The changing world of advertising

The challenge for today’s leaders is to reposition the industry as a profession to aspire for..

It is always tempting to compare the calibre of today’s leaders with those of the previous generation. A leader is a function of the times he lives in.

Creative leaders have their tasks cut out. Clockwise: Piyush Pandey, Balki and Prasoon Joshi

When you spend a lot of time in a particular industry or in doing a specific activity it is not uncommon to do some soul searching.
It was in June 1983, a small matter of 26 years ago, when I entered the world of advertising. Of course, 1983 was a historic year for India since we won the Cricket World Cup at Lords.
I must quickly add that there was nothing historic about my joining the industry. I am only glad that I have not become history!

Yet, 26 years has seen both the industry and I go through change and I did enter the industry with my heart full of hope and a head full of hair!
As it is easier to talk about the industry let me stay on that track. While it is easy to write some general feel good statements like “the only permanent thing in life is change,” let me take the more difficult road of understanding and mapping some of the changes that have happened in the last two decades and which continue to happen under our collective noses.

Legends in their own life time

When I came to advertising one heard about legends. However, there were legends of a different nature. They could drink you under the table, they had three martini lunches (after all, those were the heady days of 15 per cent commission) and a wag called them “legends in their own lunch time”. But seriously the industry had its fair share of real legends. Legends, as they were respected by their clients and their own people. Real leaders of industry.

People such as R.K. Swamy, Alyque Padamsee, S.R. Ayer, Subhash Ghosal, Mike Khanna, Ranjan Kapur, Mohamed Khan, A.G. Krishnamurthy..
And I am quite sure there were many others of equal eminence who I did not have the privilege of coming into contact with. I think it is quite easy for me to get nostalgic about the leaders of the past because I knew some of them and even had the privilege of working with a few of them.

But some of them had one unique quality. They took on industry causes and if that meant that they had to take on clients on matters of principle, they would and never mind the consequences! I must also mention that we had very limited media covering the industry, unlike today.

Yet, these leaders were recognised, most significantly because they were ‘trusted advisors’ to their clients. They not only gave their time and wisdom to their clients but to the industry as well. They gave back as much as they got and often more than they got.

What about today’s leaders?

It is always tempting to compare the calibre of today’s leaders with those of the previous generation. But I have always resisted the temptation to compare across generations, even cricketers. People who have watched Gavaskar take on the best fast bowlers of his time would certainly rate him higher than Sehwag. People who have watched Border might rate him better than Ponting. But these are mere academic exercises.

A leader is a function of the times he lives in, just as much as a batsman is a function of the opposition that he bats against and the pitches that he bats on.

Be that as it may, the most significant change today in advertising is that many leading agencies have creative people as leaders whether it is a Balki, a Piyush or a Prasoon, all of whom are legends in their own right, visible in media and bringing recognition to themselves and the agencies they lead, not to forget the industry they represent.

Are they ‘trusted advisors’ to their clients? Most certainly they are, otherwise their clients would not swear by them and if one may add, ask for them in most meetings! So what has changed?

I suspect the best of talent does not come to the industry any more. It is no longer “a high involvement’ industry and that is the challenge which today’s leaders have to come to terms with.

In fact the next big challenge for today’s leaders is to reposition advertising as a profession to aspire for. I am sure they have the capability to do it. After all, if they have made so many uninteresting products saleable, then surely they can make the second oldest profession interesting.

Print to pictures to television

We grew up on the printed word. Just see how many of us wear thick spectacles! The people who inspired us were David Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach and Claude Hopkins… in India too, the ads by Enterprise and Trikaya were worth reading. Would you believe it? People read “body copy” in those days! A tribute to the writers of those days.

Then we had a breed of art directors who really demonstrated the value of the statement ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. I remember that many of the textile brands of yesteryear demonstrated the value of this axiom.

We used to have a funny system in a few agencies at least. There was no creative department. There was a “copy department” and an “art department’. They used to sit in different cubicles and the copy writer would go with her lines written in her note book to the art director. Then someone broke down that cubicle wall, well if the Berlin wall could be broken down, why not the advertising agency?

This was also the time that cricketers realised that great bowlers hunted in pairs whether it was a Lillee and a Thomson, a Bedi and a Prasanna or even a Warne and a McGrath. Similarly, the best creative teams hunted in pairs of a writer and a visualiser.

Writers sought out art directors and paired themselves. After a time, no one bothered whose line it was or who’s visual it was, they were only concerned about how good the ad was, and it was often very good.

When did the dramatic shift towards television happen?

It is difficult to recall how the shift towards creating for television happened. We need to remember that colour television in India is a relatively recent phenomenon. It was with the Asian Games that were held in 1982 that colour television ownership in the country really burgeoned.

There was just one channel, Doordarshan, and the Hindi feature film and Chitrahaar or Oliyum Oliyum, if you lived in Madras, were the only programmes you watched unless you were a farmer!

I remember too that there used to be a programme called “Rangoli” which played songs from films and whenever a black and white song would come on, my son would shout “daddy’s favourite song” thereby proclaiming my age and (lack of )taste. The Levers brands all used television. Liril and the “girl in the waterfall’ created ripples, not only because it was breakthrough but also as one of my cynical friends said “Indians. So rarely get to see skin”. A far cry from today where one just has to go to page 3 in one’s daily newspaper!

But the wheel changed a full circle and inexorably at that. A new breed of writers who thought “film” soon took over Indian advertising. Today, some of them lead agencies and rightly so. The emergence of cable and satellite television has heightened the importance of the script writer in a big way. The script writer is here to stay, call the shots and get heavier bonuses (oh well, at least when times improve). This has also led to the next major change and that is the media.

Medium is more than a message

Media in India has transformed. From the days of just five mainline papers and one television channel, we have metamorphosised into a maelstrom of choice. I remember that media managers were being evaluated primarily on their ability to get space.

The newspapers were busy saying ‘no space’ and magazines like India Today wished they had multiple “front sections”, so acute was the demand for space and preferred positions. Ad managers of major newspapers were busy asking their agency partners to plan better.

I remember frantically calling the manager of a major newspaper that I cannot name, to ask for space for an ‘obituary ad’ as my client’s father had passed away and the ad manager of the newspaper actually asked me out of force of habit “Why can’t you plan!” Well with competition, the times have changed and how.

The emergence of cable and satellite and the growing literacy of India has lead to vernacular media making its presence felt in more ways than one. Regional media is growing and is no longer the country cousin of English.

People are no longer bashful of reading vernacular newspapers and magazines. And what about the Sun TVs of the world? Try visiting a Tamilian family between 8.00 and 8.30 pm on a weekday and you will understand what I am talking about.

Yes, it is not easy to map 26 years in a mere 1,500 words and I am not even going to try. So dear reader hang in there, like the Ashes, this column is still far from over!

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

Peddling dreams in paradise

Twenty nine years ago on a cloudy day in July, I entered the city of Bangalore by the Brindavan Express, fell in love with the city and never left it, barring a brief moment of madness for six months. I have spent a small matter of 26 years working in different advertising agencies in the city and over the past 11 years run my own communications consulting firm and have watched the advertising industry and its fluctuating fortunes with interest. The advertising industry in Bangalore was at first a poor second to the one at Madras as the city I was born in used to be called in those days. The only business was the public sector business -- the likes of BEL, BHEL, HAL, BEML, with HMT watches being the largest advertiser by far. Every two years or so, they would have a 'swamyamvar' and every agency head would fly down to Bangalore and comment about the sleepiness of the city and its denizens .But, there was some truth in the statement as the city took its time to get its act together. As the wag maintained, even the suprabhatham for Lord Balaji was after 8 am, by which time the local citizens could remove their balaclavas (the woolen cap which covers the ears to protect it from the morning chill).

Changing the face of Bangalore

The mid-'80s saw Bangalore shake off its lethargy, thanks to Hosur. Ind Suzuki motorcycles opened its motorcycle plant in Bangalore. It already had a moped plant in Bangalore, the advertising for which was handled by Clarion Advertising. Some of the clever ads of that time like 'Teacher's pet' featuring young women driving mopeds made waves. Of course, the agency types in Bangalore used to crib in those days about the predilection of a few clients for creative done out of Bombay .Truth be told, advertising in Bangalore in those days, unlike today, was perhaps streets behind the standard set by Bombay. The next big advertising event in Bangalore was the launch of Titan the company and the watch in 1987. Titan changed the way the watch was made, sold and promoted and significantly, O&M which launched the brand with its high-profile advertising campaign, still handles the advertising for the parent brand a small matter of 22 years later. It is a tribute to the wisdom of the client and a reflection of the competence and creativity of the agency that the mutually beneficial relationship is still lasting. Another large client of the '80s was TTK and MAA, an agency founded by Bunty Peerbhoy which dominated the city, handled its flagship brand TTK Prestige. In fact, the brand's line 'Jo biwi se kare pyaar, woh prestige se kaise kare inkar' was a big hit with consumers. I personally felt that it was easier to demonstrate love for the spouse by buying her a prestige pressure cooker, as too did seem lots of others as the brand continues to do extremely well! There is an interesting anecdote about TTK though. It was a time when TTK was coming out with a range of new products and they were working with a number of agencies. Coincidentally, I was sitting in the TTK office one Saturday morning and there were no less than five agency personnel in the TTK office and TT Jaggu stepped out of his cabin for a minute and said in his own inimitable style, "Looks like every bloody agency in town is here"! Trust Jaggu to come up with better lines than the agencies he worked with! At about the same time, another brand from Bangalore was determined to make its presence felt. BPL (British Physical Laboratories), originally a medical equipment company, discovered the potential of colour television in the country and became one of the foremost players, if not the leader, in the category. Having worked with the BPL brand for over a decade across different agencies, I have nothing but the highest regard for the company as my own career grew with the brand. Sadly, the brand lost its pre-eminence over the years .But that is fodder for another story. Bangalore had another first. Direct response first opened its wings here, by another person far more talented than me, but with the same name - R Sridhar, who sadly left the city after doing path-breaking work for O&M in this area.

Brands in the garden city

Meanwhile, Calcutta (that's exactly what it was called those days) was quickly losing favour with advertisers as a city and as a marketing centre as brands like Britannia and later ITC with its foods made their way here. The UB Group in the meanwhile was becoming increasingly aggressive. And its line 'Ella OK, cool drink yaake' represented the city's preference for the frothy brew. Bangalore too had its own share of export apparels who realized the value of the local markets. Brands like Weekender and WearHouse started advertising heavily. A brand like Nutrine which had its plant in Chittoor gave some business to Bangalore. In the meanwhile, Madura Garments made agencies create some path-breaking advertising, none more than Allan Solly with its 'Friday dressing' campaign which is still running. Nor can one forget Van Heusen's 'Underline your Presence'. Brands like Wilman made their presence felt with their ability to buy different creative and it resulted in global recognition on the awards scene in those days. Agency types met at Koshy's and later at Black Cadillac which subsequently wound up. Every day there was an excuse to celebrate! The biggest shift in Bangalore's history was its own emergence as a global brand. This was a function of the emergence of software services. Global recognition followed for the city and companies like Infosys and Wipro made waves globally. Every other company followed these giants as the city was the centre for recruiting talent. Sadly, the industry that put India on the global map had no clue about advertising or its value. It used public relations, which was a cheaper alternative but largely ignored advertising, so the IT revolution largely bypassed advertising.

So, what of the future?

Bangalore has overtaken Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad as a centre in the advertising game. Clearly, Mumbai and even Delhi, are ahead in terms of size and importance. But, Bangalore has its own special place in the sun and its creative product is not to be sneered at. The city that pushed Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani to global recognition is waiting for the advertising spark. It is yet to make its mark on the Indian advertising scene. It is not top-of-mind as it is in IT and IT Enabled Services. Who knows what the future might throw up? The advertising industry needs its own Narayana Murthy to bring it into global pre-eminence. Maybe someone from the advertising industry will put Bangalore on the global advertising map. I am an eternal optmist. Like this wonderful city that has given me so much and continues to give so much to so many others. Its time in advertising will come, sooner rather than later.

(The author is CEO of brand-comm and mad about Bangalore)

It’s showtime, folks!

Some of the advertisements that cut through the clutter on TV, and make life less of a grudge...

Tata Indicom: Leveraging on the power of a simple ‘hello’.

The ICC T20 World Cup is over. India followed Australia, New Zealand, Bangladesh, England and several other losers out of the United Kingdom. Simultaneously, a nation of a billion people shifted their attention to other crucial and intelligence enhancing activities like watching K serials. A few others realised there was a recession on and they had to actually work while the rest of them went back to doing what they had been doing for quite some time – nothing.

I too was at a loose end given the fact that for a few days there was actually no cricket match on TV. (Miracles do happen!). So I went back to doing what I do, which is watching commercials on TV.

I realise that producing commercials that “reward” viewers and actually “work” at the marketplace is increasingly hard to come by, given the fact that we live in recessionary (there’s that popular word again) times. Clients tend to look for advertising that is more hard-working (read boring) with the brand name repeated in every possible manner and shown a zillion times. Yet a few commercials still pass muster. Let me share the reasons why I liked a few out of the several that passed me by. A few that I watched without flipping the channels and the few that motivated me to write about.

Hello Dada, hello off side!

I am not a Tata Indicom user so I have no idea how good their network or coverage is. They too could be like my service provider whose ads are much better than their coverage. But let me give their coverage the benefit of the doubt and stay with the advertising that I can safely comment about.
Saurav Ganguly is not my favourite cricketer, not that my opinion should matter to anybody. But there is one aspect of him that must be mentioned. Ganguly is someone whom you can love or hate, but someone whom you can never ignore. Not surprisingly, this is the guiding principle for creating ads. You can either love them or hate them but you can never ignore them. Neither can you ignore the Tata Indicom ad that is built around a strong proposition and yet built around Saurav Ganguly the toast of Bengal.

The commercial is set in a bus, presumably in Kolkata. There is a Sardarji reading the newspaper who says gloatingly ‘Dada ka innings katham’. The guy in the left presumably a Dada fan (is there any other type in Kolkata?) is indignant. He raises his voice and talks about Dada’s offside strokes, his strike rate, how he is a tiger and some such stuff. But one’s imagination has to work overtime to figure out the words as the animated Bengali gentleman says “hello, hello” after every other word, a reference to the network of other service providers. The commercial goes on to say that Tata Indicom users would not be subjected to the same tension thanks to the advanced digital network which it provides.

Very often powerful advertising ideas are a function of observation of consumers and their problems. How often have we watched people in trains or buses shouting at the top of their voices and sharing their intimate family or business problems to whoever cares to listen even as they keep shouting “hello, hello!” thanks to the iffy network that they are presently using.
Nor is this all. There is another commercial set in a restaurant. When giving the menu to a young family the waiter is fittingly turned out in a costume with strong oriental overtones. The menu presumably includes some dishes like shrimp, lobster and some other fried stuff, all of which is interspersed with ‘hellos’ to the bemusement of the wife and the complete confusion of the young kid who asks for a ‘fried hello’. To add to the confusion, the phone rings and the waiter breaks into a fresh flurry of ‘hellos’. The commercial ends with the statement that Tata Indicom users do not go through the same heartache thanks to the advanced digital network that the service provider claims.

Advertising is essentially cutting through the clutter and this commercial does that simply by the use of the word ‘hello’. I read somewhere that the word most used in the world is ‘hello”. Why wouldn’t it be indeed, if networks are so pathetic!

Hey it’s about me!

The other commercial I like is one where there is a middle-aged lady who is very tense because her husband has not come home on time (A situation I can relate to). The husband comes home sheepishly and gets it from his wife (been there done that). She tells him about how he left the house and said he would go for a cup of coffee and then how he had gone for a spin in his friend’s new car (of course, one hardly needs to mention that the spin was from Lucknow to Kanpur) and would he ever mature?

The unrepentant husband to whom promises are like buttercups swears that from the next day he would show her how he would be a reformed character.
The product window talks about Max New York Life which inspires ‘awara gardi’ like this. I can already imagine my retired life as the male character seems to think and behave so much like me! Nor does the commercial end, when the son gloats over the father getting it from the mother, the father reminds him about how he has to go to work and do boring stuff!

The next commercial in the series talks about the father telling his wife that they would be going all the way to Kolkata for a wedding. Whose? A friend of a friend of a friend who comes with our hero for his morning walk! Once again the confidence of the retirement plan and money under his belt leads our retired hero to a path of ‘awara gardi’. As someone who hopes to join the club I have nothing but the highest regard for the inspirational hero that I hope to be one day!

Yet, I have a problem. While I had seen these commercials several times over and laughed at my friend’s travails, I could not recall the brand name.
In fact, when I wanted to retrieve the commercial from YouTube to see it once again, the technophobe that I am, I kept telling my tech-savvy young colleague to look for a commercial of Kotak Mahindra. Many years ago, I used to idolise my uncle who was a movie expert. So in one of our conversations, I referred to a film, I knew the scene sequence even, but could not remember the title of the film though I kept insisting that it was a great film and he promptly told me, “It can’t be a great film if you can’t remember the name.” For some strange reason I remembered him now.

To continue the analogy, the script would have served any pension fund admirably though all credit to Max New York life for thinking of it first. But still a worrying thought – are we merely doing a great ad or are we appropriating the idea exclusively for ourselves?

Come to me I’m the real McCoy

The last commercial that finds a place in this piece has a wailing baby and the mother is busy getting her hands ‘mehendied’ – if such a word exists in the lexicon. So the child is passed from one unwilling handler to the other as the baby’s wailing increases in volume. The situation seems to be almost unmanageable as none of the people who are asked to hold the baby are in control of the baby or the situation! But thankfully the mother has finished what she has do and picks up the baby which instantly stops crying and starts gurgling happily. The commercial ends with the voice over exhorting the viewer to bring his Maruti to the authorised Maruti outlet.

What a simple and yet powerful analogy! I got some hidden meanings. The car is something very precious to the owner, like the child is to the parent, how others cannot handle it with the same love and affection… a whole host of things that were never said in the commercial . But an endearing commercial to my mind at least.

Yes, there is hope for the human race yet. There may not be cricket on my telly just now, but at least advertising like this makes life less of a drudge.
Hello, you still there?

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

A brand in public life

As Nandan Nilekani takes up his assignment with the Government, our columnist recounts the many positive qualities that this Infosys leader brings to his new role..

Nandan Nilekani: A personal brand that could ensure success for the new project.

One of the most profound statements that I have heard in recent times is by Nandan Nilekani, when I went to interview him for my first book One land, one billion minds.
He said, “You become a brand not when you talk about yourself, but when others talk about you.”

Today the whole of India and one suspects other parts of the world too will be talking about Nandan as he takes charge of the prestigious project on giving every Indian a unique number.

When we were young the joke used to be, “Yes you may know Richard Nixon, but does he know you?”
I can say with a fair degree of confidence that not only do I know Nandan but he too knows me! (If I may add along with a thousand others I am sure). For, not only is Bangalore a “one horse town” where everybody knows everyone else, but also because Nandan by nature is an extremely friendly person.
One of our common friends describes him as a “role model in networking”. I know that the word networking does sound a bit suspicious, but not in the case of Nandan.
He has referred me to several of his friends very, very graciously as “an expert on brands in India”. Now how can anyone be critical of a person who links you with friends and prospects in this manner?

Disagree without being disagreeable

Today many corporate leaders in India are brands in their own right. Media loves them or hates them even, on occasion. They do not hold back on the Government or the bureaucracy. They criticise the poor infrastructure or the Government’s policies, sometimes unfairly.

Fairly or unfairly they certainly raise the hackles of a few people. I am sure successful people are entitled to their opinion and media too would much rather publish the views of celebrities than those of ordinary people like you and me.
Nandan has a point of view, he feels strongly about the country and the need for its development and yet his views have never been really controversial or headline grabbing, a philosophy that others who might have ambitions in public life would do well to remember and even try to emulate.

When I was young, I used to be more hot blooded than I presently am but I always remember my uncle’s words, “You can disagree, but don’t be disagreeable!”

Only when you give will you get

The poet Kannadasan who represented all my literary knowledge at one stage of life, wrote “there are crores of people who are worse off than you, take heart from that”.
But people like Nandan have quietly turned that around by not merely feeling glad that they are better off, but by actually giving back to society by way of contributing time, money and tremendous guidance to a number of causes that are close to their hearts.

I know of enough organisations that are doing noble work which have benefited from his largesse and, as always with the founders of Infosys, all of whom have large hearts, they have donated generously as individuals while the company has got the mileage.

Courtesy demands acknowledgement

I have worked with several busy executives who seem to be caught up in their own tangles of time management.
They never answer their mobile phones, are almost always in meetings and never acknowledge mails.
Of course, being the polite individual that I am, I do not let it pass and keep telling them that it is easier to get through to Dr Manmohan Singh.
They grin sheepishly but continue in their self-centred, inconsiderate ways.
Nandan is a wonderful exception and serves as an example, responding promptly to mails and calls.

I wonder if there is something that we who claim to be busy all the time can learn from the likes of Nandan.

No personal agenda

A few from corporate India have made it to public office.
They are visible in the media and often talk about serving the country and how India needs more talented people from the corporate world.
I agree wholeheartedly with this principle. India has a paucity of talent, particularly young talent, where it matters, in public life.
Yet I wonder if some of these self-styled leaders have anything other than the interest of the industries they serve or the companies they still own.
Half the time they are lobbying on behalf of their own industry category.

Nandan’s prompt resignation from the board of Infosys, a company that he helped found, led and guided for several years is indication that he has a larger agenda, the development of India.Challenge, opportunity or both While it is a tremendous honour, there is no denying that this job will be no bed of roses. India is steeped in red tape. The red tape in other countries may only be a pale pink in comparison. It will require patience, man management and the ability to get people on to one’s side. Many in Government could have personal agendas that conflict with the general good. Nandan has the qualities to succeed in this environment and demonstrate that running a project in government can be as successful as running it in the private sector. I am sure that the personal brand that is Nandan will ensure that brand India succeeds in this ambitious project.

(The writer is CEO of brand-comm and the author of Googly — Branding on Indian turf.)

IPL to ICC in just 20 seconds!

Companies should go over advertising and marketing strategies given the situations the various T20 tournaments throw up, be it broadcast timing or duration of the match..

The IPL has been done and dusted. The Deccan Chargers have just won the extravagantly designed trophy that is another testimony to the IPL’s opulence. Even before the celebrations ended and the hangover subsided cricket teams are fighting anoth er T20 tournament, this time for the World Cup! (Unfortunately for India, it is out of contention, having crashed out in the Super Eights stage.)

Today cricket matches and tournaments are a process, not an event, as they follow each other like waves from the ocean. No one but the players and the spectators seem tired, as the marketers seem to be busy working out promotional schemes by the dozen and ad agencies seem to be producing hundreds of television commercials which seem quite similar to each other. All too often one ends up watching the same boring commercial 17 times on the same day!
If some media reports are to be believed the T20 World Cup is a sell-out for ESPN Star and prices are at least 20 per cent higher than the pricing of the IPL. Of course, there are different sets of sponsors for both these programmes. As we are not involved as advertisers or sponsors, but merely as consumers of advertising who are gifted with 20-20 hindsight, even if some of us are constrained to wear spectacles in real life, we are free to air our views on advertising, cricket, life after IPL, brands … in fact, anything that the editor of this august newspaper permits!

What’s the time, yaar?

I am a diehard cricket fan and watch most games ball by ball and then religiously watch the highlights and the Extra Innings and the Fourth Umpire and the Stumped and every other boring cricket-related programme that comes on air. Yet we are a dying breed and even the most ardent of us are having trouble staying awake at 1 a.m. to watch the epic struggle between India and Ireland. We are getting into trouble with our bosses in the recessionary times that we live in, as our bosses, sadly, seem to have lost their interest in cricket and in the bargain, their sense of humour as well. But seriously, the timing of the matches is an issue and while advertisers are putting up a brave face, I am not sure how good the viewership is likely to be for matches which start at 10 p.m. Thankfully, the saas-bahu serials and the Anandams of the world will continue jerking tears from avid viewers as there will be no clash of interest.

Contrast this with the IPL which had brilliant timings from the Indian viewer’s point of view. Oh, what a time we had! We could have a few drinks in readiness, get sozzled during the match and end up cheering the opposing team and would read the next day’s papers to see who the real winner was! One must hand it to Lalit Modi for his time management. I am sure next time he would make the teams play at 6 a.m. in some remote part of the world, just to ensure that Indians like you and me get to watch our favourite players in the comfort of our living rooms, with our glasses in hand.

Timing was the problem which the World Cup faced in 2007 as the matches were played at crazy times (for us at least) in front of empty stadiums and a smattering of unhappy Indians who could not manage to cancel their flights or sell their tickets!
We all know that the viewership in India is directly proportionate to the team’s performance. How many of us watched the engrossing one-run victory of South Africa over New Zealand? Not too many in India, I suspect. Large numbers of Indians will only watch India games if they are held late at night. So my first prediction is that for most of the tournament the TRPs will not deliver the numbers or the economics that media planners want.

Well, in any case, T20 is a lottery as any Australian supporter will tell you, even as the Australian team goes into hiding at Leicester after an ignominious exit. One just hopes that it does not turn out to be a lottery for the advertisers who have spent crores on it!

Do advertising types ever watch their own ads?

My crib is that bank managers never stand in the queue to collect cash on Saturday mornings, principals do not have to meet other principals for the admission of their children, cops never have to pay fines and agency creative guys for nationalised banks never experience their service!

But having said that, I really wish that the large advertisers and agencies would watch their commercials aired several times during a day’s play. In fact, I cordially invite them to my living room to watch the next match. They would writhe if they were to hear the comments and groans from my friends and family as the same commercials come on ad nauseam.
One such commercial that I have seen too often is that of Dhoni for Orient Fans. Mind you, I have several favourites (!), but as I have too few friends in advertising discretion shall be my operating philosophy. Incidentally Dhoni’s batting too seems as laboured as some of his commercials and he seems to be doing quite a few.

It is perhaps here that one should admire brands such as Vodafone, which, being one of the sponsors of the IPL, had the good sense to do 29, or was it 30, different versions for value-added services as they had bought substantial time during the tournament and did not want their viewers to be bored. Reliance Communication, which is the sponsor for the current T20 tournament, too has multiple executions with the handsome Hrithik Roshan (there, I have made my niece happy).

But I too have a Reliance mobile connection and have no clue as to what the commercials are saying, other than the fact that Hrithik is a nice guy who remembers his old friends including the light boy even if he is a bit old! But imagine if Reliance had had only one commercial!
This leads me to something that I feel strongly about. If the T20 calls for a different strategy and execution then how is it that the advertising agency is serving its own boring fare whether it is a K serial or a T20 game? If crores are being spent on the promotion, should at least millions not be spent on the creative product? Imagine running 30- and 40- second commercials in a match that lasts all of 40 overs! Come on guys, get creative! Shorter, edgier, more versions, not more of the same!

IPL, T20 or what is the way ahead?

The purists might refuse to accept the “hit and giggle’ as the way to go for the game, but there is no denying the fact that advertisers and marketers should have no doubts that the future of commercial cricket is here. Money is obviously not unlimited and brands continually have to make choices as to where they will park their funds. So where would I put my money if my brand were to be associated with cricket in some way, as quite a few brands have been? Make no mistake; the World Cup is a big event. But so far it has been a low-key affair if not a damp squib. Even the opening ceremony was dumped, courtesy the glorious English weather!

The crowds, I suspect, are still waiting by the sidelines for the Ashes to begin and the grounds are half full if not fully empty. After all, every Englishman and his brother-in-law know that the Ashes are going to change hands this summer, never mind what the form book says.
While national support can muster up the numbers, neutral games have very poor viewership in India, even if they are interesting. Many of the teams that have made it to the Super Eights are quite sad, to put it mildly, and even making allowance for the fact that T20 can cause upsets. A few of the games will make for poor viewing.

Contrast this with IPL with several close games and spectators forming alliances and rooting for teams even if they have foreigners in them.
The charm of T20 is close games, with each over likely to turn the game around on its head. I wonder how many close games the current World Cup will have? I just wonder.
I do know that this is a global event as 216 countries could be sharing the broadcast lead but then India is where most of the money is being spent. And a phenomenal number of eye balls are expected.

I think companies need to think through their future strategies as IPL is here to stay and gives much more flexibility for marketers and sponsors, as the ICC seems to be looking the other way whenever Lalit Modi does or says anything.
So what’s your pick? IPL or ICC? Or should we do an sms poll on Extra Innings?

P.S. Just to lend credence to my crib about ads in the T20, Maruti has this corporate ad which I am sure is a hastily done edit of earlier commercials. So there is a sequence where a boy has a placard saying “want to go home for Diwali”, never mind the fact that the ad is being shown in June.
Oh, well, Happy Diwali!

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

Winners, losers and also-rans

Branding and marketing, rather than sport and team spirit, triumphed in this IPL..

It’s been a week since the spectacular IPL final and the not so spectacular closing ceremony. You don’t need to be very smart to know that Deccan Chargers won a taut final after facing the ignominy of being the winners of the wooden spoon last year.

The runner-up was Royal Challengers, a team that was perhaps rightly branded last year as a test team and had finished seventh. They were not much different this year as the highly valued Kevin Pietersen, who was supposed to give momentum to the side as captain and key batsman, nearly derailed the challenge till Anil Kumble, the former test captain, stepped in to show the way with a little help from Ross Taylor to end up a close second.

After 59 matches, several thousand seconds of commercial time, hours of buffoonery behind the mike and countless bumps and grinds by Jacques Kallis’ sister and her clan, let’s examine who are the real winners and losers after this event. Are there any learnings at all from this exercise?

Losing matches but winning the brand war

A recent report by an independent brand valuation firm suggests that the Kolkata Knight Riders are the most valuable of the eight teams that are currently part of the IPL. While critics of brand valuation may carp at the subjective nature of the process and while cricket fans may deride the team’s performance, there is no denying the fact that the team owner has got his marketing act right, even if he could not organise the team’s performance.

They were the first to unveil their uniform, create a winning anthem if not a rocking team, get sponsorship of leading brands such as Sprite with visible advertising and extensive sale of merchandise. I am no fan of John Buchanan or Shah Rukh Khan but even I ended up buying the black and gold T-shirt on a JetLite flight to Delhi. (Bored air travellers have been known to do strange things.)

The other teams have a lot to learn from the Knight Riders in marketing and branding while the Knight Riders team can learn lots of things from other teams such as the Chargers and the Royals on the value of team spirit and the importance of a single captain. John Buchanan demonstrated the value of the statement that a “coach is something that the players use to travel to the stadium from the hotel.” Clearly the emotional SRK would be well advised to change both coach and captain next year, but who are we to comment on his team, after all it’s his money!

Price losses and value gains

Clearly the losers in the IPL were those who failed to attend the session on “cost benefit” analysis in management school. Some of the most expensive players were easily the duds of the tournament. The English players Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff must have been flattered by the prices they commanded by owners who went by reputation, but they merely flattered to deceive.

Other Englishmen such as Collingwood and Owais Shah travelled halfway through the world to warm the dugout benches on really cold South African nights. The costliest exchange has been that of the vastly overrated Robin Uthappa for India’s premier fast bowler Zaheer Khan, which, incidentally, was announced with major fanfare and someone would have thought that we were watching history in the making.

Of course, Uthappa created his own unique record by spending more time with Mandira Bedi, giving more media interviews than he did at the middle batting. His dropped catches also provided enormous entertainment to his opponents. In retrospect the relatively underpaid Australians such as Hayden, Gilchrist and Warne demonstrated the value of experience particularly in the context of the tournament’s sudden and unexpected move to South Africa. Maybe the talent scouts would be better off by getting the likes of Justin Langer, who is still making a huge number of runs in England, to play here in future series of the IPL. Value buys are the winners while the high-profile buys will be consigned to history.

The loss of a professional reputation

They do say that a reputation is slowly built over years and can be lost in a jiffy. Well, most of the commentators lost their reputation in this three-week period as they outdid themselves in trying to pander to Lalit Modi and the sponsors in a manner that was almost pitiable. The likes of Mark Nicholas, Danny Morrison, Robin Jackman, Rameez Raja and a host of others should not be allowed anywhere near a stadium where a serious cricket match is being played here after.
I urge these illustrious gentlemen and a host of others who were part of the circus to watch their own performances again in replay and perhaps they will understand the agony that some of us went through as we watched them over after over.

Broadcasting has been the loser and I am not referring only to the quality of telecasting, which left a lot to be desired despite the helicopters crisscrossing, and the host of cameras which were focusing only on the celebrities.

Winning captains, losing captains

If last year Shane Warne was the captain of the tournament, this year it was another leggie, our own Anil Kumble, who, surprisingly was an afterthought. There was a host of other captains who not only stepped up first for the presentation ceremony but were also last in terms of innovation and ability to handle pressure.

I will not run the risk of talking about Sachin Tendulkar’s captaincy as I do not want to be lynched alive, but a few prospective Indian captains were on display in addition to the incumbent M. S. Dhoni who was his normal, unflappable self for most of the tournament except when his bowlers let him down.

Yuvraj had a permanent scowl on his face, Sehwag was smiling despite committing the cardinal sin of not giving Glenn McGrath a single game despite his team having a huge lead. Of course, Kevin Pietersen and Yuvraj had one thing in common – they had no clue as to the team composition as they went out to toss! Gilchrist turned around his team and kept smiling equally when his team snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and when Rohit Sharma did the impossible in the final over.

BCCI wins the earnings battle but loses the ethics war

BCCI and Lalit Modi have been behind this amazing marketing success story that has got the world sitting up and taking notice but it has not covered itself with glory on one important aspect and that is in resolving the conflict of interest issue.

Whilst all sorts of rumours float around about the ownership of various teams, let me stay with something that I saw on television that bothered me enormously.

Mandira, poor thing in her sad new look, was asking Kris Srikkanth who his favourite was before an important game and the Chairman of the selection committee broke forth into the Chennai Super Kings jingle. Is his sponsorship with the team more critical to him than the prestigious job as Chairman of the selection committee?

India wins, Lalit Modi loses

The second edition of IPL has been a major achievement for India and its organising capabilities. It speaks of skill, logistics, execution, all brought to bear in a short time in a foreign country when the chips were down. The world sat up and took notice.

And yet Lalit Modi’s basking in the glory and cornering the camera and the limelight demonstrates the trouble with BCCI and its in-your-face approach. India is the most powerful cricketing nation in the world and it has shown more than eyeballs this time around.

It has shown tremendous marketing acumen and organising ability. But Lalit Modi needs to remember the simple branding principle: “You become a brand when others talk about you.”
People will certainly talk about the IPL and not Lalit Modi in the years to come, one hopes.

Bye bye Johannesburg, hello London

Now the caravan moves to England where teams will play as nations. Zaheer will clash with J. P. Duminy and David Hussey with Ishant Sharma.Former team mates will rediscover the hatchet and forget the recent friendships in South Africa.People such as Andrew Symonds will continue to sledge with renewed vigour and people like me who are suffering from withdrawal symptoms after the IPL will go back to predicting winners and losers.We will also remember that the biggest winner is the game of T20 cricket with its furious ups and frenetic downs.

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

Zooming into minds and hearts

The ‘Zoozooperstars’ are the current rage.
Ramanujam Sridhar

Love ’em or not, the Zoozoos have made an impression. And that also counts for successful advertising..

Without a doubt the Vodafone campaign is the most visible campaign of the several that are currently on air and reminds me of the statement that works wonderfully in advertising and in life: “Either love me or hate me but for God’s sake don’t ignore me.”
But should the brand have made such a drastic departure from the past? Isn’t the tone of voice too different? What will happen to the pug?

There was a time when cola advertising ruled the roost in India and if one may add, in the rest of the world too, in terms of creativity. In India, the ads for Pepsi were benchmarks for creativity as they might well have been for North America. Then Coca-Cola, which was a laggard in the creativity sweepstakes, got into the act and the original “Thanda matlab Coca-Cola” ads featuring Aamir Khan quickly catapulted the brand into visibility and enabled it to catch up with Pepsi that was far ahead then.

Today, however, the category that is setting the benchmark for that elusive quality called creativity and spends that ensure that the campaign is seen is most undoubtedly that of mobile services.

I am what may be euphemistically referred to as a “compulsive user” of the mobile phone. Of course, if you ask my wife she might use the words “obsessive user”. (I must quickly add, though, that the secret to staying married for as long as I have is to generally ignore the profound statements that one’s spouse makes.)

But both of us must agree and confess that I am nowhere in the league of my children when it comes to mobile phone usage or dependence. But let me stay with “yours sincerely” as one never knows enough about one’s own children.

I was originally a JTM user from Bangalore, one of the earliest service providers in case the name does not ring a bell and a company that was subsequently taken over by Bharti. I also have a Blackberry from Reliance whose usage I am still trying to figure out. For a short while I was wooed by Hutch, as the company was then called, and subscribed to their service in a moment of weakness. I gave up the service in a short while, as the physical fitness demands imposed by the brand on me were unacceptable to a self-respecting individual.

Maybe I need to explain this, which sounds pretty complex but in actual fact is pretty simple. Whenever I was in Bombay as it was called then and in our office in Lower Parel (or upper Worli), I had to run out of the office when the phone rang if I wanted to hear the caller. I opted out of the service as I strongly believe that fitness should never be forced on an individual, however well meaning the service provider!

I could write a book about how mobile phone companies’ advertising is much better than the coverage they provide. For example, when the user is in Kandahar or some such distant place in the commercial the phone seems to work wonderfully while it barely ever works in Koramangala in Bangalore in real life.

Maybe we should shift our offices to the more remote parts of India! The service works brilliantly in a moving train in another commercial where a father and son play chess while it invariably never seems to work with the same clarity when the father is in Anna Salai (Mount Road) and the son is in Mylapore. I do realise that children are happier this way but that is another story! Calls drop at a rate which puts to shame the rate at which Mathew Hayden slams fours in the IPL. Instead of talking about things which are beyond our control, such as service, network, call drops and wrong billing, let me talk about the ads that appear for mobile services over the network and particularly those that appear during the IPL and during the strategy breaks.

Branding a campaign

Vodafone is one of the sponsors of the second edition of IPL, like Citi and DLF. But I must compliment it for not trying to be in the league of Citi and DLF when it comes to branding their offering. I love the audacity of the bank for its frequent “Citi moments of success” which the poor, hapless commentators keep chanting. Given the way people have looked at banks and their recklessness in recent times with some of them almost being on the verge of extinction, I admire Citi’s foolhardiness in its frequent reminders to customers about success.
As for DLF, the less one speaks about it the better. I am sure as an unhappy customer of some realtor or the other, my reaction when I get shortchanged by anybody is to think “I have been DLFed” so they too have created a place under the sun for themselves. I do wish the company all success, as in these troubled times it certainly needs all our good wishes if not our patronage.

Vodafone’s ads may be more in-your-face in their execution but are at least different from the abovementioned two. The current campaign for Vodafone that has been branded as the Zoozoo campaign, without a doubt is the most visible campaign of the several that are currently on air and reminds me of the statement that works wonderfully in advertising and in life: “Either love me or hate me but for God’s sake don’t ignore me.” One can ignore the campaign at one’s own peril. There are multiple executions, close to 30, I am told, for what the mobile services industry calls “value-added services” whether it is stock alerts, beauty tip alerts, prayers or cricket scores, to name just a few.

Commercials make news

As someone who has a reasonable understanding and appreciation of the public relations process, one must say that the commercials have made news, which, given the declining importance of advertising, is itself a significant achievement.

There have been features on the making of the commercials, of how they have been shot in South Africa and how they are real-life models and not animated characters and how the models are women and children.

It has been a breakthrough in the social media networking realm and has captured the imagination of the young viewer with consumers using the character as screensavers, wallpapers and sound clips of Zoozoo ads. To put it mildly, it has captured the imagination of the young viewer and one must remember that a mobile service is essentially a young person’s category. Kids certainly spend more time on their mobile phones than with their parents and most definitely more than the time they spend with their books. It is an integral part of their lives and most certainly a high-involvement category.

I personally found the campaign different and interesting, if a bit overrated. But then I am in my fifties and perhaps not the target audience for the ‘Zoozooperstars’, as the models are described.

So I spoke to a cross-section of people who were young enough to be my children – my students, young employees and a host of youngsters across the country to get their feedback, lest I be classified as a biased, old fogey who does not understand today’s youth or what makes them tick. I also had a quiet sort of liking for the pug dog and had found the campaign warm and endearing which was what I believed was the projected personality of the brand and must confess that I still keep wondering what will happen to the poor dog.

I am loving it

The first 23-year-old I asked about the campaign gave me an indication of what youngsters think. “Oh, I love it!” she said, and her eyes lit up much as mine would have when I used to think of ice-cream 30 years ago. Today’s kids might need bigger things to turn them on, maybe John Abraham, but definitely the ads are a turn-on. Perhaps, between you and me, because this was not what I wanted to hear, I spoke to a few older people as well and here the response was a bit less ecstatic and maybe a bit muted as well. “What are they trying to say?” “Seems a bit immature,” said one 50-year-old in a sonorous voice that would have made the cheekiest youngster bite his lip. Some people, who I am sure are not animal activists, seem to be missing the pug.

It’s the money

Value-added services clearly seem to be the exciting revenue option and every service provider is after the consumer to use these services. This campaign, with its multiple executions creating awareness for the range of services, addresses that specific need eminently as most users seem to be unaware of the possibilities that the service provides. The earlier image, however cute, could be seen as passive, award-winning perhaps, but certainly not as effective as the current cheeky executions.

It certainly seems to drive home the point better than Airtel’s ads with Madhavan and Vidya Balan, whom most of the current crop of youngsters see as ‘middle-aged”. Yet, questions remain.

Should the brand have made such a drastic departure from the past? Isn’t the tone of voice too different? What will happen to the pug? Do you really need so many different executions or are the client and producer having a ball at the client’s expense? If the key revenue is going to come from cricket alerts and stock market tips is it better to stay with just a few key ones?

Singing in the rain

I am sure any campaign that promotes debate and provokes strong reactions has a lot going for it, living as we do in a world where advertising campaigns create as much impact as ships that pass us by in the night. Zoozoo certainly is different.

It reminds me of a Tamil proverb that I had heard often enough: “Either stand in the sun or stand in the rain, never stand in the shade.” The creators of the campaign remind one of summer rain that makes people rush out, revel in it and sing! It is perhaps more campaigns such as these that will get currently cynical young people to get into advertising.
May the tribe of creative rain-makers increase!

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

The setting and its selling

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

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

The theory of constraints

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

Ring in an idea

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

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

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

Continue to engage, continue to sell

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

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

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

The setting and its selling

Brands have floated promotions giving customers a chance to view matches in South Africa

A new, improved Satyam?

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

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

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

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

Takeover - who wins, who loses?

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

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

The name of the game

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

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

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

The essence of the brand

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

Communication is in

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

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

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

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