Internet Inside: Our evolution to the Instant Gratification (I.G.) Generation

Sometimes viral videos bring back amazing memories. Recently I saw such a video from 1995 that made me take a walk down the memory lane about enormous changes the Internet has made in our lives.

It was the interview of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates with David Letterman back in the day before the DotCom bubble and certainly way before all the BitCoin mania and Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning hullaballoo of today. I have mentioned AI/ML above because Gates called the idea of an intelligent computer a very “scary thought.”

Don't worry. Gates didn't mention the Skynet.

It was just after Thanksgiving Day in 1995, when Gates was on CBS’s the “Late Show with David Letterman” on November 27 to promote his book “The Road Ahead” as well as Microsoft’s first online tool, the then-newly launched Internet Explorer.

Letterman was seemingly perplexed when he asked Gates, “What about this Internet thing? Do you know anything about that?”

“A place where people can publish information. They can have their own homepage, companies are there, the latest information. It’s wild what’s going on,” Gates replied.

In 1995, these were still early days of the Internet when only an estimated 14% of Americans browsed the web and websites mostly looked like links directory with a dull grey background.

Having witnessed generational shifts in technology fueling various innovations and disruptions, this was an interesting conversation to watch, with the benefit of hindsight, of Gates trying to explain to the then clueless America how to make sense of the Internet. Of course, two years later Alan Greenspan warned us of irrational exuberance caused by investments in early-age internet-based companies and what happened in Y2K, both financially and technologically, is now in the annals of history.

Keeping aside the aftermath of the Internet bubble, I think Millenials or Generation Y born around the 1980s have had it best. The number and scale of changes in quality of life due to the technological innovations and the resulting improvement in customer experience across industries after the invention of the Internet that Gen Y has seen in a comparatively short span of a few decades, I doubt any other past generation has experienced the same.

Born just before the fag-end of older tech, which lasted for many decades without much innovation, and entered adulthood with newer tech from “Fail Fast, Fail Often” philosophy-based startups, the Gen Y, especially in India due to concurrent overdue liberalization of socialist economy, literally grew with adoption of the Internet and got to experience both the patient times of waiting for scheduled over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts to now spoiled times of on-demand over-the-top (OTT) Connected Economy.

There was a time when even accounting for time to hail a cab was part-and-parcel of traveling but now even waiting for a few minutes before Uber or Lyft or Ola arrives feels like an eternity. Although some aspirational predictions from the 1980s such as flying cars and hoverboards by 2015 are still not a reality, but from watching Doogie Howser M.D. make his journal entries on a mysterious blue-screened personal-computer (PC) to now instantly sharing Instagram stories and TikTok videos using smartphone or from feeling amazed at the promptness of Computer voice assistant and intelligence of Soong-Type Android Data in the Star Trek series to now using own device assistant (still comparatively premature) such as Apple Siri or Google Home or Amazon Alexa or from making cash payments and using traditional manual credit card imprint machines to making biometric Aadhaar payments, we have come a long way.

With technology changing so fast, I wonder if the Gen Z (iGen or Centennials) or any other future generation would ever get to experience and, hence, appreciate long shifts, because the epoch is 2000 and using IoT connected devices is default normal for them.

I like to call the 2020s generation as the “I.G. Generation” i.e. Instant Gratification Generation for their sheer impatience for demand fulfillment. Interestingly, the generation about a century ago from 1900 to 1920 is known as the G.I. Generation.

Though it has been a great journey so far, the jury is still out on if this evolution to IG generation has been for good or bad. With great power comes great responsibility. The tech sector is going through a lot of debates ranging from privacy concerns around digital marketing to health care concerns around social media addiction.

Just think about it. How many of us make as basic an effort to remember our family and friends' phone numbers anymore? Ease of living powered by artificial intelligence should not come at the cost of our human intelligence.

Coming back to the nostalgic interview. So, what were Letterman’s parting thoughts about the Internet? “It is too bad there is no money in [computers and the Internet],” he said to his billionaire guest.

Boy, was Letterman wrong!

Would love to know your thoughts. What do you think? Are we better off now than before? Let me know in the comments section below…



This is a republished copy of my popular LinkedIn Pulse article “Internet Inside: Our evolution to the Instant Gratification (I.G.) Generation” and Medium story “Internet Inside: Our evolution to the Instant Gratification (I.G.) Generation”.

CMO's Handbook: 9 Critical Challenges Faced by a Marketer

(CC) https://pixabay.com/photo-1137367

As they say, “Go big, or go home”. With the recently announced strategic partnership, InMobi and Microsoft, under the leadership of Naveen Tewari and Satya Nadella, have double down on going big to disrupt the Marketing industry as we know it. The deal works towards solving for 9 critical challenges faced by a CMO of today and tomorrow.

Why you may ask? First, let us do the numbers. In the United States, the marketing consultant industry was a $43 billion business in 2016, consisting of nearly 198,000 businesses, as reported by the market research group IBISWorld. India’s digital advertising market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 33.5% to cross $3.8 billion by 2020, as reported by India Brand Equity Foundation. Hence, why not grab a larger share of a bigger pie with a more integrated seamless solution for marketers than just compete on mobile advertising business landscape.

Think about it. InMobi with its mobile-first innovative solutions and data prowess will enable marketers to get a 360-degree view of every customer, while Microsoft with its global Azure infrastructure built on the back of its cutting-edge technology, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics, will help provide actionable insights to the marketers with 365-days availability. A feat so far unheard of beyond the advertising giants such as Google and Facebook, primarily due to their competitive advantage of cross-device targeting and, understandably so, their unwillingness to share their proprietary data with the outside world.

How you may ask? A CMO’s world is not as simple as take a product to market, show an ad, and people will suddenly start flocking to brand stores, building brand loyalty, and giving repeat business. Only if it was that easy. The real value proposition of InMobi-Microsoft partnership lies in creating a one-stop-shop for most, if not all, of a CMO’s needs. Although the American Marketing Association (AMA) has identified some challenges of marketing, but I think there are some additional critical challenges that InMobi’s cloud-based Enterprise Platform for Marketers is working towards solving for CMOs of the world.

What you may ask? First challenge for a marketer has to do with demand landscape mapping or market segmentation. It is to identify the highest value source(s) of growth for a brand, product, or service because of its disproportionate impact on growth and return-on-investment (ROI) potential for a business. The real challenge is in finding the need that is not adequately filled and reaching the people who may be interested in your brand without wasting your time on those who will never be.

Second challenge for a marketer is there are multiple schools of thought on what should be a role of marketing function and a CMO in a corporation. Some companies view it as a separate marketing function, while some put it under responsibilities of an analytics or IT group. Some organizations centralize marketing activities to save cost, while some have decentralized marketing and pushed it to the front lines. Marketing is fine, but what about customer experience, brand management, and public relations? Can small and medium enterprises afford a CMO without inhouse marketing capabilities and tech wherewithal?

Third challenge for a marketer is digital transformation and how to cope with it. Marketing is not a one-way street anymore. Now customers are taking control of products, services, and, most importantly, communications. Unless you have ears to the ground 24x7, you cannot survive for long, especially with multiple-ways communication between customers in a marketplace. It is not just about targeting an advertisement to the right potential customer and closing a sale, but completing the feedback loop across various platforms to increase brand’s sticky factor. Perception is reality and disconnection from reality is not an option anymore in any field, irrespective whether it is a private enterprise or public office.

Fourth challenge for a marketer is generating insights and turning them into action. While other CXO’s are worried about scaling business and maintaining competitive advantage, a CMO is worried about leveraging social media for marketing communications, examining various mediums for customer experience, and using Big Data Analytics to gain insights and, hence, help alleviate her co-worker CXO’s worries about business survival and market leadership. While our data and knowledge graphs are growing rapidly, but our actionable insight is not. It is not just about insight generation, but how to collect, store, share, and, most importantly, use an insight to drive revenue growth.

Fifth challenge for a marketer is move aside multi-channel and cross-channel, omnichannel is the new name of the game in town. With mobile-first generations gaining in demographic strength, multi-channel of Internet of Things (IoT) and cross-channel of Online-to-Offline (O2O) are fast becoming the old normal and omnichannel is the new deal. It is no longer just about brand targeting across various devices and giving offers on sale only at their brand store. Omnichannel is about true continuity of customer experience universally and it extends beyond a single brand’s universe.

Today it is presumed by a customer that the device-based responsive design of a brand’s website should match its native mobile app and thematically reflect the look and feel inside its offline store in order to give a consistent cross-channel customer experience. However, what about a customer who is interested in buying say a Tissot watch, but buys it offline at Macy’s rather than brand’s own store after comparison shopping? The fundamental problem is not the maximization of a particular channel, but drop offs and handoffs between channels since some of these interfaces may not even be in a brand’s control.

Sixth challenge for a marketer is competing in dynamic global markets, predicting competitive shifts, entering uncharted territory, globalizing quickly, and identifying emerging competition.

Seventh challenge for a marketer is balancing incremental and moonshot innovation. Every innovative company worth its salt deals with the dilemma of whether to fuel necessary innovation in the present or invest in disruptive technologies, business models, partnerships, and customer experiences for the future. If, when, and how to transform from a product company to a conglomerate with entire ecosystem of products, platform, information, brands, and retail experiences. How to run market tests and fail-fast without revealing too much to competitors and losing the first mover’s advantage.

Eighth challenge for a marketer is data handling, security, and privacy. It is oft-repeated that data is the new oil, but I think, if not handled ethically, legally, and securely, data can turn into kryptonite overnight. It is a sad reality at many enterprises — small or big — around the world that in their race for growing market share and improving bottom-line, data handling is the least of their concerns. And when a company is not even sure if and how it should run a marketing function, how is it even supposed to know if it needs to invest in data security. Misinformation, misunderstanding of laws, ignorance of AdTech and MarTech data flow, and lack of legal counsel makes it even more complicated and risky for firms.

Data is an asset, but it can soon turn into a huge liability if not protected properly. How big a liability? Under the European Union GDPR law, penalty per infringement is 4% of annual global turnover or €20 million, whichever is greater. There are similar local privacy laws in-effect around the world and so is the jurisprudence principle of “ignorance of law is no excuse”. Minimizing your data mishandling penalties risk by leveraging experienced Enterprise Marketing firm such as InMobi sounds like a steal now, doesn’t it?

Ninth challenge for a marketer is standardized versus custom marketing solutions. When working with the giant 800-pound gorillas of the advertising industry, you have to make-do with what is offered. It is not to take away from any trend-setting innovations and research done by these great giants, but depending on the size and location of your firm and reach of your contacts, you largely have to take it or leave it. What most marketers want is to build a long-term relationship with a representative of a mobile-first Enterprise Marketing firm, which is willing to educate on best-practices, learn, and grow together, while providing them the right solution as needed. Marketing needs a human touch and contact; it is the nature of business.

Startup or not, an innovative company has to constantly be on-guard about how it wants to make an impact on its industry. One may choose to grow organically, but it takes time, effort, and money. One may grow through a merger or an acquisition, but it takes effort, money, and a right match with synergies. And then there is the partnership route, which requires two or more partners with similar clear vision, excellent execution team, and groundbreaking products to work towards a common goal and “make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.” Such moments are rare in a corporation’s life, when it gets a chance to pivot, create differentiation, and grow exponentially at the same time.

If executed right, InMobi-Microsoft deal has the potential to give the so-called tech walled gardens and varied AdTech and MarTech companies a run for their money. As Peter Drucker once said, “the best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Agree? Disagree? More to it? Let me know in the comments section below…



This is a republished copy of my popular LinkedIn Pulse article “CMO's Handbook: 9 Critical Challenges Faced by a Marketer” and Medium story “CMO's Handbook: 9 Critical Challenges Faced by a Marketer”.

Analysis of Reliance Communication's Global Call Product

Read some of my popular LinkedIn Pulse articles,

1. “CMO's Handbook: 9 Critical Challenges Faced by a Marketer”

2. “Innovation: 5 Powerful Lessons from Journey of an Inventor”
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If I was the VP of Product Development at Reliance Communications, I would regularly use my company's Reliance Global Call (formerly known as Reliance India Call) product myself to experience what my customers have to go through to make one simple phone call from US to Bharat. More specifically, I will,

1. Have a serious one-on-one talk with my IT infrastructure head.
2. Immediately hire Public Relations and Brand Management strategist, if I do not already have one.
3. Ask my IT infrastructure head and PR strategist to work together for better customer experience.
4. Immediately hire a new Product Manager and Development Team to revamp my current mobile software strategy, which I believe is causing more harm than profit to the brand.

Here is why. We now live in a world in which long distance communication is not as hard and expensive as it used to be. Especially when our elders nostalgically remind us that it used to cost thousands of ₹ or hundreds of $ to call to and from India or US, respectively. I have been following Reliance Communications rise in the international market ever since it forayed in to US-to-India call business over 8 years ago. More so because I have been Reliance customer myself since the service started and have got them lots of business through referrals. So lest I am accused, this is not a one off "had a bad experience" whine post.

Voluntary disclosure: I have not made any monetary profit from those referrals. I am just loyal to the brands I like.

I remember the time when we had to worry about all those calling cards and their beguiling fine prints. Then came Reliance Global Call (RGC) with its cohesive marketing message and simple business model: we will charge you $0.14 per min, no hidden charges, no connection charges, no minutes expiration. It was a relatively expensive deal as compared to what calling cards were offering but the USP was that I as a customer know up front what deal I am getting into. However, 8 years and over 100 countries coverage later it is not the business as usual anymore for RGC. Speaking in pure business language, Reliance should not hedge its laurels to economies of scale as being a huge barrier to entry, which no doubt it is, for new firms in this not so perfect competition world because the threat from substitutes and intensity of competitive rivalry is on the rise. What is RGC's boon today may be its bane tomorrow, unless the company innovates faster to keep up with times and improves its processes as I have suggested in this post.

Let us consider, for example, one of the threats for RGC: Substitutes. Today there are so many substitutes available such as email (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo), text chat (Meebo, AIM, Google Talk, eBuddy, ICQ), social media galore (Facebook, Twitter), video chat (Google+ Hangout), audio chat (Skype), SMS (WhatsApp), MMS, VoIP (Vonage), etc. Seriously, we are much better off than our elders were who had namely only one alternative, postal mail a.k.a the snail mail.

It feels unthinkable if today I, as a long time "Internet privileged" being, have to contact my parents urgently and the only option available is to send the message through the snail mail. Hence, the reason for writing this post. Imagine this,

1. I have to first find a spare sheet to scribble my thoughts on it. Why? Since there is no cut, copy, paste option available in this alternative and I do not want to strikeout lines on actual letter in case of a mistake. This is what dependence on technology does to a person.
2. Find a good sheet of paper to actually pen my letter.
3. Find an envelope.
4. Go to post office and buy stamps. Since post office is going out of business, so I really have to find one first.
5. Mail the letter and wait for them to receive it in 2-3 weeks.
6. Then wait for another 2-3 weeks for them to mail back a reply.

Feels like too much effort, right? Today, all of it can be done in a matter of seconds, if not minutes. Thank you, Mr. Tim Berners-Lee.

But this post is not about World Wide Web (WWW) or the Internet but about a company that has made a business out of Mr. Alexander Graham Bell's invention, the Telephone. On the midnight of January 26, which also happens to be the Republic day of India, I wanted to talk to my parents urgently about something. I tried RGC's Toll free number 1-866-373-5426, but no luck. To my surprise, I did not hear the usual hefty voice of some woman on the IVR, who never forgets to remind us customers at least 3 times per call: "Thank you for calling Reliance. Please dial the number you wish to call.". Every time I feel like saying, Oh come on lady, cut the courtesy and let me make a quick phone call. Anyways, coming back to the case at hand. That day, either the bell rang four-five times after which the call got abruptly disconnected or I got a busy tone. Same experience repeated when I dialed different Toll access numbers. Then I tried to call RGC's customer care number at 1-888-673-5426 but no one was picking up that phone number either. That is when I realized that there must be thousands of other perturbed customers with similar experiences like who must be trying to call customer care. No wonder no one was picking up that phone number, except once when someone did pick it only to hang up on me without saying anything. Ah well I said, Customer Care as usual.

Dismayed I diverted my attention to RGC's website, which was loading somewhat slowly than usual, or may be it was just me trying to read between the lines. Then I realized it was "the Republic Day" January 26 and I got a little worried. Jumping from News sites to blogs and twitter while hoping everything is fine back home. Well finally, the day passed and I talked to my parents on January 27. I narrated my experience to them and was in a complete disbelief, shock, and awe when they told me that our "we must censor the Internet" dictatorial-esque Government actually blocked access to the Internet from night before January 26 until late afternoon as part of strategy to prevent potential terrorist attacks. After knowing this, I suspected may be this was the reason why my call to India didn't go through. May be there was some government diktat to turn off international calls and Reliance was a casualty of Internet shutdown as they are a sort of VoIP provider. However, this is all mere speculation, as I do not have concrete proof if any of aforementioned happened. Nevertheless, if it is true and this is what actually happened then while I appreciate government's concern for the safety of its citizens, I doubt if this is the right way to celebrate the "Republic day" by denying the very "Public" their Right to Free Speech. I am sure there are much better ways to handle such situations than a blanket ban. So that there is Zero Loss to the public civil liberties and people may continue to talk on their 2G or 3G phones without threatening national security. Hope Mr. Kapil Sibal and Mr. Palaniappan Chidambaram are listening, no pun intended. Please do not make us go back to the snail mail days.

Again, this post is about RGC. The jury is still out on why I could not make that phone call that day. I do not know whether the government allegedly asked RGC to not allow any phone calls in and out of the country for a set period, or alternatively it was something more plausible such as a network failure or bad software upgrade that brought RGC's network down, at least in the US. In either case, RGC should have handled this situation better. Unfortunately, in neither case they, as a courtesy, intimated the customers of potential downtime. If it was a relatively implausible government censure, then as an international call service provider RGC must have been in knowhow of potential downtime beforehand. In which case, they should have put an advisory notice on their website and IVR for customer's benefit. If they did not know it beforehand and it was an unfortunate event such as a network failure then also they should have put up a message on their website and IVR. Many high customer transaction volume companies especially Banks such as Bank of America, Chase, et.al. follow this procedure all the time. It is basic courtesy protocol because what if software deployment to production servers goes haywire. Well ideally, deployment should not go bad. If it did then we have another problem to deal with in the organization.

Hence, following are my suggestions to fix some of these issues. If I was the Head of Reliance Communications,

1. I will have a serious one-on-one talk with my IT infrastructure head. I will ask him,
   1. Has he implemented an infrastructure that supports Five Nines availability standards? Five Nines means High availability or 99.999% availability of services, when the downtime is less than 5.26 minutes per year.
   2. What is the expected down time per year for the system?
   3. What is the contingency plan in case of software or network failure?
   4. What are call drop rates for past 5 years?
   
   In the past 2 years while using Reliance I have noticed that the call drops have gone up to 15%. How do I know? To figure this out I did a statistical experiment. I kept a count of total number of call drops during 400 random calls that I made in past 2 years. I suspected that RGC's call drop rate was 10% i.e. 1 in every 10 calls would be dropped. After gathering the above-mentioned sample data, I did a statistical null hypothesis test on population proportion to verify if the call drops have been increasing. As per my sample, I found statistical evidence with p-value of 0.00043423 to prove that call drop rate had risen to 15% in past two years at 0.01 level of significance. I believe 15% is a high call drop rate.
   
   One annoying thing I noticed while experimenting was that as a customer I do not even know if call drop happened because of a network failure or because my balance became Shunya. So I had to account for that. Wouldn't it be awesome if RGC gave us a forewarning that hey your balance is almost Shunya, so hurry up with that conversation. Cannot resist mentioning how many times a person on the other side has misunderstood that I hung up on them. I understand that call dropping may not be considered a big deal in India but that does not mean we should not aim for higher standards.


2. I will immediately hire Public Relations and Brand Management strategist, if I do not already have one. Let us be real,
   1. How many companies are on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc. for actually engaging customers? Not allot.
   2. How many companies are using these platforms for real two-way communication? Not allot.
   3. How many companies are on these networks because these networks are fad of the day or because their competitor is on it? Many.
   
   Well RGC is one of them. Someone at this organization has a misconception that branding your product on Social Media means to upload a photo album on Facebook of random people talking on phone and then announce it on Twitter. As if that will make customers flock to RGC's Facebook profile page and wanting to buy their product. I am sorry but this is not customer engagement using Social Media. In fact, RGC is not the only one doing it this way. Many other organizations have still not understood and optimized the power of Social Media integration.
   
   

   I posted 6 photos on Facebook in the album "Reliance Global Call" fb.me/1tTHfGOLo
   — Reliance Global Call (@Global_Call) February 17, 2012

   
   Take for another example RGC's twitter account. Like a parrot it keeps on asking you to download their mobile app as if it is the deal of the century.
   
   

   Connect without dialling Access Numbers or PINs with 'Express Dial'. Connect hassle free with Reliance Global... fb.me/UnIqRTSx
   — Reliance Global Call (@Global_Call) January 25, 2012

   
   I am not saying that RGC should not promote their Android or iPhone app. They absolutely should do so. But that is not the only thing they should do. They should engage the customer. Make it a two-way conversation. Come up with some deals. Reply to customer's gripes.
   
   When RGC was down on January 26, they could have posted a tweet announcing the downtime. All it would have taken is less than 140 characters and they would have had many relieved customers. Another issue is that RGC's homepage needs a revamp. More than a SEO upgrade it needs a serious usability restructuring. Why they need to and what they may do to fix it is something I will prefer not to comment on this public post.



3. I will ask my IT infrastructure head and PR strategist to work together for better customer experience. I do not need to rehash what I have already mentioned in 1) and 2) above, but these two entities should work together to send a consistent message to customers in case of downtimes and of course to improve the brand.


4. I will immediately hire a new Product Manager and Development Team to revamp our current mobile software strategy, which I believe is causing more harm than profit to the brand. This one is more close to heart than any other issues that I have come across while analyzing RGC because of my experience with Mobile technology domain. Sample this comment from one of RGC's customers Vivek on Android Market,

   Horrible piece of crap. I'm pretty confident that the designers of this app were half brain monkeys dabbling in programming for the first time.

   Here is another comment from Nirav,

   Very poor app. Can't believe that such a giant company can't develop simple app. Very shamefull.

   Mind you that these are latest comments from users on Android Market for the RGC app version 3.16. This means that this app must have gone through beta, version 1.xx, version 2.xx to reach 3.16 to generate such adverse comments. At the time of writing of this post Reliance Express Dial app on Android Market had a rating of 2.5/5 (41 total ratings) and had been downloaded between 5000-10000 times. I haven't even started mentioning iPhone or iPod Touch users yet. Here is Sajenm's comment on iTunes store

   Worst app ever. I cannot believe an app like this is released. Clunky, freezes, unusable. The developer needs to be fired

   Here is another one, rkp_21 says

   Stupid app. I was expecting that it would at least dial the reliance number on it's own. If I have to so the same thing I do without the app what am I getting in the app. The website claims it is worth 20 usd for this crap. Yeah Right!

   At the time of writing of this post, Reliance Exprees Dial app on iTunes store had a rating of 1.5/5 (242 total ratings). Compare customer's reaction to how RGC advertises its mobile apps on homepage

   No more dialing numerous digits to get through your international calls. One touch Mobile application. This unique application worth USD 20 is currently being offered absolutely FREE! Hurry! Download now!

   Well, we must hurry then. As one of the customers has pointed out we still have to dial the whole reliance phone number to make a phone call, which neither means "No more dialing numerous digits" nor does it means that this is "one touch mobile application". This clearly shows a divide between what is being developed and what is being advertised.
   
   
   A clear over value of product like above sometimes shows mismanagement of cost estimates. By the way, who came up with such marketing gimmick? A $20 value app, absolutely free for you. What is this a telemarketing or home shopping network advertisement? I believe it is better to delay release of the app than to rush an underdeveloped app into production because once it is out in customer's hands and they start publicly criticizing it on official download forums, then it will be a huge uphill task and a PR challenge to recover from such brand damage.