Formality Hatao, Coke Pilao

I had been approached by Afaqs on the new campaign created for Coke India, by McCann Erickson. Coca Cola moves ahead of it's "open happiness" proposition and positions itself as the perfect drink for social gatherings.

I am of the opinion that there is nothing earth-shattering about the ad and it uses the old concept of family occasion or social gathering. It is just one more execution of the core theme of Coca-Cola on happiness, family, occasions and togetherness.

The old couple carrying a bottle of Coke is more like a 'Gift' or the joy of giving Coke. This isn't Coke trying to enter the tea/coffee space and I dont think they could make a dent there either.

You can read all my thoughts on the campaign and coke's over all strategy in this piece in Afaqs here.

India Inc sees a spurt in Oct-Dec ad spends

CHENNAI: After a year's relief, advertising by FMCG companies is back, and with a bang.

The advertising spends of FMCG and retail companies have gone up significantly in the December 2012 quarter compared with the spends in December 2011 with some companies spending upto 80% more on advertising this fiscal. Godrej Consumer Products for instance, which spent about Rs 58 crore on advertising in the December 2011 quarter dished out roughly Rs 107 in December 2012 and Colgate-Palmolive (India) gave about Rs 99 crore for advertising in 2012 compared with Rs 68.94 it had set apart last year, data from CMIE showed.

"Companies went slow on advertising last year due to the lull in the economy and when they re-enter after a break, it has to be strong," said Harish Bijoor, an independent brand consultant. Globally, companies went slow on ad spends last year but Indian companies are now showing greater confidence in advertising," he said.

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Who's the whitest of them all?

The marketing wars in consumer products are fought hard and bitter and the crown sits uneasy on the winner's head. Comparative advertising can be used to great effect

The detergents business is a dirty business, if you will forgive the pun. The contestants fight bitter and often unsavoury battles to garner a few percentage points of market share and once in a while, advertising is the means to secure the sordid end. Hindustan Unilever (HUL) has been the leader in the detergents market for as long as I can remember but its position has been challenged by a number of regional brands that have been eagerly snapping at its heels over the years, and recently big global players such as Procter & Gamble (P&G) too have joined the fray.

The last named, a global major that knows a thing or two about marketing warfare and strategy, is still a late entrant into the country. It would be reasonable to say that the company has come to terms with India and its consumers and has made slow but steady progress in recent times. P&G recently introduced a low-cost detergent, Tide Naturals, claiming in its ads that it provided “whiteness with special fragrance”. The product was clearly positioned against HUL's leading brands Rin and Wheel. This claim was challenged and the Madras High Court passed an order directing P&G to modify the ad as the company was not able to substantiate the claim. The court has granted an injunction and directed P&G to respond within three weeks.

But that was just the trailer with the main movie hitting the small screen over the weekend when the courts were closed, with a new Rin commercial (shown time after time in programme after programme) featuring two mothers with shopping baskets, waiting for their respective children to return from school. One of the ladies has Rin in her basket while the other has Tide Naturals. The Tide lady speaks smugly about the brand's fragrance combined with whiteness while the Rin lady, of the strong, silent type, waits for her son's shirt to do the walking and talking. The much-awaited bus eventually arrives (after all, it is only a 30-second commercial) and the Tide boy appears in a dull shirt (what else?) while the Rin boy breezes in, in a sparkling white shirt with a flabbergasted ‘Tide Auntie' staring in wonder. Of course, the well-behaved Rin boy cannot resist taking a potshot and innocently asks “ Aunty chaunk kyun gayi?”, a reference to Tide's advertising line thereby certainly providing enormous mirth to HUL's sales force at least, for it is still debatable whether this particular campaign will make them laugh all the way to the bank.

As commercials go it certainly didn't make me stand up and cheer, but to put it mildly, all hell broke loose as the media got into it. Dark threats were uttered secretly, if not publicly; legal action, complaints to ASCI were poured out … In fact “it was all happening” and people like me wondered what the lather was all about. While it seems obvious that the marketing bigwigs at P&G are getting hot under the collar, now that Holi has come and gone, let us objectively look at the situation and see what it means for advertising, the consumer and the companies in question.

The Leader Wears an Uneasy Crown

Hindustan Lever, as that's how people of my age would refer to the company, has ruled the roost in detergents, toilet soaps and shampoos for as long as I can remember. It also used to be the widow's stock, the safe option that you could bequeath to your family (people need to bathe and wash their clothes) and a ‘day-one' company on campus at IIMs. It continues to be one of the largest advertisers and one of the best marketing companies in the country. But things have changed and sadly, for the worse. I remember my boss in Mudra, A.G. Krishnamurthy, saying, “The moment you sign on a new business it is under threat.” If that is the case with advertising agencies, imagine the plight of market leaders! Not only national brands such as Nirma, but a host of other regional brands are snapping at HUL's heels, some with enormous success. The emergence of cable and satellite television has meant that a number of brands such as Power, Discount and Arasan from Tamil Nadu are giving the detergent major sleepless nights.

The fickle management graduates of today see dollar signs and their eyes seem to light up only when they see investment bankers and consulting firms (who are day-zero companies today) and are not enamoured of soaps and detergents as we were; of course, the less one speaks about HUL's performance at the stock market the better, as it brings up unpleasant memories, for me at least. Truth be told, companies such as Infosys have shown this company and the world a thing or two about stock appreciation and investor relations. To put it in a nutshell, we have a beleaguered giant being pushed to the brink, fighting for share and attention. I daresay the campaign has to be viewed in this overall context.

Comparison not new

Comparative advertising has been used to great effect by challengers such as Pepsi and mavericks such as Apple. In India Thums Up (earlier) with ‘Don't be a bandar' and more recently, Sprite, have cheekily continued to make youngsters smile and cheerfully sip the soft drinks, even as they took pot-shots at the competition. In recent times Horlicks and Complan have gone for each other's jugulars. As a general rule, comparative advertising works when the audience is more discerning and aware of the products in question. There is research to suggest that it works better in the case of high-involvement products. People buying cars and motorcycles might be interested in feature-for-feature comparisons, as to which has the greater bhp and fuel economy and so on. But will it work for detergents? In India, brands have desisted from naming their competition but the legal position is changing with the times and now brands can claim superiority as long as they do not disparage their competitors. Does the Rin commercial disparage Tide Naturals? Let's leave that to the courts and focus on the brand's choice of strategic direction.

Earlier advertising in the Indian context, in startling contrast to advertising from the West, fought shy of actually naming its competition. Pepsi would say ‘We replaced his Pepsi with a cola' in India, while they would say ‘We replaced his Pepsi with Coke' (in the MC Hammer commercial). Complan would say that they were better than brand “H” and even mentally-challenged consumers would recognise the blinding flash of the obvious and say, “Oh, are they talking about Horlicks?” Today it is okay to name the competition and often that can open up a can of worms. It is interesting to note that research suggests that when you claim that brand X is better than brand Y, consumers actually end up being confused as to which is actually better and end up buying brand Z. Often, we forget that consumers are not waiting with bated breath for our commercial and do not hang on to our every word the way we would like them to.

Questions remain

HUL might be patting itself on the back for hitting out at Tide which is a smaller player, but is the commercial really something to write home about? Is comparative advertising the way to go? How credible are these independent laboratory tests on which the commercial is based? How different is the theme of this commercial from detergent advertising of two decades ago? In the mid-Eighties Surf Excel ran a commercial with Lalithaji, where envious ladies tell the camera that she is showing off with new clothes on Sport's Day while the truth is that she has washed her clothes with Surf. (God, it must be tough to write detergent scripts!) Does the commercial disparage its competition?

While the timing of the release of the ad seems to have been planned to precision (over a weekend when the courts were closed), does the execution have the same meticulous attention to detail? Surely, surely, there has to be a better way of showing that your product is superior. I always believe that strategy sounds awesome on paper but customers don't get to see the strategy document, all they get to see is a 30-second commercial.

Having said all that, what is my personal view? Give me a “ Daag acche hain” any day!

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

In niches there are riches!

Leading from the front:Harsh Mariwala, CMD, Marico

Harsh Mariwala of Marico shows the importance of clear strategy and meticulous execution..

Creating a culture in an organisation is easier said than done. It calls for rigorous implementation and the use of training. It calls for constant communication and collaboration amongst the key people in the organisation.

January 31 is a special day for people in advertising and marketing in Bangalore as it is the day the Ayaz Peerbhoy memorial lecture has been delivered to an eager audience over the years. It has been a calendar event for the Advertising Club, Bangalore for years now. This time it was the 29 th such occasion that the lecture was being delivered and the speaker was in no way inferior in achievement to his illustrious predecessors who had delivered it earlier - a who's who of Indian industry, people such as R. Goplakrishnan, C.K.Ranganathan and Kishore Biyani, to name just a few. Harsh Mariwala, Chairman and Managing Director of Marico Ltd, spoke about the exciting corporate journey of innovation that his company had taken over the years with little nuggets of wisdom and experience that had the audience thinking and perhaps wondering why they were unable to do the same with their own companies. The man embodied what his company stood for - understated, yet with the ability to think differently and inspire a whole bunch of MBAs to leading the company from a modest turnover of Rs 5 crore not too long ago to Rs 2,800 crore today.

Strategy is key

One of the most abused words in management literature is that curious word ‘strategy'. I say curious because different people have different perceptions of the word strategy. In the case of my students in business school, they have heard the word repeated so often by so many different people, that they have it coming out of their ears and often are clueless as to what it actually is. But less of my students and more of Marico Industries. Strategy, as any expert will tell you, is basically sacrifice, as when you choose one particular segment you ignore others, and at times the grass can always seem to be greener on the other side. Marico has consistently stayed in areas that have seemed niches (mind you, some of them have become pretty large over the years), areas where it could dominate and where it did not have to contend with MNCs with deep pockets and staying power.

The company that was primarily in the low-value commodity business transformed itself consciously over the years into a high value FMCG company. Often, people in marketing, thanks to their preoccupation with the brand and sales promotions, do not acknowledge the importance of culture and people to the brand's success. Mariwala placed the transformation of the organisation's culture and the dissemination of values as the key factors behind the success of the company and the brands driving it. It is often the ‘blinding flash of the obvious', but simple things such as sharing of information, being on first-name basis with the senior management, higher responsibilities or cross-functional exposure, though often talked about, are not practised with the same zeal with which they are spoken by companies. Clearly, Marico has been doing it, with great success, so that it has become internalised now.

A lot of Marico's success has been due to Parachute, the leading coconut oil brand. Parachute is a brand that most Indians, particularly in the South have used and continue to use, those with hair at least. When Mr Mariwala spoke about some of the innovations that the brand had been doing over the years, my mind wandered (as it seems to do more often these days). Often enough, copywriters in agencies turn up their noses when asked to create advertising for certain products saying these are ‘dull', and my response usually has been, “There are no dull products, only dull writers!”

Similarly, it is easy to view coconut oil as just a commodity, but the company has not and the results are there to show for it. The company did a number of packaging innovations starting with HDPE and also through its specially designed pack prevented freezing, something that is very common in the North of India. The seal guarantee also made it difficult to duplicate, even for the experts that India seems to unearth so often in this wonderful world of fakes and imitations. Parachute entered the rural market through laminated pouches and its flip-top and mini-packs brought in a new category of users. Innovations continued with the promotion of the concept of ‘ champi' with Parachute before shampooing. Suddenly, the category had become visible and attractive to the Levers of this world. And as Hindustan Lever (as Hindustan Unilever was then known), acquired Tomco, it promoted Nihar aggressively and threw its weight of distribution and promotions behind it. Levers even tried to take over the brand and Marico's stock price fell dramatically.

But the company counter-attacked, held on to its market shares, eventually did a David and also did the unthinkable (at that time, at least) by acquiring Nihar in 2006. Strike one for an Indian company against a large multinational! Innovation can often be a treadmill and the companies that are on it refuse to get off and the attempts to morph Parachute from a coconut oil brand to a beauty brand continue with variants, new fragrances and new formulations.

From the head to the heart

Very few people of my age can get away without using Saffola, thanks to the benefits of relaxed lifestyle built around addiction to the couch and the picture tube and a tremendous ability to postpone anything that suggests even the mildest physical activity. We are the people that keep doctors and the makers of Saffola laughing all the way to the bank. Just to put things in proper perspective, Saffola, all said and done could have been just another cooking oil, but it strongly positioned itself on the heart platform, taking the stance of a leader on World Heart Day and propagated walking every day.

True to company culture, innovations continued, like the 15-litre tap to enable ease of usage. But Saffola realised it had the capability and the competence to build on the equity in the health segment as it introduced oil blends and brand extensions such as low sodium salt and products in the area of diabetes and cholesterol management. Over the years the brand has moved from being just another edible oil brand to a health brand.

Marico has moved on to skin care with a bevy of Kaya skin care centres that are making waves all over India as young Indians get more conscious of the way they look and are opening their wallets to the new concept all over the country.

Significantly, the company has been avoiding the franchise route as it wishes to control the quality of service and the output that customers receive.

Creating a culture of innovation

Creating a culture in an organisation is easier said than done. It calls for rigorous implementation and the use of training. It calls for constant communication and collaboration amongst the key people in the organisation. The company too has been empowering its people by committing resources and ensuring that new members are carefully integrated into the organisation. The key thing about innovation is not only about ideas but about their implementation.

So what are the learnings for people who are leading organisations or teams?

Do you believe in your people?

Are you open to ideas?

Can you build a team of ‘constructive yes men' and not ‘boring yes men'?

Can you create a culture where there is a willingness to experiment and learn from failures?

Can you keep being innovative over a period of time however difficult and however expensive?

Success stories are good to read about after they have happened and there are lots of things to be learnt from examples like these. I have probably made it out to be a lot simpler than it actually has been for the company and the people who made it happen. They had a leader who believed in the team and who led from the front without actually getting in the way of his charged troops. It is certainly not a rags-to-riches story but a story that demonstrates that if you have a clear strategy and meticulous execution then niches are certainly the way to riches.

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

So, how has your experience been?

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/catalyst/2008/12/11/stories/2008121150040200.htm

As consumers get more savvy and demanding, marketers have no choice but get their customer touch points right..

A few weeks ago, I got a call from my friend’s son. This 16-year old, who was studying in Bishop Cotton School, in Bangalore, was at the forefront of the organising committee of his school and was organising an inter-school competition. “Uncle,” he said, “I would like you to be a judge for one of our competitions. It is called “brand value”, and you have to judge the ads that teams are creating for brands.” I agreed reluctantly, even as I experienced mixed, if somewhat familiar emotions. The first, of course, was a sense of happiness at the fact that even youngsters today are thinking of concepts like brand value and the second was a sense of regret, that like most of the people around me, my young friend was equating branding with advertising. I realised soon that I had actually maligned the young man, because his detailed mail which followed, clarified that the task was that teams had to convert a technology product into a brand (the school is in Bangalore after all), also producing a short advertisement as part of the process. Clearly, I was wrong about my young friend who seems to know more about branding than several people running businesses, and who suffer from a few misconceptions about branding.

A brand is not only its elements

The brand name is often the most important and frequently the most recalled element of a brand. And yet, however important the brand name is in the overall scheme of a brand’s success, a name alone is not a brand. This is not to discount the fact that brands need to be different with everything they do, if they have to stand apart in a crowded and cluttered world, and that includes naming the brand. A name like Pampers that immediately proclaims its offering or a name like Fifty-Fifty from Brittania that offers so much creative scope immediately spring to mind. Another point of difference that brands often use to telling effect is their identity. Today, brands spend considerable time, money and effort on designing their visual identities and that is probably justified as people remember shapes, colours and symbols more than they do words. Not for nothing do people say ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. This assumes greater importance in a country like India where every second person you see on the road is likely to be illiterate! People do not have to be aided with the brand name Nike, when they are shown the swoosh as they instantly recall it; so strongly is that brand associated with that visual symbol. But there is more to Nike than the symbol, which leads me to the point I am making that a brand is not merely a logo or an identity. Let me quickly clarify that I am not for an instant suggesting that a strong visual identity is not important for a brand. It gives a brand one more opportunity to differentiate itself from its host of competitors and the myriads of imitators that every brand seems to be confronted with today. Nor can one afford to forget tag lines that some brands have used consistently over the years and appropriated as properties for themselves. One remembers GE’s “We bring good things to life”. But at the risk of sounding repetitive, I must say that a brand is not a mere tag line. It is much more. And what about the packaging? The pack is what the customer is closest to and she decides to either pick it up or give it a miss in the supermarket shelves depending on how attractive it is, and how successfully it stands out from the thousands of other products on the shelf. And yet, despite whatever packaging specialists may tell you, the pack is not the brand.

Advertising makes the world go around
We dream merchants have an exaggerated view of the importance of advertising in building brands and creating consumer preference. While there is no denying the relevance and importance of advertising, it needs to be borne in mind that, as in the examples mentioned earlier, branding encompasses far more than strategic positioning and clever execution. We have enough examples of advertising that has made the consumer sit up and take notice and also open her purse strings. Cola, for instance, has always been a category driven by advertising. Who can forget Pepsi’s advertising targeted at the young and “young at heart”? Some of the greatest advertising campaigns have been for categories such as automobiles, which though not completely advertising driven, still influence the consumer. The Volkswagen “think small” campaign was voted by Advertising Age as the ‘campaign of the last century’. Categories such as, liquor have had their imagery enhanced by advertising, and one can instantly recall the memorable advertising for brands such as Absolut Vodka even if one continues to be a confirmed whisky diehard! But a brand is not only advertising as my young friend in Bishop Cotton knew. To sum up, a brand is not just a name, a logo, colours, a tag line, a positioning statement or an advertising campaign even. Yes, the significant shift in thinking has been the increasing importance of the “brand experience” provided by various consumer touch points, which are making her form impressions about it. As Jack Mackey, Vice- President, Service Management Group, said “You can say what you want about whom you [think] are, but people believe what they experience”. Customer experience! Yes that is the key word today and it must be mentioned that more and more brands are struggling to meet expectations on this front, living as they do in a flattened world that uses outsourcing.So, what’s your experience like?

Poor customer experiences seem to open up feelings, emotions and tongues just the way liquor does. Just imagine these few situations. You have a great image of a company, you think it is a great brand and make the mistake of calling it. You get through after several attempts and are greeted (!) by a brusque and harassed voice, whose tone seems to suggest “why are you disturbing me”? Will you be thinking about their lyrical advertising at that point in time or still feel it is a great brand? You go to a branded apparel outlet to buy a shirt and are met by a surly salesman (who has no intention of selling to you even if you are very keen to buy) and your immediate reaction is to leave the place of your humiliation, without spending a moment thinking of the brand that you had originally wanted. You have checked out the Web site, seen the ads, studied the brochures and go to the car outlet to take a test drive, only to be insulted by the salesman. Would you still want the car? Your bank releases wonderful ads that probably wins every award in town and eulogises its customers and its commitment to it. You go to the bank on a Saturday to get your statement done and the counter clerk glares at you with so much “affection” that you wonder if it is the same bank that has released the ads making you out to be their very reason for being. You and your team work day and night to keep your client happy, you go that extra mile and believe you are part of their team. And yet you overhear an accountant saying this when you follow up for payment — “let them wait for their money”. You admire a corporation enormously and yet when you visit them their reception is manned by a security guard! I once had the good fortune (!) of being greeted with the admirable brand name of Doberman!Experience the key
Many of us handle the easy parts of branding, the look, the feel, the advertising, the Web site, the brochure… This is what is normally referred to as the brand’s identity. Identity is what we send out to the market. That can be controlled by us and usually is. We have brand manuals and guidelines. But what the market takes out or receives, of what we send out, can and often is substantially different. This is because of their own perceptions, expectations and most critically their own experiences with the brand. This is the difficult part for marketers. This calls for a long, hard look at their own offering when it comes to experience and the honesty to accept the truth. This calls for looking at all the aspects that add to experience, whether it is physical, the setting, the functional aspects, the technical aspects and so on. It calls for a change in priorities and increased investment in training and that includes outsourced service providers. A lot of heartburn is caused to consumers by outsourced services who continue to damage the hard earned equity of brands with desperate ease. Today, as consumers get more savvy, more demanding and compare and share experiences, marketers have no choice to get their consumer touch points right. The sooner they do it, the better, for consumers are not going to wait endlessly for them to get their act right.

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

The “New”, “Improved” Integration!

Advertising, even if it does not reinvent itself, certainly discovers new concepts, theories and schools of thought that give the industry fresh leases of life. These also are gentle reminders to the marketing world that advertising is alive and kicking. The first breakthrough if you could call it that, was provided by Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates agency who coined the term “unique selling proposition”. David Ogilvy created a ripple with his advertising built around brand image. His “Man in the Hathaway shirt” followed by the campaign for Schweppes with the picture of the Chairman of the company Commander Edward Whitehead created more than a ripple. It set the stage for the formation of a major agency group. And David Ogilvy did something more. His “Confessions of an Advertising Man” which sold over a million copies probably did more for the advertising industry worldwide than the Volkswagen campaign which was arguably the greatest campaign the world has seen. This campaign and a few others like Avis, Alka Seltzer and Polaroid created by Bill Bernbach’s agency spawned a new style of advertising that was “substance with style”. Bernbach’s advertising was like a breath of fresh air and his legacy lives on. His principle of “rewarding the reader” is perhaps even more relevant now given the enormous clutter that today’s advertising has to contend with. The next big impact was by Al Ries and Jack Trout who proposed a new approach to marketing and communication packaged as “positioning”. Their scientific papers and book “Positioning: The battle for your mind” ratified what advertising agencies had been doing and highlighted the strategy crucial to the success of advertising campaigns. The next big development in advertising to my mind at least has been the emergence of integrated marketing communications (or IMC) which started with a bang and runs the risk of ending with a whimper. And yet to me IMC seems to provide a great opportunity in today’s cluttered world to make the brand stand out. But the agency needs to re-orient itself to the new realities and the new challenges. The question of course, is simple. Is the agency prepared for this challenge?

IMC? What it is?
Integrated marketing communication is based on the principle that a single strong brand idea will be the basis for every possible communication to the consumers. This will be exploded across every possible medium and will explore every possible consumer touch point. So it is not only the high budget TV commercial but outdoor, sales promotion, merchandising, direct response and public relations that carries the same brand idea. Nor is this a completely new concept. Agencies globally and in India have used this concept to great effect. One of my favourites is Britannia 50-50. The interesting brand name already gives a lot of creative scope not only for creating striking ads but also for tremendous integration as well. All the situation of the numerous commercials are humorous depicting situations which are 50-50 in nature. But the piece de resistance (or the pinnacle if you will) of integration is the sponsoring of the 3rd Umpire’s decision as to whether the batsman has made his ground or not. Other brands like VIP with the campaign line “happy journey” and the jingle “bye bye” sponsored travelogues, baggage tags, etc to demonstrate that integration is beyond mass media. We too were involved with an extremely successful IMC campaign for Dalmia Vajram built around the key thought “100/100”. The brand idea was exploded across multiple media vehicles and extended to dealer and mason meets. The campaign has continued for several years even as the brand enjoys tremendous success and visibility across the Tamilnadu and Kerala markets. Yes, integration has delivered and will continue to deliver if handled intelligently.


So, what’s the problem?
IMC as a concept and a strategic tool continues to offer a great opportunity to advertising agencies. But one wonders if it has delivered its potential. The reasons for that vary. Whilst a few advertising agencies have realised its value and capitalised on its potential there is a reasonable amount of ignorance about its capabilities and a fair amount of laziness about its implementation that is shared by quite a few advertising agencies. Agencies sadly seem to believe that what they don’t know can’t hurt them. In actual fact their ignorance is hurting their clients more. The next major problem seems to be the agency’s pre-occupation with mass media and the almost child like faith in the power of the 30 sec commercial. TV is a powerful medium and quite a few brands owe their success to this powerful medium. Yet the situation has change quite dramatically. The proliferation of channels, changing media habits particularly of young customers and declining advertising budges of companies forces agencies to rethink their old strategies. And yet how many of us are willing to look at change even more when a lot of agency revenue seems to come from this medium. Yes we live in our comfort zones. And we are better at controlling and directing media that are within our control – TV, Press, Outdoor, Point of Sale, etc. Today a big opportunity for brands presents itself in public relations. Advertising agencies have a very limited understanding of the power of public relations. PR firms too on occasion do not understand the value of integrating the brand idea with their public relations programe. So a large section of the communication is outside of the integration net. Today there is another complication as well. Completely new media like the internet, affinity groups and modes of self-expression like blogging have begun to assert themselves. How clued in are agencies on these? How do they integrate these new media with the brand idea? Can it be done?

The way ahead:
Agencies are challenged today. They have been constrained to move away from the “full service” model. They have unbundled – stand alone media agencies are just one example of this specialization. The agency is realizing that even if it wants to integrate less and less is within its control. Today clients are working with multiple partners (or is it the right expression vendors)? In addition to the creative agency, a packing specialist, a brand consultant, a PR company, a direct response agency, an events company and a merchandising expert….. Can you imagine the complexity of the client’s job? And to add to all this, integration has now become the brand manager’s job. Does she have the skill sets, the desire and most of all the energy? What does the agency do? Take the data at least resistance and say "every client gets what he deserves." That would be an easy way out but not a genuine option.
The brand belongs to the client (and yes, the consumer) but the responsibility for the brand in terms of setting its creative direction has to be with the agency. It must take the lead. Integration has gone through a difficult time and the marketing discipline runs the risk of missing out on this important strategic tool completely if it is not careful. For too long, advertising agencies have followed their clients. The client said: "Open an office in Timbuktoo," and the agency obliged. Now is the time for the agency to follow consumers. If the consumer is going online the agency needs to build competencies there. If the consumer is guided by editorial then how can the agency use this knowledge?
Agencies have to lead rather than follow. Integrate even as they create. Create what the consumer wants, and not what they are comfortable doing. Move out of their comfort zone. And that will be a great source of comfort for the client.

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO of Brandcomm.)

2006 – Hardly a defining year

There are a few moments in life that are definitive. My life seems to revolve around cricket and advertising. A few defining moments in my life? It was 7.36 p.m. on 4th June, 1993. I was sitting in the bar stool of the Bangalore Club watching the Old Trafford Ashes test on TV. And Warne bowled Gatting with a ball that turned two feet and clipped the off bail. I was watching the ball that would soon be dubbed the “ball of the century”. I just yelled in amazement. I rudely woke up the oldest member who was quietly dozing in his favourite stool who must have wondered at the falling standards of behaviour of new club members. (Another sobering moment as the spin wizard announces retirement just now). England in 1999. Herschelle Gibbs drops Steve Waugh and the World Cup. To me watching from the stands, it was another defining moment. 2003, South Africa, and the World Cup final. Zaheer Khan’s first over cost 15 runs and cost India the cup. Another defining moment. The 23rd of November, 2006. It is 5.30 a.m. and Steve Harmison came into tremendous applause to deliver the first ball of the most anticipated series in recent times – the Ashes. I am right there in front of the TV. He started with a huge wide to second slip which started England’s slide to a 3-0 Ashes defeat (at the time of writing). Another defining moment. All these moments had the capacity to move and shake me and made a profound impression on me and made me believe that I was seeing something unique, different and unforgettable. Did I have one such moment in advertising in 2006? The answer is a quick if a somewhat sad “no”. 2006 was one of those years. One of those commercials that you see and yet don’t notice. One of those ships that pass you by in the night.

The business of advertising
“Advertising” somebody said “is the business of producing ads and TV commercials”. And the business of advertising by all accounts has been good, whether your agency is ranked No.1, No.8 or No.30. A whole host of categories have discovered the power of advertising. The automotive industry is booming and as a consequence the advertising spends. Never mind the fact that every car ad reminds you of some other car ad that you have seen before. The roads are clogged with two wheelers and the networks jammed with two wheeler ads, each of which tries desperately to be like its competition. Mobile services it seems has lost its pre-occupation with tariff plans. Thank God for small mercies! And in the same breath we must thank clients and agencies for continuing campaigns in the mobile space. The ‘pug’ dog continues to charm us magically! From dogs to monkey. Idea Cellular’s tune of an Ilayaraja hit has a monkey running helter- skelter but the network follows. One of the few nice ads I saw this year. If mobile services are heavy spenders, can mobile phones be far behind? One saw a lot of advertising that was hip for mobile phones. And yet to me the stand out was Motorola’s ad for MotoFlip W220, which features a young boy being grilled by his parents for having what they believe is a horrendously expensive phone. What a brilliant way of saying that the sleek phone costs only Rs.3990! FMCG continues to alternate between brand building and price cutting. Lots of advertising, not too much worthy of recall. And yet I must recall the Surf Excel commercial in Tamil with a foreign kid eating with great relish with his “hands” watched by his horrified parents. And a reassuring old lady who says that in India, we not only eat with our hands but wash with our hands as well. Banks continue to provide mediocre service but the advertising has improved dramatically. SBI stopped being “Surprisingly” diffident but had an interesting range of commercials. HSBC had some different advertising as had Bank of India. We all live in hope and one day the service of banks will match the advertising! Education (thoroughly fragmented) has still become a large consumer of space. IIPM continues to release ads that are in your face. I don’t wish to comment on how bad they are as I thankfully am not applying to management school and am therefore not the target audience. Mutual funds is another category that has advertised heavily. HDFC Standard Life Insurance had a very insightful ad for pension plans. The retail boom is yet to result in brand building advertising which seems to be still obsessed with “sales and price-offs”. Someone has to start building retail brands harnessing advertising.

Some trends
The ad industry has announced its “unbundling” of services with great fanfare. Today agencies offer specialised services and I guess this in turn makes the client’s job more challenging. He has to be strong (and if one may add enormously patient) to deal with the creative agency, the stand-alone media agency, the PR agency, the MR agency, the events agency and the sales promotion agency. Is the client man or superman, only time will tell! And yet I think there is an increasing disconnect between creative agencies and media agencies and clients are feeling the pinch. Today agencies are a lot more focused on the bottom line. And the direct reaction is declining salaries at entry levels and increasing disenchantment at the middle level. The advertising industry is growing – but where are the people? Which bright young kid in his right senses would like to join us?

The year in perspective
I remember seeing a commercial for RIKK Bank that reminds me of Indian advertising in 2006 “The most boring bank in the world” was the descriptor. “The people are working. The money is working and that’s all”. Yes people are working in advertising and agencies are making money. But we need to introspect. If we don’t get the right people, we just won’t make any money. Let 2007 be the year of talent. And may it be the year where India’s defining moment could be winning the Cricket World Cup! At least it would make it worth my while to travel all the way to Barbados!


The author is Ramanujam Sridhar, CEO of Brand-comm.

Feedback can be mailed to sridhar@brand-comm.com

Back to the future

I recall a famous Tamil film song penned by the immortal lyricist Kannadasan which when translated reads as follows “Feet that stray from the right path don’t reach the destination”. And yet I believe it is possible for people and brands to get back on track with a little introspection. Brands stray when they try to be different for the sake of being different. The desire to be different is pretty common in advertising. And this desire to be different usually means a break from the past. If only the agency were to listen to the “echoes” of the past – a term that the famous advertising person David N. Martin (the founder of the Martin agency) was fond of using – it could build on the framework of the past, rather than creating from scratch.

A.R. Rahman resurfaces for Airtel
Airtel is an amazingly successful brand. It has very visible advertising, with a fairly high share of voice. As mobile services is an extremely competitive (cut throat?) category, there are a number of advertising renditions that happen. And yet one of the most interesting ones for me as a consumer was the one with A.R. Rahman in Hyde Park (was it) playing with an assortment of musicians even as an adoring recording artist listens to the music that is carried through Airtel mobile’s service. Well, I know that I can’t be exactly objective about A.R. Rahman but it was a brilliant track. Airtel had integrated this piece of communication making it a fairly popular ring tone. Every second Airtel user was having this ring tone and enthusiastic guys even used it in their cars as they reversed. I am not sure if Airtel has been using this tune in all their advertising. Some of their schemes like Rs.199/- set in paan shops and barber saloons certainly did not. But I was pleasantly reassured to see the Airtel music shop commercial with a predominance of red (the Airtel logo and colours) and A.R. Rahman’s music track again – in the forefront where it belongs. Their other black and white commercial too which is on air which I shall refer to as the “Berlin Wall” commercial has a strand of this music as it ends.

I will not forget A.R. Rahman
Indians love music. Its one of the great unifiers of this diverse country. Music too provides a great “opportunity to hear” (OTH) if you are not in the same room as the TV set. Airtel’s music track has the potency of being a ‘brand property’ if it isn’t already. Titan has had the same music track for a small matter of 19 years. I remember the commentator David Lloyd asking errant bowlers to write 100 lines – “I will not bowl short to Ricky Ponting”, I am sure bowlers would do well to remember this as well – “I will not bowl on Rahul Dravid’s pads” and Airtel’s agency would do well to memorise this “I will not forget A.R. Rahman”. And I wonder if it is politically correct for me to write about this interesting call I received from Hutch saying that they had an unbeatable offer for Airtel’s privileged customers. This deserves another column so I should desist for the present. Ashes to Ashes, dust to dust, if Airtel doesn’t get you then Hutch must!

“Thanda” returns to a hot country
Summer time is cola time – or at least cool drink time. A couple of years ago Coke had this wonderful “thanda” campaign with Aamir Khan, which was a break from their global advertising position and stance. Their line “Thanda matlab coca cola” warmed my heart at least. It was an attempt to own the word “thanda” which most of India (read Hindi heartland) could relate to. Then Coke lost its way (or so I said in one of my columns in this august newspaper) and said “Sar Utha Ke”. Clearly Coke was throwing out the baby with the bath water in its quest for change. And now Coke is back – if not with a bang – at least with Thanda. The new campaign with Aishwarya Rai is not my favourite – it’s too Delhi University centric, relies too much on Aishwarya’s histrionics (what are they) but is still built on “Thanda”. Coke, you are getting there. But where is Aamir? Probably in Gujarat….

“The king of good times”
Let’s get back to our original concept, music. Kingfisher first launched their Calypso tune when they sponsored the West Indian Cricket team. Arguably the West Indian Cricket team was the worst then. It is getting there even now but Kingfisher had a good thing going with its music track. The calypso beat had people humming when they were not guzzling. I particularly like Kingfisher’s recent shower commercial with Michael Vaughan and Freddie Flintoff. An interesting use of international cricketers while they are touring. (Perhaps the only worthwhile thing Vaughan has done in India on their recent tour is shoot this commercial!). And an interesting replay of the tune. The same “good times” thought is airborne with Kingfisher airlines as well. Yes, music will work. The question is can we see beyond the tips of our noses? Can we recognize the good thing that we own? Sadly we miss the obvious trick when it comes to brands and branding. So, whenever you are stumped to find a solution at present, just look backwards. You just might find your pot of gold. Your brand’s past could well guide your future.

The author is Ramanujam Sridhar, CEO of Brand-comm