Of fans and celebrities

Superstar power: Rajesh Khanna and director and ad man Balki shooting the Havells commercial.It takes courage to use a retired superstar to endorse a brand.

I used to live in Bombay, as that exciting city was called in the late Seventies in my bachelor days, and the star that people died for was Rajesh Khanna, whose famous hairstyle, ‘guru' shirts and trademark tilt of the head were forever etched in the minds and hearts of people. I remember an unsolicited tribute to his personality in a small hotel in Sion where, above the mirror, was a sticker that read, “We know you are Rajesh Khanna, but please don't comb your hair here.” Even in the city that spawned and led the “anti-Hindi agitation” Madras as Chennai was then called, his blockbuster movie Aradhana ran for 100 weeks in Little Anand! People like me who did not know a word of Hindi still hummed his songs hoping against hope that no one would ask us what we were singing. His fans were legion and would die for him. Well, newer, younger stars have taken his place and captured the imagination of today's youth just as much as Rajesh Khanna did three decades ago. One star has been replaced by several and Rajesh Khanna pretty much went into oblivion.

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A century with a difference

Bill Bernbach, who, in a land of supersized products, urged people to ‘think small’ when it came to the “ugly German car that made waves in post-War America”. _ V. SREENIVASA MURTHY

Remembering ad man Bill Bernbach, whose 100th birthday it was earlier this month

For some time now, a billion-plus Indians have been waiting for a century, actually a century of centuries from the little master Sachin Tendulkar, with bated breath initially and later with increasing restlessness, that now lies frustrated.

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United by team, divided by “spirits”

The Harbhajan-UB row about a spoof ad is a storm in a whisky peg.

Even as England and India were getting ready for the clash of the Titans and a historic test match at Lords, the Mecca of cricket, another clash was in motion. This was between two of India's current greats, M. S. Dhoni, arguably India's most successful captain, and his premier off spinner Harbhajan Singh whose claim to fame was the subjugation of Ricky Ponting in his prime. The feisty off spinner promptly earned the nickname of “Turbanator”. An aggressive competitor if there ever was one, who came out unscathed after “monkey gate” even if he could not manage to escape censure for slapping Sreesanth, another team-mate of his who did not know what hit him and promptly burst into tears. But how is it that two of India's victorious cricketers who have been part of the No. 1 test team in the world and members of the World Cup-winning T20 and one-day teams in the world, are made to look as though they cannot stand the sight of each other and Harbhajan's family and the entire Sikh community is up in arms and breathing fire and brimstone. So what's upsetting the apple cart on the eve of what is arguably the most important test series in recent times?

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In an ideal world...

Banish the myopia: Committed relationships can benefit a brand and its advertising/PR managers — Titan Industries has been associated with O&M and Lowe since its inception and Iodex with HTA (now JWT) for 86 years.

A few years ago I saw a very interesting commercial for the iconic brand Absolut vodka. I daresay not the ideal product category to talk about early in the morning even if the commercial was about an Absolut world. The interesting thing, however, was that the commercial had been created by a consumer for the brand and posted on YouTube. It featured different situations - a policeman leaving a lollypop instead of a parking ticket on the car's windshield; a huge hulk of a man whom you would dread meeting in a dark alley contentedly sitting and knitting a sock; the wife giving the husband a huge pastry full of cream and chocolate with the comment “Doctor's orders”; a young couple saying fairly intimate and yet uncomfortable things to each other with a pleasant smile and so on. This got me thinking, what if we had an ideal world in marketing and communications instead of the stress-filled and tension-ridden one that we currently inhabit?

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Much nostalgia, some regret

It is a little over three decades since I left Madras (as it was called then) and my mind goes back to the great times I had in that wonderful city. Madras was a great place to grow up even if it was 108 degrees in May. Who cared about the heat if one was chasing balls at the Marina cricket ground? A wonderful place to watch a cricket match and hear the Triplicane mamas waxing eloquent on which side of the wicket Derek Underwood should bowl from and the raucous chants of budding club cricketers whose wit far exceeded their cricketing ability. A phenomenal place to absorb culture even if you were only marginally inclined, and an easy city to live in, if only you knew the language.

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Viewer’s delight, sponsor’s nightmare

I must talk about the World Cup (habits don’t die) which is getting into the business end and India has managed to make every match interesting. How did they do that? They did that by playing way below their potential, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, turning certain victory into a pulsating tie and lo and behold Indians have to watch West Indies vs. England and South Africa vs. Bangladesh as our progress depends on theirs. What a coup for TRPs!!! And yet amidst all the Indian madness there is a bigger madness and that is the advertising. Even if I owe most of everything I have in my life to advertising, I am getting increasingly miffed with advertising for the World Cup which cuts into my viewing pleasure and makes me feel like throwing something heavy at the TV screen and blasting it into smithereens, but yet can’t as it is my hard earned money which paid for the TV in the first place. How many magic moments have been deprived thanks to the greed of the channels? Why can I not see the first ball and the sixth ball over of the over? Why should I see a half commercial when Shaun Tait ties his shoe laces? How many times do I have to suffer the same boring commercial? Why or why?

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In praise of cute kids

People have an unreasonable liking for children and dogs and nowhere else does that liking make itself apparent more than in television commercials. Remember the McDonalds “swing’ commercial where the child smiles and cries with every movement of the swing as the signage keeps appearing and disappearing?

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Heroes, zeroes and wannabes!

The IPL auction, hits and misses may be a media event but the quality of the game is what will determine its success..

Serious advertisers and those who have an interest in the game should go by the shorter version of the game and by that I mean T20.

The quality of the game,and not the players' prices, will ultimately have an impact on the success of IPL. As for the World Cup, that's another piece of entertainment better approached (or not) with great deliberation. Seen here are Mumbai Indians team owner Nita Ambani at this month's IPL auction (right) and the glittering trophy for the upcoming Cricket World Cup.

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The Times That We Live In

While advertisers are trying to get Young India right, will they please think of the other, especially, younger India watching their commercials?.

Is it a reflection of the times we live in or a young creative person's ability to get our attention?

It is 6.30 a.m. on a wintry morning in Bangalore and England has just retained the Ashes in style, beating an Australian side which used to be “awesome” and is now pretty much “awful”, to raucous chants of the Barmy Army - “Australia, are you England in disguise” they cheer and Australia have nowhere to hide for it is all happening at the Sydney Cricket Ground and not at some remote place like Nagpur or Ahmedabad. Earlier I had proudly watched the Indian resistance on a quagmire of a wicket and India demonstrated to a disbelieving Western world that it deserved to be the No.1 test team in the world as they stood up to everything that the Proteas threw at them, including a bottle on our own home-grown brat Shantakumaran Sreesanth.

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Are you missing the digital revolution?

In the eighties, some of my classmates went to the US to study further and I was a bit envious of them. The reason? The US was going through a “sexual revolution” or so one read and here I was sitting in India where even the green revolution was a flop. When they returned a few years later a little rounder if not much wiser, I asked them eagerly about their experiences and they said rather shamefacedly “I missed it. It just passed me by”. Now
when I see the digital revolution taking over the marketing the world over, I am reminded of this incident. Is our generation, which has its fair share of industry leaders, missing the digital bus? Now why am I saying this? Consider this. What is the greatest challenge that Indian marketers are facing. To my mind it is simple “Heads of marketing in companies are in their forties, Managing directors are in their fifties, while consumers are in their twenties!” Enough and more has been said about the Indian youth market, its size, its complexities and its obvious potential as a market. What does the Indian youth particularly urban youth have similar in broad characteristics to youth the world over? They are a plugged-in community and are either on the mobile or on the net 24/7. They can bare their souls to complete strangers unlike us who are tighter than clams. They have the attention span of nano seconds and are bored easily. They are not satisfied with what they are born with and what to equip themselves with to meet the demands of the world. If that means preparing for IIT so be it. If that means taking a year off from school to compete in Indian idol, then that too is par for the course! So where is the problem?

It is all in the attitude honey

Belonging to generation X, I believe we are different. We are unable to accept generation Y as our equals and peers, as my second son says quite succinctly “Dad, the problem with you is that you are a dangerous combination. You are both a teacher and a parent. Teachers lecture and parents advise. You do both!” So maybe it is time for us to do more introspection if we are to understand youth and their medium better. Are we still in the world of print and television while they are online? The other challenge is technology. Some, not all, of our generation are technologically challenged. I wonder how many of you have seen this commercial for R world, a value added services provided by Reliance communications. As it is a few years old, let me jog your memory. There is a class of young school children who are being taught. A parent of one of the children is standing outside the class, desperately trying to get his young kid’s attention. The kid desperately looks the other side. His friends draw his attention to the fact that his dad is outside and he comes out reluctantly from the class, only to be asked by his dad how he can see the score on his mobile. The kid looks at his father disdainfully says “Bus button dhabao” and gets him the score in a flash. As luck would have it, Dhoni hits a six and the father does a gig in the corridor, to the disapproving glares of two nuns who pass by. It is a brilliant commercial which addresses the consumer insight of how children take to technology like ducks to water while their parents struggle to come to terms with it.

Opportunity beckons

I was at a seminar recently where one of the speakers asked an interesting question to a group of Managing directors of PR agencies “How many of you have Facebook or LinkedIn accounts “I am not going into the answers here. But my question is simple. If the next generation is in a different medium, should we not try to understand and harness it, for our own good? How long can we keep talking about being “technophobes” and take pride in being “pencil and paper” types? The same challenge is with advertising agencies. Today’s agency heads have been reared on the picture tube.

To them life is one long thirty second commercial. They do not understand the online medium, much less create for it. Clients too are experimenting with the medium much like radio in the nineties, without going the whole hog. I believe that while there are changes around us that we can all feel good about, I do not wish us to have the Indian mentality- “Look how much we have achieved in sixty years”. Yes, but there is so much more to be done. I think, perhaps the best expression that comes to my mind when we talk of India and the online medium is that “we have miles to go before we sleep”. And if we do not traverse those miles now, we will end up having sleepless nights.

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

Image Source : Social Media Vision

Embracing Gen Y

...continuation from last week "Of older marketers, young consumers", how older marketers can communicate with their young target audience, a different beast altogether..

The average Gen ‘Y', if research is to be believed, changes its jobs an average of 29 times and the average time in one job is as long as 1.1 years!

With an eye on the future:Candidates line up for a written test and interview being conducted by top BPO companies. These jobs have brought about a sea change in lifestyles and mores.

People of my age on occasion have difficulty in remembering the names of their own children, so more for my benefit than for yours, dear reader, let me quickly summarise some of the key points we addressed in the last issue (November 4, 2010) on the subject of young customers. The biggest challenge facing marketing in India today is the fact that heads of marketing are in their forties, managing directors are in their fifties while the customers they are wooing are in their twenties! What is it that makes these twenty-somethings tick and how can marketers use this knowledge to woo them?

India's youth wants to improve itself by education and keeps attempting the IIT entrance and the CAT, even if the odds are stacked against it. Others wish to look better - an insecurity that the fairness creams market literally lives and feeds off. Older people wish to appear young too, mothers get tickled pink when someone says that they look like their daughter's sister and fathers go out to pubs with their young sons. The space, which was exclusively youth at one point in time, has now become more inclusive with older people too jostling for elbow space and attention to the chagrin of their younger wards.

Reality shows and attempts to acquire national celebrity status through programmes such as Indian Idol are common, particularly in people from smaller towns, and it is not uncommon for youngsters to drop out of college to prepare better for these shows and then they do go back reluctantly to their old, mundane lives. We also spoke about the ability of youth to multitask, their ability to be connected 24/7 and finally of how different their sleeping habits were from older people. Young India sleeps late, to put it mildly. But is every young Indian coming home with the milkman after a night of revelry or is something else happening?

The BPO revolution sweeps young India

The BPO brigade is a million-strong today and the people who work in this sector have no alternative but to synchronise their work timings with that of their counterparts in the US or the UK, if not Venezuela. It is not uncommon to find people working from 11 p.m. at night till 7 a.m. the following day. To confuse the issue, there are also some companies that call themselves KPOs. While KPOs claim that their work is not as mundane and dull as their BPO counterparts, it still warrants unearthly times and my limited understanding of the difference between these two ‘O's is that those in KPOs cop less abuse from their customers! Abuse notwithstanding, this sector like no other demonstrates the tremendous change in terms of the opportunity that presents itself to educated youth.

Of course, the word ‘education' has to be taken with a pinch of salt. It basically means an ability to communicate in English and it is not uncommon for household help to put their daughters into classes to help learn and improve their English.

It is not uncommon for people to start work early and significantly young India believes in the value of work experience even while in college as the fact that you have worked in events during weekends and in your spare time reads well in your bio-data and denotes a seriousness of purpose. It is not uncommon to find college students hanging out at golf courses handling the registration of old fogeys and providing them their high point of the day even as they make a few cool bucks. Yes, young India wants to move up in life, look better, earn more.

Of course, there are social implications as well. The BPO culture is something that has its own implications in terms of ‘thank God it's Friday', quick money and a lifestyle that is very different from what the average middle-class Indian is exposed to in his or her own home.

Rather than going into a needless harangue on the falling moral standards, I think it probably makes sense for us to say that the BPO pie presents an interesting option to the marketer of people who probably live at home and have a fair amount of disposable income with a propensity to spend and often experiment with risky stuff that people in more traditional jobs might baulk at.

Parents live in fear as they wonder what their children, who go to work after they have gone to sleep, do. Remember the Motorola commercial where the parents worriedly ask the kid who has a new flip phone whether he is doing something that he should not be doing?

What is the big deal about change?

Old India was reluctant to change and often paranoid about it. It worked in the same company for 37 years and left it only because it was forcibly asked to at the age of 60! It might have hated the job, lived in dread of the boss but still had the hypocrisy to make a virtue of this fear of change. They lived with the same person not because they loved the person but merely because the possibility of leaving the person, while it certainly must have crossed their minds, was not acceptable to society.

While today's generation ‘Y' is not exactly the opposite, it certainly has a different outlook to work and relationships. The average Gen ‘Y' of today, if research is to be believed, changes its jobs an average of 29 times and the average time in one job is as long as 1.1 years! Of course, it does pose a counter question to employers whether they really understand this generation or are too willing to write them off as unstable and “like that only”.

Forget about jobs, people at least in the cities get into and out of relationships with the ease with which cricketers change from flannels to pajama cricket. My generation used to go into deep depression if the girl in the bus stop did not look at them at 8.15 and swear eternal love to someone who had the misfortune of smiling at them, while this generation wants to “move on”. The Fastrack commercial where the guy and girl return all the trinkets and gifts given by each other when they break up (without too much heartburn) is perhaps an indication of the times that we live in.

They are unafraid too of showing their emotions and maybe the Fastrack bag commercial with Genelia and Virat Kohli where the saucy Genelia finds a new use for her bag is a newer side of generation ‘Y' that may shock the “oldest member” but I don't see young India caring too much about us.

On a more serious note Gen Y does not seem to think that marriage is sacred either — marriages tend to break up a lot easier than before. They often seem to expect a lot more from relationships and people and have neither the patience nor the inclination to see things through. Who knows? Maybe they just don't have the energy to go through the charades their parents go through in front of them day in and day out!

So where do we go from here?

Generation ‘Y' is here to stay, rule and buy. So rather than merely accept them, let us embrace them! And here, of course, I speak figuratively. We do know that they have the attention span of nanoseconds and get bored easily. (At times they remind me of some of my clients.) So we need to engage them, not lecture to them. The communication principle of “be quick, be friendly, be gone” comes to my mind. And yet I find most advertising dull. Generation ‘Y' has a sense of humour and is willing to laugh at itself and most certainly at the older generation. The challenge for us is to entertain even as we sell.

David Ogilvy might have thundered “People don't buy from a clown”. But the only thing that we know today is that there are no rules, though you must certainly know the rules before you break them! Each young Indian is different - the student of St. Xavier's, Mumbai, is different from the student of Bishop Heber's College in Tiruchi even if they are of the same age and study the same subjects. The person in Ranchi is different from the person who lives in Boat Club Road in Chennai. Gen Y is saying “I am not just a bl***y demographic” and I do hope we are listening. Generation ‘Y' is saying “I am wired” while it secretly seems to be saying that we have our wires crossed! Generation ‘Y' is saying “I am not a scaled down adult”, “Neither am I your unrealised ambition”. But to me, at least, Generation ‘Y' is also saying “If you engage me, I could be your customer for life”.

Customer for life! What an entrancing concept! Let's view Generation ‘Y' not only as our future but the present and future for marketers. What we need is a change of attitude. But are we ready?

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

Of older marketers, young consumers

How should the former overcome the age gap and speak convincingly to the latter?.

India's Gen Y is a complex kind that believes in self-advancement as much through education as through Indian Idol, is unashamedly self-absorbed, highly networked and lives life in a melting pot - how can marketers, usually much older, connect?

A few weeks ago I was asked to speak at the WAN IFRA conference at Jaipur on Gen Y in India, their hopes, fears, aspirations and on how marketers could reach out better to them. When my family heard of this opportunity to go to Jaipur, they asked me in their usual polite manner: “Do you do anything other than give speeches?” The Ramanujam family can never be accused of tact! Whenever I hear statements like this and it is quite often, I gently remind them that I am in the communications business and if delivering speeches and presentations isn't communication then what is! Personally, I learn a lot more from preparations for assignments like this.

Like in this case, I was able to look at several studies such as the Nielsen-India Today study on youth which was extremely illuminating and which has been used in this piece. Be that as it may, let us return to Gen Y and see if we can crack the code. I must, however, confess that I am perhaps not the best person qualified to understand this generation. Fifty-seven-year-olds are hardly the best judges of twenty-somethings, are they? My only qualification, perhaps, is that I have two sons aged 26 and 23 and my endeavour to understand them over the years has probably resulted in my only true sign of wisdom, a balding head!

But on a more serious note, is there a simple way to classify today's youth? In the mid-Nineties, Bajaj had done its second Hamara Bajaj ad which some of you might recall. Let me attempt to jog your memory. It has images of guys in motorcycles who drive around a rangoli so as not to disturb the pattern, guys in grungy T-shirts carrying sitars, a girl removing her hand from the boy's leg as she sees an older person on the road … The whole commercial, in my view at least, represented Indian youth of that time - traditional and yet modern, conservative and yet contemporary. In one word, the youth of the Nineties was being modern within the constraints of Indian culture and tradition. They would neither go completely overboard, nor would they rock the boat. Brilliant, I thought, and a nice depiction of young India.

In 2010, however, I feel that such a depiction might be an oversimplification of a complex breed of people. So what makes young India tick, what are their beliefs and what should India do to reach out to this generation?

The marketing challenge of India

At the risk of carrying coal to Newcastle we need to remind ourselves that we have the youngest population in the world and one-fourth of the world's youth population lives here. The good news is that 50 per cent of the Indian population will be under 30 even in 2015. But then what's the bad news? The people who are marketing to these people are much older. Vice-presidents of marketing are in their forties, managing directors are in their fifties and the customers who are buying products and services are in their twenties! And how old are editors of newspapers and magazines? I would much rather not answer that! Given this reality, what should companies do? I think they should start by marshalling their knowledge on Generation Y. What does today's youth brigade believe in?

The power of education

“A person who is better educated has more power.” The youth of today strongly believes in the power of education, even if on occasion, parents have to reinforce this belief! The success rates in IITs and IIMs are as low as 2 per cent! But clearly statistics like these do not prevent four lakh students from appearing for the IIT and a few days ago two lakh students appeared for the CAT (incidentally, a smaller number than last year). This desire to improve themselves through education is as old as the hills, but it is heartening to note that the vast Indian middle-class seems to have passed down this value to the next generation as well.

There is another new dimension to this desire for advancement, though. People believe that talent hunts like Indian Idol are the way to self-advancement. Indian Idol, for instance, had two lakh applicants and over 20,000 people were called for auditions. It is not uncommon for people to drop out of college for a year to participate in the talent hunt that will push to them to a completely new level of recognition and rewards. Young India does not believe that education is the only way.

The other important point of view is that today's Indian youth can no longer afford to “live with what he/ she has been born with”. The desire to look better is perhaps more in evidence today than ever before. An insight that brands such as Fair and Lovely have used for years and continue to do even today. Remember the controversial air-hostess commercial? Witness too, the number of fairness cream brands and cosmetic brands in the marketplace today compared to a decade ago, and the share of shelf, wallet and mind that these brands seem to enjoy. Today's youth too seems to be far more conscious of their physical well-being (if not their mental). On the rare occasions that I have gone to the gym I have been surrounded by twenty-year-olds building their bodies and toning their muscles. That's admirable but what is not is the fact that they keep referring to me as ‘uncle' despite all my attempts to look young and “with it”. Even as we speak of the younger generation we need to mention that older people are trying their hardest to appear younger. Mothers wish to appear like younger sisters of their daughters and brands such as Santoor appeal to this desire.

No longer chilled out

Our generation had its fair share of youngsters inspired by Woodstock. We talked of ‘discovering ourselves' and admired the backpack generation, though none of us owned backpacks unlike every second youngster of today. Yet some of us were chilled out, aloof and distant. Not so the current generation. Theirs is an inclusive life and unlike our generation that stayed exclusively and was friends with people who spoke the same language and belonged to the same socio-economic classification, this generation is networked. It is an inclusive group and has friends who speak different languages, come from different cultures and accepts all quite easily. It is perhaps in this context that the Idea Cellular commercial should be viewed. Have you seen the commercial where a Malayali goes to Mumbai and a Malayali lands up in Punjab … A brilliant execution of a powerful insight which must appeal to youth, certainly.

Are 24 hours enough?

How does Generation Y spend its time? Research from the Omnicom MediaGroup suggests that youth need more than 24 hours to a day. This generation has given a new dimension to multitasking. It wakes up (usually late) and reads supplements with the TV on. Continues to chat and blog with the TV on. Reality shows seem to fascinate them. Spend time at multiplexes (usually in class time), hang out in pubs and in Bangalore, at least, make their way to Café Coffee Day after the pub closes down at 11 p.m., organises and attends college fests and contests. They are plugged in all the time – either on the mobile or on their computer. If they have a quota of free SMSes that mobile service providers offer, that is usually run through by 9 a.m.!

Of course, as a parent, I wonder when they study or attend class. But this is not about how older people spend their time worrying, but about how younger people spend their time living! There is an interesting statistic about the younger generation that will have some relevance to marketers. Almost 50 per cent of the younger population goes to sleep post midnight as compared to older people who are between 30 and 45 years, where the percentage is just about 19 per cent.

Clearly (and sadly) the older generation seems to have things to do during the day like work! But this has interesting implications for marketers. Should the definition of ‘prime time' for youth be redefined to, say, 11p.m.? Newspaper owners have been keen to get their newspapers to their readers before the crack of dawn (never mind the fact that sleepy towns like Bangalore do not have such good fortune) as that was the time that the average Indian was at his brightest and most alert. What about Generation Y? When has it been up at the crack of dawn unless they are winding up after a party! So should newspapers come up with a late night edition only for this generation?

Interesting and yet incomplete … Read more in the next issue.

-

Ramanujam Sridhar

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

The Complete Man Returns

Raymond's advertising is a good example of a brand proposition kept alive and intact down the years..

Brands constantly try to remain in the public memory and advertising is an important way of making it happen. Raymond's advertising in particular has managed to engage consumers with the brand.

We goofed. Pure and simple. Before you attempt to say “so what's new” or “I told you so” let me try and explain. We have a simple ritual in our office of recognising employees on their birthdays. It is nothing elaborate, actually. We give the lucky person a cake and all sing “Happy Birthday” at the top of our voices. We have the leader of the local church choir leading our efforts though he is hard-pressed to get the willing but completely hapless group into some semblance of melody as there are two sets of voices competing for attention.

One set slightly gruffer than M.R. Radha, an actor of my time, and another set just slightly shriller than Sachin Tendulkar, an icon of your time. But we have a great time, which usually culminates in the lucky (!) person having to make a speech which is often as predictable as post-match press conferences in T20 games.

So where did we goof? We missed the birthday of one of our employees. Which is perhaps not earth-shattering given the chaotic way in which most organisations function. But what was particularly galling was the fact that the person we had forgotten to recognise was one of our nicest employees and someone whom most people went to when they had a problem.

And someone who, despite the enormous pressure she was exposed to at work, always sported a smile. I found her very subdued and not her normal cheerful self the next day which was a bit odd. We soon discovered what we had done, or more precisely, not done. Agencies are pretty good at coming out smelling like roses from the worst of disasters so the young people in the office rallied around, organised an impromptu party and found a nice way of saying ‘Sorry we are like that only'.

Of course, being the nice soul that she is, she forgave me for forgetting. After all, working closely with me, she knew that I was close to senility and was even having difficulty remembering the names of my children. But what hurt her most was that her family had forgotten as, of course, had her second family, the agency that she was spending so much time at. Oh, the malady of forgetfulness, how much better we would be without it!

Another birthday, another place

Over the weekend even as I kept thinking about it and was trying hard to forget our goof, I saw a commercial. Now that is hardly shocking given the amount of time I spend watching TV. I think it was 3 Idiots (or so I hope) that was being shown on one of the channels and there was the young Raymond model smartly turned out as always, entering a retirement community. Ever since I read a research report many years ago which spoke about Indian youth not worrying unduly about sending their parents to such places, I have been fairly interested in them. After all, one should be interested in places one is likely to end up in, right?

But back to the commercial where the Raymond man waves cheerily to a number of old people before spotting his old teacher standing alone and aloof in a corner. It's his birthday and I think the familiar emotion of not being cared for or wished on his birthday is evident on his face. The young man quietly tells the other residents that it is his birthday and they get ready to surprise him. Meanwhile, he opens his laptop and through the webcam shows his old teacher images of his grandchildren who cheerily wish him happy birthday as do his children. The scene is complete with the other residents of the old age home who have quickly mustered up a cake and the entire gang of silver citizens wishes the retired teacher and makes his day. The teacher hugs his old student who, as always, is wearing a Raymond suit that feels like heaven. An interesting commercial that highlights the loneliness of growing old and how technology can reduce the gap, linked by familiar models and a strong brand presence that has been a feature of Raymond's work over the years.

If it's a wedding it has to be Raymond

Like most Indians the first suit I bought and wore was at my wedding reception and, of course, it had to be Raymond's. Twenty-eight years later I have the same wife, a tribute to her indulgence and patience more than anything else, but the suit too fits after minor (!) alterations. I remember my father's words “have scope for expansion” when I was getting the suit made. Strange but true, for although he never put on a single inch, all of us dutifully did, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places! I came into contact with the Raymond brand again and fully realised its enormous success in my days at Mudra where the brand often featured in discussions and reviews. Vimal was Mudra's flagship brand and the agency was passionate about it. Frank Simoes was the agency that was producing sophisticated and classy advertising for the brand. For those interested in advertising trivia, Frank Simoes used to handle Vimal's advertising in the pre-Mudra days and the tagline “Only Vimal” was his. Mudra had a grudging respect for Raymond's advertising and its clear message of “understated elegance”. This sophistication has been carried on over the years first by Frank Simoes, then by Nexus and now by R K Swamy BBDO. Sometimes when brands change agencies, they change stances and end up losing brand properties in the quest for change. Often the baby is thrown out with the bath water! Thankfully not the case here!

Retired teacher wins hearts

One of the earlier commercials for Raymond, arguably the best, features the above mentioned teacher retiring from school to the complete desolation of his doting students. They have placards saying “please do not go” even as he drives off in his trusted Morris Minor after one last look at the school to which he has given so much and which loves him so much. The fabric is woven deftly into the commercial, for after all, the problem with so many of these commercials is that they can apply equally across most categories. This generally happens when scriptwriters get carried away by the power of their idea and forget that the purpose of advertising is not merely to entertain but sell! The sequel to this commercial is the teacher attending a wedding reception of one of his students who was most distraught at his leaving school. The teacher goes in diffidently into a grand wedding wondering what his own reception might be. He need not have worried; the groom quickly disengages from the crowd around him and rushes to meet his old teacher and seeks his blessings, wife in tow. The commercial ends with all the old students getting into a group picture with the teacher. The current commercial is the third in the series featuring Bomi Dotivala whose role in Munnabhai MBBS too was written about.

Brands are all about properties

Brands constantly try to remain in public memory and advertising is an important way of making it happen. Clever, consistent advertising strategically executed over the years creates a property that customers recall and associate with the brand. For years the cute girl that eyeballed the camera and said, “I love you Rasna” was a property of the brand. The models in Raymond commercials, particularly the teacher, seem to not only entertain and hold our attention, but also further the engagement with the brand. I am intrigued by the concept of sequels to commercials. As long as it does not make the agency self-obsessive, it is a great opportunity to cue earlier memories and associations and cement relationships with the brand. And yet I see a lot of advertising that leaves me really cold and make as much impact as “ships that pass us by at night”. So here are a few questions worth thinking about:

How distinctive is your advertising?

Does it have a clear and consistent tone of voice over the years?

What have you taken from the past? Remember, the past, unless it is a baggage, can be used to advantage.

Do you have a brand property that customers actually recount in brand research studies?

And finally, are you using technology to keep track of birthdays?

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly: Branding on Indian Turf. He blogs at www.ramanujamsridhar.blogspot.com)

Which shampoo has won the mystery stakes?

What's in it for the consumer really? Now, that's the real mystery!

Hindustan Unilever and Procter & Gamble are at it again. They remind me of the protagonists in that infamous test series that India played with Australia Down Under. They seem to be as feisty as Harbhajan Singh or as sullen and morose as Andrew Symonds was a few years ago, as they kept going at each other and the media often got into the contest to complicate things and muddy the waters even more. This seems to be happening all too often with these two companies as well. Some time ago Rin and Tide Naturals had fought the detergent war with a comparative commercial and even went to court on which cleaned whiter. I often wonder what happens to people in these two companies when they get promoted. How does their job description change? Well, my guess is from washing clothes, they graduate to washing hair! That is precisely what has happened as now it is the shampoo brands that are scrapping. Let's take a look at the latest provocation.

The mystery unfolds

It all started with a teaser campaign with the line ‘A Mystery Shampoo. 80% women say is better than anything else'. It was a high-profile multimedia effort using hoardings, TV and today's darling - the social network. Actors Katrina Kaif, Neha Dhupia and Shilpa Shetty were crowing on social network sites about how good the shampoo is, and posted their transformed looks on various sites, and how happy they were to sign on this brand as endorsers, and how soon the mystery would be out.

I am sure the client and the agency must have preened and patted themselves on the back for these “honest testimonials' from these celebrities. After all, we know how truthful actors are about everything including age and relationships! The competition (read HUL) did not seem unduly impressed or fazed. Of course, a basic research on Google (where would we be without it) would reveal that a similar mystery campaign was launched in 2008 in the US for Pantene and also the competitive action and strategies. In any case what happened was swift, dramatic and unfortunate for P&G. Before the big reveal of the Pantene announcement, presumably slated for August 1, HUL took over hoardings, newspapers and TV with its messaging: “There's no mystery Dove is the no.1 shampoo”.

The thunder of the mystery seems to have been stolen and there was no mystery as to on whose face the egg was. After all, shampoo and eggs do have an affinity and a connect!

The trouble with competition

One of the sad realities of business is that there are always competitors. The days of HMT are sadly gone and seem destined never to return as today, competition presents itself from the unlikeliest of nooks and corners and continues to perplex. One of the earliest manifestations of action like this that tickled watchers of advertising was the conflict between Hertz and Avis, the car rental companies in the US. Hertz being the market leader by far was bursting at the seams with customers (lucky them) and often could not even afford to clean the cars before handing it over to a waiting, often irate customer. Avis, the No.2 company that had made a virtue of being No.2 (with its campaign “because we try harder”), wished to capitalise on this and ran a campaign that said “our ash-trays are cleaner”.

It did seem a marketing coup of sorts till Hertz got into the act by asking, “What would you say in your advertising if you had half the number of cars, half the number of people to handle them and half the locations? Right, your ash-trays are cleaner! And then they had an endearing question at the end of the ad asking “Who's perfect?”

Certainly no one is perfect, not the no. 1 car rental company then, and certainly not half the competitors in business whether it was in the past, today in the present, or tomorrow in the future. Remember Pepsi's campaign during the 1996 cricket World Cup in India? After losing the sponsorship bid in India to Coke its arch rival, Pepsi used celebrities such as Sachin Tendulkar, Dominic Cork, Courtney Walsh and the umpire Dicky Bird in saying ‘Nothing official about it' and in the process making the sponsor sound officious, stuffy and old in the bargain. Of course, it is hardly relevant that it was the sponsor for the 1999 cricket World Cup in England. And despite my memory being a bit dodgy, I certainly do remember what happened in my early days in advertising in the computer category. Zenith Computers (or so I think) ran a campaign listing its features in a full page ad, leaving half a page ad free for any of the competitors who could match them. It was asking for trouble as HCL (again writing from memory), as aggressive a company as one is likely to find, came up with an ad and features that were far superior, or so it claimed. In any case I had certainly no way of discriminating between bits and bytes then and certainly not even now but certainly there was no doubt as to which of the two ads had the sharper bite.

A frame of reference

It does make sense for smaller players to have a frame of reference. Even if your office is a hole in the wall, it might help to say you are “opposite the Empire State Building”. And the same strategy has worked for smaller brands such as Apple and Pepsi that have eyeballed their larger, more influential and better established rivals, and taken them on without fear of the consequences and actually benefited. Apple with its “Welcome IBM” ad when the giant had entered the personal computing space had given the impression that here was a leader welcoming healthy competition for the benefit of the human race! Hardly! Pepsi has taken potshots at Coke regularly whether it is the MC Hammer ad or the now redone ad of Coke and Pepsi salesmen. So there is no denying the fact that having a competitive frame of reference and comparing themselves to larger, well-established players can help smaller brands if helped by smart execution and nimble on-the-ground action. But does it help all brands, across categories and where customers are not necessarily young and on the ball?

Learning from the mystery

So what happened in the case of the mystery shampoo? HUL and its agency can certainly pat themselves on the back for capitalising on some obvious Zenith-like gaps that P&G had provided for them, by having too long a gestation period for the teaser campaign and replicating something that they had done globally. I think multinational companies need to rethink their strategies of replicating and borrowing from other markets in today's Internet age. Despite all this talk about social media, I often wonder if we are missing an important point. Social media is all about engaging the customer in dialogue. What is the great opportunity for engagement in paid celebrities saying they have tested the product and find it good? They better find it good. It is like Shah Rukh Khan saying it is safe for him to drink Pepsi when he is the brand ambassador. Well, if they paid me several crores, I might even drink castor oil and quickly wash it down with whisky off camera!

What about the consumer?

When Symonds and Harbhajan behaved in their self-indulgent, insensitive way, they spared little thought for lovers of the game the world over, and, of course, we had a largely biased and interested media on both sides adding fuel to the fire. This perhaps is not as bizarre, but I think often companies miss the point. Building market share and loyalty with the customer is not only about taking potshots at the competition, scoring brownie points and getting reams of editorial in social media sites. It is about something much more lasting. It might make sense where the audience is young and discerning like Apple's customers and fan club may be. But do shampoo users care a fig? Of course, given the abundance of my hair I am not the target customer, but it would make sense for these companies that spend so much time having a go at each other, in testing whether all this really makes an impact on the market place. Do customers really care which the mystery shampoo is? This campaign reminds me of a lot of advertising that is aimed for the benefit of the creative director in the other agency, for him to notice and compliment in the pub when the rivals do bump into each other. But does it do anything for the consumer? A mystery, if you ask me!

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm. He blogs at www.ramanujamsridhar.blogspot.com.)

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)

Blast from the past

Favourite old ads are making a comeback. Did they have to disappear, in the first place?.

Is this revival of old commercials a trend? Or just the action of some smart marketers who are realising that they have good stuff in their own cupboards that can be brought out and screened again to an old audience that recognises them and a new audience that is bound to like them? And more significantly, are there consumers who prefer these old ads to the current crop and would much rather see them?

In the early days of brand-comm, the communications consultancy firm that I founded and that I (occasionally) work for, we did an interesting consulting assignment for Parry's Coffy Bite. For the benefit of those who may not have a sweet tooth or may not have tasted that wonderful bite of confectionery priced at the magical figure of 50 paise, it has a distinctive taste that is a unique blend of coffee and toffee. Children loved the forbidden coffee taste and adults enjoyed the toffee taste.

The first commercial done for the brand was arguably the best, featuring the father and his eight-year-old son both chewing the candy enthusiastically with the son saying “Coffee!” while the father said “Toffee!” and the argument started and continued over the years. Simple thought, clear position, effectively executed. Consumers liked the toffee, not to mention the ad, the brand did well and everyone was happy.

Came the time to change the commercial and complicating the issue was the fact that adults too were tasting the product and enjoying it, and slowly but surely, the focus moved from the taste of the candy to the argument and boy, was it continued! Commercials were made on a number of people having arguments. The commercials became cleverer, the subjects more convoluted and the taste platform was deserted in favour of this more exciting platform, for advertising, at least. The advertising won awards even as the brand, hit as it was by the entry of brands such as Alpenliebe, started to feel the heat in the marketplace.

We came in to look at the situation objectively and all the research seemed to point to a few obvious things. While adults consumed the product, if it happened to be at home, they were not going out to actively buy it. The primary consumer and the heavy user was the kid aged between 8 and 14 years and the product's key attribute was its unique blend of coffee and toffee. The client and agency had moved to the more intellectual terrain of arguments from the taste and it was an obvious solution to come back to the original position that the taste is so good that it is difficult to say whether the taste is coffee or toffee and even run the same ten-year-old commercial for a short time before another execution could be done.

The Tamil poet Kannadasan might have written that the “legs that stray from the right road will not reach their destination” but brands can be more fortunate. They can come back to either running their old commercial or at least reviving the earlier position that served them so valiantly in the past.

Nootruku Nooru Vajram

Another brand which taught us interesting lessons was Vajram, a brand of cement from Dalmia that brand-comm had branded, created the packaging and advertising for and launched in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The communication and branding were research-based and the television commercial ‘Nootruku Nooru' Vajram resonated in homes in Tamil Nadu that avidly watched Sun TV. The brand was one of the most successful cement brands launched in Tamil Nadu and soon became the company's mainstay. The commercial ran for several years and the client, and sometimes even the agency, got tired of it.

Every year at dealer meets we would ask the dealers the same question — “Should we change the commercial?' — and the dealers would look at us as if they had been told ‘India is the best T20 team in the world' and echo a resounding “No!” I am sure they must have been often wondering if the brand was in safe hands. ‘If it ain't broke, don't fix it' might well have been their impression. Several years later, just recently, in fact, the commercial has been changed. I do not wish to comment on that as we no longer handle the communication, but I just wonder! I am sure the results will soon be out for the customer tells us in no uncertain terms what she thinks about the communication and the brand.

People of my age may be forgiven for living in the past and going back to ‘those good old days' when batsmen walked and bowlers politely questioned umpires and where captains did not blame IPL parties for their lacklustre performance. Similarly too, ads were few and far between just like cricket matches and people remembered ads and spoke about them, as they did about deeds on the cricket field. All of this leads me to the key point that I wish to make:

Why can't agencies run some of their old commercials for the brand rather than creating new, expensive advertising which often enough is not a patch on the old one?

To prove my point: ITC Sundrop had a very successful launch commercial of a boy doing somersaults in the midst of some fluffy puris. I was pleasantly surprised to see the same commercial after several years, a commercial that I had liked even if it did nothing to make me more careful about my spreading waist even if the waist was not accompanied by the usual material prosperity that people associate with it. I also saw a commercial featuring Hrithik Roshan where a little boy is having difficulty watching a match in a dealer outlet because taller, stronger, more insensitive people were blocking his view. He sits dejected on the pavement only to be joined by Hrithik Roshan who sees his predicament and switches on the match in his mobile on R World and Yuvraj hits a six and the world erupts.

Yes, my friend, those were the days Yuvraj was fit, was hitting sixes and India was winning matches and commercials were working. Again I am getting sidetracked. Another commercial that I saw recently and that was made earlier was for Mak lubricants featuring a young, sexily dressed girl with the song ‘ Jawaani something something' playing in the background (You must forgive me, I can remember the tune and the music but cannot remember the Hindi words).

Is this revival of old commercials a trend? Or just the action of some smart marketers who are realising that they have good stuff in their cupboards that can be brought out and screened again to an old audience that recognises them and a new audience that is bound to like them? And more significantly, are there consumers like me who prefer these old ads to the current crop and would much rather see them?

The paint of India

Asian Paints is one of India's most savvy marketers and I have always loved its advertising. Whenever I have had the opportunity I have written, spoken about and brought it out as case studies in my classes and training sessions. Take the case of the Asian paints Apex which too has had some outstanding advertising over the years. It started with ‘Sunil Babu' whose tone of voice and style of delivery became a way of speech in India and when it got translated into Tamil the ‘ Kalkarrey Chandru' became a part of the local idiom of Tamil Nadu. What more can a copywriter hope for?

The next ad was for Apex Ultima and featured another popular TV commercial (in my book, at least) of a Chote Nawab standing in front of racing horses who kick up a cloud of dust. The villagers are astonished and the shaken Nawab preens himself ready to receive the accolades of the villagers rushing towards him. He finds to his consternation, however, that the villagers are running towards the house and the line says “ Haan toh bhai, bahari diwaron par dhool ko tikne na de” which I am told is ‘Dust can never remain on a wall painted with Apex Ultima'. Even if I did not understand the words, it made sense to me and an impact on me.

I wish I could say the same about the new Apex Ultima commercial featuring a performing magician who is able to make the house disappear but not the paint. I can't explain why the ad leaves me cold. Is it because I prefer the older, simpler ones? Is it because the brand suddenly tries to be upmarket and suave in startling contrast to the earlier ones? Of course, the standard responses of agency types to statements such as these are usually “You are not the target audience?” Excuse me, but I am, I am just building a house in a golfing resort in preparation for my retirement and in the hope that my golf handicap becomes less of an embarrassment!

At stumps

So here are a few thoughts for your consideration:

Are you getting tired of your commercial before your customer is? Have you checked with the consumer or the trade?

Does it still have legs? Have you measured wear-out?

Who is pushing for change, you or your agency? (One client shared the funny problem of the new creative director in the agency trashing the client's commercial made by his predecessor in the same agency and pushing for change).

Are you changing your position?

Are you losing out in the process of change?

In short, are you throwing the baby out with the bath water?

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

Keep smiling, things can’t get worse!

The advertising industry is going through tough times. But it’s important to take the mind off the gloom..

Yes, the time is ripe for some cheer. Today I am able to talk about some of my experiences and actually laugh about them. It is time perhaps to recall what my first boss in advertising said: “Keep your sense of humour, otherwise you will go mad in this industry.”

Times are bad! How often have we heard this in recent times? Throw in the media adding their two bit, talk of layoffs, salary cuts, increasing client cribs and reduced retainers, and it seems advertising’s cup of woe is brimming over. I know that other industries too have their own horror stories but let me stay with the advertising industry as I spend so much of my time in this industry and am confronted by so many gloomy faces around me, I thought that I need to try to entertain them and you too, dear reader, for your patience over the years, with a few of the things that have happened to me in my long (there I go again) life in advertising.

It seems now that it is not only the industry that is going through doom and gloom but the whole country! The Indian cricket fan too has joined the depressed bandwagon, for as I write Australia has just scraped past a rampaging Pakistan to throw India out of the champion’s trophy and the TV media is going hammer and tongs at yesterday’s darling, M. S. Dhoni. Yes, the time is ripe for some cheer. Today I am able to talk about some of my experiences and actually laugh about them; as time, they say, heals everything. It is time perhaps to recall what my first boss in advertising said: “Keep your sense of humour, otherwise you will go mad in this industry.” Though lots of people might consider me a bit potty, to put it mildly, I have, I believe, managed to retain my sanity, if not my hair. Today many of the people I am writing about are no longer my clients, which probably explains their prosperity and my penury, but I remember them fondly and thank them for bringing laughter into my life and also teaching me a few lessons in life.

Bring on the music!

When I started the Bangalore office of Mudra in 1987, I used to go around on my TVS Suzuki motorcycle, thereby bringing disrepute to the advertising profession as I must have been the only branch manager of a large agency who was zipping around on a motorcycle, or so I believed. Of course, I need to slip in the reason why I was using it. The reason was simple. I could not afford a car; but more critically I used to handle the account of TVS Suzuki in my earlier agency and to me what David Ogilvy said was gospel truth: “You’d better use your client’s products!” he would thunder. On the lighter side I used to wonder if the agency which handles the client does not use the product then who else will! But less of me and my asides and more of what happened.
The two client service personnel in the agency at that time, my account supervisor and I, would go spinning around on my motorcycle with our bag full of layouts and our hearts full of hope. Business was scarce and we spent a lot of time knocking on doors with scant success. But we did get the odd, small assignment. One such was being asked to do a radio spot for one of our clients — a local cement manufacturer in Bangalore, who belonged to one of the largest business families in India.

The greatest claim to fame of the managing director of the company was that he had married into the illustrious family and I must confess that it was difficult for me and my colleague to keep a straight face as the client briefed us about the project on hand. “The mugic must be good,” he gushed. “People like mugic,” he pronounced “Do you have someone who will compose the mugic?” he asked. Both my colleague (who is today the COO of a large marketing company) and I were IIM products, and we were probably a bit vain about our management qualifications not to mention our English accents. We went down the lift laughing at the poor man’s accent and even as we were getting ready to start our trusted steed our client came down, entourage et al, with two people ready to open the lift door, and the car door of the latest Mercedes Benz of that time! Yes, we learnt an important lesson that day: “It is not your accent that matters as much as the family you marry into!” I would have cheerfully traded my accent for a Benz if anyone wanted it, but life is not always as simple as it seems, is it?

Just play the commercial!

My clients came in all sizes, shapes and hues. Some spoke with clipped British accents to the utterly desi ones whose lack of knowledge of English was more than compensated by their earthy wisdom and unerring knowledge of the consumer and the market. We were to produce a commercial for this client and came out with what I thought was a pretty good commercial.
I was to present the commercial and like all good client service people of that time I got my trusted slide projector out. I need to quickly tell you that in those days we used to rely on the 35 mm slide projector for support (just like the drunkard who leans against the lamppost more for support than illumination). Today, of course, we rely on the PowerPoint for precisely the same reasons, but back to the presentation. I got ready to play my regulation 40 slides with the background, the target audience, the creative strategy ... Sounds familiar? I launched into my pitch with all the eloquence of a passionate account executive who is not allowed to speak at home.

Barely was I on to slide three when the client got up ... “Mr Shiridhar, please stop,” he said. I stopped, confused and bewildered and looked at him, waiting for direction like all good client servicing people do. “Tell me, Mr Shiridhar,” he said, “are you going to stand in front of every television set in the country and make this presentation before our commercial comes on air? Nahi na, so just play the commercial.” He was absolutely right as clients usually are and I saw the wisdom of what he was saying. How often do we get carried away by the power of our own rhetoric and the colour of our slides and forget that it is all about the commercial that the consumer gets to see eventually. Yes, “show and tell’ is the name of the game. Your commercial must entertain and sell without all the bells and whistles that precede it when you are presenting to the client.

Presentation for dessert!

The late Eighties were the days of the great Indian IPO. Everyone and his brother-in-law were going public. The big cons were granite and aquaculture and the hotbed was Hyderabad where rumour had it that the moment the company went public the first capital investment the company would make would be buying a Mercedes for the MD! But back to our own travails! We were chasing one such IPO and the company did not even have an office. So we were asked to present at the client’s house.

Shamelessly we went and the joint family was having dinner. My favourite image of the ad agency is like that of my retriever with its tongue hanging out longingly, so much does new business mean to us agency people! There were only 50 people, children running around, and mayhem, a bit like the Fortune cooking oil commercial that one sees on TV.

Before the dessert we set up our projectors for the entertainment! I got ready to present, only to realise that I was the odd man out as my client probably spoke only a few words of English. The daughter-in-law was the smartest one and she was quietly managing the show and the company. So my colleague, who is the president of one of India’s top three agencies today, bailed me out by presenting our great advertising strategy and the creative in chaste Hindi (or so I presumed as I did not understand a word of what he said). I personally believe the presentation was too good for the client as we did not get the business and boy, was I glad about that as the company went under a little later! Sometimes we do get some things right, even by accident!

I am not sure if you are feeling as good as I am after reading this, but at least I am sure I have gotten your mind off the gloom, and never mind, we will beat Australia 7-0 when they come here!

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