Titan Dials Back the Clock to Move Forward
- 17th Jul 2023
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The Economic Times
Firm ropes in industry experts and academia to help crack the code on
consumer insights and effective branding.
New Delhi: As more and more companies incorporate artificial intelligence in their day-to-day business operations, one of the pioneers of subliminal recall in advertisements, Titan Company Ltd, is trying to strike a delicate balance between tradition and modernity.
The company is roping in experts from the field of memory studies to help better advertise and brand Taneira, the textile arm of the Titan group. In partnership with Titan, IIT-Madras has rolled out a first-ofits-kind, sixweek long course titled 'Memory Studies in Industry Contexts' exclusively to senior and midlevel managers of the company.
The course will apply memory studies' tools, theories, and frameworks to interpret and analyse consumer insights and affective branding. Memory studies looks at the interplay of remembering and re-creating through signs, structures, and sentiments. The subject draws on psychology, cultural studies, current research in machine studies and artificial intelligence. Several Titan product categories, especially those relating to Taneira, are rooted in Indian culture and heritage, and the partnership with IIT-Madras will help the company seamlessly blend advertising rhetoric with emerging technology.
"The course is a very positive step for IIT-M and the Department of Humanities as it has a huge impact in terms of trying to calibrate trust and memory in an age of artificial intelligence," said the director of IIT-Madras, Prof V Kamakoti.
Speaking at the inauguration of the course was the head of Central Technology Services, Titan, Satish S, who said, "This is agreat opportunity for Titan to leverage the know-how of the memory studies department to further solidify the trust that our customer reposes in us. "
Through this partnership, it is hoped that the employees of Titan will develop a comprehensive understanding of cultural memory and this, in turn, will help them situate their brand and technology in the most effective ways, Satish said.
"Memory studies has an immediate relevance for industry and brand development, especially in terms of producing and promoting brands and their perception management through psychological reception, social structures, and sentiments," said course coordinator Dr Avishek Parui.
The course module, accessed by ET, will revolve around organisational memory, with an emphasis on the growth of institutional memory through behavioural psychology and organisational optics. It will also examine perception management emphasising the role of trust, faith, and materiality in industry settings, as well as consumer behaviour.
Additionally, the module will delve into the complexities of memory, affect and materiality, investigating how emotions and affect shape our understanding of materials and examining the virtual nature of the effect within belief systems.
Furthermore, it will provide insights into memory in the post-digital era, exploring contactless interfaces, non-human transactional portals, and the evolving role of technology. Lastly, the module will analyse collective memory, specifically the use of signs in advertisements to represent the memory momentum of a cultural climate.
The other course coordinator, Dr Merin Simi Raj, said, "It comes as little surprise that Titan has teamed up with IIT-M for a course on memory studies, especially when you can recall the brand simply from its immortal jingles of the 90s and 00s. "