There are some things money can’t buy, one of them is a balanced life
“Are you getting paid his salary to do his job?”
— Overheard at an IT consultancy bullpen
Dianne Ackerman’s aim behind writing A Natural History of the Senses in 1990 was to explore the evolution and the complexity of the ”radar-net of our senses” which according to her, were the wonders we catalogue as touch, taste, smell, hearing, vision.”[1] Balance did not make the list. Aristotle too, concluded 2000 years ago that human and non human animals have only 5 senses of which balance is not a part.
I am happy with 5 senses, why include balance?
Tracing the evolution of a human being, balance is found as one of the most ancient of our senses, much older than sight or hearing.
Without it, humans couldn’t have begun to walk upright, never mind hunt game or be able to defend ourselves against enemies and predators. Or do this.
During the Industrial Revolution, British workers demanded shorter work weeks given their hard working conditions. In response, industrialists and unions alike agreed on a day off for the workers. A shorter or a half-day Saturday was seen as a natural lead-in to Sunday’s day of rest.
Most Christians, carrying the religious idea of Sabbath forward, adopted Sunday as a day of worship and rest. Over time, workplaces in Western countries began to accommodate those religious observances.
It is also important to remember that work in that era was largely manual, and workers left their work when they left the site.
What’s the Beef?
While advances in technology have made work more flexible, the number of working hours continue to increase in countries with low GDP per capita.
It would help to look at reasons that lead us to believe that our lives may be out of balance :
- A lack of direction as a result of either confusion between an enormous amount of options (read more about it here) or from the absence of a guiding light
- The thrill of new work or the misery of drowning in existing work ensures that we do not have/take the time to watch out for the trade-offs involved in our decisions.
- ”Do work you love and you will not work a day in your life”, while this idea may nudge people toward finding their professional “bliss”, such a blanket statement can readily be used to justify an imbalanced life
- Keeping one’s balance maintained between all sorts of athletic experiences requires consistent practice till it becomes second nature. Additionally, the limited amount of hours and the amount of activities scheduled within them often overwhelms us enough to the point of inaction.
- Pushing ourselves to meet some crazy deadline after our body has thrown it’s hands up might not be the best way to go. Respect your “red zone”
Help me understand this.
Machines are efficient and balanced because they are programmed to perform a limited number of tasks under expected conditions; so are athletes or artisans who do the same task over and over necessary to achieve their “ultimate goal”.[2]
The idea of “balance” presumes increased control over our environment, for work and life to pass us by in predictable patterns so that we may control the outcome.
To understand this better, let us trace through Jack’s lifetime while borrowing from psychology certain concepts that will help us understand the intricacies.
From the time Jack opened his eyes to around age 6, he was Dora the Explorer. Learn how to crawl, walk and then run to ensuring the entire house has slept before they do, this period of time is one with no balance at all. Sleep for as long as you want, eat as much as you like, make strange noises and laugh at your own blubber. What a time that was!
Some form of schooling is where balance is first implemented. The academic calendar is set and the time spent in school is diced to the hour, ensuring maximum learning and possibly a decent face for Jack to show during his next PTA session.
Structures set at school are put to test once Jack begins college, a place where he would like to “experience” things his parents didn’t pay tuition for. You can’t refuse a second round just because you have an early morning lecture the following day.
Jack’s college years go by in a haze, professional life now comes at him hard. Pretty soon, the second rounds begin to disappear. The least Jack can do is stay sober when his superior decides to spew lava on him the next day.
Jack begins to observe his life slowly going off-keel. He is lucky as most people have to be told about this by friends,family or a well-wishing 3rd party.
At this point, realising your life is horribly out of balance may have prompted you to collect some information on how to reverse it.
Great! Let’s take ’em for a spin, Jack?
Jack:
Why not make our lives balanced again?
Most advice on restoring balance suggests either reducing the amount of choices to be made or voluntarily giving away a part of our hard-earned freedom.
We are motivated to preserve our autonomy and status within a group and would like to avoid irreversible decisions. With both these objectives firmly planted in Jack’s mind, he gives one of the following explanations to support his hesitation:
- I need to “fully” understand how I reached my existing state of affairs and will not begin reforms till they are completely understood.[3]
Second order thinking is useful as it brings forth any unintended consequences that your change might cause but it’s evil nemesis, overthinking, can very easily be used as a crutch activity to delay action[4] - “Ok, I have been working more than I should have for the largest part of this year but that was because of these troublesome pieces of work. Now that we’re nearing completion, I don’t see any reason for this to continue”. We secretly hope that an event that may have occurred frequently in the past will not occur with the same frequency in the future. Wish your boss also fell for the Gambler’s Fallacy
Why is balance given as the answer to most problems then?
Taking a balanced approach gives us a satisfying feeling of not choosing either of the extremes and being right in the middle.
Marketers use this fact to influence our preferences between presented options.
Decoy Effect explains why consumers’ preferences between two options tend to change when a third option that is inferior in all respects to the option above but is partially superior to the option below it is introduced.
Which glass would you pick?
How can brands practice balance?
Consumers are bombarded with pieces of information, not just advertising, every minute of the day. With attention spans getting shorter, your branding must stand out to capture your audience’s attention. Since every firm does not or cannot spend large amounts of money just to keep themselves fresh in the consumers’ mind.
Using technology to slice and dice the colossal amount of consumer data available would allow your message to be delivered “at the right place, at the right time and to the right person”. Understanding your target consumers’ preferences and purchasing behaviour at the early stages of the sales funnel has always been important.
Consumer sentiment, as reported by the COVID-19 Consumer Pulse Survey carried out by McKinsey made it abundantly clear that a break from their regular routine led 49% of Indians to try a different brand and 22% of Canadian consumers are paying increased attention to how companies take care of the safety of their employees.[5]
LinkedIn teamed up with the IPA,Les Binet and Peter Field to survey 3,702 B2B marketers spread across 9 industries to come up with 5 principles they believe will help maximise marketing growth[6]out of which 3 seemed related to maintaining balance in marketing activities
Principle 1: Sustain growth by leveraging both acquisition and customer growth strategies
“It’s easier to retain customers we have than go out and get customers we don’t”.
This is especially followed in markets where fair value is a given or in markets where all products offer what is important to the customers and the extra-mile doesn’t matter.
The book “Blue Ocean Strategy” suggests marketers create demand for their products/services in uncontested spaces (i.e blue oceans), places where new customers can be targeted or where your product can complement the existing offering rather than wage battles with incumbents in their current industry for a competitive position which would most likely erode their top line earnings
Principle 2:Strive for ad consistency, reach and duration in order to achieve fame
Let’s face it, there is no right time for an ad to show up. Yet people continue to lean on them when making a purchase decision
Consumers might think with their heads but buy a good amount of their shopping cart with their heart. Ensuring your creative leads consumers to some sort of action and arms them with a sense of purpose sets you apart from communications that just ticks all the boxes on some guideline.
AkzoNobel’s Dulux, one of the world’s leading paint brands, offers a case in point. In 2006, with each local business setting its own brand and business goals and developing its own marketing mix, the outcome was inconsistent brand positioning and results.
In 2008, Dulux’s new global brand team pursued a sweeping program to understand how people perceived the brand across markets, paint’s purpose in their lives, and the human truths that inspired people to color their environments. Across countries, a consistent theme emerged: The colors around us powerfully influence how we feel.
Dulux wasn’t selling cans of paint; it was selling “tins of optimism.” This new definition of Dulux’s brand purpose led to a marketing campaign that was unified and aimed at the emotion behind the product and not just the product itself.[7]
Principle 3:Invest in shorter-term demand generation and longer-term brand campaigns to drive growth
Marketing activities are generally classified into ones that help cement your brand’s image into the consumers’ mind and ones that help create immediate demand around your products/services to fuel short-term growth. On average, most marketers seem to dedicate the larger portion of their marketing budgets toward demand-based activities that will create short-term growth simply because their impact can be measured.
This principle suggests paying a little more attention to media activities carried out in the upper to mid portions of the sales funnel, the metrics that are used to measure their performance and the amount of time these activites are analysed for.
Has anyone been able to do it successfully?
“For most parents, especially in India,education is still the best way to make it big”, says Anita Kishore, Strategy Head at BYJU’s
While enrolment gaps between high and low-income countries have narrowed globally, the World Bank’s 2018 World Development Report suggests that students in many communities are still not learning basic skills while in school
This is clear as good quality teachers are expensive and tend to be concentrated in large cities. However, with the increasing presence of smartphones, a new delivery channel for education has also emerged, one that in the truest sense democratizes education for every student, regardless of their geography.
Using the principles described above, let’s take a look at how BYJU’s was not only able to gain traction in India but also across other geographies without any major marketing effort
Principle 1: Leverage both acquisition and customer growth strategies
Building on a rich history of having trained students for various college preparatory tests, Byju Raveendran officially launched the “Think and Learn” company in 2011.[8]
While the primary goal remained helping kids cover the gap between what the book teaches them and skills the world requires, BYJU’s was different as it reached out to kids who may not be interested in what goes on at school but given the right stimuli, might take the initiative to learn and score well during their exams with kids who were already invested into learning their subjects.
While the current after-school training market ran behind the red ocean, BYJU’s found out a way to help an overlooked segment achieve goals they had lost interest in
Principle 2:Strive for ad consistency,reach and duration in order to achieve fame
Having done very well through word of mouth, the aim of quickly reaching millions of students nationwide would need a different tactic and it took the shape of marketing campaigns across various channels. Such as a series of pan-India television campaigns that featured popular celebrities glorifying the Byju’s ecosystem.
Besides these spots, Byju’s capitalized on an area that would not need constant campaigns yet would keep the brand on every viewer’s mind: sport.
By obtaining rights to be a name sponsor to the Indian Cricket Team, Byju’s has ensured that parents and kids alike do not forget the brand even when they are outside the classroom having fun[9]
Principle 3: Invest in shorter term demand generation efforts and longer-term brand campaigns
In contrast to the short-term efforts, such as the TV spots and the cricket jersey branding. Byju understood the role parents play in their child’s education and began to incorporate it into their sales strategy.
Due to the limited time and attention parents themselves have, working parents are often unable to get a good look at their child’s education. The only benchmark that then seems to matter are the marks secured by the child which might not necessarily indicate the clarity of the underlying concept.
Tracking a child’s progress through a pre-defined set of videos and tests, sales executives at Byju’s are now ready to reach out to parents through their ‘parent connect’ app and give them an analysis of their child’s strengths and weaknesses and advise on how Byju’s can help cover those gaps. By keeping the parents informed, Byju’s guarantees itself repeat sale without additional effort
All work or all play will make Jack a tired, lonely and a depressed boy. Some work done with some play on the side might help Jack get one of those things money can’t buy
