read body language or sustaining conversations give someone an edge over the rest? 

I remember visiting Kashmir as an 8-year-old and another child on the bus journey between Srinagar and Jammu carrying a bagful of snow back home, only to realise somewhere along the way that it will eventually melt. As we crossed Unkal on our way back to Bangalore, I felt like that child who wanted to bag the simplicity, fewer choices and a more focused environment of the town and bring it back home as a gift for the city mouse who lives with me, though somewhere along the way, within a few days of having reached the city, that would all just melt or maybe I just needed a different metaphor - one that would last!

A big mess - what do children like about it?

Children have their own logic, their own sense of right and wrong, fair and unfair. It is fascinating to peek into their world. Mess is a child's best friend. I used to always wonder why. Then one day, I stopped wondering and asked a child and this is what emerged. LISTEN IN

Play! Play! Play !

Playtime is zealously guarded. Ask children to cut short their playtime by even five minutes and they would morph into master negotiators, number crunching the minutes and seconds they have been deprived of. The possibilities of what play brings to a child's world are infinite. Here are just a few. Listen in!

#demystifyingchildhood, #earlychildhood #earlychildhoodeducation

On childhood, metaphors and sheet music

Can you think of a metaphor that signifies childhood? A lot of people (parents, educators etc.) think of childhood as ‘soft clay’ that can be and needs to be moulded. Not surprising! It justifies the role that an adult plays in the life of a child. Much like the Maggi TVC that showed the mother sprinkling condiments on the 2-minute dish that pretty much prepared itself when dunked into some hot water. So anything wrong with moulding soft clay? On the face of it NO. Perhaps that is why this metaphor is so popular.

Metaphors are powerful. Apart from lending colour and imagery to an idea, metaphors reflect and even shape our thought process. They carry meaning beyond (meta) one thing and transfer (phero) it to another. I would think of these ideas as cultural pollinators. 
In The words that help us understand the world, Professor Stacy Pies from New York University compares metaphors to “3D chess. You’re thinking three things at once: what it says, what it means and what it doesn’t mean. She goes on to explain what makes a metaphor effective is when the metaphors created are striking and original but it’s also about what the person making the metaphor is seeking to achieve in their audience. When they succeed in evoking their desired outcome and send us on a mental journey to discover these connections, it creates a spark”. 

Last week, I attended an unusual birthday celebration of a 3-year-old. There were no return gifts or tattoo artists. Instead, this was a spiritual gathering. People had congregated to bless the child. There were songs of devotion and a rather young-looking guru at the helm who addressed the audience. He opened his speech with this one statement “Children are not to be moulded but unfolded”. Professor Stacy’s words suddenly came to life. It made me think about childhood differently. The contrasts between the two ideas ‘moulded’ and ‘unfolded’ were glaring. (refer to the image at the top)

 If one approaches childhood using the ‘moulded’ metaphor, irrespective of the best intent (nurture talent/skill) or the gentlest approach used, what still seems limiting is that the direction in which one is focussing one’s energy and the child’s energy is somewhat defined at an early stage of the individual's life. It discounts the fact that the individual will grow, change, and evolve over the next 20 years. As adults, many of us are still rediscovering our purpose. The more one invests in the idea, the deeper it takes root and anything outside of it creates a huge dissonance. 
It is like learning to play a musical instrument using music sheets. The sheets have a predefined sequence of notes, a predefined time and duration for which each note is played and even a predefined finger on a specific hand that would need to press the key. A minor change from any of these predefined rules qualifies as a mistake. A child who has learnt to play music by ear would find this whole process highly frustrating. Yet there are hundreds and thousands of children who learn to play by reading musical sheets. The interesting question in my mind was not which approach is considered better or worse but what happens as a result of following either approach. 

My curiosity was quelled when I met a self-taught musician and asked him what he thought of the two approaches. His experience with self-taught music which he learnt to play by ear was a process of discovery. He could teach himself to play a new tune flawlessly in a matter of minutes or hours but that was just one of his strengths. He moved seamlessly from one instrument to another since he applied the same principles of playing notes by ear. Very early in his musical journey, he began creating tunes since his brain had recognized and coded how each note sounded and he could combine them as building blocks in lots of different ways. Most importantly all of this happened without gruelling effort. It was inspired action that was his constant driving force. When he moved to join one of the IITs and encountered other musicians who had learnt to play by reading musical sheets, they could read sheets and play the notes effortlessly. But were not tuned to creating or experimenting. Their energies flowed towards reading, interpreting and replicating and that too after years of practice. 

Like it is with music, so it is with children - twenty years from now the outcome from both approaches might turn out praiseworthy. The choice and decision then are about, what is the kind of journey one wishes to undertake on the way to that destination. Gulzar’s famous words ‘is mod se jaate hain, kuch sust kadam raste, kuch tez kadam rahein’. In our journey as parents, educators or influencers of children at some point the road bifurcates - one is a road less travelled creating opportunities to meander and discover and the other is the tried and tested fast-paced lane with no time to reflect. Which one will you take?

#earlychildhood #metaphors #culture