Corporate Social Responsibility

There is a little bit of CSR……..in my hair!

By Harish Bijoor

If I am to simplify all of life with a perspective that is distinctly marketing oriented, there are just two types of people in the world. A small set of marketing people on one side, and a whole large set of people being marketed-to at the other end!

Peek keenly at any person you know. Either she is a marketing person marketing a product, a service, a dream or even a desire to someone else, or is a person who is being marketed to all the time by the marketer at large!

Marketing is therefore a people-centric process. And just as long as it remains that, and just as long as man loves living in a society of his making, CSR is going to remain a big buzz-word for the future ahead! CSR remains a very relevant strategic marketing tool for the amorphous future ahead of us!

In these long years of being around in the great Indian marketplace, I have seen marketing morph in its ideals. In the beginning, there was the product and the service. Both had to be reached out to the customer in the marketplace. This was also a day and age when everything was in short supply. The demand was big. The marketer performed his role as a mere transporter of the goods to the arms length convenience of the hungry consumer. These were the days when you had to wait 6 years on a waiting list to buy a 'Vespa' scooter and in a longer still queue to possess that sturdy black telephone instrument in your drawing room!

Marketers in this day and age had a simple goal. Distribute. Distribute with equity where possible. Be fair. Appear to be fair as well!

Life changed dramatically. In enters the era of plenty. Plenty of products and services! Enough to come out of your ears and everywhere else! Competition is sharp! The marketer morphs from his old attitude in such an environment. He becomes consumer savvy. He offers not only the product, but a superior degree of service to go with it. He offers customer experience and delight that becomes the brand in itself!

We live in such a competitive marketing era. There are just too many marketing people around. Just too many with all the boring ideas around. Everyone has been to the same marketing school (if not the same type) and comes out with the same set of ideas to go to market! And everyone fails! Parri passu marketing does not work!

In such an environment of parri passu marketing, time to think different. Time to think of a new tool to use! CSR is a great one! If used sensibly and with the sensitivity it deserves!

Three Marketing Formats:

Let me offer a theory I propound extensively.

There are simply three marketing formats to follow in a society as it morphs. In the early stage, society is all about “I, me, myself”! At this stage in consumer societal evolution, the marketer gets away using the language of hedonism and pleasure. The “I, me, myself” kind of product and service works well. The ‘Axe’ effect works here!

And then there is the stage when the consumer has gone beyond that basic stage. He is now concerned about the people around him. His loved ones. His family of four. His extended family of four more, mother, father, father-in-law and mother-in-law, last to be included!

This kind of man likes brands to be inclusive in their language, tone and tenor. This kind of man wants products that are good for the entire family! Never mind the rest of society, just as long his close-knitted family is taken care of, he is fine! The 'Annapurna' atta story works here!

And then there is man who is more conscious of more people around him. This is the kind of guy who is bothered about the good of his immediate neighborhood and society! He wants his entire neighborhood to be happy! The ‘Lifebuoy’ “clean the neighborhood” story works here!

There is macro-man then. This is the kind of person who wants the good of his immediate society and his entire planet. This is the kind of guy who wants to use bio-based detergents that don’t hurt the eco-system! The ‘Surf Excel’ “Do bucket paani bachana hai” theme works here!

And finally there is Cosmos man! Concerned about the cosmos, much of which he does not know even! We are yet to get there!

CSR works at every level. CSR is an inclusive process! A process that embraces the good of society in a very inclusive manner. This inclusiveness could start at the level of the immediate family and morph on to embrace the entire Cosmos.

CSR plays a vital role in taking commercial brands out into the commercial marketplace with a theme that is appealing to the sense and sensibility of the modern consumer. CSR is therefore a valuable tool that marketers can use to market their brand of soap, detergent, sugar and tea with equal panache and commercial effectiveness.

CSR is not at all about running public hospitals and schools alone. CSR is not about sending Tsunami relief material to the trouble spots of the world. That is old hat! It is much more! The modern consumer understands CSR that much more intimately when you touch his life, with a wee bit of CSR in your soap. A wee bit in your shampoo! In your kids diapers and feminine hygiene products as well!

The future of marketing is full of CSR! Of a different kind!

The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

India: The competitive advantage

The competitive advantage of India in the Demand Economy

By Harish Bijoor

At the end of a rather long working millennium, one has the luxury of putting up one’s legs on a soft stool, sinking into a soft beanbag and thinking soft thoughts of a soft millennium gone by.

I call it soft, particularly from the Indian perspective of things. The hundred marketing years behind us were distinctly soft years. Soft issues faced and soft options exercised. Soft covenants arrived at softly.

The years ahead look different indeed. Hard years indeed! Troublesome marketing times. Troublesome times for the marketing of the country that is India. Tough years that will call for tough ways.

Let’s then explore what is ahead of us. Visit and re-visit the strengths that exist. Strengths that will re-define the competitive advantage of India in the world market. The India ahead as the new consumer super-power of the world. The new intellectual capital of the world and of course the new seat of buying, selling, marketing and facilitating super-power of the world. The new role of India the buyer, India the seller and India the broker.

Let’s do this scenario painting exercise of the key competitive advantage of India in the markets of the future by visiting briefly the key issues we see as distinct points of strengths.

The British left India as a nation of shopkeepers. Our retail universe that covers a nano-fraction of super-markets, large numbers of small and medium sized shops and cubby holes of retail commerce in remote inaccessible corners of the country, is the biggest you can find in any of the 182 countries that comprise the world and its consuming markets. A population of 12 million retail outlets to service the needs and requirements of the world’s second biggest consuming mass of people!

The one big strength that less than one other nation in the world can stake its claim to, is the size of the population that rests within the boundaries of our country. A huge weakness of gigantic proportions when viewed from the many development-oriented periscopes of the past. Not so when you view it with the future in mind. A future that is energized by these very large masses of people who have been the biggest liability for the nation of a billion plus!

The past viewed people as a liability. Not enough physical work to go round, not enough food to eat and of course not enough education to ventilate around. Every bit of progress that development achieved was sacrificed very, very quickly (possibly even before the economist was able to record and publish the feat), at the altar of population and its rather robust pace of growth.

While every sector of the economy did reasonably well in bits and patches over the last hundred years, so did the sector of population growth. Stretched food resources, stressed out finances, a pathetic situation on the physical infrastructure front and a complete lack of positive momentum represented the development of the last hundred years in India. People were therefore the biggest liability.

Not so anymore. Not in the hundred years ahead of us. One of the biggest assets of marketing-based India is its numbers in the very many homes that dot the countryside of ‘sunny-side-up’ India! Lots of existing people and a robust yen to propagate more of the kind, only means a lot more stomachs to feed and a lot more bladders to fill. Lots more bodies to clothe and a lot more minds to educate.

Think of a product. Think of a service. Think of a want. Think of a need. The biggest and the best of them will linger in the land that is India! The marketing future of India is therefore made. Ready at the take-off stage which will have many a Schumpeter stumped!

But then, people are not the only need of a consumer market. Consumption is certainly not the only key to unlock the riches of a marketing man’s Pandora’s box. Money somehow seems to be the real key. More money in these many hands, more the consumption. But then, is the money around?

While the pessimists answer to the question will say that men without money or men without the means to make the money, are of no use to marketing and its future, the fact remains that there is a value in the market that has a huge potential. A potential that can well nigh break open huge values in the times to come.

Let’s just remember one thing. India has been a poor country for a long, long while now. People below the poverty line have numbered a strong platoon of people. And despite it all, the population has grown, survived and continues to thrive in its sheer numbers. People have found a way to survive. The fittest have survived on high value brands, the less fit than that have thrived on brands of a lesser caliber in the country. Those even lower in the hierarchy have survived on the fringe of the commodity in every category of want and need. Consumption needs have always found answers. Consumption solutions for all!

There is therefore a pyramid of consumption that lies all over the slopes of Maslowe’s hierarchy of needs. But then, everybody, rich or poor, has fallen within the confines of this pyramid. And just as long as they do, there is indeed potential for a robust market for commodities, quasi-brands, brands, super-brands and of course at the ultimate level of the self-actualizing folk, no brands at all!

Every one of these segments has a value though. And in value rests the potential for the marketer. The one big true-blue competitive advantage for India of the present and India of the future, is indeed its large population base articulating every basic need in consumption of products, services and utilities.

Time to change the paradigm of India’s population then! Every marketer of whatever origin, be it from within India or outside, will queue up in the consumer markets of the country, trying to woo the wallet of the willing. As traditional source markets reach a plateau in their consumption, nascent markets like the one in India will hold a great deal of allure to the marketing man in his Western strait-jacket.

The competitive advantage of India will rest in both its own shores and in the foreign lands of its source markets. As the WTO regime opens up markets that do not discriminate and markets that don’t raise the usual high tariff walls that have been the distinct characteristics of the past that has gone by, the Indian product and the Indian brand has a challenge to seize and exploit to its advantage.

The India brand is the center-point of this entire exercise that waits to unfold. The country and its many unique propositions show an excellent potential packed into the future.

This potential needs many Godfathers to unlock though. The name India is in itself filled with a mystique of the past. Tigers on the streets, snake charmers at the ‘chowrasthas’ and the great Indian rope-trick are all images that keep coming back ever so recurrently in the life of the Indian in foreign markets. India is still a mystique. And India is ancient. A civilization as ancient as can be. A glorious history, a rich tapestry of tradition and a whole bunch of assorted mystique attached to the Indian brand that is connected to all things natural and of course all things beautiful, is something that needs to be exploited to the hilt.

No point then to negate the mystique and charm of the brand there is in the minds of peoples outside the shores of India. Might as well use it to advantage. Add all those dashes of hi-technology to all the soft touch of the nation in the minds of the consumer in foreign markets, and you just might have a potent broth that will re-position the brand that is India.

The competitive advantage of an image versus that of a functional reality has seen the winning potential in the image and the brand. As the future evolves into one that is besotted more with imagery than with the functional trait, piggybacking on the India brand, a whole host of honest products and services that cling on to the tail of the mystique that is India, is certainly a possibility of significant competitive advantage.

The one big missing element in the marketing of the India brand has been the commitment to brand thinking within the realm of Indian bureaucracy. The policy maker needs to shift the way he thinks and the way he operates in the realm of the image.

Preserving a whole host of things that are distinctly Indian and distinctly ethnic will be the biggest task for those in the game of maintaining the key differentiators, which will bet eh key USPs of the India brand. Indian foods are already a big thing in the West. A United Kingdom without 'Balti' cooking and Butter Chicken Masala would indeed be a poorer nation of gourmet eaters!

Natural health remedies, natural cooking, the Organic nation, the realm of alternate medicine and health are but only some of the areas that will distinguish India in the future. There are a whole host of areas to explore. No one nation in the world can claim to offer the kind of variety that India can. In its food, its clothes, its festivals, its rituals and of course in its many Gods. India as a safe tourist destination of the future is still but a dream. The potential however lives on.

The many, many competitive advantages of India, glorified in recent years in the realm of InfoTech, front-ended scientific research work that is currently on in the outer-periphery of achievement, India’s strides in the realm of PharmaTech and allied areas are possibilities that have been highlighted well and possibly even inflated beyond levels of credible usage in the past.

Avoiding these realms, one can only look at the basics that India offers to the markets that are emerging now and to the markets that will emerge in the future.

The effort that has to be made in order to establish and capitalize on the basics just outlined as key competitive advantage of the country, require an investment in the realms of positive development of the network economy, its infrastructure base, its communication ability and of course the key factor of brand-led thinking.

India has long since lived as a commodity. It is time then to yank itself out of the commodity mindset and establish its presence in the brand-led world. The world today is one that is moved more by the image than by the reality. India needs to seize its place in the limelight of brands.

As everything in the marketing lives of the Indian gets redefined in the near and medium-term future, there is but no other option than to depend heavily on the key strengths we have taken for granted in the past. Even considered a liability in the recent past.

Awakening the Indian economy and its competitiveness lies in the realm of the high quality product that will roll out of our ancient manufacturing facilities. These products need to talk of a quality that will battle the best that will come in from every direction there is. And that too at low cost. Our ‘desi’ chickens will need to compete with American chicken legs that will walk into the kitchens of our country.

As many an industry faces an impending closure, the best will indeed survive. The fittest will survive and the rest will vanish into the limbo of the have-beens. As all this happens and as social turmoil seizes the 'have-beens' by the jugular, there is ahead of us a moment that will truly bet the defining moment when the entire bureaucracy that run the competitive model of Indian industry and enterprise will wake up all of a sudden, with a jolt. A nightmare that is bound to seize the policy-maker, the implementer and indeed the key participant of the economy, the man in industry, all together by the short hair.

And this defining moment is the one that will turn the paradigm of Indian competitiveness we have followed so very vigorously for all these years, upside down. This will be the moment of re-think. A point of time when the truly important will replace the truly insignificant. A pursuit of which, our model of industrialization thrust upon the nation during the Nehruvian era, glorified in the past.

The WTO regime is the catalyst of this process. And the first of the bombshells will be fired in the dominant sector of agriculture in the Indian economy. And its almost here!

We are, I suspect, very close to that defining moment. Let’s witness and let’s participate in that process of turmoil. We have no choice, in any case!

In Conclusion

The competitive advantage of India in world markets is best assessed by taking a quick peek at the models of competition possible in markets of the present and the future.

If I am to look around the nations of the world and correlate models in current use, there are four distinct patterns that emerge. Four clusters that have whole sets of nations congregating in models those seem to work for each of them differently and with different levels of efficacy. Needless to say, the peculiarities of each nation in question dictate the distinct choice they have made for themselves. Let’s visit the clusters. And let’s call them all kinds of animal names.

1.The Earthworm Model:

The passive model of competitive reaction. The invitation theory that is best practiced by the earthworm. A rich worm really. It knows the basics best. It is in constant touch with the earth that it seeks nourishment from and nourishes back simultaneously. A fundamentally strong being.

Several problems in this model though. It is passive for one. Non-reactionary. A model in the self-fulfilling prophecy mode. The best example of the fatalistic theory in practice. When faced with danger, all it can do is continue its humble journey in the earth. Competition kills this model with ease. There is no reaction. The fatalistic model of competition at its best!

Is India here?

2.The Snail model:

The common competitive model in practice by a whole host of nations. This model is reactively proactive. A clear cocoon orientation. When faced with competition and danger, there is a regression into the shell. The withdrawn marketer at play. The philosopher marketer even! The marketer who revels in the safety-static nexus. Waiting for the competition to just go away, so that normal life may resume again!

Is India here?

3.The Porcupine Model:

This model tells the competitor clearly of the array of weapons that are available for retributive action. There is a clear emphasis on the display of the arsenal. It believes in the overt display. A clear détente model of competition. Avoids a lot of speculative action and is ready for the real battle

Is India here?

4.The Everyone Else Model:

This is the model of the real-time player in competitive markets of the present and certainly the future. This is the real-time marketer. Reactive when necessary. Proactive when necessary. Guerilla in tactics when necessary as well!

This is a constant-change oriented model that believes in watching the scenario carefully and reacting accordingly. Making forays into proactive territory on a speculative basis. Never mind if even only one of those sixteen forays actually click! Life in the fast track of competitive marketing is pretty un-predictable and speculative. Change here is absolutely discontinuous. Making a decision on a point of competitive strategy based on happenings of the past and the present could be disastrous. The future never ever happens the way the past decided.

Change here is so discontinuous that it is aptly illustrated by the example of the baby-arrival process in the house. The first child in this baby-boomers house is born out of a Caesarian section, gone in for by an over-zealous gynecologist. The second baby of the house is therefore predictably to be one out of a similar process. Caesarian section! No! It isn’t. Change is discontinuous. The second baby is a natural birth! The third child is due to happen then. This time round, it’s Caesarian section as well! Oops!

The fourth child of this baby-happy home is due. Change is indeed discontinuous. There is no predictability here. Guess what! This time round, the baby is actually conceived, carried and delivered by the father of the baby! Oops! Again! Change is indeed that discontinuous!

Shouldn’t India be here?

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

E mail: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Rural India

Creating Brands For Rural India

By Harish Bijoor

I spent the first four years of my career entirely in rural markets. I used every mode of travel to enter into the gut and gore of the slice of market I had the privilege to look after. The bullock-cart, the camel-driven cart and the boat were all means to penetrate a terrain no MBA in his right mind wanted to. Dirty rat-infested lodges, police-raids that had me ashamed of my neighbours in the rooms around and food that had me running to the nearby field even in broad daylight are tales my early life in the rough and tumble of Indian marketing is made of.

These four years taught me one thing clearly! There are two Indias! Real India and Virtual India!

Real India was this piece of terrain I sold tea, coffee, spices and condoms to. It was a big chunk of the land mass. It occupies bulk of the landmass and houses 742 million people as of now! It is populous, multi-cultural and multi-faceted. India started here. This is the residence of the arts, the culture, the food, the ethnic fashion, the agricultural practice, the nuance of language and diction and everything else that we in Urban India have morphed to our needs as of today. Remember, in the very beginning there was no urban at all! It was all rural! All real!

Virtual India was where I came from. Virtual India was where I was shaped into a being capable of commercial, social and cultural existence. The size of pie of land I came from was an urban island of sorts. An aberration even! The populace that lives here comprised a fourth of the size of the population of India on the whole.

There sure was a Matrix at play! While politics of the nation was governed largely by what Real India had to say, government policy did not necessarily tread the very same path. There was this huge gap in understanding what was right for the masses and what was politically expedient. In the bargain, policy was hijacked by the politician.

While politics was the domain of the politician and the bureaucrat that ran the nation in many ways, commerce was largely played in the very same way. Till the wave of liberalization set in. And when this happened, Indian businesses actually steered Virtual India. What’s more, Virtual India took charge of the way Real India was to be run as well.

And in Virtual India, the businesses that dictate the soap that needs to be placed in your toilet and the detergent in your bathroom and the cooking gas in your kitchen, actually ran Real India.

Real India is today run by Virtual India. The largest part of land-mass and the larger part of the population base is controlled in many-many ways by the way the urban man in urban India wants it run. A true blue hegemony of the Urban Indian!

Remember again that all marketing men and their kin in advertising, market research and branding are mostly urban souls. Many in disguise as well!

Real India (read as: rural India henceforth) is fast morphing to the needs, wants, desires and aspirations discovered by the urban man. Television as a medium has created awareness, a raging interest in brands, a latent desire to consume and possess what is shown on the not-such-an-idiot-afterall-box! Television has spurred on consumptive action and has acted as a brand consumption catalyst in many ways. And television has continually shown us images that make everything Urban desirable and everything Rural as something that is basic….too basic!

Look keenly at the statistics that tell us the growth of urbanization. In 1951 we had 2,843 Urban Agglomerations(UA) and towns. Today, the number is close to 4000! The Urban population in 1951 stood at 17.3 per cent of total. Today, the number is a proud and unidimensional 27.8 per cent! In the last fifty years, we have had what I would call creeping urbanization. In the next fifty, it is time to expect a galloping rate! Thanks to television…and thanks fundamentally to the Brand movement, which is poised to make a big movement in the heart and hearth of the rural dweller!

The two Indias mean two sets of peoples. The rural man, woman, child, dog and cat for a start! Remember, dog-food and cat-food companies will definitely want to invade the vast rural hinterland sometime in the future for sure!

How then does one go about creating brands for the rural person in the rural dwelling?

There are two ways really. The first is the insensitive way most marketers have adopted to date. The second is a more sensitive rendering of what marketers and brand-evangelists in the future could adopt.

The first is really the easy way. Pioneer marketers in rural areas used it to good advantage. Take the urban brand,

1) Tweak the product a wee bit (read: make it rustic, rugged and even lower-quality if necessary),

2) Lower the price (read: offer inferior grade teas to the rural market and superior grades to the urban one in the same brand),

3) Extend the brand to Low Unit Packs (read: lower unit packs will be cheaper in price and inferior in quality as well. Higher unit packs will take in superior quality. Urban markets use High unit packs and rural markets use LUPs)

4) Modify the packaging marginally (read: add the brand name in Hindi and four other prominent vernaculars)

5) Advertise (read: Take the English rendering of the standard urban storyboard and make a film in Hindi. Take this film and dub it in the vernacular. Never mind the lip sync even….in the early days!)

6) Promote (Read: Use Cinema widely. Use wall-site paintings. Sponsor the local boat race and the temple festival alike! Use rural publicity vans to percolate the brand message through television sets that would carry a VCR and a large-format screen as well)

7) Market Research (Read as: find out more about the rural dweller. Use the intrusive and alien questionnaire format to find out more. Use probes of every kind. Use the focus group at times if you are feeling particularly qualitative in your yearnings for data.)

The easy way is the insensitive way to create and build brands in the rural markets that still remain on the landscape. My clarion call: Forget the easy way you have used all these years. Take the tough route of branding in the rural market. Preserve rural India and what it represents. Bring back pride to rural India in terms of what it has to offer in its multi-variable format.

But why? Is this a return to socialism? A form of retro-appeal? Of retro-fashion?

No, the logic is strong enough for us to pursue the new rules of branding for rural India. For one, take the case of the fertilizer and pesticide situation.

In the very beginning, all of India was organic. We grew everything we did to cater to a population size that was manageable without the use of pesticides and fertilizers. Natural organic manure and very innovative natural practices that used plant and animal waste distinguished the agricultural practices of India.

And then came the revolution everyone wanted. The men in the Gandhi caps (except Gandhiji of course) wanted a bigger yield from the land and the cow and the factory alike. Practices morphed and India became yet another dumping ground for the pesticide and fertilizer that came from far and near. The countryside morphed. Yields doubled.

The year is 2003! The world is discovering health and the joy of consuming the organic produce. It’s back to nature…the pure way! And India has lost it! Imagine a situation where India could emerge as a 100 per cent producer of the organic product! And remember still that the organic produce today commands a premium in the key consumption markets of the world! We lost it!

The rural terrain we still boast of can be preserved. I seek a sensitivity among the marketing man. A sensitivity that promises not to harm commercial intent, which is the salient driving force of all business intent. A sensitivity that could well carve out for the marketing man a commercial space one can be truly proud of.

The case I present in this piece therefore, is a case that seeks to preserve the sanctity of Rural India and discover commerce and sense in it all! A plea to really stop this one-sided movement that seeks to make the rural man a consumptive animal of cornflake and dog biscuit alike!

Create brands keeping in mind rural imperatives then. Here goes the ideal rural brand map. My ultimate want as a Marketing man.

1.Reverse-engineered brands:

Rural markets are different than the urban. Understanding is the key point. Reverse-engineer the brand quite unlike what we have done in the past. Go to the rural market and find out its wants, needs, aspirations, dreams and expectations. Go and meet up with a million villagers and create the product that is relevant to their needs. Stop depending on research numbers that run in the hundreds and a few thousands at the best!

Ask the rural man what he wants. Engineer the product and the brand appeal and get back to him for a ratification. This time round as well, go back to the million hearts you reached out the first time to. Show it to him. Get it ratified. Insulate it all from the urban paradigm you have operated thus far within.

2. The name itself:

Seek out the vernacular. Seek out the different. Seek out the name that is futuristic for sure, but seek it out in the ethos of the land the brand will sell within. Seek it out within the social milieu it will swim in.

And don’t pass value judgment on the name that you seek out wearing tinted urban glares! And this goes for the slogan, the colour, and every component of brand appeal you will build for your brand of biscuit or bubblegum or bottle-cleaner or whatever!

3. The glitz and glamour of the advertising execution:

Tread carefully here. Don’t for heaven’s sake decimate rural dress, culture, lingua franca, habit and rustic appeal. The point is to preserve and not decimate. Preserve and not clonalize!

Watch out for the attitude that you covey. Look carefully for those hidden meanings that the hegemony of the urban marketer has cultivated in all of us. Take it through a thorough check and weed out the urban bias with a candour that will come more out of practice than upbringing and education.

The fashion statement, the habit burr and the style-irreverence modern advertising seeks to throw at the viewer in the marketplace can on most occasions swim against the tide of social acceptance. Watch out for these signs and avoid them like the SARS!

4. Do a consciously aggressive rural job:

Generations of wrong advertising and marketing norm has punctured the ego of the rural market for a while now. Go out there into the rural market with a passion to set right these wrongs. Do such an aggressive job on it that you will make rural a fashion statement even! Enough to make the urban man sit up and want to ape!!

Position the rural ethos right. Position it uniquely with a yen to create a differentiation that is truly a world apart. Very few developed economies can boast a size of rural population that is multi-variegated as ours! Use it to advantage!

5.Packaging Right:

Look for the ways and means that packaging will deliver freshness and maintain equity with the environment as well!

The plastic revolution we witness today in urban markets is proving to be disaster! Fortunately for India, this revolution is as yet at a nascent stage in our rural markets. Imagine what would happen if the key issues of disposal were to affect three fourths a mass larger than it affects today in the country! The problem would multiply by a factor of four! Avoid this altogether and invent for the rural market forms of packaging that will be close to the environment we want to gift to our grandchildren marketers!

Break away from the quality differentiation standards adopted by the modern marketer for Urban and Rural marketer. No apartheid here dear marketer! Equal money must deserve equal value!

6. The Price and Promotion Mechanics:

The rural consumer has been through the throes of the games the urban marketer has played in terms of price and promotion. The rural dweller is tired really of collecting those inane sets of combs and tumblers and calendars alike.

The rural consumer needs to be approached with a savvy sense of understanding his needs. Is it value that he seeks? If so what kind of value? Is it a value dictated by price? By quality? By quantity? Or by appeal? Functional or Emotional?

Creating brands for rural India is a science that will require many ardent students who are willing to participate in this great big task of doing the different thing altogether in branding. It will require quite a bit of swimming against the tide of all that we have done in marketing in the past. It will require decimating many a myth. It will demand many years of hard work, something the urban marketer will find daunting.

The rural market for brands is a powder keg of an opportunity waiting to be explored……not exploited! The traditional means of taking the urban brand and its appeal into the rural heartland will only destroy the fragile rural mind and milieu.

I really hope the harm has not already been done! If it has, I rest my case…..a defeated soul in search of the ideal rural market!

The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. with a consulting presence in Hong Kong, London and the Indian sub-continent.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Mobile: +91 98440 83491

Indian Marketing Trends

Indian Marketing Trends

Media Must Not Commit Hara-Kiri

Media Must Not Commit Hara-kiri!

By Harish Bijoor

Media must not kill itself.

As I watch the evolution of media over the last several years, I worry for it. I worry hard as I watch the routes primary mediums seem to want to adopt in contemporary India today.

Let me trace this story of a worry that haunts me through an examination of what I peek at when I look at the trends in the evolution of the mediums I have loved and used to commercial brand advantage so much all these years. Televsion, Press, Radio and the unconventional medium included!

The Evolution:

Communication and the want to communicate is possibly one of the oldest of the desires of man. Food, clothing, shelter, sex and the desire to communicate…..in that order for a start! At least I would like to believe that!

In the very beginning, the best form of communication is seen to be the 1:1 form! The earliest form of it all, where one individual meets another. Adam meets Eve. Communicates. Communication in the earliest forms we know of could be visual, verbal, aural or can be of any form that straddles sensory communicative ability! Seeing, touching, smelling, tasting, feeling, talking and hearing are indeed all forms.

The 1:1 form of communication is possibly the strongest form we have in terms of delivery efficacy! It is direct and personal. It has the ability to establish an instant rapport between the communicator and the one being communicated to. It is two-way as well! It provides for the ability of the communicator to cogently understand the needs, wants and desires of the person being communicated to.

But 1:1 communication is difficult at times. When communication of this form gets difficult to maintain, man evolves the next best form. 1:Many! In this form, the communicator is one and the communiqué is dished out to thousands of people. The local Press and the avatar of FM Radio as we know it today are possibly good examples of this form. There is still some semblance of localization maintained in the process. There is still some customization of appeal. This is mostly one-way. The communicator, at best, can use the process of extrapolatative market research to arrive at what the consumer wants and desires.

1: Many then morphs into the 1: Very-Many form. This is the form best represented by National Network television. One message dished out to the entire country with little or no customization at all! This form of communication is that much more divorced from local needs as any. Communication is dished out keeping the masses in mind, and there is indeed a lowest-common denominator being appealed to!

And then there is the 1:Too Many type! Fox News dishing out its American fare to the entire world is possibly a great example!

The final frontier will be breached when we are able to advertise on the moon. The vision of 2020! You take a moonlit walk with your beloved, look up to the moon, and there is an advertising message staring back at you: “The moon, brought to you by Coca Cola”! This indeed would be the final form. 1: All!

Many of us will go through all these forms of communication in our very lifetime! The point: media morphs! When one form gets inefficient and unable to deliver, a new form appears. The new form is not necessarily the best in terms of efficacy, but is certainly the best in terms of reach! Not the best in terms of impact, but certainly the best in terms of reach!

The evolution of media has largely been reach-centric. Everything else has been sacrificed on the way!

Things Gone Wrong:

As we have traversed the evolutionary process of mediums, from 1: 1 to the mythical 1: All media-fantasizers dream of, there are several things that have gone wrong on the way! There is one big worry I will focus on in this piece.

The one big thing mediums have for themselves is the fact that they are trusted mediums that disseminate content.

Right in the beginning, the medium emerges as a completely content-oriented form. Look at the first newspapers that hit the stands. The idea is content. The newspaper is the purveyor of content.

The first set of readers adopt the publication of their choice based on content. Content that is presented cogently and content that is presented with integrity. It is indeed content that shapes the medium and its readership. As readership builds up, the publication is successful in literally building a community of people who would swear by the publication for what it carries. The publication represents community interest and becomes a representative of the collective aspirations, needs and wants of its readers. Many a time, this very content is crafted with care taking into consideration its set of captive readers. This truly is the newspaper that understands its customers and delivers to them what they want.

As circulation numbers climb, there is a direct correlation between the increase in advertising among publications of all types. As more and more readers franchise a paper, the advertising side of the paper tends to deepen. And rightly so. No complaints here.

The evolutionary trend here is however worrisome. Publications at times tend to show a trend to keep increasing the advertising side of the paper at the detriment of content. What started as a 100 per cent content publication metamorphoses into an 80 per cent content and 20 per cent advertising 'avatar'. The end point in this game is however reached when advertising tends to weigh equally in page numbers as content does. No complaints thus far as well!

The complaints start coming when the publication in question starts leveraging its content to stay in tune with the needs, wants and desires of its advertisers rather than the needs, wants and desires of its readers! Many a publication traverses this terrain. And this is the big worry!

The reader of the publication is the guinea pig. How long will this pig remain a pig? Not very long really!

Every medium, whether in the terrain of the medium of television, press or radio is guilty of this trend. Time to correct the trajectory before it is too late!

The very credibility of mediums is in doubt. Let us remember that the very primary franchise of mediums is based on content. The franchisee of the medium adopts the channel, the newspaper brand or his FM channel of choice based on content and what it offers. As the years go by, if the user actually senses a lack of commitment on the part of the medium, the vehicle will be distrusted.

The very goose that lays the golden eggs for media houses is up on judgment. The more individual mediums leverage on advertising and bring every form of it in the guise of creative advertising executions amidst the form of content and at times well within it even, the more is the damage being done!

I want to trust my television channel. I watch it for content! I believe it offers me content that packs in integrity! I believe it will not do me wrong! I believe in what is offered on it! I swear by it! I will speak about it to others and increase its viewership! I am the simple consumer!

As advertising makes its way on the channel of my favour, I will trust the advertising equally. I will vest onto the advertising the positive cues I reserve for the channel. I will trust the advertising. I will even believe that the channel of my favour will not carry advertising that lacks integrity. I am the simple consumer!

As days go by and as I watch a lack of discretion in allowing in intrusive advertising on to the medium, I will start wondering whether my channel has it all right! As I keep to the franchise and as I see a lot of advertising finding its way into the content part of the channel, subliminal and overt, I worry more! I am still the simple consumer!

I keep watching my favorite channel. Till one day I discover that my favorite channel dishes out content that is not entirely above-board in terms of mixing advertising with content. I worry and distrust seeps in. I am still the simple consumer. I become cynical. I distrust the channel. I distrust all advertising on it as well!

The channel has taken it a bit too far. The channel has traversed from a 100 per cent content integrity channel to a cusp of the content and advertising. I am at times unable to discern what drives the channel more. The advertising or the content? The viewer of the advertiser?

As mediums get more and more driven by the advertiser, we need to worry. Time to re-jig our act. Remember, content drives it all! Also remember, the consumer drives this movement. Not the advertiser! Lets re-jig it all!

We owe it to our collective future!

The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc, a private-label consulting firm with a presence in the markets of UK, Hong Kong and the Indian sub-continent.

Email responses to: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Challenges of Consumerism

The competitive advantage of India in the world market

By Harish Bijoor

At the end of a rather long working millennium, one has the luxury of putting up one’s legs on a soft stool, sinking into a soft beanbag and thinking soft thoughts of a soft millennium gone by.

I call it soft, particularly from the Indian perspective of things. The hundred marketing years behind us were distinctly soft years. Soft issues faced and soft options exercised. Soft covenants arrived at softly.

The years ahead look different indeed. Hard years indeed! Troublesome marketing times. Troublesome times for the marketing of the country that is India. Tough years that will call for tough ways.

Let’s then explore what is ahead of us. Visit and re-visit the strengths that exist. Strengths that will re-define the competitive advantage of India in the world market. The India ahead as the new consumer super-power of the world. The new intellectual capital of the world and of course the new seat of buying, selling, marketing and facilitating super-power of the world. The new role of India the buyer, India the seller and India the broker.

Let’s do this scenario painting exercise of the key competitive advantage of India in the markets of the future by visiting briefly the key issues we see as distinct points of strengths.

The British left India as a nation of shopkeepers. Our retail universe that covers a nano-fraction of super-markets, large numbers of small and medium sized shops and cubby holes of retail commerce in remote inaccessible corners of the country, is the biggest you can find in any of the 182 countries that comprise the world and its consuming markets. A population of 12 million retail outlets to service the needs and requirements of the world’s second biggest consuming mass of people!

The one big strength that less than one other nation in the world can stake its claim to, is the size of the population that rests within the boundaries of our country. A huge weakness of gigantic proportions when viewed from the many development-oriented periscopes of the past. Not so when you view it with the future in mind. A future that is energized by these very large masses of people who have been the biggest liability for the nation of a billion plus!

The past viewed people as a liability. Not enough physical work to go round, not enough food to eat and of course not enough education to ventilate around. Every bit of progress that development achieved was sacrificed very, very quickly (possibly even before the economist was able to record and publish the feat), at the altar of population and its rather robust pace of growth.

While every sector of the economy did reasonably well in bits and patches over the last hundred years, so did the sector of population growth. Stretched food resources, stressed out finances, a pathetic situation on the physical infrastructure front and a complete lack of positive momentum represented the development of the last hundred years in India. People were therefore the biggest liability.

Not so anymore. Not in the hundred years ahead of us. One of the biggest assets of marketing-based India is its numbers in the very many homes that dot the countryside of ‘sunny-side-up’ India! Lots of existing people and a robust yen to propagate more of the kind, only means a lot more stomachs to feed and a lot more bladders to fill. Lots more bodies to clothe and a lot more minds to educate.

Think of a product. Think of a service. Think of a want. Think of a need. The biggest and the best of them will linger in the land that is India! The marketing future of India is therefore made. Ready at the take-off stage which will have many a Schumpeter stumped!

But then, people are not the only need of a consumer market. Consumption is certainly not the only key to unlock the riches of a marketing man’s Pandora’s box. Money somehow seems to be the real key. More money in these many hands, more the consumption. But then, is the money around?

While the pessimists answer to the question will say that men without money or men without the means to make the money, are of no use to marketing and its future, the fact remains that there is a value in the market that has a huge potential. A potential that can well nigh break open huge values in the times to come.

Let’s just remember one thing. India has been a poor country for a long, long while now. People below the poverty line have numbered a strong platoon of people. And despite it all, the population has grown, survived and continues to thrive in its sheer numbers. People have found a way to survive. The fittest have survived on high value brands, the less fit than that have thrived on brands of a lesser caliber in the country. Those even lower in the hierarchy have survived on the fringe of the commodity in every category of want and need. Consumption needs have always found answers. Consumption solutions for all!

There is therefore a pyramid of consumption that lies all over the slopes of Maslowe’s hierarchy of needs. But then, everybody, rich or poor, has fallen within the confines of this pyramid. And just as long as they do, there is indeed potential for a robust market for commodities, quasi-brands, brands, super-brands and of course at the ultimate level of the self-actualizing folk, no brands at all!

Every one of these segments has a value though. And in value rests the potential for the marketer. The one big true-blue competitive advantage for India of the present and India of the future, is indeed its large population base articulating every basic need in consumption of products, services and utilities.

Time to change the paradigm of India’s population then! Every marketer of whatever origin, be it from within India or outside, will queue up in the consumer markets of the country, trying to woo the wallet of the willing. As traditional source markets reach a plateau in their consumption, nascent markets like the one in India will hold a great deal of allure to the marketing man in his Western strait-jacket.

The competitive advantage of India will rest in both its own shores and in the foreign lands of its source markets. As the WTO regime opens up markets that do not discriminate and markets that don’t raise the usual high tariff walls that have been the distinct characteristics of the past that has gone by, the Indian product and the Indian brand has a challenge to seize and exploit to its advantage.

The India brand is the center-point of this entire exercise that waits to unfold. The country and its many unique propositions show an excellent potential packed into the future.

This potential needs many Godfathers to unlock though. The name India is in itself filled with a mystique of the past. Tigers on the streets, snake charmers at the ‘chowrasthas’ and the great Indian rope-trick are all images that keep coming back ever so recurrently in the life of the Indian in foreign markets. India is still a mystique. And India is ancient. A civilization as ancient as can be. A glorious history, a rich tapestry of tradition and a whole bunch of assorted mystique attached to the Indian brand that is connected to all things natural and of course all things beautiful, is something that needs to be exploited to the hilt.

No point then to negate the mystique and charm of the brand there is in the minds of peoples outside the shores of India. Might as well use it to advantage. Add all those dashes of hi-technology to all the soft touch of the nation in the minds of the consumer in foreign markets, and you just might have a potent broth that will re-position the brand that is India.

The competitive advantage of an image versus that of a functional reality has seen the winning potential in the image and the brand. As the future evolves into one that is besotted more with imagery than with the functional trait, piggybacking on the India brand, a whole host of honest products and services that cling on to the tail of the mystique that is India, is certainly a possibility of significant competitive advantage.

The one big missing element in the marketing of the India brand has been the commitment to brand thinking within the realm of Indian bureaucracy. The policy maker needs to shift the way he thinks and the way he operates in the realm of the image.

Preserving a whole host of things that are distinctly Indian and distinctly ethnic will be the biggest task for those in the game of maintaining the key differentiators, which will bet eh key USPs of the India brand. Indian foods are already a big thing in the West. A United Kingdom without 'Balti' cooking and Butter Chicken Masala would indeed be a poorer nation of gourmet eaters!

Natural health remedies, natural cooking, the Organic nation, the realm of alternate medicine and health are but only some of the areas that will distinguish India in the future. There are a whole host of areas to explore. No one nation in the world can claim to offer the kind of variety that India can. In its food, its clothes, its festivals, its rituals and of course in its many Gods. India as a safe tourist destination of the future is still but a dream. The potential however lives on.

The many, many competitive advantages of India, glorified in recent years in the realm of InfoTech, front-ended scientific research work that is currently on in the outer-periphery of achievement, India’s strides in the realm of PharmaTech and allied areas are possibilities that have been highlighted well and possibly even inflated beyond levels of credible usage in the past.

Avoiding these realms, one can only look at the basics that India offers to the markets that are emerging now and to the markets that will emerge in the future.

The effort that has to be made in order to establish and capitalize on the basics just outlined as key competitive advantage of the country, require an investment in the realms of positive development of the network economy, its infrastructure base, its communication ability and of course the key factor of brand-led thinking.

India has long since lived as a commodity. It is time then to yank itself out of the commodity mindset and establish its presence in the brand-led world. The world today is one that is moved more by the image than by the reality. India needs to seize its place in the limelight of brands.

As everything in the marketing lives of the Indian gets redefined in the near and medium-term future, there is but no other option than to depend heavily on the key strengths we have taken for granted in the past. Even considered a liability in the recent past.

Awakening the Indian economy and its competitiveness lies in the realm of the high quality product that will roll out of our ancient manufacturing facilities. These products need to talk of a quality that will battle the best that will come in from every direction there is. And that too at low cost. Our ‘desi’ chickens will need to compete with American chicken legs that will walk into the kitchens of our country.

As many an industry faces an impending closure, the best will indeed survive. The fittest will survive and the rest will vanish into the limbo of the have-beens. As all this happens and as social turmoil seizes the 'have-beens' by the jugular, there is ahead of us a moment that will truly bet the defining moment when the entire bureaucracy that run the competitive model of Indian industry and enterprise will wake up all of a sudden, with a jolt. A nightmare that is bound to seize the policy-maker, the implementer and indeed the key participant of the economy, the man in industry, all together by the short hair.

And this defining moment is the one that will turn the paradigm of Indian competitiveness we have followed so very vigorously for all these years, upside down. This will be the moment of re-think. A point of time when the truly important will replace the truly insignificant. A pursuit of which, our model of industrialization thrust upon the nation during the Nehruvian era, glorified in the past.

The WTO regime is the catalyst of this process. And the first of the bombshells will be fired in the dominant sector of agriculture in the Indian economy. And its almost here!

We are, I suspect, very close to that defining moment. Let’s witness and let’s participate in that process of turmoil. We have no choice, in any case!

In Conclusion

The competitive advantage of India in world markets is best assessed by taking a quick peek at the models of competition possible in markets of the present and the future.

If I am to look around the nations of the world and correlate models in current use, there are four distinct patterns that emerge. Four clusters that have whole sets of nations congregating in models those seem to work for each of them differently and with different levels of efficacy. Needless to say, the peculiarities of each nation in question dictate the distinct choice they have made for themselves. Let’s visit the clusters. And let’s call them all kinds of animal names.

1.The Earthworm Model:

The passive model of competitive reaction. The invitation theory that is best practiced by the earthworm. A rich worm really. It knows the basics best. It is in constant touch with the earth that it seeks nourishment from and nourishes back simultaneously. A fundamentally strong being.

Several problems in this model though. It is passive for one. Non-reactionary. A model in the self-fulfilling prophecy mode. The best example of the fatalistic theory in practice. When faced with danger, all it can do is continue its humble journey in the earth. Competition kills this model with ease. There is no reaction. The fatalistic model of competition at its best!

Is India here?

2.The Snail model:

The common competitive model in practice by a whole host of nations. This model is reactively proactive. A clear cocoon orientation. When faced with competition and danger, there is a regression into the shell. The withdrawn marketer at play. The philosopher marketer even! The marketer who revels in the safety-static nexus. Waiting for the competition to just go away, so that normal life may resume again!

Is India here?

3.The Porcupine Model:

This model tells the competitor clearly of the array of weapons that are available for retributive action. There is a clear emphasis on the display of the arsenal. It believes in the overt display. A clear détente model of competition. Avoids a lot of speculative action and is ready for the real battle

Is India here?

4.The Everyone Else Model:

This is the model of the real-time player in competitive markets of the present and certainly the future. This is the real-time marketer. Reactive when necessary. Proactive when necessary. Guerilla in tactics when necessary as well!

This is a constant-change oriented model that believes in watching the scenario carefully and reacting accordingly. Making forays into proactive territory on a speculative basis. Never mind if even only one of those sixteen forays actually click! Life in the fast track of competitive marketing is pretty un-predictable and speculative. Change here is absolutely discontinuous. Making a decision on a point of competitive strategy based on happenings of the past and the present could be disastrous. The future never ever happens the way the past decided.

Change here is so discontinuous that it is aptly illustrated by the example of the baby-arrival process in the house. The first child in this baby-boomers house is born out of a Caesarian section, gone in for by an over-zealous gynecologist. The second baby of the house is therefore predictably to be one out of a similar process. Caesarian section! No! It isn’t. Change is discontinuous. The second baby is a natural birth! The third child is due to happen then. This time round, it’s Caesarian section as well! Oops!

The fourth child of this baby-happy home is due. Change is indeed discontinuous. There is no predictability here. Guess what! This time round, the baby is actually conceived, carried and delivered by the father of the baby! Oops! Again! Change is indeed that discontinuous!

Shouldn’t India be here?

Harish Bijoor is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

E mail: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Handphone: +91 98440 83491