The All-new Models of competition

Earthworm, Snail, Porcupine and Co.

By Harish Bijoor

Competition is a reality. None of us can ignore competition. There is competition in the home, in the school, in college, in office and most certainly in the great Indian market-place as a whole.

If there is life, there is competition. The baby in the house competes for your attention, just as that brand new hair gel on the shelf is seeking out your attention amidst a clutter of competition weighing down the super-market shelf.

How does one really compete? Let me paint four models.

If I am to look around the nations of the world and correlate competitive 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 of the East 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 the Indian marketer here? I

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 The withdrawn marketer at play.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

Many marketers seem 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, its 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?

The author is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

The Salesman is Dead!

gog

Death of a Salesman

By Harish Bijoor

Who is a salesperson?

The typical definition points squarely at that one entity that runs out there in the field. That one entity that does the sales prospecting first. That very entity that makes the cold call. That entity that does the sales pitch. And most certainly that one entity that closes the sale and brings in the ‘moolah’ into the kitty of the company he represents or the individual purpose he touts.

The year is 2005. This rather antediluvian definition of a salesperson is changing at a rapid pace. The narrow spotlight that fell on the front-ended salesperson as the sales entity of the organization, focused in his revenue tapping activity, is gradually spreading wider and wider in organization.

The salesperson prospects. And so do a host of back-end operators today. Whole departments that sit behind computer data-bases and whole departments that still pore through directories of people who fit the profile of the company in question are becoming critical sales-lead points for the man in the field to follow. Is this a sales-person as well? But of course!

The salesperson tele-calls. And so do a host of call-center operatives set up to generate the hot leads from a whole fuzzy and amorphous list of prospects. Companies in the market for the aggressive sale boast of deep-seated call centers that work 24X7 to pass the lead on to the man or woman on the front. Is this a sales-person as well? Most certainly yes.

The sales-person plants the seed of an awareness in the minds of consumers. Your range of superior toilet-cleaner needs to be planted as a thought in the minds of prospective consumers. While the sales-person on the field does this physically one on one, advertising of both the mass media and specific kind does it all the while. Is the advertising creative person in his pony-tail, the media-person in his breeches and the peppy client servicing 'types' sales entities as well? Most vehemently yes.

The sales-person is therefore not one. The salesperson is many! Many entities that make for the end purpose of creating the awareness, stoking it on into an interest in the potty-cleaner, causing for a flaming desire for the same and of course clinching it into an action of a sale.

And is that the end of the road? Not at all. The post-sale process is equally important. Is the post sale service person an important entity in the chain of causing the sale and keeping it as such? Yes again. The service person is a sales person as well. Every service person is a salesperson at large, with the very big potential of making that sale happen for a second time and most certainly a very positive entity working to create a positive appeal for the company that has done the selling –in for a repeat purchase at some time in the near or distant future.

The focus of the narrow beam therefore widens. And there’s more.

I enter the realm of your sales office. There sits a guard at the door. Is he a salesperson? Yes, he is. Your office receptionist who is painting her nails as she responds to a call is a salesperson as well. Everyone is.

Why is it then that everyone in the enterprise of a sale does not really think he or she is a salesperson? And why is it that everyone listed out here does not really participate in the enterprise of selling with the vigor and zest that the front-ended salesperson of the organization displays?

These are indeed key issues that worry many a man, woman and child in the realm of selling. Trouble touch-points, if when corrected can actually result in cascaded quantum value for the selling organization.

Look keenly at the organization of sales in your company then. Peek keenly at the nomenclature in vogue. Call everyone in your organization a sales entity then. Bring in the S word with pride into the designation and job profiles of everyone in your organization. Call them all together and celebrate your sales successes. Remember, each of them, starting with the office peon to the guy who mans the kitchen has been equally responsible in creating the cascade of sale.

And don’t stop at that. Incentivise everyone in the organization based on the sale volume or value your organization commands every quarter. The sales-person in the front will of course garner the most of this incentive, but as the distance to the selling process increases, the incentive will decrease. Nevertheless, everyone earns a part of what the enterprise makes on its sale. Money talks and money helps weave purpose here.

The CEO sitting right atop the pyramid of organization needs to be a salesperson as well. She is indeed the ultimate salesperson of organization. Sales must be a part of the designation description of your CEO. It helps vest the S word with the dignity it demands and deserves.

At the end of it all, sales is the one activity that is the purpose of organization. Sales brings in the cash flow. Never mind whether you are a temple-trust, a modern multi-specialty hospital, a school at large or a company that sells dentures or dog biscuits. The purpose of the organization is the sale.

Get your corporate organization centric to the purpose of the sale. Get the S word going with gusto and reap the rewards that will follow.

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

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Marketing in the Days ahead..............

The Future of the Future: Two Pointers….

By Harish Bijoor

The future is not for you to see.

Well almost. The future of marketing lies in the future of branding. Two pointers then to the future of the future……..

1. The Amoeba and I

Human beings are not static state entities. We change. Our minds change. The thoughts in our minds change. We are change animals. We actually morph all the while. Our bodies change. Our minds change as well. Our bodies change with time. Right upto the age of 18 we are on the growth path. From then on we are on the death path. Our cells grow all the while and then start dying all the while. The body is therefore all about change.

The mind similarly is all about change. Change that is even more dynamic. While the body and its changes are all about a relationship with time, the mind and its change is not about time at all. It is about the diverse sets of experiences we go through. It is all about experience and exposure.

When our minds (where thoughts live) are forever on a morph mode, how dare brands remain static and expect to thrive?

Brands need to reinvent themselves on the format of an amoeba that is forever changing. Amoebic Branding is it! Change with dominant sets of consumers. A brand can’t be static anymore. Brands need to have avatars that change all the while. And for this, for a start, brands need to know the minds of their consumers the way they are and the way they will be next month. Brands need to Scenario plan all the way ahead.

Brand appeal needs to be inconsistent. Consistency is old hat. Consistency is the old paradigm of the branding process. One needs to break through the walls of this very rigid edifice brand folks have built over the last several decades. A brand needs to be inconsistent. Inconsistent in sync with the consumer.

Consumers are changing faster than brands. And that possibly is one of the reasons brands are being left behind and consumers are sprinting ahead. Running away from brands! Amoebic branding is all about keeping pace with the mind and mood of the consumer and morphing brand offerings both in terms of imagery and more radically so, in terms of product as well! The product can’t be static anymore as well! Wake up to new branding! Wake up to the new DNA of a brand!

2. Watch out! Inclusive branding ahead!

The very base paradigm of branding is exclusivity. In the beginning, there was the commodity. The commodity was pretty much unrecognizable one from the other. Brand folk caused for distinction. The commodity morphed to a quasi-brand status of some recognition. Brand folk kept getting exclusive in their approach. The quasi-brand moved on to become a brand. The brand was exclusive space. And then came the super-brand! Very exclusive space!

If the brand is exclusive space, it excludes a whole lot of society from it.

As society evolves, the language of the day will move on to get more and more inclusive. Do brands today include the masses or do they exclude them? Do brands in India include the needs, wants, aspirations, desires and affordability parameters of the have-nots?

If they don’t, and if all they cause is a hunger for higher end products that just can’t be satisfied, time then to get going and get onto the bandwagon of what I call Inclusive Branding. Branding that involves every segment of the masses there is to please, feed, clothe and shelter!

Inclusive branding is therefore all about an offering that embraces all. In some way or the other. In an extreme manner of speaking, brands will aspire not to alienate but embrace. Brands will cause hunger amongst only the relevant groups of people they aspire to satisfy. Mass advertising will therefore need to get very sensitive. If you are a Skoda Auto, you will get very sensitive and stop using mass media altogether that reaches the recesses of the dispossessed in your country. You will remember that even people below the poverty line in your country watch television, and you will not want to create unnecessary hunger and saliva appeal amongst those who can’t afford what you peddle.

And this is not about being benign. It is all about avoiding social discontent. All about avoiding those negative cues and strokes your brand gives to a whole set of people who can’t afford to be within its consumption set.

One step further then. Brands just might have other offers for those who can’t afford what you advertise to the masses. A branded tea that retails at Rs.300 a Kilogram just might have a variant that retails at Rs.2 per 5 grams! The quality of the offering will of course be different, but the brand name might be the same!

Can a brand with the same name swim upstream and downstream in an economy at the same time? The paradigm might just have to be broken!

Inclusive branding will be about embracing all whom you advertise to. The strategies of Inclusive branding are many, but the goal is the same. Newer and newer routes will be discovered! Inclusive branding is the new DNA of a truly successful brand ahead!

The author is a Brand domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc, a private-label consulting outfit with a presence in the markets of Hong Kong, London, Dubai and the Indian sub-continent

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

clustrmaps

Marketing Models for India

Earthworm, Snail, Porcupine and Co.

By Harish Bijoor

Competition is a reality. None of us can ignore competition. There is competition in the home, in the school, in college, in office and most certainly in the great Indian market-place as a whole.

If there is life, there is competition. The baby in the house competes for your attention, just as that brand new hair gel on the shelf is seeking out your attention amidst a clutter of competition weighing down the super-market shelf.

How does one really compete? Let me paint four models.

If I am to look around the nations of the world and correlate competitive 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 of the East 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 the Indian marketer here? I

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

Many marketers seem 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, its 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?

The author is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

The Indian Consumer of the Future

Networking Working

By Harish Bijoor

The FMCG industry is back on the growth path in India. With a bang! After a big series of lulls seen in the industry with slackening rates of consumer interest, the FY 2008 promises a record growth rate of 17 % for the best FMCG brands in the country.

As one peels the Marketing Onion that is India, one finds successes that are bigger still in FMCG space. Bigger than the recorded growth rate of 17% even, as will be seen by majors in the space such as HUL, Marico and a P&G.

To get a hint of the real heroes of FMCG space in the last several years, peek keenly at the top-line numbers recorded by MLM (Multi-level marketing) companies. In the lead is just one company: Amway.

Top-line growth numbers of the company far out-strip the achievements of the oldest FMCG majors that have dominated the marketing environment that is India.

I theorize on this now. A theory I have built and evangelize across corporate organizations in the space of FMCG in India.

My theory then.

I do believe there are three dominant types of consumers in any marketing economy.

Indian Consumer Ver.1.1: The first is what I call a Pure consumer. This consumer buys for himself and his family. This consumer lives in the big cities of India. This consumer is a fourth or fifth generation branded FMCG buyer even. Marketers have traditionally focused on selling to such a consumer in India thus far.

Indian Consumer Ver.1.2: The second consumer is the one who is part consumer and part re-seller. He buys products and at times services not for himself alone. Whatever he buys, he will use a part for himself and his family, and the rest he will re-sell, often at a profit. Marketers in MLM companies typically sell to such folk. The success of the FY 2008 has been this Indian consumer Ver. 1.2. Amway reaped the wind here.

Indian Consumer Ver. 1.3: The third consumer is the one, who in the future, will actually buy only to re-sell. This consumer will emerge in the smaller towns of India. In the 6, 42,700 villages of India. This consumer will challenge the might of the distributor who was the re-seller in the old days. True blue democratization of the selling process, where the consumer is really not a consumer at all. He is only a Pure re-seller. There are marketers exploring this space. Taking baby steps here.

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

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

IPL Cricket and Indian Sports Marketing Dynamics

Geography is History

By Harish Bijoor

Geography is history!

The IPL team brand is a reality today. Even as the bidding for the City Teams is done with and just as the top 80 cricketers are picked up in an open auction with open and overt commercial intent by a Preity Zinta or a Dr. Vijay Mallya, it is time to sit up and shake the paradigm of geography and its old value. At least in cricketing terms.

Cricket history is an old and valued one. If Hinduism has its Bhagvad Gita, Christianity its Bible and Islam its Koran, Cricket has its own as well with an ever-growing Wisden. But then, that’s old hat now!

A trace of the history of evolution of cricket then?

Kerry Packer saw it first. The audience for 5-day cricket with its men in whites was getting to be tiresome. Cricket refused to change its avatar. Packer came in with his revolutionary one-day format. In came cricket with colored uniforms and just 50-overs each. This was instant cricket. A game that wrapped up its results in just one day of each team playing fifty-overs.

The game prospered. The game grew. Sponsorship grew. Brands that sought quicker eye-ball impact picked the game with vigor. Now there was Cricket Classic (the five day version played by men in whites) and Instant Cricket (the 50-over variety with its adrenaline rush for the younger man). In many ways, if you were older and if you had a heart problem, you better watch 5-day cricket. If you were younger, there was One-day cricket around for you. And then of course there were cusp cricket fans who watched both the variants. There was just more cricket to eat than before, and no one complained. Except for parents of kids with exams to write, who just kept complaining that this was just not cricket.

In came the years of the 2000 series. Cricket administrators and those concerned with Cricket –commerce (many interested only in terms of audience reach and the ability to monetize this value in terms of advertising) were thinking fast and quick. The contemporary audience was tiring of one-day cricket as well. Lives were getting fast-paced. People just did not have enough time to sit and watch a One-day game that somehow seemed slower than the life-styles of most of the audience that was watching it.

The game changed. In came Twenty-20. A shorter game. A sexier version. A version that promised to compete with the 90-minute joy of the world’s biggest viewed game of them all, Soccer.

With history wrapped up, time to talk the paradigm of Geography.

In sheer brand terms, cricket is a game that has traditionally depended on the jingoism of nations at the International level. In some cases the jingoism of States and Regions even, just as the Ranjhi Trophy matches sought so desperately to build in the country. In vain of course!

The IPL is different. This nascent brand of wannabe cricket wants to develop a whole new paradigm of consumer acceptance altogether. The key proposition: build Team-brand loyalty rather than just plain old National-brand or State-brand loyalty.

How is this done? How long will it take? And what are the key hurdles to cross? And importantly, can it be done at all?

Last question first. Can it be done at all?

Most certainly yes. Peek keenly at soccer and the emergence of the mega-buck teams that represent a passion of their own. Are you an Arsenal fan? Or a Man-U maniac? And is the Manchester United much more of a movement than national football altogether? And what about the eye-balls that track the game? Do they follow Team-sport more than National Soccer? And which one is a weekly passion? And which one attracts the biggest bucks?

The answer is blowing in the winds my dear friends. Team soccer is bigger than it all. Team sport is more profitable than it all. More eye-balls, more frequent eye-balls, and indeed more eye-balls to monetize literally every week. More eye-balls and indeed every other body part of the fan to monetize, not only in playing season, but in slack time as well. Every ball, every T-shirt and every wrist band is an opportunity that packs money.

My definition of a brand: The brand is a thought. A thought that lives in people’s minds. The Team Bangalore of Vijay Mallya is a thought. A thought that will live in every mind. This thought is not only about soccer. It is about more. It is about a city. It is about the passion that Bangalore evokes in every heart, body and soul that lives in Bangalore. Add to it the heart, body, soul and every other sundry body part that thinks positively of Bangalore but does not live there. To that extent, this Team-branding of cricket provides the opportunity to harvest the passion of every cricket enthusiast who lives in Bangalore

The brand is today essentially consumed not by geographic clusters. Not even by consumers who live in common and identified Demographic clusters. The brand is today a Psychographic reality. Never mind where you live, you will consume Team Bengaluru. The moment you consume the brand and enjoy a passion-link into it, you are saying it out loud that you live out there with your mind rather than your body. Team cricket provides for this key insight to be harvested.

Building this new paradigm of Team Cricket will take time. It will not happen overnight. But then cricket and its administrators have all the time on their hands. It is the early entrants to the game who will singe their hands and minds and pockets. They will then wait and build. Build with every season. Build with every marketing tool of viral connect there is to use.

In sum, let’s lump it if not like it. Team Brand cricket is here to stay. The moneys in it are just too big to ignore. Marketers and owners of teams will harvest passion for the game, passion for the city and indeed passion for the individual cricket star over a period of time. Give it six years time, and you will watch nothing else but a Big Sunday game of Bengaluru versus Jaipuru! Maybe even a Jaipuru versus a Mysooru game in the future! What say?

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

Email: ceo@harishbijoorconsults.com

India Everywhere

We are like this only!

By Harish Bijoor

The last nail is just about being hammered onto the coffin of the year 2007, even as I furiously hammer this year-end piece onto my laptop. 2007 is a year done with. Wrapped up for posterity to savor. Wrapped up for the historian of the future to possibly pore through the pages of an exciting year that was.

How did this year go then? What were the seminal trend lines that defined 2007? Anything special? Anything new?

Lot’s really. Let me peek into the year just gone by and look at the big defining trends in the realm of everything that caught our collective imagination. There isn’t space for everything, but here are the some bigger ones. Ten of them!

1. India Everywhere: Intel was only inside, but India was everywhere. The year saw a renewed focus on India from every country there was. The biggest journals of the world carried big stories on the country that was touted to be a key player of the tri-polar world of the future. India had arrived. At least in terms of all the focus the business of this country evoked.

Corporate raiders from India continued a streak of acquisitions that looked at just about every industry vertical there was to tap. Tea, coffee, steel and the automotive sector saw big inroads. Ownership patterns of companies that were hitherto “developed world” oriented, shifted in many ways to incorporate a more inclusive “developing” world ownership.

India became a fashionable buzz-country to focus upon. MNC corporation’s world-wide encouraged their top managements to travel into the country and get a handle of what was happening. Authors such as Thomas L Friedman added grist to the flaming buzz that was India.

2. Incredible India:

With India being everywhere, the tourism industry went berserk. Travel was big. Tourist inflows into the country were big. Tourists of the business variety just kept coming. Tourists of the holiday variety were still not as big as must be, but the interest on India is bringing in the 'moolah'.

India at 60 was a fun place to be.

3. Services Boomed:

India has morphed from a pure products oriented economy to a services-skewed one. There is big demand for every kind of service there is to use. The realms of telecom in particular boomed. India boasts a total of 266 million mobile connections as the calendar year closes. The market remains on a fast growth path, clocking in 7.2 million new phone connections every month.

What a far cry then from the years of yore when one had to wait 12 years to get a landline at home!

4. Bollywood boomed on:

Bollywood remained the big harbinger of everything that was exciting in India. India continued producing the largest number of feature films in the world.

The big blockbusters had a nation craving for more. Controversial efforts such as “Kabhi Alvida Na kehna” were followed up by true blue interesting formats such as the Diwali release of “Om Shanti Om” and “Saawariya”. Smaller format films such as “Jab We Met” did a delightful amount of business as well. Small remained beautiful.

The universal favorite remained the love story format. Somehow this format seems to always be a big hit with man, woman and child.

5. The stock-market as category killer:

The market for money was never as good as this. The stock market defied every surge of a much-restrained bear. The bulls were all around. Some wore the colors of Japan, and many wore the colors of funds that were out here from every nation of funds there was. Source of funds was a matter of worry for a while, but a very responsible SEBI walked the tight-rope rather well.

The year end looks hot with the Sensex breaching well nigh the 20K mark time and again. The Sensex is a big brand in itself today.

6. Instant cricket:

Cricket is dead. Long live cricket.

The old format of 5-day cricket is today a fuddy-duddy format. The new generation of young, working and empowered Indians are looking for quick-fix sporting encounters. India is moving towards a 90-minute soccer game kind of fixation as well.

Cricket however remains the nation’s game. The 1-day format is getting tiresome even. Just as this happens, in came the T20 version. Cricket as instant and quick as it can get.

The 5-day game variant is now a family game that is watched by all those who have the time for it. The others watch the highlights.

A lot more have rushed in to partake of the 20-over variant. This T20 game is now the game of the young. Parents are however just about waking up in the country, asking their young ones to stay away from the snazzy new variant even, as T20 is seen as adult cricket, what with the skimpily clad cheer-leaders leading the way in every break there is.

7. Food and drinks morph:

The Cola controversy has been forgotten. More and more of the non-staple drinks are invading the market. Big forays are being made with water as well. Probiotic curd, live cultures, Probiotic Ice cream and healthy drinks of the natural variety are hitting our shelves in a big way.

8. Tele-marketing dies:

There is a small death that has occurred. Even thought there are only 6 million Indians who have registered for the Do not disturb register, marketers have re-oriented their early strategies of pestering the consumer with the Tele-marketing call.

9. Retail booms:

Big retail booms. Small retail is just about getting onto an aggressive stance of attack. The year witnessed the opening up of many a retail format that was organized retail that ate into the turf of hitherto small retail.

The fresh fruit and vegetable sector, grocery, apparel, footwear, electronics , auto, jewellery, and literally every other high-value category has seen inroads by organized retail.

The year end saw the biggest planned retailer of the country, Reliance Retail, redefining its approach to the Indian market, particularly in the sensitive terrain of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Simultaneously then, politically correct retail that focused on the rural sector of the country emerged. IOC’s ‘Kisan Seva kendras’, the DCM ‘Hariyali’ effort, ITC’s ‘Chaupal Sagar’ and efforts from the Murugappa group, Godrej and the Future group saw test markets.

10. And Narendra Modi won:

Even as the last few nails are being knocked into the year, the final political nail to be hammered onto the coffin of the year is the verdict of the Gujarat polls. Narendra Modi has won. Mind it!( As Quick Gun Murugan would say ), this is all about Narendra Modi and not the BJP. The man has won. Possibly the party has lost. Please read a lot of meaning in this sentence.

Politics remains a game of the impossible. Exit polls of every variety have gone awry once again. Never mind. The people’s verdict is clear in Gujarat. Modi will rule another five years!

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

Email: ceo@harishbijoorconsults.com

Marketing 2010

The Marketing Year Ahead

By Harish Bijoor

Marketers do not normally remember the past. The past is history. Very simply because consumer’s do not remember the past as well. Consumers are essentially concerned about what’s now and what’s in the future. The consumer today is a “power of now” entity. So is the marketer.

The year 2007 is done with. Time to wrap it up in cellophane, put in the moth-balls and stack it in the attic of our imagination. Time to plan for the year ahead. The year 2008 and all the years that will follow it.

Trend-tracking the year that has gone by is an exercise on its own. Trend-spotting the marketing years ahead is a tougher exercise still. I am attempting it in this piece. Let me look at three big marketing trends that will define the years ahead of us and break every paradigm oriented behavior the marketer has painted himself into in the past..

Trend One: The Consumer as seller!

Let me explain this. Marketing as we know it is about to change in the future. The savvy marketer of the future (if you want to be one), needs to decimate the concept of the ‘consumer as consumer’ and ‘marketer as marketer’.

The consumer has for far too many decades been just a consumer. The consumer is changing. There is a big opportunity out here to harvest and capitalize upon, particularly so in India.

In the old days, the consumer was a pure consumer. Take urban India for instance. The user of a packet of tea is essentially a consumer, just as the buyer of a detergent is. The urban consumer of today is 100% consumer. She buys to use everything she buys completely on herself or her family.

Take a peek at a new trend. The urban consumer is of two types today. One buys to consume herself. The 100% consumer, and the other is quite like Bru coffee, 70% consumer and 30% re-seller! Take the examples we have in our modern urban life from an Amway, a Tupperware and a Herbalife.

Peek deeper still into the rural markets that are just about waking up to consumerism in a big way, prompted by the medium of television that does not distinguish urban from rural in its reach, messaging and advertising creatives alike. Television creates hunger for products and services in urban and rural markets alike.

In these rural markets, we will have a new profile of the emerging consumer. A consumer who is possibly 50% consumer (for self-use of product and service alike) and the balance 50% re-seller. This is the guy who is the Insurance agent, the intermediary for a financial product, and equally is the person who acts as an intermediary distributor of a detergent or a cake of soap alike. This channel, uniquely, is not restricted to the efforts of the multi-level channel marketer like an Amway, but is equally involved in selling products and services as a distributor on a direct mode of distribution.

Peek deeper still. You will see the emergence of the 10% consumer and 90% re-seller. This is the rural consumer who buys very little of the product for herself and the rest that she buys, she sells at a profit. She is part of an NGO at times, and at times part of a self-help group that is linked to the big marketers of the day. We see some signs of this emerging with the “Shakti-amma” of HUL and certainly in the case of a whole host of SHGs re-selling shampoo and Shikakai alike.

Watch out then for the consumer as seller. Part consumer and part seller. Capitalize on this and open up those dormant markets.

Trend Two: CSR is dead! ISR emerges!

Corporate Social Responsibility is unsustainable activity. CSR that harvests only the money of corporates and not necessarily the passion of the people who work in corporate organizations is a self-fulfilling prophesy of doom.

What will emerge in its place is ISR. Individual Social Responsibility commitments. Corporate organsiaitons will harvest the time and passion of its people and channelize it in as contributions to the social sector. When done in this manner, the passion of the people involved will emerge as movements on their own. Very long-term sustainable movements, unlike CSR, which at best is the fashion statement of Corporate Boards. Puffed up further by positive PR.

Trend Three: Harvesting consumer passion with a time-expiry date!

Consumer passion, something taken for granted in India, is vanishing fast.

Passion is essentially a lowest common denominator item. When a people are deprived of the basics, and when a people are hungry, they are the most passionate about the issues that plague society.

As India gets more and more prosperous, people climb the hierarchy of need higher and higher. As this happens, people become more and more besotted with the material things that make their lives good. This movement is contra to the movement that builds the passion of a people. Therefore, expect more and more consumers getting cynical about the issues that plague us day in and day out. Expect less of the economically empowered to vote. Expect less of them to contribute to the terrain of consumer passion.

Consumer passion today comes with a date-expiry tag to it. It will last another 15 years for sure. But lesser and lesser numbers with every passing year of consumer prosperity ahead of us.

Touché! And welcome 2008!

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

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Marketing Trends 2007

Brand Trends 2007


By Harish Bijoor

Study the advertising and branding trends of a country, and you know what the country is all about. In a jiffy you know its peoples.

Branding and the core conception of the science of branding, the execution of the brand plan at the ground level through the tools of marketing and selling, and indeed the visual execution of the brand proposition through the means of advertising is a complete give-away of a culture. Brand culture.

Let me do just that for the year that has passed by. 2007 is just about buried as a year gone by. Let me peek into the gut and gore of the year, its many highs and a few lows from a complete brand perspective. A recap of the calendar year 2007.

Some slug-points then of the many trends that defined the year 2007.

What’s in a name?

Nothing at all.

UTI Bank decided to become an Axis by compulsion. Nothing changed at all. The visual depiction of twins, from cherubic babies to equally cherubic babes morphed on to show the fact that nothing had changed except the name. The colour coded execution worked very well. Consumers however kept wondering why change a name if nothing else had.

Hutch did the same due to change of ownership. The pug shifted kennels. Mega-spends ensured that the message was dinned into the heads of an audience that had come to love the three pink samosas of Hutch. The Vodafone red was everywhere in a campaign that was orchestrated well through every media there was to use. Ubiquity was the name of the game.

HLL became an HUL. The Hindustan story won here. Hindustan was bigger than Unilever in this case. Air Deccan morphed from being the common man’s carrier to a confused bird just about deciding what it wanted to be. At the moment it is a Simplifly Deccan.

Aviation space saw a lot of brand confusion. Air Sahara became a JetLite, just as Jet Airways itself underwent a change of colour and in-air identity. Indian of course was the most confused of them all. The airline which had gone on to change its name from an age-old Indian Airlines to Indian, changed its identity once again. The year saw the Public Sector aviation space with just one brand all across: Air India. Here again, nothing else has sadly changed. Except the name.

What’s in a name Shakespeare-ji?

There’s a little bit of Retail in my hair


Every Tom, Dick and Harish wanted a little bit of retail in their business plans this year. The year was the beacon year of organized retail. Kishore Biyani got crowned the ‘Corporate Dukaandar’ of the year and wrote his best-selling book as well!

The model of Indian retail is on the morph phase. The business model of yore fought battles that were completely “David versus David”. Small retail versus small. Today, the fight has just about begun. This is a “David versus Goliath” battle. The future will of course be all about a “Goliath versus Goliath” battle as Macro formats fight for survival.

Retail Darwinism will prevail in this market. Even as the “David versus Goliath” battle has begun, a whole army of small shop-keepers and of course a larger army of middle-men have gotten together to stall it in many a state. Reliance Fresh has taken the brunt of the attack this year. More will come.

Modern trade formats are re-defining their business plans and no plan can afford to be static in a market that is completely dynamic in its sweep. Time for modern retail to get inclusive in its sweep. Time to put together that format I touted four years ago.

A Reliance Retail must get into the market and get together the existing 3000 small retailers in Hyderabad. Sign an MOU with each one of them. Co-brand their outlet. Let there be a Reliance-Adarsh retail and a Reliance-Kavita Retail. Pool the back-end work and source jointly. Brand the front-end and professionalize levels of service. Let the small retailer have an option to survive. A co-opetition model?

The ‘Corporate Kaka’ is here? Not yet.


Madvertising was here

The creative pony-tailed guy with breeches holding up his pants in advertising agencies went berserk. Advertising morphed. Madvertising is here.

Cows chewed gum instead of cud and smiled happily ever-after. Vets touted brands and marriages for the cows they treated. Never mind that consumers felt quite like cows watching all of this. Creative license was a fun license to have and use.

Happy teeth lit up streets, tennis courts and of course the cars and dining tables of royalty. Bingo went on a spree making fun of accents and peoples and a new genre of madvertising was born. Excellent on the score of generating awareness and possibly interest in the brand, but I don’t really know how it fared in creating that one purpose of most businesses: the end sale and the repeat, sale after sale.

Bollywood defined marketing

Movies, music and ‘masti’ surrounding it all, made for a memorable marketing year. The two big touted blockbusters of the year used every marketing gimmick there was to push themselves down the throat and into the psyche of the movie-goer at large. Om Shanti Om and Saawariya. Marketing spend on both was big. One won. Another lost. Proving that content is king.

OSO has become a buzz-word of the last quarter of 2007. Everyone who was a teenager and more in the seventies has wanted to see this movie. Shahrukh Khan was the big draw, as was his six-pack.

The six-pack itself has become a brand in its own right. Every ageing Madonna who is a 40 plus, including the one tapping this onto the laptop for print, wants a six-pack now. The 40-plus man has a reason to live. And his wife has a reason to nag. “If Shahrukh can do it, why can’t you!”

OSO has led to two big music releases and a spate of OSO parties where everyone wants to wear an OSO shirt of the seventies. Retail outlets across the country have stocked up the big polka dot shirts and the short 'kurtis' with sequins and tight ‘churidaars’ well in time to meet the rush.

Watch out for the new look all around. The seventies look in your life. In everything. In cars, in advertising, in husbands and in wives as well.

Movies create a market. And how!


Vicarious Lives of Consumers and Marketers

Empowered consumers in the big cities of our country lived dual lives. Vicarious lives. One life was real in the midst of their families and in the midst of marketers who were all around them. Another was lived in the virtual world.

An on-line identity was rich in what it offered the vicarious-craving consumer. A whole host of websites such as a Facebook, Myspace, Vox, SecondLife, LinkedIn, Orkut, Minglebox, Yaari, Flickr and tens of others offered a dual life.

Your friendly dentist is possibly a Pole-dancer in SecondLife, just as your Barman at the neighboring watering hole might as well be a Temple Priest on the same site. People are living dual lives now.

Marketers have discovered this and a whole host of marketers such as Sun Microsystems, Reuters and Wells Fargo have set up shop on SecondLife to create a turnover for themselves in Linden Dollars, the currency of this vicarious space. What’s more, there is an Indian recruitment portal as well waiting to recruit the trespasser!

More and more marketers will jump in.

Internal branding grows

Corporates are progressively understanding the need to get an image for themselves that is benign, positive and internal-customer friendly.

Corporate organizations in the space of technology, end-to-end services, ITES, FMCG and Durables alike are understanding the need to adopt Internal branding as a practice.

People are seen to be the most difficult resources to gain and keep. India has morphed form being a market short of products and services to being a market that is short of people altogether. The talent crunch is hitting every sector, be it aviation with its shortage of pilots, manufacturing with its shortage of engineers and marketing with its shortage of sales and brand people of merit.

Internal branding gains, just as salivating consulting organizations that specialize in the practice flourish. Ouch! It hurts!


Womarketing is here

As society levels out its gender bias as issues of yore, the woman in India is getting pampered. This is the money-empowered woman.

With more and more women comprising the work-force, and with women spending more and more of an outdoor oriented life, the marketer is geared with his product and service appeal.

Every sun-screen and hair-colour is out with a range for women only. Every cosmetic has two avatars today. One for the man and another for the woman. Every Fair & Lovely has therefore a Fair & Handsome as well in reaction. The gender equation is getting evened out into being a non-equation even.

There are hotels that offer women’s only floors. Gyms that offer facilities only for women all day long. Malls that ostensibly promote themselves as Malls for women alone. Men are welcome to tag along though.

As a Volvo internationally develops a concept car for women, developed by women themselves, and just as women in Holland and Belgium have developed for themselves a Rose beer for women alone, India takes baby steps to woo the empowered woman at large.

As this movement gets more and more ridiculous, expect to walk into a specialty restaurant and find a “Male Biriyani” and a “Feminine Biriyani” on the menu even. Bah!

Social issues are in

As the year races to a close, and as product categories, jaded by use of the old USP of functional and emotional dimension alike tire out, newer and newer experiments are being made.

Tata Tea takes a different route. A route taken once by Surf a year ago with its “Do bucket paani bachana hai” campaign, and a route taken by Lifebuoy as well with its urban locality clean-up campaign with kids in its visuals.



Tata Tea now wants you not to “Utho” (get up) but to “Jaago” (wake up)! The politician who comes seeking a vote is being grilled. Even asked his qualification….thankfully along with a cup of tea at hand to hold brand relevance!

Idea Cellular is aiming at removing the caste tag and replacing it with a mobile number and Coke on its own is hoping to harvest the general consumer sentiment with its Little drops of joy campaign.

Many of these look premature for a market just about waking up. However, these are baby steps. Let them be.

And a mish-mash of things altogether

For a trend-spotter, which is a hat I wear once every quarter, the year gone by has been an exciting one. A mish-mash year with a whole chunk of mish-mash trends. Let me run through some as I close this piece and welcome Marketing Year 2008.

Packaging got interactive. Frito Lay’s Kurkure led the way by inviting consumer faces on its pack-front along with winning recipes. Everything offered itself to be branded. New media emerged. The full railway station, tunnels, an aerobridge at airports and much more.

The instant movement was appreciated widely. The 5-day game version of cricket found few takers. One-day cricket was quick and fun. In came T20 and the 20-over variant of instant cricket was a big hit. Watch out. In the future parents may stop their young ones from watching the T20 variant which has the skimpily clad cheer-leaders. 5-day cricket will be family cricket and T20 for the rest of them all. Ouch again!

Brand-endorsement trends morphed as well. Cricket remained the big sourcing ground, apart from Bollywood and Tollywood and Sandalwood and all our other woods. Foreign stars found relevance. What MRF pioneered with Lara and maybe what Cinthol pioneered even earlier with Imran Khan gained credence as a movement. In came a Ricky Ponting, a Bret lee and of course Shoaib Akthar. We looked across the border.

India remained restrictive in its marketing mood and mind. Particularly when it came to the issue of sex, conception and misconception. Sex education in schools remained a point of vehement debate. Cipla’s morning-after I-Pill took flak and more.



The Sensex got branded. A positive brand as of now. This is going to be a roller-coaster ride as usual. India arrived. Indian hotel chains changed from the dual tariff regime of Dollar and Rupee to a single tariff regime of the Rupee only. With the firm rupee, time for the IT industry in India to take a cue, I guess. Same goes for the export-oriented industry at large.

Tele-marketing lies on a stretcher with the Do not call register in place. And websites continue to rule with offers of every kind. While a FirstPhera promises to take care of all your wedding needs, the Madras Cemeteries Board website promises live online telecast of funerals for the benefit of friends and relatives all over the world who are unable to attend. Every niche is covered.

RIP.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Emailceo@harishbijoorconsults.com