Are you teasing your customer?

The moment brands irritate consumers, they will get into serious trouble. Brands such as Karbonn and MRF are riding on the IPL bandwagon. But there isn't any method in the madness, sadly.

One of the most entertaining commercials I have seen over the years is for Rolo, a brand of confectionery. The commercial opens in a zoo where a little boy is watching a baby elephant. He has a sweet in his hand and beckons the elephant, ostensibly with the intention of giving it the sweet. When it comes close to him, he pops it into his own mouth, mocking the poor elephant in the process. The film cuts to several years later where there is a young man wearing a sweater similar to that of the young boy's shown in the commercial and there is a procession of elephants which our young man is watching with interest. Suddenly one of the elephants in the procession turns around and thumps the young man on the head. Clearly the young elephant has not forgotten being tormented several years ago and the voiceover goes on to say “Think twice what you do with your last Rolo”.

Of course, the commercial demonstrates the ‘memory of an elephant' as a creative thought but more importantly it shows the need for marketers and brand managers to be careful with their consumers and not tease them or needle them unnecessarily. So what's the connection, must be the question uppermost in your mind. That's because as we get into the business end of the IPL (is there any other end?) cricket season, I feel that the organisers, the sponsors and the television channels should spare a thought for the poor customer sitting at the other end of the television screen who is being constantly harassed, bombarded and insulted. And who knows how long she is going to be patient? I say ‘she' deliberately as perhaps one of the real achievements of the IPL has been its ability to get women to come and watch not only in the stadia but also in living rooms. I think the point to be made is that while IPL has put India on the global sports marketing map and shown the world a thing or two it is certainly throwing up certain distressing signs and early warning signals that marketers must be alert to.

Properties and all that jazz

Marketers are constantly looking for properties that their brands can own and at times it is easier to buy some properties from media and try and make the most of them. The IPL has demonstrated a tremendous ability to make things sound larger than life, and “first ever' and “best ever” are terms that seem commonplace here. Let me explain. T20 cricket is all about fours and sixes and never mind about the poor bowlers who in any case are being paid to get slaughtered. The pitches are deader than mortuaries in government hospitals while the boundary ropes are being made shorter and shorter and at times rival the length of the cheerleader's skirts! So more sixes are scored in a T20 game than in a season of test cricket and not surprisingly sixes are a hot media property called the “DLF Maximum” And we have commentators who are better served being at the WWE so much do they rave and rant once the ball clears the short ropes!

And then there are the catches called the “Karbonn Kamaal Catch” which takes the cake. A fielder holds a catch which a schoolgirl would normally hold with her eyes closed before the commentator nearly has a heart attack waxing eloquent about the Karbon Kamaal Catch which could also be a Citi moment of success - another branded property from a bank that has redefined success in recent times. Nor is that all. There is another blot on the landscape in the form of an MRF blimp which is being heralded as the greatest technological innovation after the space shuttle and then there are strategic time-outs (all branded) and tons of commercials, creepy crawlers in the frames, a commercial being shown on the big screen in between balls, Akshay Kumar flying around the kitchen playing tennis and a completely bewildered and irritated consumer who doesn't know what on earth is hitting her.

Advertising makes the world go around

Mind you, I am a great fan of advertising (after all, the industry has fed and clothed me for three decades now) but surely there has to be a method in the madness. Isn't this a bit of overkill? Are these advertisers watching these commercials when they come on air or listening to what people have to say about them? I would urge them to come into my living room when a few of my friends are watching the match with me. They would cringe and immediately pull their commercials off air. Some of these brands are big – why are they trivialising themselves? Take MRF, one of the brands I truly admire. A brand which has consistently stayed with cricket, a brand with a heritage, a brand that has done so much for the game in the country, a brand that has legends endorsing it … It got the enthralling serial Bodyline into the country nearly two decades ago and persisted with cricket and has built its equity over the years. Yet, I feel sorry for the brand. If only the people in MRF would listen to the inane stuff that is being said while their blimp is being shown, they would quickly jump ship and start endorsing ice hockey. Television is not the “theatre of the mind” as radio is for the viewer to imagine what is being said. I am seeing the telecast, for God's sake! Why are you insulting my intelligence?

Why brands need to be careful

Today brands live and try to grow in a crowded marketplace. They are often trying to outshout each other and create awareness for themselves. While awareness is all fine, I think the ambience in which brands present themselves to their consumers is extremely important too. Brands have a personality and every appearance must reflect that personality. Are the brands as loud, grating and in-your-face as they are made out to be by their presence in IPL? And how can brands that are in different stages of their life adopt the same strategy? A new brand such as Karbonn that wishes to establish itself needs to perhaps shout to get attention, but should not the Citis of the world and the MRFs do something more subtle and sophisticated? In fact, it would be very interesting if the large spenders did an objective evaluation after this exposure as to what consumers think of their brands. Yes, a lot more people might be aware of the brand, but what would the values associated with the brand be?

Hype vs substance

The IPL is an entertainment extravaganza and there is a kaleidoscope of colour, sound, lights, celebrity and, on occasion, skin on display. Of course, in the middle of all this is cricket, in between strategic time-outs of course. So it is easy to get carried away. It is like watching a “first day first show” of a Rajnikant movie. There is constant excitement - rupee notes are being thrown on the screen, people are whistling, shouting and clapping. The atmosphere has to be seen to be believed. Yet, how do you evaluate the movie? Can you, at all? I think the IPL is in a similar situation. There is so much hype and hoopla around it that brands can lose their way or what is worse, lose their character. More importantly, every brand is trying to dumb itself down and talk the language of the lowest common denominator and that is bothering me as a consumer.

I think we need to remember one thing. The Indian consumer is not yet cynical. He believes the advertising that he sees and trusts in celebrities. He believes what he reads in the newspaper and what he sees on TV, He thinks the expert is objective, perhaps with a slight India bias. But what one is seeing in the IPL is the world of hyperbole. Everything is exaggerated, amplified and made larger than life. It is easy for brands to succumb to the heady potion that the IPL is dishing out. But concerns remain. If brands lose credibility then all that they have been doing for years might just become diluted.

Yes, these are challenging times, but also times of great opportunity. But as always one needs to be anchored in the basics. The basics are simple. Business is about brands and brands are about consumers. The moment brands irritate consumers, they are going to be in serious trouble. I am on the verge of getting irritated. Are you?

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

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.)

Rewind. Reflect. Rejuvenate.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/catalyst/2007/12/27/stories/2007122750030200.htm

Consumed as I am by two passions - cricket and advertising, I was trying to see if there is any parallel between what happened in cricket around the world in 2007 with what happened in advertising, marketing and business in India at the same time. F irst, let me talk about cricket. For Indian cricket, 2007 was probably a year like no other. The disaster of the cricket World Cup in the Caribbean was reduced in impact by a test series win in England after a small matter of 21 years.
Of course, neither the captain nor the team got the recognition they deserved and the captain resigned in disgust as this must have been the last straw on an already tired and frustrated camel’s back. It is no fun being captain of India as Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar will testify.
This was followed by an extraordinary triumph in South Africa where we won the T20 World Cup under a new captain, Dhoni who, incidentally, is a strong link between my two interests. The whole of India went mad after this. Then followed a one-day series loss to Australia and a one-day series and Test triumph over Pakistan, again after two decades. And now the all important tour of Australia has just begun. What a year of highs and lows! Many of the young Indians saw a World Cup triumph by India for the first time in their young lives.
The world of advertising, brands and communication that I am equally passionate about did not have as dramatic a year. Here are a series of reflections on the year gone by and predictions for the immediate future. After all, 2007 will soon become 2008. And if now is not the time to reflect or introspect, I wonder when is.

India shining
‘India Shining’ may have bombed at the last elections but it is not elections or the advertising for it that we are talking about now. The economy is booming, companies are doing brilliantly, the Sensex is soaring and confidence is at an all time high for India and Indians aided and abetted with deals like the Corus deal. In fact, it is bordering on arrogance, a bit like the way of the BCCI in its relationship (?) with ICC with which the BCCI frequently throws its weight around thanks to the sponsorship muscle it enjoys. A booming India and a 20,000 Sensex means good things for the Indian advertising industry and here is the first prediction.
Year 2008 will be an even better year for the industry and there will be an increase in advertising for products and services as sections of our population think the world is their oyster and rightly so. Where will this boom come from?
While the booming Sensex will mean that there will be a slew of IPOs, and agencies specialising in this arena of activity will rake in the moolah, an opportunity will present itself for public relations agencies as well. This in a sense will be a replay of the late Eighties and early Nineties. Yet many of the older, well-established agencies could be threatened by a younger breed of agencies as people who make decisions will change and younger merchant bankers come into the picture and maybe the stranglehold of the old stalwarts over the new issues advertising market will be under threat.

Retail hot and happening
I need to reiterate that the retail revolution will continue, burgeon and eventually sweep this country. Retailers who are currently in ‘sale’ mode will also realise that factors such as service delivery, branding and differentiation will have to prevail as price advantages will reduce, if not disappear. Yet, the agencies face a bigger threat. The rise of retail means the agency can no longer get away with glossy image-building ads that are cute to watch and do nothing for footfalls. Results will be the key.
“Don’t tell me what a great ad it is, just drive people to my store” could well be the mantra of the marketer who is already struggling with rising real estate costs and increasing competition. Earlier, agencies used to build image with TV and drive traffic through newspapers. What will the new formula be? If retail is the next big 20-20 of business then both marketers and agencies would not have the luxury of time to experiment. The time to deliver is now. Is the agency ready? Who knows? And on the subject of 20-20 cricket, which was a huge money spinner, agencies need to realise that it is here to stay. They need to figure out whether they need shorter, edgier and zanier work for the audience and the mood that is different, rather than the same commercial for all seasons and all programmes.

Yo, baby! We are young and talking!
The youth theme has been done to death but we cannot wish away the fact that 59 per cent of the Indian population is below the age of 24 and that we have an amazing mobile market. Indian youth has taken to mobile phones as a duck to water. With increasing connectivity and accelerating use of GPRS, it provides a great opportunity for marketers to look at this medium far more seriously.
My children are 23 and 20 and represent India’s urban, affluent youth. They are probably more attached to their mobiles than they are to their parents. While it is a disappointment to me, it is perhaps a great opportunity for marketers to capitalise on this, engage and build relationships with youth using the mobile. Do we really understand this medium and its potency? And let’s not forget that we are one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. Speaking of youth and the new medium let me go on to the next big opportunity, and that is digital.

The great technology divide
India understands technology and has used it to become a budding superpower. Yet, we need to remember that online is the medium of the future and we have not really cracked it, technology notwithstanding. We have talked about this and will continue to talk about it but perhaps its time has come.
Let me give you a simple analogy. In the Eighties, Print was king. People wrote lyrical copy and won awards. Body copy was crafted and visuals made your mouth water. Then TV became the medium to watch out for, work on and build reputations with. Those who adapted to the medium and understood its differences got a headstart over their competition.
And what about advertising professionals? The ones who understood the new medium did well while those who refused to or ignored it just got left behind. We are at a similar juncture now.
Online is the medium that will change the face of marketing. Does the agency understand this medium? Is it only using this as “spin” to media and clients, or can it harness it? This is a big ask and creative people too must cross this chasm. My request to creative people is simple. Embrace this medium. Train to create in it. Understand its nuances and pitfalls and you will reap the benefits but a quick assessment of where agencies are, or what little they did in 2007 in this medium, makes one slightly concerned.

A few concluding thoughts
What were the great ads of 2007? What were the ads that made you stand up and cheer or wish you had done them? I could not think of too many or maybe they are not playing on the sports channels. In any case Airtel, Reliance and Idea produced interesting ads. Some of the financial advertising was insightful while colas seem to have lost their fizz. But media fragmentation is a way of life and will continue to be so.
The past two years, and even 2008, one suspects, will be all about celebrities. Leading the pack is our small-town hero Dhoni.
Hype rules for a short while and then reality takes over, whether it’s Saawariya or ICL. Here are two of the biggest flops of 2007 and whichever year that we are talking about, the basics will not change. Media weights or slick advertising can never support an inferior product. And expectations must be delivered.
The fact that the worldwide advertising hub for Lenovo will be Bangalore is an interesting and heartening development for advertising. This is not only about costs as the cynics might wish us to believe but an appreciation of our creative and strategic abilities.
Three of the larger agencies have creative people heading the agency, a phenomenon which was earlier reserved for the creative shops. One of the largest payouts in recent time happened at Lintas, bringing with it its own share of controversy about consultants and perhaps might have even got the Finance Minister’s attention, though one sincerely hopes not.
Whichever the year one is reviewing it seems impossible to keep out the paucity of people and the real decline in advertising’s importance in the overall scheme of things, and most certainly in the job market. Agencies are sceptical of training youth for fear of losing them. Yes, people will leave but plan for it, and if you do strike it rich with a few, you are still ahead.
So where do we go from here? While a year is just 12 months there is a depressing sameness to the advertising industry. Clients refuse to pay and then complain about poor quality. Talent is an issue and we seem to do precious little whether it is 12 months or 12 years. Retail is under metamorphosis, technology is reinventing itself every day, and the consumer is transforming herself while advertising continues to be in preservation mode.
Here, my years are showing and I am ending up being pessimistic. It is a great time to be in business. So let me end by wishing every one of you in advertising, communications and marketing and the whole world a wonderful 2008!

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

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

Is daddy cool?

The setting is a primary school classroom. The children are all busy listening to their teacher. Outside the class a parent (father) is trying desperately to catch the eye of his child who is equally desperately trying to avoid his eye. The kid’s friends also draw attention to the gesticulating parent and reluctantly the boy comes out of the class. His animated father asks him how to get the cricket score on his mobile and how he can get to R World. The exasperated son looks at his father with barely concealed scorn and tells him “just press the button”, gets him the score and goes back to class. The film ends with the father’s delighted, albeit ill-timed jig at the Indian score and at Dhoni’s six. Two nuns, who are passing by, wonder what’s happening. I like this commercial for a number of reasons not the least of which is my own anxiety to know the cricket score, sometimes when I am in alien lands like Thailand where cricket is nowhere in the scheme of things. But back to school and our commercial.

Execution – only half the story
At the risk of carrying coal to Newcastle, I must repeat that there are two components to any communication. The execution is that which we finally see, love, hate or are indifferent too. It is difficult not to like the Reliance R World commercial. Key to the executional success is a cute kid whose histrionics holds the commercial together. I am sure many of us have noticed the bevy of cute kids that waltz into our living rooms emoting for one brand or the other. This kid is one such. Let’s move on to the other part which is the strategy or ‘what’ is being said: This precedes the ‘how’ that you and I get to see.

The ‘parity economy’ we live in
One of the most abused clichés of our times is the statement that we live in a competitive world with multiple brands in every category. Every product is depressingly similar to its competition and there are so many of them whether it is soaps, shampoos, detergents… You name the category and I would be hard pressed to name the brands within it. So unique selling propositions like ‘bottles washed in steam’ or ‘only toothpaste with clove oil’ are increasingly difficult to come by in this day and age of product parity. The solution is not within the product but within the consumer. However difficult it is we must strive to find a consumer insight that strikes a chord in the viewer’s heart and moves the brand’s sales graph up. This commercial has one such insight. It’s not the ‘R World’ feature. Airtel offers value-added services too as I am sure does Hutch. And I am sure all these brands are powered by a website like Cricinfo. So there is no differentiator there. But the difference is that this commercial strikes a chord through its understanding of its consumers.


Daddy is a technophobe!
Just look around you and you will be amazed at how technologically challenged most consumers are. Nor is it a new phenomenon. In the eighties and nineties, one out of every two middle class Indian households bought a VCR but few among them ever used the ‘record’ switch, perhaps even more infrequently when a program that was scheduled for later had to be recorded in absentia. Even today people seem to be more comfortable ‘forwarding’ e-mails than composing them. People who own the snazziest LCD TV’s do not know how to tune the various channels that are beamed off the cable network. Owners of satellite radio do not know how to feed the password to get it on air and most relevantly many of us have fancy mobile phones with umpteen features that we haven’t the foggiest notion about. I wonder how many people above 40 who have cell phones with camera can actually take a picture and use that visual as wall paper. I for one cant! So what do we do? We enlist the support of our children who thankfully don’t suffer from our technological deficiency. These kids can delete our unnecessary messages, store important numbers, tell us how to activate voice mail and use call waiting facility. And they barely need to be out of their diapers to do all these seemingly mind boggling things.
It is this insight that drives the ‘R World’ commercial.

Insights are pure gold
Phil Dusenberry, the advertising great who was behind some of BBDO’s path breaking campaigns has this to say, “Good research demands brilliant analysis which inspires blazing insights that lead to ground breaking strategies and award winning executions.” Traditionally we have believed in the power of ideas. I am not knocking ideas. They have their use- but insights are long term and far more valuable. GE’s ‘We bring good things to life’ based on a strong insight ran for 24 years. The starting point is research. And research does not mean tons of spreadsheets or mountains of data. It is understanding the consumer, her motivations and problems. It is time spent intelligently at the consumer’s house or at the retail outlet or at the pub if beer is our product. Insights have been discovered before by observant marketers. And will continue to be discovered in future too. If you want to secure your brand’s future have no stone unturned. Just unearth that insight!

The author is Ramanujam Sridhar, CEO of Brand-comm