Sign in Subscribe

Naveen Sivakumaran

📍 Sydney

This will piss you off but you must not react...

"You're putting it on the wrong foot, love!" Aditi is seated on the floor putting on her shoes. She made it very clear that she didn't want my help. I tried telling her a couple times, but, "No, appah. It's Aditi&

Build it. But they won't come.

"Try it, Aditi, just one little bite" I was trying to tempt my 2-year-old to try ice cream for the first time. She sticks out her tongue. Little by little until the tip touches the ice cream. A lick. And another. Bigger licks. A few nibbles. "Mine!

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

I was watching Peppa Pig with Aditi. A morning ritual of ours. She, on my lap, munching down her brekkie while pointing out things she recognises from the cartoon. It's a nice little "us" time that we enjoy. One episode has a scene where George (Peppa&

Create once. Distribute forever.

I'm piggybacking off an earlier piece where I talked about how Aditi, my 2-year-old, is more fascinated with the toy box than the toy itself. One box... Several uses. As a box itself, it's a car, place, house, bed. When torn down into pieces, it becomes

The product you sell is useless without context

I was playing with Aditi and surprised her with a bunch of toys. She was psyched. Unpacked them all. Those with toddlers can relate - give them the coolest toys to play with and they'll be more fascinated with the boxes. Plain cardboard boxes! See, the toy, is

Garbage in garbage out

"Their brief is all over the place!" A friend of mine who runs a hybrid software development studio was on a rant about a client who kept changing the scope of a web app. It was beginning to affect team morale, let alone resulting in wasted resources. He

Great product. Great message. Didn't stick?

"I'm trying out LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It's pretty good, man." My acquaintance goes on tell me about its features. Me thinking, "It was cool when I first told you about it 3 years ago. It was also cool when I told you about

Doing what you say you'll do is a superpower

The opening lines of the first chapter in Paul Arden's amazing book "It's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be." Why do we strive for excellence when mediocrity is required? There is little demand in the commercial

The hardest thing in marketing is...

"The hardest thing in life is having a conversation with a drunkard when you are sober" I heard this line on an Instagram reel where a Tamil actor was asked what he thinks is the hardest thing in life. While LOL'ing, I forwarded it to a

Is your marketing message missing the mark?

"Banananana. Banananana. I want banananana." My two-year-old daughter, Aditi, is on the warpath. My wife and I are trying to finish dinner at the kitchen counter. "She's already had one", said my wife. I was not prepared to become collateral damage. I grabbed one