How Dare They?

Do you remember the Fair and Lovely air-hostess commercial? 

It was a commercial that hit complexion-conscious India in the gut as it also attacked the Indian predilection for a male child. Having grown up entirely in an environment where the colour of one’s skin was paramount, I could certainly relate to it. It did wonders for the brand and yet it raised the hackles of the educated, affluent Indian elite who had no use for the product.

“How dare they?” thundered the elite in their cocktail circuits. When I asked Balki (whose agency had created it), about the ad, he smilingly said “Pedder Road does not seem to like it”. I remember showing this to a delegation of international students and explained how the ad ran the risk of being banned because it had tackled sensitive issues head on. The global audience was really impressed as they believed controversy helped any ad and brand gain visibility by leaps and bounds.

Many of them were envious of the ad’s ability to evoke such strong reactions. “In the UK, if an ad is banned it is phenomenal, we would give an arm and leg for that,” said one very excitedly. I remembered this when I saw the new Airtel TV commercial.

Is the ad sexist?

 To my mind it is a needless controversy and probably an engineered one.

Why do I say this? I strongly believe in the communication principle “Either love me or hate me but for God’s sake don’t ignore me.” Today, with a smart social media strategy it is possible to ensure that an ad is not ignored. You can certainly pick up certain elements in the communication and create a controversy around it.

How can the wife be the boss? Why should she rush home to cook? Why are bosses like Hitler? We can certainly pick up enough angles and create a storm around a TV commercial, making even those who have not seen it go to YouTube to check it out.

Mobile ads set the tone

Having said all that, I still need to give credit where it is due. When I first entered advertising it was so long ago that I can’t even remember when cola advertising was the ‘hot’ category. Creative types yearned to work on Coke or Pepsi.

Today, mobile services are the colas of yesterday. Brands like Airtel, Vodafone and Tata Docomo keep us entertained with their charming, witty and, on occasion, controversial commercials. I am not complaining as often these commercials are a lot more interesting to watch than the programmes in which they are featured. But shouldn’t these companies that spend millions on advertising worry about their basic offering? Or is that asking for too much?

You can read the entire piece on the Hindu Business Line.

Old & beautiful

In May 2008, mobile handset maker Motorola launched a television commercial for its MotoYUVAw270 variant that showcased a father trying to mimic his teenager son’s carefree, freaky way of speaking with his girlfriend on the phone. The TVC opened with the father coming back from work and finding his son setting up a date with his girlfriend via his handsfree. Post his conversation, the son leaves the room and the father is alone with the MotoYUVA. He immediately picks it up and tries to imitate the son by speaking in to nobody on the other end in a sing-song manner alongside making some awkward dance movements. The film ends with his son and wife discovering this wild side of his and he moving out of the room embarrassed.

In May 2011, telecom brand Airtel launched an ad in which an old grandfather is shown narrating a story of his young days to his teenage grandson. The grandfather tells the young boy that a goon called Kanti Lal Godbole from Kishen Ganj had kissed his wife, or the boy’s grandmother, before their wedding. The grandson promises he will help the grandfather avenge Godbole’s delinquency. He launches a search for the man on, where else but social networking site Facebook, finds hims and takes his grandfather to him. The grandfather, on finding the man with his wife goes ahead and plants a peck on her cheeks. Score settled, the duo runs away from the scene.

In August 2012, Prolife Product teamed up with ad agency Curry Nation to launch a television commercial for 18 Again, a vaginal tightening gel. The ad showed a middle-aged woman making sensuous salsa moves to ‘I feel like a virgin’ number, along with her husband. The ad ends with the oldest lady (presumably, the mother-in-law) of the house trying to find out more on the product ‘18 Again’ by typing in the URL – www.18again.com- on her computer while her amused husband looks on.

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When value took centre-stage

For the Indian consumer in 2011, economy was distinct from parsimony, and values too, came to the forefront.

The Boxing Day test is overshadowing even the deadline of my year-end column. In a sense it is easier to review the past than to predict the future. So let me stay with the past (as befitting people of my age) and not worry unduly about the outcome of India's Australia tour even if I can feel the excitement of a possible Indian win (after ages) in every pore of my body. How was the year for marketing and the consumer? And what about the poor advertising agency? As usual I believe in the collective wisdom of my peers many of whom are storehouses and repositories of information on marketing and the consumer just as Wisden has always been on cricket. So I humbly dedicate this column (errors et al) to my quietly wise friends whom I reached out to in my hour of need.

A new value-seeker

Thanks to reports of doom and gloom the average Indian consumer has stopped splurging. (Or has he?)

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Keep it simple, if you can!

On the heels of a crowded, elongated, often boring cricket World Cup that still managed to end brilliantly was another one-day series. You could brand it as the (former) titans versus (the perennial) minnows. Okay, let me try to be simple as that is what I am advocating here – it was Australia vs Bangladesh. And so brilliantly was the itinerary planned by the ICC that if Australia had won the World Cup as they had done on the last three occasions, then they would have flown straight to Dhaka from Mumbai with the World Cup (even if it would not be the real one) in their bag, gloriously hungover, to boot. Of course, Dhoni ensured that Australia was not inconvenienced and remained coldly sober as they quietly flew in to Bangladesh after a rare quarter-final defeat. The low-key series happened even as the diehard Bangladeshi cricket fan (what a glutton for punishment) faithfully turned up thrice in a week at the stadia only to watch his team get trounced (again).

Read more »

Another Logo Bites The Dust!

Brands, which really belong to customers, would be better served if they improved the service along with a makeover..

Change of face: Airtel gets a new logo as 3G services arrive. Sunil B. Mittal at a press conference in New Delhi to launch the new logo and signature tune. - KAMAL NARANG

On November 18, 2010 I was near Hampi and opened a newspaper only to find the newspaper carrying a jacket (on its front page) unveiling the new logo of Airtel, my mobile service provider ever since I can remember. Interestingly the new logo was malleable enough to be part of that newspaper's logo in the ad announcing the logo change, where the new stylised shape replaced the ‘o'. Of course, you could forgive my ignorance for thinking that it should really be cueing an ‘a', not that anyone really bothers about what I say or write. India's leading mobile service operator was going to town with new creatives announcing the new logo not only in the paper that I talked about but in several others and supplemented the burst with TV spots for the launch of 3G services with commercials shot internationally. Media reports suggest Airtel is spending a miserly (!) amount of Rs 300 crore on the campaign. Changing a brand's identity clearly means a big investment for the marketer and big business for the advertising agency and the brand identity firm that creates the logo. In the same breath I need to mention that in my view brands are taking the step all too frequently these days irrespective of whether such a change is necessary and for the better.



Is change the order of the day?

Suddenly brands in India seem to be diffident about their identities and are in a hurry to shed them for newer, sexier and (naturally) more expensive ones. Over the last couple of years I can certainly recall brands such as Shoppers Stop, Godrej, Ceat and Canara Bank changing their logos (may the ones I have not mentioned kindly forgive me) as they probably felt their logos did not represent their current standing adequately.

Why do brands change their identities?

“Our logo is dated and India is full of young customers. We wish to create a new identity that will be attractive to young customers.” (And what about poor old customers like us who patronised you, old logo et al?)

“We have changed our business focus and the new identity represents that.” (At least this time we hope you know what you want to do!)

“We are offering a whole new range of services.” (Are you now!)

And so the story goes on. In my view, marketers tend to be more worried about their identity than the image consumers carry of them. To clarify, identity is easily manageable, starting with a logo, a Web page, brochures, advertising – in other words all communication that the company wishes to convey. This in short is the company's view, the way it sees itself. The image of the brand, however, is something entirely different. It is how the consumer perceives the brand and that view could be substantially different. So in my view, merely changing a company's identity (and the logo is its most visible part), may not do much to change the overall image of the company if not accompanied by significant measures to improve its service or delivery.

The “new” and “improved” Airtel logo

I am sure many of us are familiar with the slogans “new” and “improved” that FMCG brands have been using. It is a strategy (?) as old as the hills and often consumers would be hard-pressed to figure out what was new or improved about some of these brands that they have been using since childhood. Of course, logo changes are far more noticeable, particularly when they are backed by huge media spends as in the case of Airtel. Now let's come to the key question: Is Airtel's new logo really an improvement assuming that change was necessary? Of course, discussions on design usually tend to be unresolved as design is such a subjective topic and everyone knows how volatile creative people can be when their work is subject to scrutiny.

The earlier Airtel logo had a boxed-in look to it, while the new logo has a free, unencumbered feel. As one of the analysts who commented on the design said, “It is without boundaries.” In a sense that is perhaps what the brand is attempting to do as it moves across geographies and straddles continents with its new offerings, not being satisfied with merely being the market leader in India. The earlier logo was red, which, one suspects, is a brand property and it is hardly surprising that the new logo continues to be in red. Yet the bone of contention is that the design element cues another brand, Videocon, which also is claiming to be international and which, incidentally, also has ambitions in the mobile services space. But the greater concern is that the new identity seems closer to Vodafone, a major competitor of Airtel and a global brand of repute in the mobile services space.

In this context, it is perhaps relevant to look at historic competitors in another category, soft drinks, where Coke and Pepsi have battled it out for market share and brownie points, ever since I can remember. Of course, Coke and Pepsi have strong brand properties; Coke owns the colour red while Pepsi appropriates blue. It has been said half jocularly that the easiest way to make a Coke salesman see red is to whisper the word ‘blue' in his ear! Similarly a Pepsi salesman would go blue in the face if you just mentioned the word ‘red' to him! But seriously, competing brands build properties that in no way cue their competition and on this count I feel that it is perhaps not the ideal strategy to change yourself to look closer to your largest competitor.

Have mobile, will change!

Let's keep aside the global markets for a second and focus on the Indian market where I can speak with confidence, not so much as an analyst, but certainly as a consumer. I believe I have been a loyal customer of Airtel for years now. I have been wooed assiduously by the competitors and have even flirted with some of them for some time and continue to hold a second line. I remember the citizens of Bangalore cribbing incessantly about the name change to ‘Bengaluru'. “We are the constituents, did you ask us before you changed the name?” they ranted. Of course, politicians have their own agenda, which is largely independent of public opinion. But shouldn't marketers be different? Was I or anyone else asked whether we were tired of the logo? Marketers should somehow remember that brands ultimately belong to consumers and not so much to marketers. If Airtel had asked its consumers, they would have complained bitterly about the clogging of the networks and the frequent call drops. If we had a choice, we would have said stay with the logo, mate; just use the money you plan to spend on the change on the service!

Portability is finally here!

Why don't consumers change their mobile service providers and their banks? It is lethargy, really, as it is too much of a hassle to change, or at least has been, so far. And heavy users like me have another problem. We never really know how good the competing service provider is likely to be. And if after going through the heartburn and hassle of changing your service provider and your number and telling the whole world you end up in a mess, you are unlikely to be a very happy man. It is precisely this fear which has held back people. But now I am not so sure. I think I will experiment and so will a million others, one hopes. I hope service providers stop focusing their entire attention on prepaid and remind themselves that customers like me too matter!

Yes, these are interesting times, not only for marketers such as Airtel but consumers such as you and me. Companies and brands would do well to focus on things that will really make a difference to the consumer's life that are perhaps more difficult to manage, like the coverage and the customer experience, rather than the more easily manageable but relatively unimportant aspects like identity!

Do you agree?

Ramanujam Sridhar, CEO, brand – comm.
Read my blog @ http://www.brand-comm.com/blog.html
Facebook: facebook.com/RamanujamSridhar
Twitter: twitter.com/RamanujamSri

CNBC TV 18 Covers exclusively Airtel's New Brand Identity & Experts Opinion

Mohit Beotra - Head of Brand & Media, Bharti Airtel talks about the reason behind the change in the logo.

Experts from the field of Branding, Management feel that the heavy investment made by Airtel in re-branding was of no need. I felt that there was no need to have changed the logo, for Airtel did not bring in anything new for the consumer i.e., nothing significantly different is being offered to the consumer. Elsie Nanji feels the new logo resembles the logo of Vodafone & Videocon. Santosh Padhl feels that the logo could have been much better.

The consumer also feels that the new logo was not promoted enough and that the logo resembles other brands like Vodafone, Videocon.

Airtel is trying to push its new logo awareness by inviting users to suggest a name to the new identity.

Source: CnbcTv18

Changing the rules of the game, in seconds

Rapid innovation had Indians taking to mobile services, originally seen as imprudent. Players old and new continue to woo customers with smart deals and offers..

Innovation is the name of the game: A customer checks out a touchscreen information kiosk at the Docomo Dive-In store in Vijayawada. _ CH. VIJAYA BHASKAR

Even the most diehard admirer of India knows, deep down in his heart, that as a nation we have not too much to celebrate, despite the self-congratulatory messages that we keep giving ourselves in the media, which seem to be for the consumption of FIIs. But no one can deny the phenomenal success of the telecom and the mobile market over the last decade or so. The numbers are there for all to see and exult. The Indian mobile market has done a Sachin Tendulkar on us, leaving the rest far behind. In January 2010 the number of telecom connections crossed the mind-boggling number of 545 million with a tele-density of over 49.5 per cent even as landlines accounted for a mere 36.75 million. Older Indians would probably recall the waiting, heartburn and stress in their attempts to get a landline, and the consequent euphoria on getting it after a waiting period of seven years!

I remember when I started the Bangalore office of Mudra Communications, getting the landline connection after moving heaven and earth, meant that we were finally in business! I wonder if our first account gave us as much satisfaction. After all, that was 1987 and mobiles came into the country much later, so one had no option but to wait. But it is not as though India took to mobiles as a duck takes to water. The operators struggled to sell the concept, people worried about paying for incoming calls (usually wrong numbers from lazy or short-sighted callers), the prohibitive costs of outgoing calls (Rs 17 per minute, I think it was) along with statements of “my privacy matters to me”. Now all of these have become things of the past thanks to the innovation of the mobile operators.

Who would want prepaid?

They made “prepaid” a phenomenal success. Prepaid is probably 90 per cent of the market today and even if “post-paid” users such as me crib that we are being robbed to pay them, the mobile operators do not seem to be unduly bothered. The western world scoffed saying “why would anyone want to pre-pay, unless he is a drug dealer?” Well, Indians are like that only and constantly confound other Indians and the rest of the world. Credit must be given to companies such as Airtel who quickly realised they were in the business of selling minutes. And boy, did some of us buy!

Innovations continue

Indian mobile services companies and companies such as Nokia opened up the market with handsets that were created specifically for value-conscious Indians. It is not uncommon to find sweepers in J. P. Nagar catching up with their counterparts in Malleswaram and as a result both those areas of Bangalore are less than spick and span. But who cares, certainly not the mobile companies who have provided the high points of a normally monotonous day through their connectivity! Today many of the earlier pain points have been addressed - incoming is free, which soon became “lifetime incoming free” which means that a person could receive calls on the same mobile number for life , so someone who had not paid the mobile operator for months on end could still receive calls. What a boon for the electrician, the plumber and other small traders!

Your life can change in seconds

While companies obsess about market share, it is common knowledge that market expansion is a function of more than one player not only competing with each other but also promoting consumption of the category. Take the cola market, for instance – its growth has largely been because Coke and Pepsi have gone at each other hammer and tongs, even as they have expanded the overall market. The cola wars, however bitter, helped grow the overall market.

I remember in the late Eighties and early Nineties Rasna being a dominant player with over 80 per cent share of the soft drink concentrate market. Remember that cute girl eyeballing the camera with her “I love you Rasna”? Well, the biggest advantage and yet largest threat was that they were the largest player, and were equivalent to the category. So when the cola market took on the concentrate market, youngsters moved to the more interesting, increasingly aspirational category, and Rasna had to fight single-handedly against a category with deep pockets that was willing to wait for returns.

Thankfully, the mobile services category has many players with a few others coming in or waiting in the wings. One of the later ones has been Tata Docomo which seems to have shaken up the market and made the biggies sit up and take notice with its “per second billing”. Competitors who had underestimated the game changing nature of this offering had to grudgingly follow. What bigger tributes for a newer entrant to have larger, more established players follow it?

What's in a name?

The brand name is the single, most important element in a brand's success. Enough theories exist about how it should be two syllables, sound well, be easy to pronounce … You have heard all of that and more. I am not sure the name Docomo would score on every count, but who the hell cares about theory, the proof of the pudding is in how often the cash register rings or is it how often your ringtone is downloaded? Be that as it may Docomo (which is perhaps less of a mouthful than alpenliebe) has been accepted, recalled and bought. A lot of the success has to be attributed to the advertising. The early advertising was merely intent on getting the brand name across, making it familiar to millions of Indians challenged by names foreign. The Tata name which means so much to the average Indian was underplayed, in my view at least. But the brand name was sung, the letters formed themselves into a recognisable logo and the first task of awareness was achieved with a high-profile integrated campaign that hit you whether you switched on the TV, looked up at a hoarding or opened the newspaper.

Young and aspirational

I am not sure who the Docomo user is. I am sure the user is young , technologically-savvy, can handle two SIM cards and is constantly looking for value that the brand seems to provide readily. The advertising is young. My favourite is that of the guy in the airline who, being like me, is unable to say no to leave a seat next to a pretty young girl for an older man, only to find that he has been allotted a seat where two gorgeous babes flank him on either side, and soon has one of the sleepy travellers nuzzling even closer to him even as I wonder why such happy results never follow my inability to say no! There are more commercials on the same lines - a triumphant kid emulating some of his more demonstrative football idols, hitting himself against the goal post, which he had crossed just a few seconds earlier.

My eternal favourite will be that of the traditional looking South Indian girl with a vivid tattoo which her mother approves reluctantly, or so I think; I am a parent too! It brought back memories of my son's tattoo in Tamil of the name ‘Sevilimedu' - the village we all hail from. I am not sure if we were shocked, happy he went back to his roots or sad that we had forgotten our roots till this reminder! While parents may not love this ad, I am sure the young consumer would love it. The signature tune has been a strong factor in holding all the communication together. India loves music and the “friendship express” too, I am sure has its admirers.

The power of an idea

I think the mobile market is the most exciting market to be in and people who relish a fight can learn a lot from the heady, competitive marketplace where you have to be on your toes all the time. Brands such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea all have done their own share of innovation and have produced, and continue to produce outstanding advertising. Visible advertising seems to be par for the course, even for brands such as Virgin that have interesting advertising. Yet, I believe the value and power of advertising can be overstated. The key differentiator is the offering, as Tata Docomo has demonstrated. It changed the rules of the game. It certainly helps to have visible advertising beaming at you from every channel, particularly if the advertising is interesting.

The future will belong to brands that continually innovate and one hopes that all innovations will not be built on price cuts or offers alone. As a consumer I am really delighted that mobile service operators are falling over themselves to offer something or the other new. I only hope that they will spare a thought for a poor postpaid user like me too. And is it too much to ask for less call drops and better coverage?

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly: Branding on Indian Turf.)

Have mobile, will go to town

Cellular services are thriving, but like several other services and products,

the claims in the advertising are not mirrored in actual performance.

When I entered advertising in the Eighties, cola was the happening category. Agency creative types would give an arm and a leg to work on a cola or a soft drinks account. Captions resonated in young people's minds, won awards for the agency that created them and quickly made it to the editorial as newspapers and magazines adapted the lines and made them their own. In all fairness many of the other categories, dominated as they were by multinational style advertising, had boring and predictable ads. Thankfully people still watched these ads as there was only one channel and usually half a programme to watch. This was before the days of oongli cricket as the remote control had not yet made its diabolical presence felt. And if my memory serves me right, there was research to suggest that people found the commercials more entertaining than the programmes themselves, which was perhaps an indication of how sad the programmes were at that point in time.

Having said that it would be remiss of me not to mention some of the pathbreaking ads of the Eighties, some of which I can still recall and which I still show my students today, some of whom were born after these ads were made. Ads for Vimal, the ‘I love you Rasna' ads, the ‘Lalitaji' commercials, ‘Give me Red' for Eveready, ‘Hamara Bajaj' and the commercial of the Cadbury's girl in the cricket field to name just a few, kept our collars up even if our wallets were thin. And yet, when I show these ads today they seem hardly as exciting as they were when I first saw them. It was for nothing that Bill Bernbach said “Today's smartest advertising style is tomorrow's corn.”

Variety, the spice of life

Perhaps the greatest shot in the arm not only for the Indian economy but for Indian advertising was liberalisation when foreign brands came in quest of the ‘great Indian middle class'. Some flourished while others floundered but advertise they did, with varying shades of creativity. And yet the greatest revolution, to my mind at least, has been the ‘mobile revolution' as India took to mobiles the way a young Sachin Tendulkar took to cricket nearly three decades ago. Young India goes to sleep with its mobile and old India has sleepless nights about the next generation's addiction for mobile phones. But one industry that has not lost any sleep about the phenomenal growth of the mobile services industry is advertising.

Mobile service companies are advertising-dependent, to put it mildly. Companies are in cut-throat competition with each other in the prepaid and postpaid categories, have mindboggling schemes and sexy advertising. The target audience is young, irreverent, has a sense of humour and is completely relaxed as it spends its parents' money! Mobile services is a brilliant advertising category that can entertain, beat the clutter, make you smile and even win your agency awards. What more can anyone ask for?

Of course, there is a slightly discordant note that I must bring up (I think it is my horoscope that prevents me from seeing the brighter side of things) and that is about how far removed from the truth this advertising often is. Every mobile service ad talks about phenomenal coverage. The pug follows the little girl wherever she goes, signifying the depth and width of the coverage. It is a completely different matter that my colleagues in Mumbai are extremely fit as they have to run out every time their mobile phone rings, as you can't hear a word inside the office! Of course, the fact that I do not run much is evident from my middle!

One of the most recalled commercials for Airtel is one in which the grandfather who is in the village and the grandson who is in the train play chess. Forget connectivity on a moving train in distant lands; as an Airtel customer I can vouch for how dismal the coverage is in not-so-distant places such as Mumbai for I have hell when I go there and even in Bangalore where I live and work. Coverage is the last thing the brand should speak about, for it is like a red rag to disgruntled consumers such as us.

In fact, the advertising for mobile services reminds me of a competition that most management schools have called ‘mad ads' where students are asked to do advertising for an imaginary product or service. Mobile services are definitely there and thriving, but they are like several other service products in the country whose actual performance has no relevance to the advertising that they portray. Make no mistake, mobile services advertising in the country is by and large brilliant, entertaining, and clutter-breaking. Why ask needless questions like “is what they are saying true” and “how good is the actual coverage?”

Withdrawal symptoms after IPL

The IPL is over and for a few days I had withdrawal symptoms as I would mechanically go and sit in front of the TV at 8 p.m. I miss the hysterics of Danny Morrison; Navjot Singh Sidhu's profound wisdom that would fill an entire calling card; the show of legs as the cheerleaders danced to Kannada and Tamil songs; the wistful gaze of an heir apparent on a largely disinterested young star; and the elusive smiles of Preity Zinta as her team discovered new depths; the missed sitters that made me think ‘S***, I could have caught that'; the multiple teams on 12 points; the strategic breaks where the commentators were hard pressed to say anything remotely strategic; the haunting images of Lalit Modi with some pretty woman or the other… A weaker man might have been driven to drink! But thankfully, the ads for mobile services continue to entertain even if Lalit Modi or Shashi Tharoor refuse to. So let me talk about the mobile services ads that I like and that are current.

Show me your tattoo and I will show you mine

Have you seen the one where a lady with South Indian features is chopping vegetables on a kitchen table, Suprabhatham is playing in the background and her pretty daughter approaches her reluctantly and says, “I want to show you something”? The mother looks up, one suspects with dread, God knows what today's youngsters can show and lo and behold, she displays a huge and grotesque tattoo on her lower back. I stared aghast at the tattoo as I thought her mother would and imagine my surprise when the mother says in her pronounced Madrasi accent, “very nice”. It was for “my song” and asks people to listen to what they would like to listen. I am sure lots of people with grown-up children like me love this commercial for Tata Docomo, as they would of the young man who goes for an interview and says exactly the wrong things and yet gets a job! Tata Docomo has been a game changer in the mobile category and its pricing has turned the market on its head. But its success in no small measure is due to the advertising.

Not far behind are the Airtel ads for night time calling featuring Sharman Joshi (I finally figured out his name, after all, South Indian names are a problem for North Indians too) where he speaks to his girlfriend's brother and advises him on what to study before he gets to speak to the girl or when he makes the shopkeeper speak to his mom and bargain on the sari price and butters up his professor on thermodynamics thanks to the Net … So what if Airtel has call drops and you can't hear, at least, they have interesting commercials. And what about Idea Cellular and its whacky commercials that feature crazy contests with Abhishek, his fat attendant and the dumb blonde? The whackier the contest, the more I liked the commercial. And what about Vodafone and the Zoozoos? I know that I am going to upset a few people, including my colleague who is a fervent admirer of the advertising, when I say that the current advertising is not as endearing as the earlier edition. Is it more in your face? More strident? More tailored to suit the brand IPL? I don't know, but I have seen better from the same brand.

And finally it is not only advertising

I have a sneaking suspicion that the mobile brands are taking the easy way out and focusing on creativity and advertising that is manageable. What about customer service and engagement? Let me give you an example as recent as yesterday. My wife received a mail from her personal relationship manager whose name I shall not mention saying “thank you” and that she was “special” and how she was her personal relationship manager. There was a small problem though; the mail started with “Dear Sir/Madam,” and went on to say all those glowing things. My wife being the difficult customer that she is wrote back:

“Thank you for your mail (here she had addressed the relationship manager by name). If I am such a valued customer, I am surprised that your database does not tell you whether I am a male or a female.

Regards, …”

Ouch!

I think it is time mobile service companies realised that there is more to life than advertising. Advertising is fun. It is glamorous. It is sexy even, like the tattoo ad. But the boring stuff is what customers bond with and that is customer experience and service.

Is anyone listening or are they too busy making ads?

Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of 'Googly: Branding on Indian Turf.

Brand sceptics?

Ramanujam Sridhar

India is still romancing with brands but the end of the honeymoon period is near..
The task of marketing to this multi-tasking, multi-asking generation is simultaneously a challenge and an opportunity.

A few weeks ago I was invited to Mumbai to be one of the panellists in a seminar on customer loyalty. Between you and me, a “loyal customer” is something of an oxymoron, just as the descriptions “faithful husband” or “well-behaved teenager” can be! Instead of waxing eloquent on the frailties of the human race, let me move on to the topic of discussion of our particular panel, which was on “defining the customer of the future”. I shared the panel with a few people who were wiser if not older than me — Kinjal Medh, Chief Operating Officer, Cogito Consulting; Arvind Sharma, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Leo Burnett; Rajiv Lal, Chief Executive Officer Perspectrum; and Satish Sathyanarayana, Chief Executive Officer, Wunderman India Pvt Ltd. Here is a smattering of predictions on the future customer made by this eminent group. Needless to mention that the original and pathbreaking predictions were made by the other esteemed panel members, whilst I attempted to provide comic relief to a post-lunch seminar audience that had been fed on an overdose of dessert and a numbing mix of matrices and statistical mumbo jumbo earlier in the day.Worry, worry, worry

As a starting point it might be worthwhile to remember what Mike Clasper, the former President of Procter and Gamble, said, “I would label the consumer of 2025 in three ways: more demanding, wiser and more worried.” Well, I guess, we don’t have to wait another 16 years to check the validity of this prediction because it seems to have already come true today. Aren’t we more demanding today than we were five years ago? I can speak for myself and say that I have certainly become a lot more demanding as a customer. Just ask Airtel or Standard Chartered Bank. And if the doorman at the Taj does not come springing to open my car door, I am frowning at his lethargy and waxing eloquent about the poor service of the five-star hotel to the total disinterest of my family!

Of course, if you ask my wife she would go a step further and say I have graduated from merely being demanding to becoming more of a pain. But then spouses, they say, cannot be objective about their partners, so much do they love them! I guess consumers are certainly becoming more knowledgeable, if not wiser, though the increasing speed of the decreasing hair line of today’s generation is definitely to be viewed as a sign of wisdom! They have certainly become more worried as this generation has been through more crises than any other and even the strongest of minds would be worried after what happened in Mumbai.

So, what it does it mean for marketers? There is a crying need to go back to the old fashioned and yet-still-relevant quality of ‘empathy’ that salespeople needed then and need more than ever now, and will need in the future too. I need empathy from service providers, harried as I am now by the uncertainty in the global environment, crashing value of investments, plummeting real estate prices and the general mood of depression that has engulfed the world, Obama notwithstanding.Why can’t you be like her?

Human beings love to compare. We all know that and customers, after all, are human beings. The reality, however, is that too few service providers (in India at least) are providing exceptional service. Speaking of airlines, I have some familiarity with, if not affinity for, Jet and Kingfisher in the premium category and recently Indigo in the budget category that are providing superior service. I have always been a great admirer of Jet Airways and speak passionately for them at every forum. And yet, I have a distressing habit as well. When I go to the nationalised bank, which holds my savings bank account (with a modest balance if I may add) I expect the person in the counter to be smart, friendly and vivacious, just like the stewardess who ushers me into the Jet Airways flight. Sadly for me, though, she is grumpy, harassed and probably sees shades of her spouse in me, so severely does she scowl at me! I know that I am being unreasonable in expecting her to be like the Jet Airways stewardess but then “I am like that only”. I can safely predict that trends like these are here to stay, and if anything is likely to intensify tomorrow as more and more of tomorrow’s customers will make odious comparisons across categories and find their service providers wanting.

There is another distressing trend with service providers and that includes me as well. It is that we have one set of benchmarks for ourselves when we are customers and a different set when we provide services to customers. No prizes for guessing which is lower! Marketers need to completely change their outlook on service and the consumer today, if they want to survive tomorrow.Multi-tasking, multi-asking.

My marketing teacher at IIM Bangalore proffesor P.N. Thirunarayana, who instilled and fuelled my desire to be in marketing, called India’s young generation as the MTV generation, whom he defined as multi-tasking, time-compressed and value-seekers. Yes, India is a young country with an overwhelming proportion of youngsters who are in their twenties. The reality, however, is that while Indian consumers are in their twenties, heads of marketing are in their forties and managing directors are in their fifties. Needless to say, the politicians who run this country are in their eighties! How do we cope with this techno-savvy young customer who is simultaneously watching TV on mute, listening to music on her iPod, even as she is frantically punching the keys of her mobile phone to send numerous text messages by the minute to scores of her friends? I am told that today’s youth can exhaust the quota of 750 free SMS messages per day by 9 a.m! We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg as India’s youth brigade explodes not only in size but in affluence. The task of marketing to this multi-tasking, multi-asking generation is simultaneously a challenge and an opportunity. How many marketers are going to be equal to the challenge? Only time will tell!

There is another new dimension to the Indian economy that the future might unfold and that is the ‘baby boomers’ who are currently in their fifties and they represent another potent market segment. They are the “in between generation” — caught between tipples of scotch and snatches of Bhagavad Gita. They have hefty wallets (and matching waistlines) and yet are largely ignored by marketers despite their high net worth. To give you an example, whilst I got so many birthday wishes from the Shoppers Stops and the Stancharts of this world, no one sends me specific offers considering my age or lifestyle! So marketers are clearly not using the information that they have optimally. So we have two strong and yet diverse target segments that can and must co-exist for the benefit of the marketer, however diverse they may be in terms of demographics and psychographics. But then who said marketing is easy?

Now let’s go back to the generation that is going to rule India. How do we get and hold the attention of today’s and tomorrow’s customer who has the attention span of a nano second? How do we engage her, despite the multitude of distractions that seem such an inherent part of modern, urban life? Don’t lecture to this audience. They do not need one more teacher. Surprise them at a time when they least expect it. Have a tone of voice that is engaging. What made KBC such a big hit when it was first launched? There was Amitabh, whom the young audience could rely on, who was friendly, helpful and empathetic. Let’s not forget that many youngsters who were hooked on to it were the latchkey generation that lived in nuclear homes, where both parents were working. Brands will have to become friendlier even as their consumers get flightier. Brands will need to win the battle for share of mind, a far cry from the days when brands were obsessed with share of shelf.Romantic or sceptic
Today, India is still romancing with brands. We are still in our honeymoon period, so to speak. And yet one can see that customers like me are getting disenchanted with our wooers, who call us at odd times of the day, like 3 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon! We are annoyed and irritated with marketers who ignore the fact that our number is a “do not call number”. Our patience is currently running thin, but I am not sure if the people who are wooing us are aware of that just yet. It will not be long before we become brand sceptics though and that is something that marketers should be well aware of. Brand romantic or brand sceptic? Only time will tell.

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of One Land, One Billion Minds.)