Blast from the past

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nootruku Nooru Vajram

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The paint of India

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

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

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

At stumps

So here are a few thoughts for your consideration:

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

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

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

Are you changing your position?

Are you losing out in the process of change?

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

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

Have mobile, will go to town

Cellular services are thriving, but like several other services and products,

the claims in the advertising are not mirrored in actual performance.

When I entered advertising in the Eighties, cola was the happening category. Agency creative types would give an arm and a leg to work on a cola or a soft drinks account. Captions resonated in young people's minds, won awards for the agency that created them and quickly made it to the editorial as newspapers and magazines adapted the lines and made them their own. In all fairness many of the other categories, dominated as they were by multinational style advertising, had boring and predictable ads. Thankfully people still watched these ads as there was only one channel and usually half a programme to watch. This was before the days of oongli cricket as the remote control had not yet made its diabolical presence felt. And if my memory serves me right, there was research to suggest that people found the commercials more entertaining than the programmes themselves, which was perhaps an indication of how sad the programmes were at that point in time.

Having said that it would be remiss of me not to mention some of the pathbreaking ads of the Eighties, some of which I can still recall and which I still show my students today, some of whom were born after these ads were made. Ads for Vimal, the ‘I love you Rasna' ads, the ‘Lalitaji' commercials, ‘Give me Red' for Eveready, ‘Hamara Bajaj' and the commercial of the Cadbury's girl in the cricket field to name just a few, kept our collars up even if our wallets were thin. And yet, when I show these ads today they seem hardly as exciting as they were when I first saw them. It was for nothing that Bill Bernbach said “Today's smartest advertising style is tomorrow's corn.”

Variety, the spice of life

Perhaps the greatest shot in the arm not only for the Indian economy but for Indian advertising was liberalisation when foreign brands came in quest of the ‘great Indian middle class'. Some flourished while others floundered but advertise they did, with varying shades of creativity. And yet the greatest revolution, to my mind at least, has been the ‘mobile revolution' as India took to mobiles the way a young Sachin Tendulkar took to cricket nearly three decades ago. Young India goes to sleep with its mobile and old India has sleepless nights about the next generation's addiction for mobile phones. But one industry that has not lost any sleep about the phenomenal growth of the mobile services industry is advertising.

Mobile service companies are advertising-dependent, to put it mildly. Companies are in cut-throat competition with each other in the prepaid and postpaid categories, have mindboggling schemes and sexy advertising. The target audience is young, irreverent, has a sense of humour and is completely relaxed as it spends its parents' money! Mobile services is a brilliant advertising category that can entertain, beat the clutter, make you smile and even win your agency awards. What more can anyone ask for?

Of course, there is a slightly discordant note that I must bring up (I think it is my horoscope that prevents me from seeing the brighter side of things) and that is about how far removed from the truth this advertising often is. Every mobile service ad talks about phenomenal coverage. The pug follows the little girl wherever she goes, signifying the depth and width of the coverage. It is a completely different matter that my colleagues in Mumbai are extremely fit as they have to run out every time their mobile phone rings, as you can't hear a word inside the office! Of course, the fact that I do not run much is evident from my middle!

One of the most recalled commercials for Airtel is one in which the grandfather who is in the village and the grandson who is in the train play chess. Forget connectivity on a moving train in distant lands; as an Airtel customer I can vouch for how dismal the coverage is in not-so-distant places such as Mumbai for I have hell when I go there and even in Bangalore where I live and work. Coverage is the last thing the brand should speak about, for it is like a red rag to disgruntled consumers such as us.

In fact, the advertising for mobile services reminds me of a competition that most management schools have called ‘mad ads' where students are asked to do advertising for an imaginary product or service. Mobile services are definitely there and thriving, but they are like several other service products in the country whose actual performance has no relevance to the advertising that they portray. Make no mistake, mobile services advertising in the country is by and large brilliant, entertaining, and clutter-breaking. Why ask needless questions like “is what they are saying true” and “how good is the actual coverage?”

Withdrawal symptoms after IPL

The IPL is over and for a few days I had withdrawal symptoms as I would mechanically go and sit in front of the TV at 8 p.m. I miss the hysterics of Danny Morrison; Navjot Singh Sidhu's profound wisdom that would fill an entire calling card; the show of legs as the cheerleaders danced to Kannada and Tamil songs; the wistful gaze of an heir apparent on a largely disinterested young star; and the elusive smiles of Preity Zinta as her team discovered new depths; the missed sitters that made me think ‘S***, I could have caught that'; the multiple teams on 12 points; the strategic breaks where the commentators were hard pressed to say anything remotely strategic; the haunting images of Lalit Modi with some pretty woman or the other… A weaker man might have been driven to drink! But thankfully, the ads for mobile services continue to entertain even if Lalit Modi or Shashi Tharoor refuse to. So let me talk about the mobile services ads that I like and that are current.

Show me your tattoo and I will show you mine

Have you seen the one where a lady with South Indian features is chopping vegetables on a kitchen table, Suprabhatham is playing in the background and her pretty daughter approaches her reluctantly and says, “I want to show you something”? The mother looks up, one suspects with dread, God knows what today's youngsters can show and lo and behold, she displays a huge and grotesque tattoo on her lower back. I stared aghast at the tattoo as I thought her mother would and imagine my surprise when the mother says in her pronounced Madrasi accent, “very nice”. It was for “my song” and asks people to listen to what they would like to listen. I am sure lots of people with grown-up children like me love this commercial for Tata Docomo, as they would of the young man who goes for an interview and says exactly the wrong things and yet gets a job! Tata Docomo has been a game changer in the mobile category and its pricing has turned the market on its head. But its success in no small measure is due to the advertising.

Not far behind are the Airtel ads for night time calling featuring Sharman Joshi (I finally figured out his name, after all, South Indian names are a problem for North Indians too) where he speaks to his girlfriend's brother and advises him on what to study before he gets to speak to the girl or when he makes the shopkeeper speak to his mom and bargain on the sari price and butters up his professor on thermodynamics thanks to the Net … So what if Airtel has call drops and you can't hear, at least, they have interesting commercials. And what about Idea Cellular and its whacky commercials that feature crazy contests with Abhishek, his fat attendant and the dumb blonde? The whackier the contest, the more I liked the commercial. And what about Vodafone and the Zoozoos? I know that I am going to upset a few people, including my colleague who is a fervent admirer of the advertising, when I say that the current advertising is not as endearing as the earlier edition. Is it more in your face? More strident? More tailored to suit the brand IPL? I don't know, but I have seen better from the same brand.

And finally it is not only advertising

I have a sneaking suspicion that the mobile brands are taking the easy way out and focusing on creativity and advertising that is manageable. What about customer service and engagement? Let me give you an example as recent as yesterday. My wife received a mail from her personal relationship manager whose name I shall not mention saying “thank you” and that she was “special” and how she was her personal relationship manager. There was a small problem though; the mail started with “Dear Sir/Madam,” and went on to say all those glowing things. My wife being the difficult customer that she is wrote back:

“Thank you for your mail (here she had addressed the relationship manager by name). If I am such a valued customer, I am surprised that your database does not tell you whether I am a male or a female.

Regards, …”

Ouch!

I think it is time mobile service companies realised that there is more to life than advertising. Advertising is fun. It is glamorous. It is sexy even, like the tattoo ad. But the boring stuff is what customers bond with and that is customer experience and service.

Is anyone listening or are they too busy making ads?

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

Is IPL losing its sheen?

The league tournament should aim to provide entertainment from the cricket pitch, not from I-T raids at its offices or television studios.


The third edition of the IPL tournament is in its last leg and the teams are fighting it out in the trying heat and dust. Batsmen are finding it easier to sweat bucketloads than to make runs. Teams seem to have some strange affinity for the number “12” as five teams seem to be stuck on this magical points figure. The stadia seem full, at least at Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi. TRPs are soaring, IPL post-match party tickets are being sold at Rs 50,000 if rumours are to be believed. But things are not as hunky dory as they ought to be. The attention shifted slowly but surely from the cricket to franchisee ownerships, bribes, mudslinging and more, taking its toll on Shashi Tharoor. Reports have it that Lalit Modi will also be forced to quit. In short, whatever is happening with the induction of new teams is, to borrow a phrase as old as the game, “just not cricket”.

IPL a revolutionary brand

I have no doubt in my mind that IPL revolutionised the face of cricket in India definitely, and the world. It is an idea whose time had come, and whether the inspiration was Kerry Packer, the NBA, American baseball or the fact that twenty-twenty cricket was, like David Warner, just waiting to explode, the concept took off. It was brilliantly packaged, wonderfully promoted and successfully executed even if it was a bit ‘in your face' for my liking. But let's give Lalit Modi his due for creating a global brand in a very, very short period of time.

The western world tried to ignore this for some time, and then grudgingly had to accept even as its own players came running to be a part of it. Even if many of the global players sat on the bench like our software engineers of yesteryears, they did not seem to mind. The unique mix of Bollywood, team owners who cried in the stands, cheerleaders who had not the foggiest notion of who was playing, ageing cricketers who showed their younger counterparts a thing or two, whether it was the zooter or the mongoose bat, some outstanding emerging Indian talent, some close finishes, some breathtaking innings, some shocking bloomers, all contributed to the enormous success of the format.

Too much, too soon?

While JM Keynes said that in the long run we are all dead, Jack Welch said that while any fool can make money in the short run (and here I am paraphrasing) and any fool can make money in the long run, it needs true ability to make money in both, the long run and the short run. There is no denying the phenomenal success of IPL in the short life it has had so far. It has not only created a following (if not for the local teams) but managed to make people buy enormously expensive tickets and advertisers buy dubious advertising properties at fancy prices. Already the climate is being created for the advertising rates to touch an all-time high. For the next IPL, the Max mobiles and the Karbonn mobiles of the world are already licking their lips in anticipation, even if I am dreading what I am going to be in for soon.

Lalit Modi must easily be the most photographed and televised person in the country (Shah Rukh Khan, kindly excuse) as every newspaper, television channel and Web site seems to either love or hate him. No half measures with our man, are there? In fact, if we were to do a “share of voice” analysis, compare and contrast the coverage that Lalit Modi has with, say, a gentleman by the name of Manmohan Singh, who has the job of Prime Minister of the country, the latter would be a distant second. This, of course, is a commentary on the sad state of news coverage in this country that I shall come to later, but let's stay with the brand IPL and the current imbroglio it seems to have gotten itself into.

Trouble in God's own country

Kerala is an absolutely delightful place to visit and holiday in. But despite Shashi Tharoor's overt and often misplaced enthusiasm for the place as a business destination investors have been wary of going there, and I think it is irrelevant (at least for this author) to figure out the rightness or wrongness of perceptions about investing here. But there is no doubt in my mind that the latest investment by an IPL franchisee has put the cat amongst the pigeons.

It has all the ingredients of a media potboiler. A suave, sophisticated minister who tweets into trouble with the ease which the Indian team used to get into corners; a lady whom the media say is close to the (now former) minister and who has sweat equity in the company; owners who are not well known as some of the other franchisee owners; rumours that a current cricketer is part of the team; an allegation by the CEO that Lalit Modi offered him a bribe (which indiscreet utterance has already cost him his job); tweets from Lalit Modi about the uncertainty of the owners, allegations and counter allegations flying around, questions raised about the original franchisees … Thank God newspapers have only 16 pages!

One of my learned clients made a very interesting observation. He said that earlier in news capsules you had clearly demarcated time slots for different aspects - local news, international news, sports, entertainment and so on. But if you analyse today's telecast it is all about entertainment and sports, and if news does not entertain, it will not make it. Well, the IPL is certainly entertaining, and the franchisee confusion is certainly entertaining but what about the brand which had the possibility of being a future icon?

Controversy is king

A few years ago I was teaching some international students from the UK who were visiting IIM, Bangalore. I showed them the Fair and Lovely air hostess commercial, telling them it had been controversial and had to be pulled off air. They were very excited as controversies, they said, kept the brand in the news and were valued in the UK. It was interesting too to read the views of a few advertisers today, who said that controversy is good for the IPL brand. Sadly, I disagree. It is true that brands reflect the personality of their owners. Kingfisher represents the “king of good times” and what better exponent of the good times than Vijay Mallya. But that example is different as it is a pretty good beer, has the right image and as long as the weather in India remains as salubrious as it is (!) the brand will fare brilliantly.

IPL is a different kettle of fish. Lalit Modi is someone whom you either love or hate. Without the benefit of formal market research, I can only say that he seems to have rubbed an enormous number of people the wrong way, and he is the IPL brand, for many of us at least. And while being in the news is great, I am not sure whether making the headlines with a tax raid on your offices is great publicity for your brand.

Circumspection is the key

Lalit Modi runs the risk of being caught on an uncovered wicket on the day after overnight rain. His brand is under scrutiny. He should try to bat like Jack Hobbs or Geoffrey Boycott with his eye on the ball. Sadly, he is batting like Robin Uthappa. I am sure he has the confidence to handle anything, after all, Indian businessmen think they can handle anything, including the law. But he should spare a thought for the brand that he has built so quickly, and a brand that is the envy of the world. Brands are difficult to build and easy to dent. They are like fine pieces of crystal that need careful handling, love and affection even.

It is the time for objectivity, for Lalit Modi. Time to tweet less and time to think more. A time not to fight someone else's political battles, but a time to remember the things that made IPL a phenomenal success and go back to the basics. It is about entertainment in the sports field, not in media rooms and television studios. It is again a time to look at the consumer. Lalit Modi would do well to remember that there are a lot of people who would wish him to fail and he must prove them wrong, not only for his own sake but for the sake of the brand that he has singlehandedly built.

Will he? Won't he? Only time will tell.

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

Image Source : Starbozz

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.)

Sachin Brandman

An endorsement that is truly synergistic with the maestro's core is yet to be seen..

Who is greater - Sachin Tendulkar or Don Bradman? I have never watched the great Don Bradman bat, live, poor me, born as I was in 1952, four years after the great man walked away, bat under his arm at the Oval, after being bowled by Eric Hollies for a duck (his eyes misted over perhaps by the tremendous reception), so I am least qualified to comment on the relative merits of either or “compare and contrast” as we were taught to in school. There is, however, no doubt that Sachin Tendulkar's 200 ‘not out' in a one-day international (ODI) has given Indians something to cheer about even if opinion is divided on Pranab Mukherjee's Budget which followed immediately after.

Sunil Gavaskar has promptly thrown his hat into the ring by saying Sachin is the greatest the game has produced, Don or no Don. David Frith, a celebrated writer of the game, on the other hand, whilst lauding Sachin's phenomenal achievements, says “Sorry India, the Don is better”. Let me present my two bits on the subject. Sachin is easily the greatest player that we have had the good fortune to see, live, and am I glad that I have watched him not only take on Shane Warne, Shoaib Akhtar, Brett Lee, Dale Steyn and Glenn McGrath, but also take them all to the cleaners. Having said that, I believe comparisons are odious. Bradman never wore a helmet, played on uncovered pitches, faced bodyline, did not have the super-compressed powerhouses (read bats) that today's batsmen use or had the ropes pulled in to allow sixes to be hit at will. So let's not get into the futile controversy of who is the greatest but let us just celebrate our own maestro and remind ourselves that a couple of years ago some were baying for his blood.

So let me just stay with Sachin the brand and the endorser of a million (okay, hundred) products, the man who has shown the way to sponsorship to a host of less talented sportsmen for over twenty years, the man who has earned crores of rupees and will continue to earn crores more as long as he wishes to earn them. How can brands capitalise on the aura around the man, use it and yet not get sucked into it? What should the strategy for ‘brand Sachin' be now that its valuation is at an ‘all-time' high?

Surrounded by men with feet of clay

The sports world has its own share of celebrities from different sports and from different parts of the world, many of whom probably earn a lot more than Sachin Tendulkar, given the popularity of the respective sports in the countries that they live in. Whilst the sporting prowess and the consequent ability of these people to make news and make money were hardly in question, there was another side to these great sportsmen: They all had feet of clay, to put it mildly. They had roving eyes, their marriages were as fragile as the Indian batting line-up had been in the past, their fingers were ever ready to send raunchy text messages, they indulged in scraps at bars, had the ability to resist anything but temptation … what colourful lives some of these celebrities have led! But while that makes for titillating reading to all of us, it has certainly given the sponsors quite a few sleepless nights. With every Tiger Woods joke doing the round on the Internet, Accenture must have squirmed just a little more. And this is perhaps the greatest advantage with Sachin Tendulkar, who has a squeaky clean, almost boring reputation, for which I am sure sponsors are willing to pay a premium. If there has been the slightest discordant note it has been the tax imbroglio involving his Ferrari and my personal quibble is he switched camps from MRF which picked him up as a fresh-faced kid, to Adidas. But who am I to crib?

Tendulkar power: just go get it!

I have been watching the sojourn of Tendulkar as a model and as an endorser over the years. Of course, he has been a very saleable commodity and has been cheerfully and freely used by his admirers. Was a time when he was the only batsman doing well whilst all around him the Indian team was collapsing like nine pins and Amul cheekily wrote an ad that read “Tendu ten don't” with a picture of a defiant little champion along with images of ten other desolate Indians. But then Tendulkar has always been in the news and for the right reasons.
The earliest commercial of Sachin Tendulkar that I can remember is for Pepsi, where a baby-faced Sachin and his school batting partner Vinod Kambli indulge in acrobatics to get the only remaining bottle of Pepsi after a round of strenuous practice, only to have it taken by the captain Azhar who cheekily says “Relax boys, have a Pepsi” while both have flabbergasted looks on their faces. Sachin grew in stature, became more mature even if his voice was a bit squeaky. One of the best fits for Sachin that I could remember was for Visa the credit card. Visa was looking for a young, middle-class Indian who had nothing but the ability to make it to the top, as that was the message it wished to convey to young India.

And which better role model than the young cricketer who came from a lower middle-class family, set Shivaji Park alight, broke records and later bowlers' backs to become the finest player that India had ever produced? The commercial was a hit. I remember the commercial being played during the tournament at Sharjhah were Sachin set the stadium and the whole of India alight with his once-in-a-life time ‘desert storm' when he beat Australia single-handed. I remember the client getting hundreds of calls that night for Visa credit cards. With every four that was being hit and with every exposure of the commercial, the wires were getting burned at the Visa call centre as everyone wanted Visa Power.

A true victor

Another landmark commercial for brand Sachin has been for TVS Victor that was launched just before the cricket World Cup in 2003 in South Africa. Sachin dazzled as he took on team after team and attack after attack with breathtaking freshness. India fell at the final hurdle but Sachin was the true victor, and TVS went on record to say that the choice of Sachin as their brand ambassador was one of the prime reasons for the brand's successful launch.

Yes, Sachin has delivered and not only on the cricket field but at the cash register as well. Other brands such as Boost have used Sachin as the ‘secret of their energy'. There have been scores of others, the more recallable ones being MRF and Adidas. Yes, the Sachin juggernaut has rolled on, taking several brands with it and I have only talked about a few because of constraints of space. Sachin is at the very moment at the very pinnacle of his prowess, and has a record that no one can hope to achieve, not even Ricky Ponting (who is suddenly realising that he will have a lot more catching up to do). So that brings me to the million dollar question: Here is the most saleable commodity India has, a jewel in our crown and the envy of the world. But being the brand he has always been, he has, naturally, a price tag, so will you or won't you sign on the legend?

Make the most of the moment

It is quite likely that the marketing machinery will get into high speed as the maestro's prices skyrocket. While one cannot put a price on his phenomenal ability, using him has been and will always be a business decision. Ultimately every celebrity decision is one of cost versus benefit. Consider that. Emotional decisions rarely work. I think it is time for brands to realise that they have to go beyond Sachin's presence and aura which will definitely help awareness.

But what next? The future will belong to any brand that captures the essence of the great man. And what is that essence? It is the ability to constantly reinvent himself. It is the enthusiasm of a child for the game, which enables him to dive full length to stop the ball after playing for 20 years. Brands constantly struggle to remain young, attractive and relevant to newer audiences. They should take a lesson or two from the ageless master. Let's hope that some brand, any brand, will capture the true essence of Sachin and achieve a brand fit that has not happened so far, in his case, at least. Someone has to write a memorable script that embodies the true Sachin, for what brand Sachin has been missing over the years has been a breakthrough script. Now that he has scored 200 in an ODI, it is perhaps time that the script too makes a dramatic entry.
And despite all the debate about who is the best, something tells me Sir Don Bradman would have approved of the successor to the mantle of the greatest batsman of all time.

(The writer is the CEO of brand-comm and the author of ‘Googly - Branding on Indian Turf'.)Ramanujam Sridhar

Image Source : 3BP

The trouble with customer service

Aspiring to create a service differential is a noble thing but make sure your routine services are handled well. While it is all fine to strive to build a service differential it is certainly risky to embark on the pillow trail if the other routine service stuff is not handled adequately.

Customer service or should one say the lack of it, is a great conversation opener. I always wonder which opens up tongues more, the brew from Scotland or poor customer service. I am sure it is the latter and even the most stubborn of introverts have no difficulty opening up to total strangers as their tale of woe about one service provider or the other finds a more than sympathetic listener who is more than willing to share his own horror story. Sadly though, there is a lot of heat that the subject generates and even a few laughs, but not too much light is shed on the way forward. After all, as Indians we love to criticise when the shoe is on someone else's foot even if we do not have something constructive to offer. But there are exceptions to conversations about service and I experienced this when I had the opportunity to interview Dr A. Parasuraman, Vice-Dean of Faculty and Professor at the University of Miami, an acknowledged expert on service quality and a renowned and respected academician. He has one more admirable qualification that I must table – he was my senior at Don Bosco school in Chennai's Egmore, and what better qualifications can a person have to talk about service or for that matter any subject under the sun! Tempted as I am to wax eloquent about my alma mater, my escapades that were part of my life there and my penchant for churning out impositions (with amazing regularity), I shall desist and stay with the less glamorous topic of customer service.

Pillow talk

Parasu, as he is affectionately referred to, had come to India to be the keynote speaker at the Custommerce summit at Mumbai earlier this month. I used the opportunity to spend quality time with him and as always he came up with some interesting insights that have been a feature of his writing and teaching over the years. His ideas made me think about my own experiences as a customer which too are reflected in this piece. He shared an interesting experience of his where he had been to a star hotel which welcomed him with a glitzy ‘pillow menu' in addition to the usual stuff that people who inhabit five-star hotels are familiar with. Even to this social class that has been there and done that a ‘pillow menu' is certainly a rarity and worth talking about.
So what happens when you see a glossy pillow menu listing ten different types of pillows (from soft to medium to hard), one of which would be delivered to your room at the touch of a button? The first is that you are impressed enormously and can hardly wait to rest your head on one of those fluffy things. The second, which does not have to wait till you go to bed and which happens almost immediately, is that your expectations from the hotel skyrocket (how good will this hotel be that actually thinks up a ‘pillow menu') and quickly plummet when the hotel forgets to give you your wake up call in the morning which is something that most hotels normally do without too much trouble. There is an important learning for organisations from this incident. While it is all fine to strive to build a service differential it is certainly risky to embark on the pillow trail as you can so easily end with egg on your face if the other routine service stuff is not handled adequately. As an aside, the innovation too is pretty expensive as you have to create a glossy brochure, actually find different types of pillows and handle the inventory for hundreds of rooms, not to forget the additional personnel that such a service entails.

Routine or non-routine?

Parasu spoke at length about the routine aspects of service and the non-routine aspects of service that companies constantly have to deliver. Let's take the case of airlines - ticketing, checking in people, delivery of baggage are all routine stuff and companies usually have a process to handle this. Of course, let's not forget for a moment that while these are ‘hygiene' factors, the inability to deliver on this could cause disproportionate angst when the airlines slip up on any of these. Parasu argues that while organisations do have a process for the delivery of routine service, they come to grief often when they have to face non-routine service demands. They usually have metrics to measure their performance on routine stuff, like how long it takes or should take for a person to check in, how long before the luggage arrives to the room after check-in, and so on.
What happens in the case of non-routine stuff is quite another kettle of fish altogether. How often have we seen tired, weary travellers anxious to go home after a long and draining flight only to be told that their baggage is not on the same flight! This is clearly a non-routine event and the service provider that is prepared for this, the one that has metrics for measurement and has a back-up plan to tackle contingencies such as these will win the service stakes.

Of course, every industry has its own share of non-routine events. Take the hotel industry - how often have we seen irate hotel guests losing their cool in the lobby when they are told they do not have a reservation, though they very clearly believe they have one! They tell the whole world, even if they are not interested in the story, about how pathetic the hotel is and how it needs to overhaul its reservation systems! We have seen in our own experience in the consulting business too, when a client wants as scope of deliverables something that we are not readily used to, the entire process goes into a tizzy and needless delays occur in submitting a proposal, which in any case is the easiest of the various stages in the consulting process.

A non-routine dosa!

With my mind full of routine and non-routine service experiences I came back to Bangalore, the dosa capital of India (or so we would like to believe). The newest joint making waves in Bangalore is a restaurant called Maiyya in Jayanagar which has people waiting forever (or so it seems) to get into, three stories that are brimming with hungry residents of Bangalore, a stand-and-drink coffee centre and a bakery all rolled in one. We went there as a large group and complicated the normally efficient hotel as we asked for non-routine stuff! Bangalore has this habit of inserting chutney inside the dosa which is a specialty (or a pain) depending on which side of the Cauvery you belong to. I cannot handle it whilst some in my group wanted it that way, our instructions to have a few with and a few without created so much chaos and caused so much angst, with the wrong dosas being served and being returned, and everyone including the waiter was thoroughly aggrieved in the bargain. I am sure that he never wants to see my bald head again and I am sure I am never going back. If only, I thought to myself, if only I could have stayed with the simple, routine dosa the way it is served in Karnataka, I might have never realised the value of the point being made by Parasu, for after all, nothing has such a lasting impression as the lesson learnt on an empty stomach!

Service is in the details

So here are a few thoughts that you can mull over in the context of customer service:
Is more time being consumed in talking about service in your company than actually delivering it?
Is your senior management committed to customercentricity and service?
How well is your technology integrated with your entire service offering?
How closely do you monitor both your routine and non-routine service deliveries?
Do you have metrics to measure and monitor both?
How good are your retrieval mechanisms when something goes wrong, for a retrieval situation can actually provide a wonderful opportunity to cover lost ground.

The reality is that service is hardly as glamorous as it is made out to be. It is unremitting, constant attention to detail, boring, repetitive but with great scope for both irritating and turning away your customers. And yet, there is a pot of gold to be won at the end of the ordeal, as so few service providers make the cut with an increasingly demanding customer.
Are you the one?

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

Image Source: InsideSocal

Mani Ayer's two-word mantra

S. R. Mani Ayer,Former Managing Director, Ogilvy & Mather

Ayer was visiting Chennai. I presented with great enthusiasm a campaign we had developed for a client. Little did I know about the two-word weapon he would use to assess it.

Ayer put every advertisement to the ‘So what?' test. It was the quickest way to check for relevance. How does it matter to the audience? How does it matter to the client? Often, these two words removed the puff and helped us discover the essence of what we wanted to say. Much as we dreaded the sessions where we laid out advertising strategies and creative work to SRA, the discussions that ensued were enriching.

Ayer hired me at Ogilvy Benson & Mather in 1975. In my very first interview on December 2, 1974, he said, “I will hire you. I don't know when and where.”

I did not know how to react to this. I asked him if I could call up to find out. “Sure. Once a week.” Thereafter from December until March, I called him every Thursday at 9:15 a.m. sharp. The conversation was simple.
“Good Morning, Mr Ayer. Sridhar here. Any news for me, Mr Ayer?”
“Not yet. Keep in touch.”
Finally, he gave me my letter in March 1975. He sent me to Chennai soon thereafter.

October 11, 1976. Four of us from Chennai had come to Mumbai to attend an account management training programme. Three of my colleagues died in an air crash that morning. I had stayed back to visit my sister, but the Times of India had also carried my name in the list of passengers who were killed. On hearing the news, I rushed to Apeejay House.

Ayer was visibly relieved to see me. You could see he was disturbed but he had to take charge and move on. He asked me, “Is it OK for you to fly this evening?” I returned to Chennai and he arrived the next day.

I saw a great leader, a compassionate human in action in the days that followed. I accompanied him on his visits to the families. He quickly put together a team to run OBM, Chennai. Supriya Das from our Kolkata office moved in to run the office until we could hire a manager. Mohan Menon moved from Mumbai to look after the Creative Department.
Ayer would fly in every week to meet clients, spend time with us and keep us going.

There used to be a Southern Railway Canteen opposite Higginbotham's. We used to have curd rice for lunch there. Ayer would join us for these curd rice lunches.

He and I used to visit Bangalore to meet Vijaya Bank and Binny's. We used to take the Bangalore mail and stay at Barton Court. Travelling with Ayer was an extraordinary experience. He was a fund of knowledge and a great storyteller. I remember one particular trip when we spoke throughout the night until we arrived in Bangalore.

As he helped me grow in the organisation, I began to understand this extraordinary person. Plagued by self-doubt, I often went to him with my resignation. He would listen to me with infinite patience, give me tips on what to do, and I would go back confident and happy. It was like talking to a therapist. He made me feel valued, respected and important. Many of us proudly call ourselves graduates of the Ayer school. He helped us realise our potential — he nurtured us as he would plants in a garden.

When Suresh Mullick passed away, he was keen to bring out a book on him and entrusted me with the task. The project did not take off for quite some time. I was embarrassed about my inaction but Ayer was kind and patient. Finally, we managed to put together an e-book on Suresh. I feel blessed he gave me a task that was dear to him.

He was a boss, a mentor, a coach, guru — no single word can describe my relationship with him. He lit a flame in each of us who worked with him. It is a flame eternal, that will continue. Those of us who were lucky enough to receive must be gracious enough to give. That is what he taught us.

(The writer is a graduate of the Ayer school.)

In niches there are riches!

Leading from the front:Harsh Mariwala, CMD, Marico

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

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

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

Strategy is key

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

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

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

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

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

From the head to the heart

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

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

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

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

Creating a culture of innovation

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

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

Do you believe in your people?

Are you open to ideas?

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

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

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

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

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