Branding in 2010

"The Three Things that will Create an Impact in the Branding industry on the Road to 2010".

The Future of the Future Of Branding

By Harish Bijoor

The future is not for you to see.

Well almost. The future of marketing lies in the future of branding. Three things then that will impact on the future of the future……..as I see it.

1. Impact ONE: 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. Impact TWO: 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!

Impact THREE: People!

Brand people are getting more and more difficult to get. Good branding people. There are a limited number of well-trained (red: pedigree trained) branding people in the country. You can count them on a 100 page book, one page representing one trained brand soul.

A sub-set of these well-trained people are people from this set who understand the realities of the day and are completely contemporary in their approach to branding. Branding is an art, a science and philosophy that is changing at a furious pace.

The killer combination is the true-blue trained branding person who is completely attuned to changing realities on the consumer front. A forty year old who reads the market like a 12-year old on the verge of his teenage years.

The search for these kinds of people is a tough one. This is going to impact branding and its practice tremendously. Companies will spend a lot of money down the chute, experimenting with people. This search is the one search to get right.

The search is certainly as elusive as the mostly futile search launched by many a woman in the past hundred years with the buzz-phrase: Wanted! A good husband!

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: ceo@harishbijoorconsults.com

2006: More Marketing Trends.................

Marketing Masti 2006

By Harish Bijoor

As we put the year 2006 to rest, time to peek at the defining trends that made marketing Year 2006 what it was.

Here is a trend-watch of what led to what.

Interactive Everything: Consumer boredom got handled reasonably well in 2006. The Interactive movement just about emerged.

It started with radio and television. The plethora of channels of both radio and television meant a more competitive programming structure for both mediums. In the beginning, all mediums just dish out fare that they devise by themselves. When things get competitive, channels then get interactive. 2006 saw a lot of this.

Every television channel got down to get the viewer involved. Programming that had viewers watching and then voting was big. The 'Nach Baliye' syndrome was here for good. And then comes news. Television channels actually got people to vote in rampantly for every issue there was to vote upon. The Jessica Lal trial, Prince and Budhia, the Nitish Katara murder trail, and tens of such causes were taken up. SMS revenue sharing deals were struck and television channels made money on a new revenue model at play.

Simultaneously with the revenue inflows due to participative viewership programmes, viewers felt happy. What a good combination this was! The viewer felt involved. Citizen journalists happened as well.

The interactive movement will not stop here in the years to come. It will move on. Interactive product development is a game to test and try. Make your consumers devise your product. Make your consumers make their own toothpaste the way they like it. At least make them feel they made it. Consumer product development! Consumer brand development! Interactive advertising! Interactive Branding! Interactive selling!

Modern Retail takes off but small is still beautiful: My friend Kishore Biyani calls himself a “Dukandar”. The 'Badshahs' of retail hogged the lime-light this year. “Dukandari” became an honorable profession to boot. The young Management Trainee who got selected by Reliance Retail went home excited this year. Even Grandma at home would not fret and say that her grandson who did this 2-year MBA program now works in a shop. Even Grandma looks at modern retail with a whole new perspective. Working in a shop is now a great thing to do.

Modern retail has arrived. The USD 280 Billion retail industry of India is all set to see aggregation of business. The medium sized retailer is set to perish by the road-side and the big retailer will gain. Your local ‘subzi-wallah’ now needs to compete with the corner Reliance Fresh outlet. Your 'subzi-wallah' will need to offer tomatoes at a standard price all through the year as a Reliance Retail will. Your 'subzi-wallah' will need to compete on hygiene, shopping experience, customer service and norms of glitz and glamour. Will he?

As all this happens, the micro retailer will continue to thrive. Your corner ‘kaka shop’ will thrive on the basis of location, low overheads and an overall yen to survive. The ’small is beautiful’ model will still be relevant to India. As modern retail arrives and thrives, we have a polarization of outlets then. At one end is the glitzy modern trade outlet. And at another, you have the small little micro-retailer. The 'pan-wallah' will continue to thrive in his business as well.

India is a nation of 12 million shops with a density of retail outlet population that stands at 12 outlets per 1000. This will largely thrive and survive.

Even the Promo-mindset changed: I have lived and thrived in a country where the consumer promotion is the ultimate salvation for sagging sales lines of the corporate organisation. Ever since the first promotion in the sixties of a stainless steel spoon on a Det detergent, the stainless steel spoon has remained the one-enduring item that every manufacturer of tea, coffee, soap, 'dal, cheeni, chawal and atta' doled out to the consumer.

We have offered spoons, combs, steel tumblers, mugs, and buckets as freebies for long enough. We are tired.

The year 2006 saw a definitive change in this trend. Marketers are experimenting with more. Traditionally, we have always offered a product with a product. A spoon with a packet of Tea. Now, we have a service being offered with a product. Pespsodent offered its buyers a coupon for a Café Coffee Day cup of coffee at any of its 370 and odd Cafes in the country. Shortly, expect to have a product offered with a service. Maybe a DVD player with a Television channel subscription? Or a free bottle of Oil to take home with every Body Massage at a spa? Travel First Class by Kingfisher Airlines and you will get a chauffeur driven car for a destination drop!

Colas join the Social Ostracism Categories: 2006 was a defining year for the Cola companies in India. India and the Indian at large appeared as connected to the world as any, when it came to issues of health and environment.

This had to happen. The James Bond movie today hits every Indian theatre whether it is in Hyderabad or Holenarsipura on the same day as it hits the multi-plexes in Houston and Halifax. The world is as seamless as it comes. Why then must not India awake and shout at everything the world is shouting about?

Pepsi and Coke faced their toughest year in India. The pesticide controversy rose to new heights. Kerala banned all of it and Karnataka banned it in its schools and hospitals. As the year ends, Karnataka has banned colas and is contemplating a full ban on junk food in schools and colleges and hospitals. Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss in Delhi is pleased as punch!

The food and drink category is progressively getting polarized into two segments. Junk food at one end and Real food at another. Junk food is getting the status of what I call a “social ostracism category”. Other social ostracism category products sitting higher on the sensitivity scale of the consumer at large are the Cigarettes, liquor, 'Gutkha' categories. Food now joins the lowest rungs of these. Junk food in particular and the Colas as a non-staple beverage. Junk food and junk drink, if you may call them that.

Cola companies have therefore looked outwardly brave and fought it all with marketing vigor and bravado. The year saw a Rajeev Bakshi starring in a commercial for Pepsi even. And Rajeev gave Aamir Khan a tough run for this money!

Simultaneously Cola companies have got inward looking at their base strategies. The companies are undoubtedly busy re-inventing their business models. Expect to see a lot of these embracing the “Real Food” and “Real Beverage” categories even. The Cola companies will have two verticals in their future businesses for sure. One will be on the side of the “Real” and the other on the side of “Junk”. Needless to say, both portions will thrive at different points of time. Time to hedge bets in the social ostracism categories at large.

Health and Wellness is sexy: Marketers of food and beverage have been plucking the low hanging fruit of consumer expectation, want, need, desire and aspiration for long. India is now entering into Phase 2 of its marketing era.

Phase 1 was really the early years from the Sixties on. The years when India showed a gradual craving for the product and service the whole wide world was consuming. This phase really reached its take-off stage in the early years of the 2000 series. Today, things are taking a wee bit of a turn.

Phase 2 of marketing era in India is just about beginning. 2006 showed the first signs of this trend. Consumers are waking up. Consumers connected to the developed world at large are waking up to concerns of health. Health as represented as offerings in the food and the beverage the consumer consumes. The Maggi ‘Atta’ noodles is here!

New categories are emerging. The sugar substitute has now matured. What used to be a sugar substitute in a small sachet for use in a cup of tea or coffee is now in a large jar for kitchen use. You might as well make even a 'Gajar Ka Halwa' with a branded sugar substitute in a bottle.

The movement is bound to cascade. Consumers are going to question the amount of sugar in a bottled drink, the amount of fat in a cup of cappuccino, and indeed the amount of fat in a portion of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The trans-fats debate in the US is having its own impact in India. Sugar is an issue at debate. Oils of every kind will face scrutiny. So will fats. Every food and beverage player, whether in the product space or service space, will need to re-invent themselves for the future. As margarine rises, butter will face flak! And there will be a margarine in every category of food and beverage, waiting to offer itself as a salvation product or service.

Indian Innovation continued: Innovation, thy name is the Indian.

All of us have heard of the ‘Jugaad’ in Uttar Pradesh. All of us have heard of the Washing machines that make 'Lassis' at prosperous 'dhabhas' in Hoshiarpur.

The quest for innovation continued. The latest in the line up is the saree shop in Chennai, the Sri Kumaran Store. The store has launched a traditional sequinned saree with an innovation that is truly South Indian. The saree has a mobile-phone pocket! The saree with a mobile phone pocket, if you will! Technology meets tradition!

The 20 year old is actually 40: At the consumer end, the one big thing that happened in their lives was the complete down-aging syndrome of the Indian masses in the prosperous urban centers.

The man in the city is younger than the man in the village. The 50 year old started thinking like the forty year old and the forty year old thought he was all of 20.

Consumers are thinking younger, and in turn want to look younger as well. A whole range of cosmetic products will have a major run sooner than later.

When you devise a product or service in the future, watch out. Make sure that you devise it for people who are 20 and most certainly for all those people who are much older than that, but think they are 20!

Tele-marketing scaled new peaks of irritation: January 1, 2006. I was woken up in Boston at 4 am by Shilpa from Citibank who wanted to sell me a credit card. She had this “once in a life-time offer” for me and I was one of 100 lucky winners who would get a free credit card posted to me. All I had to say was a yes.

I screamed. I raved. I ranted. Shilpa warned me the call was being recorded.

Tele-marketing done by marketers which comprised a whole bunch of folk who represented products as close-knit as personal loans, car loans, home loans, and loans to pay off all other loans, pestered a hapless mass of consumers to irritation. I hear even Finance Minister P Chidambaram was not spared on his overseas trips. This is true-blue democracy at play!

The TRAI largely attempted little and the DNC registry was at best spoken of and left at that. At the end of the year, right now in December, President APJ Abdul Kalam has put his weight as well behind the cause of banning tele-marketing calls.

Tough days ahead for the tele-marketer hopefully. There will be a DNC registry, and possibly a high tariff on tele-marketing calls (a suggested Rs.1000 per call) which just might dissuade the tele-marketing call altogether.

The telemarketer will miss a whole big market of 185 million connections in India, projected to grow at 6million connections per month in all of 2007! And that makes it an exit volume of 257 million connected telephones in the country by the year end 2007.

Dotcom 2.0 starts making those early noises: The first rush of the Internet and business on the net ended up in a bubble burst all of us remember all too well. While Dotcom 1.0 was all about eye-balls, page-views and the dominance of the advertising model on the net. Dotcom 2.0 will be more solid. Promises to be.

The right gurgles are being heard as of now. 2006 saw the emergence of potent business models that had the Internet in India marrying the current requirement of the day to a very robust application led model of E-biz.

E-buzz is just about to happen then. Every Naukri.com is on a flourish mode as the job market in India booms over with the BPO, Technology, Bio-tech, Retail, Banking, Insurance and Real-estate sectors at the take-off stage. The Pure Internet play portals are doing a roaring business for sure.

Want to get married? Try the net. Want to buy an airplane ticket? Try the net. Want to do anything at all that can give you a pure Internet play experience, do it on the net. Just as long as the fulfillment process can be completed online, just do it.

As on June 2006, a Comscore Networks survey reveals a net using population in India (above the age of 15) standing at 18.02 million. Expect a quantum growth on this month on month. As the global online audience will rise by 2.7-3.0% month on month, expect an 8.5-9.5% growth rate in India. Quite in sync and match with the GDP growth rates on hand. India’s excitingly low broadband connect rates will help spur this on.

Hunger among the not-hungry: One last trend then. A negative one. A trend every marketer must be wary about. Worried about.

Marketers everywhere are guilty of causing hunger for products and services that consumers don’t necessarily need and want. This movement surged in leaps and bounds in 2006. The images a whole nation of consumers watched on television are essentially urban led images in a nation that has three fourths of its population living in rural areas. The hegemony of the urban rich continued to dominate the marketing agenda.

Hunger for inane products and equally inane services continued to be made in the advertising hot shops of the country. The prime goal behind all development remained the creative tone and tenor. Everything else was secondary.

The party-sparkles(“chamki” to the ‘desi’ at heart), hard-set hair gel and the scented panty-liner used advertising executions that excited a nation of consumers on the wall.

Marketers must therefore get ready to pay a ‘Guilt tax’ soon for all their errors of commission and indeed omission. Watch out!

On that note, wish you a very happy New Year 2007!

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, UK, the Middle East and India.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Indian Marketing Trends 2006

Marketing Watch 2006

By Harish Bijoor

Time to save Marketing Year 2006 onto an old CD. Time to put it away as well. Store it out there in the Marketing archives of our time.

Time to therefore peek at the trends that shaped the year just gone by. Here is my take on the defining trends that made the year what it was.

Let’s trend-spot then….

Tele-marketing scaled new peaks of irritation: January 1, 2006. I was woken up in Boston at 4 am by Shilpa from Citibank who wanted to sell me a credit card. She had this “once in a life-time offer” for me and I was one of 100 lucky winners who would get a free credit card posted to me. All I had to say was a yes.

I screamed. I raved. I ranted. Shilpa warned me the call was being recorded.

Tele-marketing done by marketers which comprised a whole bunch of folk who represented products as close-knit as personal loans, car loans, home loans, and loans to pay off all other loans, pestered a hapless mass of consumers to irritation. I hear even Finance Minister P Chidambaram was not spared on his overseas trips. This is true-blue democracy at play!

The TRAI largely attempted little and the DNC registry was at best spoken of and left at that. At the end of the year, right now in December, President APJ Abdul Kalam has put his weight as well behind the cause of banning tele-marketing calls.

Tough days ahead for the tele-marketer hopefully. There will be a DNC registry, and possibly a high tariff on tele-marketing calls (a suggested Rs.1000 per call) which just might dissuade the tele-marketing call altogether.

The telemarketer will miss a whole big market of 185 million connections in India, projected to grow at 6million connections per month in all of 2007! And that makes it an exit volume of 257 million connected telephones in the country by the year end 2007.

Interactive Everything: Consumer boredom got handled reasonably well in 2006. The Interactive movement just about emerged.

It started with radio and television. The plethora of channels of both radio and television meant a more competitive programming structure for both mediums. In the beginning, all mediums just dish out fare that they devise by themselves. When things get competitive, channels then get interactive. 2006 saw a lot of this.

Every television channel got down to get the viewer involved. Programming that had viewers watching and then voting was big. The 'Nach Baliye' syndrome was here for good. And then comes news. Television channels actually got people to vote in rampantly for every issue there was to vote upon. The Jessica Lal trial, Prince and Budhia, the Nitish Katara murder trail, and tens of such causes were taken up. SMS revenue sharing deals were struck and television channels made money on a new revenue model at play.

Simultaneously with the revenue inflows due to participative viewership programmes, viewers felt happy. What a good combination this was! The viewer felt involved. Citizen journalists happened as well.

The interactive movement will not stop here in the years to come. It will move on. Interactive product development is a game to test and try. Make your consumers devise your product. Make your consumers make their own toothpaste the way they like it. At least make them feel they made it. Consumer product development! Consumer brand development! Interactive advertising! Interactive Branding! Interactive selling!

Modern Retail takes off but small is still beautiful: My friend Kishore Biyani calls himself a “Dukandar”. The 'Badshahs' of retail hogged the lime-light this year. “Dukandari” became an honorable profession to boot. The young Management Trainee who got selected by Reliance Retail went home excited this year. Even Grandma at home would not fret and say that her grandson who did this 2-year MBA program now works in a shop. Even Grandma looks at modern retail with a whole new perspective. Working in a shop is now a great thing to do.

Modern retail has arrived. The USD 280 Billion retail industry of India is all set to see aggregation of business. The medium sized retailer is set to perish by the road-side and the big retailer will gain. Your local ‘subzi-wallah’ now needs to compete with the corner Reliance Fresh outlet. Your 'subzi-wallah' will need to offer tomatoes at a standard price all through the year as a Reliance Retail will. Your 'subzi-wallah' will need to compete on hygiene, shopping experience, customer service and norms of glitz and glamour. Will he?

As all this happens, the micro retailer will continue to thrive. Your corner ‘kaka shop’ will thrive on the basis of location, low overheads and an overall yen to survive. The ’small is beautiful’ model will still be relevant to India. As modern retail arrives and thrives, we have a polarization of outlets then. At one end is the glitzy modern trade outlet. And at another, you have the small little micro-retailer. The 'pan-wallah' will continue to thrive in his business as well.

India is a nation of 12 million shops with a density of retail outlet population that stands at 12 outlets per 1000. This will largely thrive and survive.

Even the Promo-mindset changed: I have lived and thrived in a country where the consumer promotion is the ultimate salvation for sagging sales lines of the corporate organisation. Ever since the first promotion in the sixties of a stainless steel spoon on a Det detergent, the stainless steel spoon has remained the one-enduring item that every manufacturer of tea, coffee, soap, 'dal, cheeni, chawal and atta' doled out to the consumer.

We have offered spoons, combs, steel tumblers, mugs, and buckets as freebies for long enough. We are tired.

The year 2006 saw a definitive change in this trend. Marketers are experimenting with more. Traditionally, we have always offered a product with a product. A spoon with a packet of Tea. Now, we have a service being offered with a product. Pespsodent offered its buyers a coupon for a Café Coffee Day cup of coffee at any of its 370 and odd Cafes in the country. Shortly, expect to have a product offered with a service. Maybe a DVD player with a Television channel subscription? Or a free bottle of Oil to take home with every Body Massage at a spa? Travel First Class by Kingfisher Airlines and you will get a chauffeur driven car for a destination drop!

Colas join the Social Ostracism Categories: 2006 was a defining year for the Cola companies in India. India and the Indian at large appeared as connected to the world as any, when it came to issues of health and environment.

This had to happen. The James Bond movie today hits every Indian theatre whether it is in Hyderabad or Holenarsipura on the same day as it hits the multi-plexes in Houston and Halifax. The world is as seamless as it comes. Why then must not India awake and shout at everything the world is shouting about?

Pepsi and Coke faced their toughest year in India. The pesticide controversy rose to new heights. Kerala banned all of it and Karnataka banned it in its schools and hospitals. As the year ends, Karnataka has banned colas and is contemplating a full ban on junk food in schools and colleges and hospitals. Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss in Delhi is pleased as punch!

The food and drink category is progressively getting polarized into two segments. Junk food at one end and Real food at another. Junk food is getting the status of what I call a “social ostracism category”. Other social ostracism category products sitting higher on the sensitivity scale of the consumer at large are the Cigarettes, liquor, 'Gutkha' categories. Food now joins the lowest rungs of these. Junk food in particular and the Colas as a non-staple beverage. Junk food and junk drink, if you may call them that.

Cola companies have therefore looked outwardly brave and fought it all with marketing vigor and bravado. The year saw a Rajeev Bakshi starring in a commercial for Pepsi even. And Rajeev gave Aamir Khan a tough run for this money!

Simultaneously Cola companies have got inward looking at their base strategies. The companies are undoubtedly busy re-inventing their business models. Expect to see a lot of these embracing the “Real Food” and “Real Beverage” categories even. The Cola companies will have two verticals in their future businesses for sure. One will be on the side of the “Real” and the other on the side of “Junk”. Needless to say, both portions will thrive at different points of time. Time to hedge bets in the social ostracism categories at large.

Health and Wellness is sexy: Marketers of food and beverage have been plucking the low hanging fruit of consumer expectation, want, need, desire and aspiration for long. India is now entering into Phase 2 of its marketing era.

Phase 1 was really the early years from the Sixties on. The years when India showed a gradual craving for the product and service the whole wide world was consuming. This phase really reached its take-off stage in the early years of the 2000 series. Today, things are taking a wee bit of a turn.

Phase 2 of marketing era in India is just about beginning. 2006 showed the first signs of this trend. Consumers are waking up. Consumers connected to the developed world at large are waking up to concerns of health. Health as represented as offerings in the food and the beverage the consumer consumes. The Maggi ‘Atta’ noodles is here!

New categories are emerging. The sugar substitute has now matured. What used to be a sugar substitute in a small sachet for use in a cup of tea or coffee is now in a large jar for kitchen use. You might as well make even a 'Gajar Ka Halwa' with a branded sugar substitute in a bottle.

The movement is bound to cascade. Consumers are going to question the amount of sugar in a bottled drink, the amount of fat in a cup of cappuccino, and indeed the amount of fat in a portion of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The trans-fats debate in the US is having its own impact in India. Sugar is an issue at debate. Oils of every kind will face scrutiny. So will fats. Every food and beverage player, whether in the product space or service space, will need to re-invent themselves for the future. As margarine rises, butter will face flak! And there will be a margarine in every category of food and beverage, waiting to offer itself as a salvation product or service.

Indian Innovation continued: Innovation, thy name is the Indian.

All of us have heard of the ‘Jugaad’ in Uttar Pradesh. All of us have heard of the Washing machines that make 'Lassis' at prosperous 'dhabhas' in Hoshiarpur.

The quest for innovation continued. The latest in the line up is the saree shop in Chennai, the Sri Kumaran Store. The store has launched a traditional sequinned saree with an innovation that is truly South Indian. The saree has a mobile-phone pocket! The saree with a mobile phone pocket, if you will! Technology meets tradition!

The 20 year old is actually 40: At the consumer end, the one big thing that happened in their lives was the complete down-aging syndrome of the Indian masses in the prosperous urban centers.

The man in the city is younger than the man in the village. The 50 year old started thinking like the forty year old and the forty year old thought he was all of 20.

Consumers are thinking younger, and in turn want to look younger as well. A whole range of cosmetic products will have a major run sooner than later.

When you devise a product or service in the future, watch out. Make sure that you devise it for people who are 20 and most certainly for all those people who are much older than that, but think they are 20!

Dotcom 2.0 starts making those early noises: The first rush of the Internet and business on the net ended up in a bubble burst all of us remember all too well. While Dotcom 1.0 was all about eye-balls, page-views and the dominance of the advertising model on the net. Dotcom 2.0 will be more solid. Promises to be.

The right gurgles are being heard as of now. 2006 saw the emergence of potent business models that had the Internet in India marrying the current requirement of the day to a very robust application led model of E-biz.

E-buzz is just about to happen then. Every Naukri.com is on a flourish mode as the job market in India booms over with the BPO, Technology, Bio-tech, Retail, Banking, Insurance and Real-estate sectors at the take-off stage. The Pure Internet play portals are doing a roaring business for sure.

Want to get married? Try the net. Want to buy an airplane ticket? Try the net. Want to do anything at all that can give you a pure Internet play experience, do it on the net. Just as long as the fulfillment process can be completed online, just do it.

As on June 2006, a Comscore Networks survey reveals a net using population in India (above the age of 15) standing at 18.02 million. Expect a quantum growth on this month on month. As the global online audience will rise by 2.7-3.0% month on month, expect an 8.5-9.5% growth rate in India. Quite in sync and match with the GDP growth rates on hand. India’s excitingly low broadband connect rates will help spur this on.

Hunger among the not-hungry: One last trend then. A negative one. A trend every marketer must be wary about. Worried about.

Marketers everywhere are guilty of causing hunger for products and services that consumers don’t necessarily need and want. This movement surged in leaps and bounds in 2006. The images a whole nation of consumers watched on television are essentially urban led images in a nation that has three fourths of its population living in rural areas. The hegemony of the urban rich continued to dominate the marketing agenda.

Hunger for inane products and equally inane services continued to be made in the advertising hot shops of the country. The prime goal behind all development remained the creative tone and tenor. Everything else was secondary.

The party-sparkles(“chamki” to the ‘desi’ at heart), hard-set hair gel and the scented panty-liner used advertising executions that excited a nation of consumers on the wall.

Marketers must therefore get ready to pay a ‘Guilt tax’ soon for all their errors of commission and indeed omission. Watch out!

On that note, wish you a very happy New Year 2007!

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, UK, the Middle East and India.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Brand Trends 2007

Brand Crystal Gaze 2007

By Harish Bijoor

I peek at 3 Brand Trends that will dominate our Marketing lives in the year ahead.

The Brand Caste system.

The Caste system is dead. Long live the Caste system.

In the big cities of our lives, no one is ever bothered whether you are a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Shudra. Thank God and the culture of political correctness for that.

The Caste system as we knew it is well nigh dead. But a new Caste system will emerge. 2007 could as well count to be the year it all happened in India. I call this the brand new caste system. The Brand Caste system. Add a Trade Mark symbol to that.

What’s this all about? Look around you. The brand is getting more and more ubiquitous in its consumption. Eat more brands, drink more brands, breathe more brands and partake of more brands seems to be the culture around. This will deepen.

As consumption of brands deepens, Brand Caste clusters will emerge. These are essentially Brand Caste Circles. Consumers of various brands will be scattered all over the globe and will occupy different geographies. In terms of Brand Caste however, they will occupy very closely knit circles. Never mind the geography.

Look around. The listener of a Radio Mirchi emotes with every other listener of a Radio Mirchi, whether in Indore, Mumbai or a Bangalore. Never mind the geographical distance. This is a seamless movement. They are all the same. The same psychographic group at large. They are the Radio Mirchi brand cluster. But remember, this is only one brand consumption pattern. Add forty more. Does a Radio Mirchi listener use a Colgate toothpaste, wear a Peter England shirt, ride a Kinetic, and watches movies only at a multi-plex come what may?

Bind them into a brand caste cluster. In fact give me the names of 60 brands a consumer uses and I will give you the Caste circle the consumer occupies. Is he a Brand Brahmana, a Brand Kshatriya, a Brand Vaishya or a Brand Shudra?

And guess what, all the ills of the old caste system will plague the new Brand caste system. The ‘Brand Brahmana’ will smirk at the ‘Brand Vaishya’. Inter-caste marriages will be tough as usual! The twain shall never meet!

Inclusive Branding ahead.

The brand is essentially an exclusive statement of intent. Brands started as that, and have progressively become a bit too exclusive in their stances. Brands essentially try to build exclusive walls around themselves and lock consumers within their gates. Entry is to an exclusive set. It’s quite like the membership to an exclusive club.

The year ahead will see marketers review their approaches keenly. The brand as an exclusive statement helps pluck the low-hanging fruits of the market at large. The higher hanging fruit can now be got only when the brand becomes that much more approachable.

Brands will suddenly embrace more. No longer will the brand be about the consumer and the “I, me, myself movement”. It will be about more. The consumer and her extended family of 22 members. And more. The locality she lives within. Remember the Lifebuoy clean the locality campaign? And more. The city she lives in and the community around. Remember the Surf Excel 10/10 offer with a scholarship for the underprivileged child in your city? And more. The country at large. Remember the Red Label “Desh Ka Pyaala”? And more. The world at large. And indeed the Cosmos as well!

Strangely, the brand Caste system and the Inclusive Branding movement will start out together. The country is large.

CSR becomes ISR.

Corporate Social Responsibility has been a reasonably big buzz around for the last decade. Corporate organizations have vied with one another to spend their share-holders’ monies on activities that help out society in need.

Schools have been built, hospitals put up and in times of an earthquake and a flood(of which we have had a fair share) these organizations have sent out money and material.

An audit of the actual amount spent on CSR by organizations however leaves a pathetic number staring at your face. Makes one wonder then whether CSR has been but a politically correct thing for the corporate entity to dabble in.

The year ahead promises some excitement here. I see organizations of every kind wanting to get socially involved in a more relevant manner. Organizations will progressively cease offering money to the market at large. Instead, organizations will encourage their employees to move from the CSR movement to the ISR movement. The Individual Social Responsibility movement.

The days of ISR will stop spending the share-holders’ profit. Instead, work-stressed employees will be encouraged to achieve a softer side to their personas. The IT code-writer will be on the streets, helping feed the under-privileged on the streets. And guess what. He will bring his own free time, his own money and more importantly his own persona to the cause.

ISR will therefore emerge as the more relevant, more passionate and more real replacement to the lip-service CSR movement we have seen thus far at large. When the ISR practitioner is investing his own time, his own money and indeed his own persona in a cause, he will pick and choose the most real, the most needy and the best of the causes.

Leakage of funds in the sector will be a thing of the past. IT companies will use this as an Internal Branding and retention tool as well!

Happy New Year 2007 then!

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

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

A Brand New Brand India

Brand New Brand India!

By Harish Bijoor

Everything all around us is a brand. You are. I am. India is.

You, India and I are all in the marketplace seeking our place in the sun. The only reality of significance for the moment is the Buyer-Seller Dyad, made famous by Henri Tosi many, many years ago. Everybody is a buyer and a seller. And buying and selling is an image-driven issue. What starts with utility, moves on to price and what lingers on price moves on higher up in the hierarchy to the brand and its unique image. The brand is IT!

India is a brand then. And brand India is seeking to establish itself a unique identity. An identity that makes it stand apart from the rest. An identity that will create a craving among sets of consumers who will choose India over all else in the great ‘Swayamvar’ of country-brands that decides the future of many a business.

How does one put the India brand in the top rung of image-recall among sets of consumers globally? How does one leverage what is unique to India’s distinct credit?

In this discussion, we must traverse some key issues.

First of all, what is a brand? Do we really understand it? I redefine the brand altogether differently. And then, who is the consumer? What focus do we take? What really are the Unique Selling Propositions of brand India? How do we leverage that? What are the hurdles around? What is the competition? What are the India negatives? What have we done in the past? And have we been wrong? What must we do in the future? And who will do it?

Many questions to discuss. Let’s go!

What is a brand?

Many years of swimming with definitions that say this and that have tired me. I have kept moving on in my quest for a definition that embraces the real nature of the brand. I have seen every definition there is, and have felt an inadequacy and emptiness that has been plaguing my need for a truly definitive definition!

Nirvana dawns on me and my research years. The year is 2003!

My definition of the brand is simple: “The brand is a thought!”

Peel that definition further. The brand is a thought. A thought that rests in a consumer mind. The brand is not owned by the Corporate or brand manager or advertising agency or whoever the brand intermediary. The brand is owned in the mind of a consumer! One consumer!

This definition is tricky in its offering. It throws the brand as an entity that is an ephemeral thought that sits in the head of a consumer. As many consumers (and indeed non-consumers) in a market, that many thoughts…..in that many heads! A difficult proposition to manage. Brand Management is indeed the art, science and philosophy of managing brands in consumer/non-consumer heads!

Managing a brand is therefore an extrinsic concept rather than intrinsic. Brands are managed in the heads of consumers and not in the Board Rooms of Corporates or the cubicles of advertising agencies. Many thinkers of the past have gone awry in their understanding of the brand. My years of research simplify the brand and its definition. At the same time, it complicates. How in tarnation does one manage the minds of a million consumers? A million consumers who are individuals and not clones. A million consumers who go through unique family lives, social conditioning, life-experiences, economic upheavals of different kinds and political exposures which are as varied as they come!

Let’s leave the definition aside for the moment. Let’s agree to accept a simple definition. The brand is a thought in a consumer head!

Who is the Consumer for Brand India?

Everyone is. At the beginning and indeed at the end of the marketing game, everyone is a consumer in some way or the other. However, let’s add some focus to this exercise of honing in on the consumer for Brand India.

While at the macro-level, everyone who comes across the name India is a consumer (either existing or potential), at the micro-level, the market cane divided into two simple sets. The B2B (Business to business) market and the B2C (Business to consumer) market. Both are important to the India brand at large.

While the B2B interface is necessary as we build a robust India brand amongst countries, organizations that fund countries, NGOs that support country causes, corporates we supply to, intermediaries who source for markets globally, bankers who put out image reports and market diagnostics, and a whole host of others, B2C image is an equal necessity to address.

B2C is a necessary image for a country to leverage as its brands enter consumer markets. As products and services from India hit global markets with a greater degree of regularity, the India brand image is a vital necessity. India needs to have for itself a positive imagery that is socially, economically, religiously and even politically correct.

The world looks keenly at the product that emerges from a social system that is right in its eyes. When South Africa had social sanction against it, a South African product was shunned by many a country that was careful to distance the social outcast of a country that believed in apartheid! The brand must have and build positive Brand Social Equity (BSE)!

The world looks equally with keen eyes at Economic equity. Brand Economic Equity (BEE) is a key term I would coin to describe the process at play. The world seeks a basic level of quality from those that supply it. The India brand must establish and sustain these basic quality levels which have become a basic entry parameter into global markets. Brand Economic Equity is also about costs. It is about the low-cost high quality product that can compete in the global market as it adds to the bottom-lines of all those who handle the product as intermediaries. Look keenly at China. China has done to the manufacturing sector what India is attempting to do to the Services sector with its BPO and ITES sectors. Driving down costs to the bare minimum and offering the product and service of high quality!

Brand Religious Equity (BRE) is really a niche today. It is indeed a term that describes a country brand as a bigot brand or a secular freethinking brand. Every country that adopts the norms of the secular and every country that embraces with debate, dissent and much turmoil (as we saw at Cancun) the offering of the WTO is normally on safe ground here.

Brand Religious Equity is also about which part of the world you belong to. The brand from Iran is a suspect brand here! Syria is a rogue state. Both Syria and its brand-offerings in consumer space will suffer here. The India brand will need to represent itself with the cloak of secularism that will make it stand apart in a region that is a suspect-geography for the biggest global players in the Marketing game of the world!

The final frontier is that of the Brand Political Equity (BPE). This is all about the politically correct being in the market. The Indian product that adheres to the norms of hygiene, quality, hazard control and most importantly political correctness will find a place in the global sun. The Kashmiri carpet woven by kids will hurt the BPE of the India brand just as much as patent-infringed roses will affect our image on Valentine’s day all across the world.

The India brand needs to cater to each of these B2B and B2C segments offering the best of brand equity to markets and its sets of discerning consumers across the gamut of the social, the economic, the religious and political equities that are becoming more and more important in the world at large today.

India USPs!

India shining then! 18 great monsoons (with an aberration in one year) that has caused for continued rural prosperity in an economy that depends on the rain! A services sector that is growing at a robust clip! Self-sufficiency in the food sector. A young population that contrasts itself from a geriatric world at large! A burgeoning rate of tele-density that rivals the rate of population growth, which was hitherto our claim to fame in the past. Better infrastructure across the realms of need. India is shining really!

India has USPs that are distinct, some of which we will discuss as we enter the realm of what we must do to re-orient the branding of the image that is India in the mind of the global consumer. Let us for the moment focus on the Goldman Sach’s BRIC Report on the BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China!

India’s economy could be larger than all but the US and China in 30 years! India’s economy can be larger than Japan’s by 2032! India shows the potential to grow the fastest over the next 30 years! Growth rate could be more than 5 per cent over the next sustained 30 years! India is likely to raise its US dollar income per capita in 2050 to 35 times the current level! In 2050 India’s GDP per capita could be $17,366!

India is unique in many ways. A population size that is large, heterogeneous, largely English speaking, educated, and boasts of a deep culture that runs into thousands of years. India is young. India is vibrant. India is just about on the verge of shaking off the image of sloth and bundled bureaucracy that has haunted it for many decades. India is happening!

Just as India happens, we need to very quickly make an analysis of all the things we have done wrong thus far in the branding of India. Time to recap and take account of the many mistakes we have made. The image of India is what it is today because of all that we have done thus far. Done wrong!

The new Way Forward

I strongly believe that India has done wrong in projecting itself as a brand of significance in the world tapestry of understanding. India has been done injustice to.

India has touted for long many years the “Made In India’ line. A line that came into prominence during the Nehruvian era. Pandit Nehru was besotted with production and productivity. In many ways he hijacked the nation that is India onto the road of production and productivity.

Nehru’s vision encapsulated an India that would compete with the rest of the world on the same parameters that the rest of the world progressed with. The Nehruvian plan for the country was but a me-too approach paper that had us setting up manufacturing facilities all over and focusing on agricultural productivity that was higher than what was being achieved. We copied the model that was at play in the rest of the developed world in those early days of our Independence.

I think we did wrong.

The manufacturing sector which was the focus of attention produced more. The agricultural sector focused on producing more as well, from the same landmass. Inputs of agricultural pesticides and fertilizers spurred on the process even further!

Peek keenly at the agri sector of the economy. India, which was once a dominant organic producer of the vegetable and the grain alike, adopted fertilizer and pesticide in a large industrial manner of adoption. The unique proposition of an organic nature of cultivation was sacrificed at the altar of productivity and self-sufficiency! Indian agriculture thus lost its cutting edge! Blunted by aping the West and its practices in a frenzy!

And then came the “Made In India” line. The Indian product, manufactured in our factories and on our farms hit the global market with the “Made In India” line! This line was faulty. The Indian product was not able to live up to the highest standards of quality that the International customer expected. The product failed. The “Made in India” label became a liability for product recognition. Made in India meant low quality and inferior performance in many a category. And then came a time when the Indian product would hit the global shore, but the made in India label had to be removed. Walk into Harrods and you will find moiré than eighty made in India products. Not more than five of them actually have the made in India label. The rest pass-off as superior imports from a more reliable destination!

The “Made In India Label” has been flogged for far too long. Time to revisit this line. Time to focus on our other two key areas of strength.

I believe we have a strong agricultural heritage. We could get organic. Back to the old ways of doing things. We pluck our crops by hand. No machine threshing here. Our cultivation process is not mass cultivation. Our crops are the output of small farms. Our agriculture is still labour intensive, compared to many a Western nation that is highly mechanized. Our cropping is non-Corporatised!

Our crops are shade-grown. Handpicked. The output of small micro-farming effort. Indian agriculture is politically correct in many ways. Use it to advantage. Let’s focus on the “Grown In India” line!

One other USP that is uniquely Indian is in the services sector. India has a heritage of being a service-oriented culture. The guest is still God in our homes. Indian hospitality is cherished. The Indian serves well. The translation of this is seen in the many ITES and the BPO sector initiatives that have taken off! Time to use the “Served Out Of India” proposition as well! Remember, manya credit card transaction in the US and in Europe and in Japan is run out of a Koramangala in Bangalore or a Gurgaon near Delhi!

Dump the “Made In India” focus then. Focus on “Grown In India”! Focus on “Served Out Of India”!

Let’s create the new India brand! Alisha time to sing two new songs then!!!!!

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 London, Hong Kong and the Indian sub-continent.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Mobile: +91 98440 83491

India and its People Exports

Our People Count!

By Harish Bijoor

India has exported brawn and brain alike for hundreds of years. Our numbers, in many ways have been our biggest assets. We failed to realize it for many, many years though. We lived within a paradigm of our own creation. A paradigm that got besotted with the short-term issues that plagued our nation at large in the early decades of independence.

The paradigm was a simple and straight-forward one. A paradigm drawn and dictated by the immediate. Our population numbers to begin with were large. Our resources to cater to the needs of this large population were just not enough. What’s more, year after year, the population growth rates that stared back at us were worrisome indeed. We were short in terms of everything but water. There was a shortage of food. A shortage of medicines and a shortage of everything that a growing population would clamor for.

The times have changed. Time to re-draw and stretch the lines of the paradigm we work with. Time to raise a toast and cheer to the growing numbers in our population. Time to explore the wealth represented by the large numbers of people we boast of.

Time to crunch world numbers as well. Time to peek into the crystal ball and look at people-wealth across the nations that will dominate the years and decades ahead of us. Let me start by taking a peek at what our renowned demographer Mr. AR Nanda has to say about it.

According to Mr.Nanda, India is all set to become the world’s youngest nation with the largest workforce in the world by 2020! India will boast of a working population between the age group of 15 and 59 numbering 820 million (up from the current 402 million) by 2020.

Let’s take this number for a start. This simply means that India would boast a surplus working manpower by 2020. Current plans on the anvil within the Indian context will however not have enough jobs to offer within the country. A point to worry?

Not really! Look around at the people-wealth prognosis across the commercial world that beckons us. The US will be very, very short on this count. There will be a shortage of 17 million working people out there! China will be short by 10 million and Japan will scream for 9 million more! Even Soviet Russia will be short by 6 million folk required to run the commerce of the country.

In this prognosis built on the current rate of growth of populations as per country trends, India emerges the only one with the big surplus. This surplus manpower will therefore very reasonably gravitate to these people-short countries, running the enterprise of business and commerce all around. A ready market for 42 million people of working age in just these 4 countries listed as an example!

A History of people export

India has indeed a history of people export. We started with brawn and have moved on to brain. Look keenly at our early years of people export. We have fortunately always had enough people. So many people around that there were not enough jobs for everyone to handle. In the very early years our first people exports started at the end of sending labour out to the plantations of the East and West alike. Look at the populations that moved base into Sri Lanka. Into the terrains of the African continent and into the gut of the plantations of Singapore and Malaysia.

This was the early export of labour form a labour (people) surplus country to a people-short geography like the ones represented by the hostile territory of plantation life in rubber and timber and coffee alike.

The times changed. We still had lots of people to export. In came the need from newer rich economies such as the Middle East and so also the clamor for cheap labour from the thriving economies of Hong Kong and Singapore alike. We exported our skilled labour now. We had climbed a notch higher. The skills we exported were those of the mason, the carpenter and the butcher alike.

The times kept changing. We kept evolving in our response to the people needs all around. The higher skill was in demand. We were just about moving from brawn power to brain power. The doctor was in demand. We educated them out here and exported them. Not at the will and volition of the government as much as at the will and volition of the individual seeking prospects that were monetarily enticing. We exported our doctors to the UK, just as we sent our engineers to the US. The architect and the scientist of many a hue came from India and found herself populating the commercial enterprise of many a nation.

We kept evolving. We kept climbing the ladder till we reached the top. The doctor, the engineer and the teacher (academic gurus of every kind) occupied pedestals in every market we sent them to.

Today, we come a full circle. We still export our folk, but the trend seems to have taken a wee bit of a reverse. What we export today is possibly climbing down the hierarchy. Up the down staircase in many, many ways! These people we ‘export’ actually live in the country but work for the enterprise of many a nation outside the territorial boundaries of India. The BPO revolution as we call it today is an articulation of this trend at large that we live with and thrive in today.

The year is 2005. The year of the BPO challenge at large!

In this piece, I explore the key challenges and issues that face the country at large as we enter the world of the ITEs. An era in which India continues to dominate the space of people surplus solutions. The BPO is one such space. A space progressively getting occupied by the Indian at large, leveraging on the sheer numbers of our people and their educational levels, which are looking all the more exciting a reserve than we ever imagined it to be.

The BPO Revolution

The BPO revolution that has hit the shores of India is throwing up its own set of challenges. Internal and external. The buzz in the metros of Delhi-Noida-Gurgaon (should we not fuse the three?), Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and a Kolkata in that order, is palpable. It cuts through thick. These early adopter BPO towns are islands of early prosperity that stand out like sore thumbs in the Indian landscape.

In an economy that has seen the services sector as the fastest growing of them all in recent times, the ITES segment contributes a brisk number. An interesting number of new jobs being created all the time and with it an interesting set of issues that stare back at us.

Even as the hue and cry on Outsourcing is dying out in the US and UK, there are interesting challenges that stare back at the industry and the people it employs. I peek at a few of these challenges. Only a few!

1. This completely foreign and alien business of BPO:

The BPO industry is completely extrinsic to country in its focus. Literally all of the business that is catered to out of the hubs of a Domlur or a Gurgaon or whatever, is all about businesses that seek the foreign accent at play. India is not a point of focus at all. ITES is all about servicing the outsider out of a cheaper-labor location. Enter any BPO outfit. The English is accented. The dress is getting more and more accented as well. The BPO outfit in the country might as well be territorial outposts of the foreign land being serviced.

Business is tough. A business that focuses completely on the export market is a business that is at the mercy of the volatile international environment in this commodity space of low-tech BPO! The barriers to entry in this business are going lower and lower and the success of the early settlers is creating a whole mass of salivating folks who are just wanting to do the same. BPO is commodity!

2. Price goes down and cost goes up:

Right at the start of the first trickle in of business in this segment, the early business development folk of the BPO start-ups procured business at prices that were exciting. As the days went by, and as competition within India itself increased, the price pressures started. Add to this the emerging competition from countries such as Vietnam, which wants to clone the Indian BPO experience, and China, Mauritius, Sri Lanka and Namibia, if you please! The price pressures are apparent. Businesses are flowing in at a lower unit price than what the early birds in the game were used to.

At the other end of servicing the business that has been procured, there are cost pressures at play as well. In the early days, the first sets of folk to wear the headset and sit in front of the monitor came in at salaries that were even as low as Rs.4,000 a month. Today, the same job goes at 12,000! There is a heady upswing in salaries in the segment.

There is certainly margin pressure at play. Peek keenly at the financials of many an enterprise in the game, and there seems to be a yen to look at the volume of business and ignore the margin-trends at play. Many a player seems to be around waiting to be picked up by the big MNC interest at a valuation that will go higher and higher with the brand name at play and the number of seats that accommodate the tired butts of call center operators.

Is there a bust ahead?

Sykes has just cut jobs 50%. Is this the beginning? Is this a bubble?

3. The social tumult:

Now this is something business seldom cares about. Not in India for sure.

Wealth must be created. Money must be made. Economic prosperity must be aimed at. And all this needs to be done keeping in mind the medium and long-term social good in mind.

Watch BPO space. This is space of tumult on that score for sure.

BPO space is completely western space. In India of yore, the son and daughter of an educated man aspired to study. Education has always occupied prime status in the Indian home for boy and girl alike in urban areas, and certainly for the boy child in semi-urban clusters. Saraswathi, the patron goddess of education is a point of worship.

Today, things are a wee bit different. Young folk, all of 18-19 aspire to get a BPO job. Youngsters under the stress of hormonal pressures are keen to get going with the business of making their own money. Truncating education at the Pre-university level is an option today. The BPO provides an option to earn good money at a young age, even without the degrees in hand.

I believe young India is going to get less and less educated. We are going to clone the US model here. Urban young education is on a decline. When the opportunity to earn without the requisite degrees in hand were not there, by default, education happened. Today, it will not.

The BPO enterprise is a specialist skill of low value. India is building an army of inadequately educated telephone operators. Till the business flows in, this is fine. God forbid! If and when it stops, there will be tumult. What will we do with two million, single-skilled, highly accented and inadequately educated telephone operators in this country? And that too folk used to an aberrantly high monthly income!

Add to this dilemma of the years ahead, a dilemma of today itself. Young folk are following an exciting lifestyle at a very very young age. This is fast-tracked by money in the hands and the freedom of a working person. Add to it night-time work, the ennui of a boring job and the proximity of the two sexes in a happening fun environment!

Sexual harassment at the workplace is old hat. Today no one is harassed. Today, everything is consensual. Sex is discovered earlier than before and promiscuity happens young! A Surya Ramamurthy is a Sue and a Sampath Krishnan from Adyar is an easy Sam!

The roads that lead to the BPO hubs of the day are a hell to traverse physically. The Toyota Qualis revolution is also here. Drivers are in big demand as well. Most drivers work 18 hour driving days and nights. And no one bothers. There is prosperity all around.

People living outside of the BPO island smirk at the sector. BPO is today a sub-culture in itself! Spot a BPO-type, and you will recognize him and her instantly!

The societal challenge remains as well!

Many more challenges ahead….but this time round, there is space for just this much! Till then, let prosperity prevail!

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, UK, and the Indian sub-continent.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Email: ceo@harishbijoorconsults.com