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.)

Your employee is your brand

Do companies spend even a fraction of training budgets on employees who are the face of the organisation?.

Branding is not a magical destination but is about people. And employees are an integral partfuelling the people process. _ K. RAMESH BABU

Do you remember our conversation last fortnight when we spoke about the human side of the brand and the need to look at things beyond advertising, media coverage, identity and colours in building brands? We spoke about how critical the first impression for a brand can be, how companies, under the guise of outsourcing, outsource their very brand to people who do not realise its value – such as security guards, for instance. We also spoke about how the telephone and the manner in which it is answered (or not) actually has the potential to take the brand's image downhill, how companies (CEOs included) fail to respond to people who get in touch with them and about how companies can hurt their own image badly by handling interviews and the process of interviewing poorly.

As one of the respondents to my blog said, “It is easier to preach than to practise!”While I will respond to that comment a little later in my piece, I will continue to talk about what companies can do right and what they often do wrong without perhaps realising or even caring about the consequences of their sins of omission and commission.

A small gesture

While it is perhaps easy to get disillusioned with the way companies are acting or not acting and get pessimistic and cynical, I shall strive to be balanced, however difficult that may seem to be in the light of what I had written earlier. Several years ago, I used to teach brand management at IIM, Kozhikode in its early days. It was term VI and the students were understandably a bit nervous, as it was placement time after all. I asked the class what their favourite company was and while the class reeled out the list of India's biggest and best, one of the students said, “MindTree”.

I was surprised as it was a very new company then. The reason was not difficult to see: The company had come to campus, made an offer to one of my students and as a gesture given him a company T-shirt on his acceptance of the offer. A simple gesture, you say. Absolutely! But to a student about to join a company on his first job, with all the anxieties that placement time bestows so easily, it had scored disproportionately with a young impressionable mind which he probably carried for the rest of his life. Here was a first impression of a different kind!

Mind you, I am willing to accept that things might have changed over the last decade or so and that today's management graduates may be more cynical about such gestures. I have also heard people speak with great pride about getting a prompt response from N.R. Narayana Murthy to some letter or mail and so the story goes on … Like individuals, companies too do things right and on occasions also do some things that are wrong for the brand. All of these have some impact on the brand, which leads me to the obvious question: How does your brand's ledger look in terms of debits and credits?

Money, money, money

Let's move on to things that are perhaps not so pleasant. Both you and I know that the subject of money need not be pleasant, especially when you don't get it and particularly when it is overdue. Let me start with my true life experience with a once prominent company that has now become completely obscure. It had this dubious reputation with advertising agencies when it came to payment. I remember the early days, when the company had the money, but used to set aside agency payments, as the attitude of the senior management of the company was, “Well, they need our business, they can wait.”

I know that we went through hell as did the other agencies servicing this client. Later, the client grew in business and in billings, but became so highly leveraged and so strapped for cash that the company soon became a “has been” and a credit risk. I am not referring to companies going through an occasional cash crunch, for several do at some point or the other, but of how accountants can be poor ambassadors of the brand, and often are. How often have we heard these: “Signatories not available” (usually for days on end); “We have misplaced your bills”; “Your bills have not been approved by marketing” and some more ingenious ones as well.

I know that many companies went through a tough time in the recession, but their track record of the past stood them in good stead. They took pains to explain to the affected parties and what stood them in good stead was their credibility. Actually, branding is less about words and more about actions and the sooner companies realise this, the better it will be for them.

Your employees are your brand

Traditionally companies have looked at their consumer and consciously attempted to improve her experiences and engagement with the brand. In the early Eighties, brands were hurt by dealers who had a limited concept and appreciation of customer service. Customers often blamed the company for their poor service, without realising that it was the dealer. Companies have become savvier over the years and invested in service and training of personnel and today brands such as Maruti have built a substantial franchise primarily on their service quality.

Yet, do companies, which spend so much time, effort and money on dealers and their development, spend even a fraction of their training budgets on employees who are constantly dealing with the world at large, whether it is their accountants, clerical staff or even employees from different functional areas such as human relations and finance? Traditional wisdom focuses on the revenue generator as someone who has to be trained as he brings in the moolah. This was perhaps understandable and acceptable in the days gone by, but today's world has new problems, thrown up by the Net and the increasing activism of consumers and the world at large. Yesterday's strategies may not work today in an increasingly dynamic and complex work place.

What does the future hold?

Sometimes the answers to the future may lie in the past. Let's analyse successful companies. What have they been doing? They have done things first and done them differently. Tomorrow's successful companies are going to be led by CEOs who will show the way in responsiveness. They will show the way by ensuring that their employees are taught the value of empathy. It is common knowledge that the people who are successful in sales have put themselves in their consumer's shoes. This is that rare quality called empathy. Now, there is a need for any employee who has any sort of interface with the world at large to be empathetic – to vendors and their problems, the general public who may come into contact with the company. Consider the insensitive statement by the CEO of British Petroleum who wanted his “life back” after 11 people were dead and the impact and ripples that it created through the world. If that is the case with CEOs who are trained, coached and mentored, imagine the plight of the poor employee and the ripple effect that thoughtless or insensitive behaviour can cause.

Branding a process, not a destination

While branding is often seen as a magical destination or a sort of Holy Grail, it rarely ever is. It is a process, with unremitting, often boring, attention to detail in everything that the company says or does. It needs direction from the top and the commitment of the CEO or the brand custodian. It needs constant monitoring and investment in training. It needs the humility to listen to criticism that is often harsh, at times unfair and now in the public domain. I realised this as I got an angry response from one of my readers about my ‘tepid' response to his query and my organisation's inability to respond to his need in a manner that was acceptable or satisfactory.

We keep getting knocks. The trick, though, is to learn and move on. The solution is not so much focus, but attention to detail on every single thing that the company is doing. It is about processes. It is about people. It is about passion to do the things that we set out to do. And most importantly, it is about everyone in the organisation and not only marketing as we have traditionally believe.

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

Is your advertising outrageous?

An ad that succeeds need not always be politically correct but one that identifies with the target consumer..

Fairness for better prospects, marriage so that you can look like a princess - whether you take theads with a pinch of salt or righteous indignation, they will be successful if the insight is right.

Make them laugh, make them cry, for God's sake make them do something” is an advertising dictum that one has read and heard, even if one has not been able to get the creative person to follow this principle as often as I would have liked. Now why do I say that? Everyday there are hundreds of ads that come on TV (millions or so, it seems, on IPL) and in the newspaper that could easily be described as “ships that pass you by in the night” making no impact whatsoever on you, or on thousands of customers like you. And then suddenly you notice an ad that makes you sit up. An ad that hits you in the gut, an ad that perhaps gets your hackles up and you sit up and take notice and you might even say “how dare they do this”. If you are not the target audience and the ad has still intrigued or irritated you, you may try to get a second opinion and may even take the trouble of asking the person for whom you think the ad was meant.

I remember trying to do a review of one of the earlier Fastrack ads set in a classroom when there is a roll call and a number of girls drool “Yes sir”, “Yes sir” when the name of a handsome boy wearing a sexy watch is called out. Of course, the ad was interesting, but however young at heart I may claim to be, I must confess that I did not get it in its entirety, so I did what most parents do when confronted with something new. I asked my second son who was 19 then, the target audience for the ad, what he thought of it and he said, “It's kickass, Pa!” without batting an eyelid, basically saying that it was up to scratch. Of course, I need to confess that if I had spoken like that to Ramanujam Senior, my dad, I may not have been alive to tell the tale.

But the point I wish to make is that often enough, while all of us view advertising and usually have a strong point of view about it, we are not the target customers. Of course, we can certainly air our views to whoever cares to listen and even write about it in blogs but the advertiser, really speaking, should be concerned about the views of the real target audience who is a genuine prospect for the brand and not so much about everyone who has a point of view. Though I daresay people like me also voice their opinion using the Net and making their opinion heard, if not count.

Is it fair?

Another ad which stirred things up quite a bit was the Fair & Lovely ad - I am sure you remember the one with the air hostess, featuring a father who openly wishes he had a son and the indignant daughter uses Fair & Lovely, becomes an air hostess and takes her father to a five-star restaurant where the father naively asks her for the same cup of coffee that created happy chaos just a few weeks ago.

I have seen enough people rave and rant about this ad. I suppose if you live in Lavelle Road in Bengaluru, Boat Club Road in Chennai or Nepean Sea Road in Mumbai, this ad can affect your sensitivities and make you vocal. But then if you live in these places, chances are that you can get your conditioners from Paris. The target audience, however, lives in interior Tamil Nadu or Gujarat, where people unabashedly demand not only dowry but fair brides. Should Hindustan Unilever worry about the people in these smaller towns or the elite group that lives in high-rise condominiums but will never use their product?

We Indians are a hypocritical race, we often mean exactly the opposite of what we say and often pay lip service to lofty ideals. Mind you, I am not saying that everything that manufacturers and advertisers say is true or has to be accepted, but one of the things going for this commercial is that it strikes a chord in the hearts of dark girls even as it makes you and me say “How dare they?” I have seen enough bridegrooms reject my cousins because they were dark even as they blatantly used to say that the “horoscopes were not matching”. They do say that truly great advertising is “on the verge of being outrageous”. To my mind, at least, this ad fit the bill, never mind what people had to say about it and boy did they have a lot to say, even though this was in the ‘pre-blog' days!

Take me to the church on time

A recent ad that stirs up similar sentiments, if not more acute, given the fact that we have people who are blogging, is the ad for Tanishq. You might have seen this ad, which features a modern family, the daughter driving an SUV, the family speaking English, a girl undecided on marriage, but whose life plans quickly change for the better as she tries on the wedding collection from Tanishq. If the girl is independent as she ostensibly seems to be and is not keen on marriage, how can something like diamonds, however exquisite, make her change her mind, the critics ask. If she is a woman of today who is logical and practical and knows what she wants, how can she change her mind, just for the jewellery? And yet, are decisions about marriage so well thought out? I wish they were. Is it also so easy to unravel a woman's mind? From time immemorial, man has tried and failed miserably. Others like me have given up, as we do not believe we have a hope in hell. Don't people say that a woman's mind is as unpredictable as English weather even if the current one promises to be the hottest in years? Hardly surprising that we are not touring this summer, for we are usually followed by wind and rain!

Much as I would like to probe the recesses of the woman's mind, let me reluctantly return to the task on hand and the commercial at hand. Once again, I was intrigued by the commercial and not having a daughter to be married, I turned to the young girls in my office who seem to relate to and conform to the girl in the commercial. They too are educated, know what they want in life, have a point of view and are not afraid to express it. ‘Girls want to look good when they get married.' ‘Marriage is an important occasion.' ‘Anyway one has to get married, why not look good on the occasion?' to a lone voice saying “As if a girl would get married for the jewellery!”

Let's take a closer look at the commercial. It gets your attention, has a good cast and one can certainly expect Arundathi Nag to turn in a good performance. It has an element of surprise in the fact that it proposes something that is unexpected, radical even. But does it offend the sensitivities of the core target audience?

Tanishq is probably not a major player in the wedding market, which is a huge buying occasion which perhaps explains the rationale of the commercial. I have attended weddings in small towns in India, in metros such as Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore and more recently in far-off places such as Chicago and Detroit. Last week, I was at a Tambrahm wedding at Detroit where the father of the bride had the first dance with his daughter, a far cry from Mylapore, but the wedding set still seemed to be very critical with all the women, both young and old, going gaga over it.

What should brands do?

I think the easy, boring way is to take the predictable, non-controversial route that most commercials seem to follow. I wish more clients and agency heads would take risks. I know clients will say that it is their money that I am talking about! But having said that, I do know that in creative and in life the dictum ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained' has some merit. And yet a word of caution is in order. It is not about people like me who write or bloggers, however powerful they may be, but focus on the consumer.

When in doubt, go to the consumer. Tanishq might do well to talk to its consumers through the length and breadth of India and ask people whether people are saying ‘It's cool' like the girls in my office or ‘How dare they?' as a blogger asked. As I often do, let me end with a quote of Bill Bernbach: “If you stand for something, you will always find some people for you and some against you. If you stand for nothing, you will find nobody against you and nobody for you.”

Stand for something, but just check with your consumer whether you are standing for her or against her!

(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.

India will rise as brand owners rather than as brand creators

Dr Jagadish Sheth talks to BrandLine on the human factor in business, the Easternisation of the world and the recession..

Dr Jagadish N. Sheth, Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing, Goizueta Business School, Emory University

Dr Jagadish N. Sheth, the Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing from Goizueta Business School at Emory University in the US was recently at Mysore as keynote speaker on the conference of ‘service strategies for global leadership’ organised by the Custommerce Centre for Service Excellence at SDMIMD. He spoke to Ramanujam Sridhar exclusively for BrandLine on a variety of subjects such as technology and service, China and India, changes in people and behaviour and branding. Talking to Jagadish Sheth is simultaneously interesting and inspiring. He is one who could be described as a pocket-sized dynamo of information and insights, all dished out with a disarming sense of humour and without the slightest trace of arrogance which might be understandable and excusable given his phenomenal achievements. The refugee from Burma, who grew up in Chennai and graduated from Loyola College, has certainly come a long way to being awarded as ‘Outstanding Marketing Educator Award’ by the Academy of Marketing Science. He is a prolific author, having co-authored hundreds of articles and books — some like ‘The Rule of Three’ have made waves globally. He hardly looks 71 and has boundless energy and enthusiasm and more hair on his head than people half his age. His sense of humour is infectious and conversation with him enriching.

Here is an excerpt of the interview with him:

Today there is a lot of talk about technology and customer service. Do you have any thoughts on the subject?

Yes, there is an interesting trend that is happening in the US. Probably as a consequence of the desire for cost reduction, human contact is reducing. This has created an enormously negative reaction from consumers. I would personally place a premium on the value of human contact. Human intervention can actually turn out to be much more cost-effective in the long run. Human intervention can be a very effective means of retrieving a service problem or situation with customers. People want other people to resolve their problems.

You obviously feel strongly about the importance of the human factor in business.

I am passionate about human beings and the value addition they bring. When a grain of wheat is transformed into a loaf of bread the value addition can be a mere five times. An uncut diamond to a finished diamond is perhaps 10-12 times. But when a human being is moulded the value addition can be several times over. There is no asset which is as mouldable or as malleable as the human being. Successful companies will have to discover the capability of making ordinary people extraordinary. They would be well advised to look at how NGOs operate as they seem to transform ordinary people into extraordinary people. India, for instance, has enormous untapped talent. Let me give you my own example. I was a refugee from Burma who made his way to Kutch. Today if I had been earning Rs 4,000 or 5,000 a month I should have been happy. But someone spotted the talent, and you can see the difference. India, to repeat, has enormous talent just waiting to be tapped.

In your recent book you talked about India and China rising …

Yes, the rise of India and China will make an enormous impact on the world. The rise of these two nations represents the changing economic and geopolitical alignment of the world. These two markets will be contested heavily as the rest of the world realises it needs to make its presence felt in these markets to be global players. Haier, the Chinese company, is probably the largest appliances company. Other brands such as Lenovo, Dell and HP too are making their presence felt. India does not seem to have a serious domestic player in the appliances market as Indian companies do not seem to have scale. Both India and China will have strong rural markets. While both India and China will go global, they will probably use different routes. China could use the route of manufacturing and exports, India could use the acquisition route. While this may have been temporarily stalled because of the current globalisation scenario, India could still get back on track.

You had spoken about China competing with India in the services sector.

I suppose China understands that India has a head start in certain sectors of outsourcing and technology. It is gearing itself up by training its children to speak English without a Chinese accent as it does realise that India has a head start in English which is a competitive advantage. The market will be big enough for both the players and India might cater to the higher end while China will perhaps cater to the lower end of the market. But the reality is that the world is comfortable dealing with India and selling to India. India is assuming leadership of the world as more and more Indian managers rise to positions of eminence in the US and Europe. Clearly the perceptions of India being a country of snake charmers is changing, and fast. India is emerging as a thought leader in academics and education, and people such as C. K. Prahalad are recognised globally.

Do you believe that the East is becoming more important in the world scheme of things?

Most definitely. I have a concept called the ‘Easternisation of the world’. Westerners, traditionally, are open to change, unlike Easterners who do have a tendency to resist change, being more traditional. Westerners have taken to Yoga, spirituality, Ayurveda, literature. Look at Slumdog Millionaire! I believe there is a fusion of cultures, what I call as ‘Christian Yoga’ as we have a situation where churches teach Yoga. Rudyard Kipling said “East is east and West is west and never the twain shall meet”. He was dead wrong. Incidentally he was wrong and is now dead (chuckles). There are other changes as well. The generation gap could be as low as eight years today unlike the 20 years or so that there was earlier.

Today we live in recessionary times, so what are the implications for customer service?

What do companies normally do in recessionary times? They normally cut back on items of expenditure, at times with disastrous results. They cut back on travel, training and education and on customer support. Traditionally technology has been the means of increasing productivity. The human race has traditionally embraced technology from the days of the fulcrum to the most advanced means of technology that is being used today. The solution to recessionary times is machine-enabled customer support.

We need to remember that people like machines. Today, thanks to the emergence of Web technology and broadband more customers shop online, particularly youngsters. Companies must encourage end consumers to do it themselves. People are also more comfortable dealing with machines as there is a consistency to them and humans vary in the quality of interaction with consumers.

Let’s move from service to brands. There is a lot of talk of branding in India, do you see any Indian brands making it big globally?

When you talk of brands you normally refer to product brands or service brands. Yet, there are brands that are business-to-business and corporate brands. Tata is a globally recognised and respected brand. Infosys is a well-respected brand and Wipro is not far behind. Indian corporate brands are making themselves felt globally. Yet, I believe India will make it to the top on a different route. India will rise as the country of brand owners than as the country of brand creators. You have a brand such as Tata Tea taking over Tetley. You also have other examples such as Jaguar which have been taken over by Tata. When it comes to the product space Indian brands are making their presence felt slowly. We have a brand like Patak’s Pickles moving from the ethnic space to the mainstream. Take Kingfisher beer, for instance; it is common for foreigners to ask for this beer in the pubs of London. So Indian brands are making their presence felt globally.

Finally, since you spend so much time with youngsters, especially students, what is your advice to them?

My advice to them is simple: “Never forget the purpose of your being here”. Management education is not only about getting a high-paying job. Students could ask themselves the question “How do I make money even as I do good for society?” You need to gain skills as well as knowledge. You need to remember you are embarking on a lifelong journey.

It is perhaps unlikely that you will start in a company and end in the same company as the earlier generation did. Be prepared too for mid-career crisis and remember that it could happen earlier to you.

Ramanujam Sridhar is the CEO of brand-comm and the author of “Googly - Branding on Indian Turf”.

The setting and its selling

With the IPL matches shifting to South Africa, marketers are finding ways to retain viewer interest and stay relevant.
Brands have floated promotions giving customers a chance to view matches in South Africa

The IPL is alive and kicking, but in South Africa. As I write, Rajasthan Royals, the winners of the first edition of IPL, have just won a tight game at Centurion. There are conflicting reports on the TRPs, one version says it is dropping while another says it is strong. Speaking for myself, I have watched the matches however much they have been interrupted by rain, and however many times Lalit Modi has been shown and however one sided some of them have been. (But I am an advertiser’s dream viewer and perhaps a dying breed!) Staying with Lalit Modi, I must mention however that if I had been responsible for his personal profiling I would have asked for a substantial bonus as the television crews seem to be infatuated with him! The grounds seem to be filled with people who seem to be having a good time if the amber coloured liquid in their hands is any indication. Consumers however are chafing at the bit just like Glen McGrath, who still has to get a game for the Delhi Daredevils. What is the consumer’s problem? She knows that the strategy break is a con, just to get in more commercials. She has to stay awake longer as the matches end later, defeating the very nature of T20 cricket. And batsmen are hard pressed to retain their momentum during an unnecessarily long break and usually end up holing out in the eleventh over. So quite a few people are being challenged by the matches being held in South Africa, whether it is Set max, which is wondering how to handle the extra talk time thanks to the frequent and persistent rain, or the Royal Challengers, who are wondering where their next win will come from or the Kolkatta Knight Riders, who must be dreading what new scandal will hit the media. But none of these, to my mind at least, is equal to the challenge that marketers and sponsors in India have faced with the shifting of the matches from the known to the unknown (for us at least] rainbow nation suddenly.

The theory of constraints

Marketing and management is all about optimization of resources that invariably are never enough for what we want to do. Another scenario is the presence of constraints that prevent organizations and brands from moving forward and the smarter companies handle these by taking them in their stride and working around them. I have nothing but the highest praise for the companies which had bet on the IPL second edition happening in the Chinnaswamy stadium at Bengaluru (good God!) and the Brabourne stadium at Mumbai (not much better), who found to their chagrin that the venues were the Wanderers and St. George’s Park in Centurion and several others that one had merely heard of or seen on TV. One of the most annoying aspects of the IPL commentary for me personally this season has been the way commentators have gone overboard on Lalit Modi and his team, who organized the transfer of venue in a mere three weeks. Commendable, but spare a thought for the marketers who had planned a whole range of promotional activities and ground activations in India, who were told that the matches would not be in Indian cities. Yet they have got their act together and have tried to make the most of the changed scenario within the same short time window and by and large are up and running, something that neither the Royal Challengers nor the Kolkata Knight Riders have been able to do, at least at the time of writing. So let’s take a look at some of the promotions that have been built around IPL and see what brands and companies have been doing here in India.

Ring in an idea

Idea Cellular launched the Special IPL-666 recharge where the consumer will get talk time of Rs. 666 and can earn up to 6 minutes of free talk time with every six that the Mumbai Indians score. May Jayasuria hit more sixes and may the residents of Mumbai talk more! Another visible scheme “Talk to Mumbai Indians” gives callers an opportunity to talk to Sachin, Zaheer and Harbhajan. There is a cute commercial where the phone rings and Harbhajan picks it up perhaps hoping that Symonds or Sreesanth would be on the line, but unfortunately it is a young female voice that wishes to speak to Zaheer Khan! I guess no one has told the feisty sardar that he should not pick up someone else’s mobile! For all you know it might have been someone from the Government of India asking him why he did not come to pick up his Padmasree in person! Idea has another scheme by which those who use roaming nationally or internationally have the opportunity to win a tour to South Africa. Aircel the sponsor of the Chennai Super Kings team has launched “Kaun dega man of the match award” contest for its mobile subscriber who can guess which is Dhoni’s favourite love song. The winner gets the rare opportunity to go to South Africa and hand over the man of the match award thereby getting instant recognition across continents and with millions of viewers across the world. Of course both Aircel and Chennai Superkings must be hoping that the highly paid MS Dhoni, around whom so many promotions have been built, scores a few more runs and even picks up a man of the match award as the current Indian T20 team is by and large sitting back and waiting for the foreigners to deliver whilst they poor, conscientious souls are doing it match after match - whether it is Hayden, Gilchrist, De Villiers, Sangakkara or Dilshan. Of course the veteran Indians (imagine calling the baby faced Sachin that) who are not part of the T20 team are showing our much touted youngsters a thing or two about commitment and passion. Back to the marketers, Virgin Mobile not to be outdone launches “Indian Hatke League” which gives Indian youth and not only Virgin Mobile users the opportunity to play this online mobile game where the user has the option to play for any of the eight teams participating in the second edition of IPL.

McDowell’s No.1 whose brand idea and theme has been built around friendship continues the theme with its T20 Fan Friendzy league (FFL) for the ongoing T20 season. Fans have the opportunity to form their own dream teams and virtually play ahead of every game and the group of friends scoring the highest points at the end of the season will be sent to England to watch the ICC T20 finals.

McDowell No.1 has an interesting concept “Loyal fans, die-hard friends” built around the theme that fans can support different teams and yet celebrate together while watching the games. Indigo Nation, the brand that designs trendy and fashionable formal wear for the young, edgy and maverick man is the official formal wear partner of the Royal Challengers Bangalore team. Let’s hope that the fashionable team will carry the edge on to the field. For every purchase of Rs. 1000 from indigo Nation, the customer gets a chance to win a trip to South Africa to watch the IPL semi-final and final. For every purchase of Rs. 1500, the customer gets a red satin tie, as is worn by the RCB team.

Continue to engage, continue to sell

In India, cricket sells, whether brands sell or not! While the big ticket brands like Pepsi have the capability and resources to put their money where their mouth is and spend crores of rupees behind concepts like “first ball ka captain” other brands may not have the same luxury and yet would like to capitalize on the mania that the game inspires in this diverse country. While it is relatively easier to do it in the stadia and around them when the matches are being held in India, the current scenario posts an entirely different challenge as the excitement has to happen in pubs, lounges and in sports bars. Thankfully the timing of the matches are just right for the Indian viewer (or should one add, the guzzler) as the day matches in South Africa are during the “happy hours” in India which enables one to forget how badly the team that one is supporting is playing! But back to the customer connect. While brands and marketers have been quick to cash in on the challenge they would be well advised to revisit the basics before they embark on an ambitious programme of promotions.

What is the essence of the brand?
What is the selling proposition?
How strong is the association with a particular interest like cricket?
Is it a “One off” idea or can it be long term?
Does it add to the brand’s equity or is it diluting it?
The trouble is that, at times, marketers get emotional about their brands and sometimes about cricket. An emotional attachment may or not be right for the brand. So think carefully and objectively and come up with your own strategy and here is hoping that it does not end up like John Buchanan’s multiple captains theory!

Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO of brand-comm and the author of “One land, one billion minds”.

A new, improved Satyam?

Ramanujam Sridhar
The brand must make an effort to show it has changed for the better..

When I was young (Oh God, there I go again!) a movie running for 100 days was a significant achievement. (Today however, I see posters heralding a triumphant ten-day-run of movies.) Aradhana, the Hindi movie with immortal music byS. D. Burman ran for 100 weeks in Tamil-speaking Madras, when I was just finishing school. But sadly, this is not about movies or music or even about my schooling, but about another significant achievement that has happened in the last 100 days. I refer to the takeover of Satyam by Tech Mahindra, which will fork out a small sum of Rs 2,889 crore to gain a controlling 51 per cent equity in the company whose troubles started 100 days ago, in the media at least, on January 7 with Ramalinga Raju’s confessions.

How quickly things have moved since that fateful day! No one must be more relieved than the 53,000 beleaguered employees of the company. These 100 days have also seen a tremendous achievement by the newly constituted board of Satyam to get its act together and get the interest of the corporate world in a brand which had come under a phenomenal cloud. It is also a significant achievement for India and Indian business when globally, larger, higher profile brands have bitten the dust and others are still out begging bowl in hand. But let’s return home and to our own concerns.

What does this takeover and change mean for brand Satyam? Will it regain its former glory? What must the company do? Let me hazard a few guesses as it is always easier to make predictions in turbulent times like these, as one can always take refuge under the unpredictability of the times that we live in, should the predictions turn out to be horribly off the mark!

Takeover - who wins, who loses?

Of the four who were serious bidders, maybe Cognizant was best suited from a technology and business fit perspective, but that was not to be. L&T too did the rumour rounds, having already had a presence on the board and showing its interest in no uncertain terms to all who cared to listen, media included. Now that the deal is done, it is pertinent to observe that perhaps the deal might benefit Tech Mahindra more than it might benefit Satyam, as it immediately catapults the combined entity into the elite stable of Indian software.

However, one must quickly add that though the Mahindras are not dominant players in the technology space (they are in the telecom space in technology) they are most certainly a respected name in the Indian industry, with a track record of success in business and the acknowledged ability to launch successful brands across categories. The troubled Satyam brand will certainly benefit from the solidity that the mere name implies and the consistency in management that the earlier leadership sorely lacked. Having said that, it might perhaps be better to concentrate on the road ahead and the challenges that lie in store than focus on the immediate past. For it seems apparent to even the casual observer that the road ahead is going to be reminiscent of the challenges and frustrations that the Indian industry faced in the times of the Licence Raj, full of unexpected road blocks and with hardly a dull moment!

The name of the game

Individuals do not have control over their names, by and large as parents and astrologers (in India, at least) determine how one is called. As my favourite author would say: “Imagine going through life with a name like this!” Brands, fortunately, have some leeway. They can even change names midway through their lives should the need present itself. And if ever there ever was a need for Satyam to change its name, it most certainly needs to do so in the present.

During my youth I made some feeble and ill-directed attempts to leave the country. Thankfully, I was unsuccessful. As part of those ill-fated attempts I wrote the GRE. (If you do not ask me my score, I promise you I won’t lie to you!) But back to that exam, which had a section on antonyms, where the student had to find the word that meant exactly the opposite to the word in question from the choices available. The word Satyam reminds me exactly of this, because the company has certainly stood for everything except truth which is really what Satyam means. So, is it a “no brainer” to change the name?

Well, sometimes research throws up answers that we already know, something that we realise much later, after spending considerable amounts of money. Doing research on the efficacy and relevance of the Satyam brand name in this case, might in my opinion, throw up the same result. While certain companies have built and refined their brand names from the past, such as Sasken, which was earlier known as SAS, I feel that the company ought to now make a clear break from the past. So that is one strategic brand decision out of the way. What next?

The essence of the brand

Ideally brands have an essence that defines their very being. Their raison d’etre. Too often these are tributes to the dexterity in word play of the brand consultant or advertising agency and not anchored in reality. Satyam or the new brand, as the case may be, will not have this luxury the second time around. Its mission and vision statements must be anchored in reality and not mere feel-good statements that adorn the walls of corporate boardrooms and that no one reads barring the office attendant who has the unfortunate job of dusting it occasionally!
Staying on the subject of brands, a successful brand is relevant to its publics and different from its competitors. There is no doubt that Satyam will continue to be relevant to most of its customers and to several thousand of its existing employees. (I must confess my cowardice in not addressing the relevance of the brand to investors at this point in time.) It must, in its new avatar, too be different. Not so much from its competition, but from the way it was, or has been perceived to be recently. In fact, this is the greatest challenge, particularly for existing employees. How do they keep demonstrating that they are “new & improved” in every aspect of their customer service and delivery? This is something that is easier to talk about than deliver, but the very success of the new venture, as I choose to call it, will hinge on this important difference.

Communication is in

Troubled times call for extensive and continuous internal communication. In this case, it is not only the environment but the company too that is under stress. Never has there been a greater time to communicate. The company should resist the temptation to talk to an ever eager media and focus internally on its most important target, its own people. An audience that has lived on the edge, fed by rumours and threatened by fears, some of them justified and who are now seeing a change of ownership. The company has to focus on retaining talent as that will be crucial in ensuring stability for its customers who have stood by it by during turbulent times. Communication of stability and a reassurance to existing employees will have to be punctuated with a clear articulation of a new set of values and a new direction that will be the basis of the company’s functioning.

I am sure the Mahindras are shrewd businessmen and know what they are getting into. They might do well to remember what Hector Liang, Chairman of United Biscuits, said: “Buildings age and become dilapidated. Machines wear out. Cars rust. People die. But what lives on are the brands.”

May the new brand that is being formed out of this acquisition live on!

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

Go on, surprise me!

Empathy with the consumer should be the guiding principle of service..

HDFC, the pioneer of the housing finance industry in the country, has raised the bar over the years on both technology and service ability.

On February 1, in the middle of the night, a shock awaited me. I got a frantic call around midnight that my mother was unwell. We rushed there, only to find that she was seriously ill. Her pulse was failing and one of us had the presence of mind to call the emergency care of Wockhardt hospital on Bannerghatta road in Bangalore, close to where we stay. Even as my mother continued to struggle over the next half hour we sat around hoping against hope that she would be okay. The emergency unit arrived from the hospital in time with all the paraphernalia - ambulance, stretcher, life-support equipment, a team of five including the duty doctor. They tried to revive her, even as we kept watching and praying. Sadly, it was too late. They left saying that there was very little they could do and it was all over.

Amidst all the grief I still realised that they were providing a necessary service and had to be paid for it. I asked them how much I should pay and at first one of them said that I had to pay for the injection. Then he called the hospital and said there would be no charge for the emergency visit of the entire team. While my mother was a patient of the hospital and used its services regularly this was still something that any hospital would have been justified in charging for. Today, a month later, I am able to talk about this and with effort even write about it. But clearly there was an element of surprise in their handling of the situation. Given the reputation that some hospitals have of being more commercial than they ought to be, this sensitive handling of a tragic incident came like a breath of fresh air to someone who was in a state of shock.

Outstanding service

My friend and service expert Ramesh Venkateswaran and I run a service programme called ‘Honeymoon for Life’ in which he asks participants to recount experiences where the service provider has gone beyond the call of duty and surprised the consumers and a range of examples are recounted by the participants from small establishments like pharmacies to credit card companies to banks. It rarely ever has been a hospital but then I have my own true-to-life example. So what happened here? Marketing and service is all about empathy, that all-elusive quality that great salespeople possess. Are you able to put yourself in the customer’s shoes? Are you able to go through the pain she goes through and offer a solution or relief? Are you able to surprise her? Usually hospitals shock us with their bills and service charges, but here was a pleasant surprise. However, one must quickly clarify that this is not about money and at that time money was the last thing I was thinking about. It was the gesture that completely caught me and my family unprepared, so much so that it made an impact on me. I am certain that I am going to be the hospital’s goodwill ambassador unless and until the hospital does something that tarnishes the great impression that it has made on me.

Developing with the times

Here is another example that is perhaps not as dramatic but still surprising that pertains to the old reliable HDFC. My association with Housing Development Finance Corporation as it was called goes back three decades as one of my best friends joined the company when it was founded in 1977. Over the years I have watched it grow in stature, size and reputation as India’s premier housing finance institution. I am sharing a surprising experience with the home loan company that happened more than a month ago.

But let me start with my association as a customer a small matter of 20 years ago when I took my first housing loan for the princely sum of Rs 3 lakh. Difficult though it may be to believe today, one could actually buy a decent two-bedroom apartment in the city of Bangalore for a little over this money in the late Eighties!

Don’t worry, I will not wax eloquent about how my starting salary in the bank in 1973 was Rs 372 or how a bottle of beer cost all of Rs 5 in Bangalore. I shall stay with HDFC and my experiences as a customer over the last two decades and how the institution has evolved in my own experience as a customer. When we talk about a brand, I think it is important to consider its guiding principles when it was started, however dominant the brand may turn out to be years later as HDFC most certainly is today.

More so in the light of our experiences with the Satyams of the world! HDFC has been the pioneer of the housing finance industry in the country and has from day one been a conservative financial institution, conceptualised as it has been on the lines of the more staid State Bank of India than the more adventurous Citibank. It is perhaps worthwhile to recall that other financial institutions that have come later in the home loan space and lent recklessly (at least a few of them) are now struggling with a higher percentage of NPAs than required or necessary. It seems there is a price to “risk” that they are now discovering, to their chagrin!Cut to the present

I have had many opportunities to interact and deal with HDFC over the years and have found them to be friendly, efficient and courteous, definitely in Chennai.
Sometimes we tend to forget the principle that financial institutions have to be less and less about money and more and more about people and service. Also we tend to confuse technology with service and forget that it is just an aid and not a substitute for service. And technology when harnessed effectively can actually delight and surprise the customer as I was able to experience just recently with HDFC.

Just last month I took a housing loan from the Chennai office of the company. The procedure was quick, friendly and I was handed over a cheque for the loan amount in a matter of ten minutes. Even as I got ready to leave with the cheque and shook hands with the person handling my case my mobile phone buzzed.

I picked it up to see a text message welcoming me to HDFC and giving me the password for me to check the position of my loan account on the net. I was floored because clearly HDFC had transformed itself over the years from being a conservative, stable financial services company to an organisation that had upped its service delivery to the next level without losing out on any of its basic functioning skills and competencies. It also made me quickly revisit my own perceptions about the institution being staid.

Clearly HDFC had raised the bar over the years on both technology and service ability.
So here are a few, possibly uncomfortable questions that are easier to pose than to answer:
How good is the service level across different teams in your company?
When was the last truly outstanding example of customer service?
How frequently does it keep happening?
Does your company make this part of the company’s folklore?
How often are there reaffirmations of commitment to service from senior management?A time to take stock

All of us have customers that we have to take care of. We have the option of providing a minimum of acceptable service as most of us manage to do (often with great difficulty), but rarely ever do we raise the bar and if we do it is done by one outstanding, committed, empowered individual but rarely does it extend through the length and breadth of the company. In troubled times like these with customers on edge, outstanding service can and will be the differentiator. The truth is staring us in the face but many of us just seem to be looking the other way.

So let’s start surprising our customers, lest we experience shocks!

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

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.)