An Interview with Santosh Desai on "Memes For Mummyji: Making Sense of Post-Smartphone India"

In this episode, I speak with Santosh Desai, a leading commentator on how culture shapes brands, consumers and everyday life in India. Over more than four decades in advertising and marketing, he has served as President of McCann-Erickson India and CEO of Futurebrands. He now leads Think9, where he works with businesses on growth and consumer insight, and writes the City City Bang Bang column for The Times of India. He is the author of Mother Pious Lady and, most recently, Memes for Mummyji. In Memes for Mummyji, Desai explores how smartphones have brought about profound changes in India. Though smartphones have reshaped life around the world, their impact in India has taken a distinctive form. The book looks at the smartphone as one of the major inflection points in contemporary Indian life. 00:00:00: What's coming up 00:02:25: Title Sequence 00:02:39: Podcast intro 00:04:15: What got Santosh into writing 00:09:06: Why did he write 'Memes for Mummiji' 00:14:52: The empowering effects of the smart phone in India given lack of access and inequality in education 00:21:21: The distinctive empowerment of women 00:25:31: The impact of women's empowerment on men and the consequent backlash 00:27:30: How notions of masculinity have been affected 00:34:03: The impact of the smart phone on the self 00:39:34: The relationship with things around us becoming self conscious and abstract 00:43:09: Things that we have lost as a result of the changes such as the disappearance of the horizon or not being able to see the moon 00:49:50: The sense of entitlement and power not going away even as the country is becoming more developed 00:59.48: The power of memes, Gen Z and the Cockroach Janata party movement 01:08:12: The power of cultural insights in business and marketing 01:16:15: What people need to get right to market products in India 01:19:47: Podcast outro About the Insight Edge podcast brought to you by Insight Dojo(www.insightdojo.com). Insight Edge explores how breakthrough ideas emerge in business, science, the arts, and everyday life through conversations with remarkable thinkers and practitioners. Insight Dojo helps organisations create breakthrough success through the practice of pragmatic polymathy #insight #innovation #culture #marketing #India