Digital Media and Learnings of Life

Caught in the crossfire of daily personal and professional routine, life seemed to stuck somewhere, not moving an inch from where it was, I told myself, ‘enough is enough’; I need peace, I need a new beginning, I need to reboot my life. Despite being born in the country of mystic and mythology and much after the hippie culture, and I decided to move to region of hills of Himalaya and Ganges in search of peace and what I call “Reboot” the life.

This is just second day of my journey in pursuit of ‘rebooting the life’ and I have learnt few good lessons of life, which are as follows:

1.       Format your mind: This has been told and written innumerable times by various experts and gurus of different sects and religion that if you want to fill new ideas and concepts then you will have to empty the old one out. I have given a new name to it.  Whatever has happened is the matter of past. It may help you to take some pre-decided steps, but will not be sufficient to take on the uncertainties of future. If you are stuck to what you have done in the past, then I am sorry, you will be buried in present and will not see the future. So, it is always advisable to keep the past data as back up and keep some portion left empty to learn new things, which future have in store for you.

2.       Don’t try to control, which you can’t control: I don’t know the exact population of this planet earth, where we live, but I assume, it would not be less than seven billion. Now, can any individual, irrespective to his or her power, will be able to control the impact of behaviour and actions of remaining people on this planet? Certainly not; in my opinion. Then why do we fret on what is not in our control and think of controlling it? Better way to look towards life is control what you can control and i.e, your own actions. You should always be ready to create a new file, which can be combine of your back up file (from point no:1) and new learning (from point no:1) from uncertainties present and future may throw on you.

3.       Reach Out: As I have mentioned earlier, when I decided to “Reboot my life”, I headed to the region of hills of Himalaya and Ganges. Not only this place is one among most beautiful places in the world, but also boasts many of the innumerable physical abode of source energy, power and life, my deity ‘Mother Goddess, The Supreme Power, Durga’ and ‘Lord Shiva’; of course, both live in heart and mind of more than billion population on earth. Although this paragraph has some religious overtones, but I am not apologetic about it. The point I am trying to make is the step which I took; ‘Reach Out’. You, according to your own definition of god, religion-if you believe in, need to reach out to it. Unless you make an effort, you won’t get it.

Remember one thing, that in this journey, ‘Karma’ is never compromised. All three points above mentioned for rebooting the life, has prominently talked about the actions to be taken, and more importantly, it has to be taken by you only.

Now I am connecting these points with my back up file, ‘Digital Media and Networking’. Aren’t these points relevant to digital media also. Neither ATL/BTL marketing communication, nor word of mouth publicity is new to this world. These things have been in practice for many -many years, but what is new is the mode of communication, their power to extrapolate and percolate news and information at the speed of thought, consumer’s finger on the super source of information. They are not the mass of flesh and bones with no mind, as earlier thought and practiced, which can be herded like animals. They can snap back and when they will snap back, it will be with more power than one could have ever thought off. Mahatma Gandhi had once said that your consumer is your god. At the same time, the question arises that our enormous study and experience in different aspect of marketing is farce; shall we renounce it completely? Definitely not, it is our back up file, but we shall always be ready to create a new file with new learnings. And for doing so, we will have to leave some space, some scope to add learning from new challenges, which our micro and macro environment will throw at us.

Coming to the second point of my learning, you can’t control your consumer’s behaviour and response, so better don’t try doing that. What best you can do is to make your effort, wait for consumer’s response and believe me; it will be instantaneous if unfavourable, and then respond them with either correction in your product or services or communication or any other information. In his book “What Would Google Do”, Jeff Jarvis has mentioned his one of the encounter with Mark Zuckerberg, where an industry hotshot had requested Mark to share some tips, so that he can also create a community like him. On this request, Mark gave the straight answer to him that he can’t build a community like him. It was not an arrogant answer, which he elaborated later. He said that communities already exist and you can’t own them. What you can do is to ‘reach out’ to them, participate, discuss and be part of that community. Here also, the actions left to you are ‘reach out’ and ‘don’t try to control, which you can’t control’.   

So, isn’t digital media is reflection of our daily life? By the way, my journey has just started and many more learning will come, which I will keep sharing. Keep updating your Facebook, keep tweeting, keep writing blogs, keep adding +1; just hang out there and enjoy life.