On Self-fulfilling Prophesies

How often have you heard a marketer complain that his/her category is low-involvement, has matured and is declining, all ideas have been tried before and so on and so forth. It is like saying give me the ideal conditions of a new and exciting category, which consumer is keen to utilize and then I will justify my MBA degree and high salary by showing you profitable growth. The moment you tell yourself that my category is on death-bed is the moment it goes on the death-bed. It is this conversation in the mind about the category that needs to be killed because it has the potential of truly killing the category, way before its time has come.

What stops most marketers from seeing the exciting possibilities that inherently resides in every category? What stops marketers of steel getting excited about the construction possibilities in Steel or doing designer products (like Magpie), what stops tea marketers from making it as exciting as coffee, and in fact I would go a step beyond and say why not make even an atta or a detergent as exciting for the consumer to get involved in.

I am always inspired by two examples from India which demonstrated the amount of life residing in a category long after the market leaders had given up on it.

Rekitt Benckiser had been selling powder blue for over 5 decades and enjoyed a 90% of share in a Rs. 50cr. Category. Consumer on the other hand had no choice but kept putting up with the patchy bluing that Robin Blue offered. In comes Ujala- a liquid blue which spreads evenly and delivers a higher degree of whiteness. Moreover it shows great gumption and bets the company on this product by spending more than even the colas on advertising it nationally with its legendary jingle ‘Aaya naya Ujala, Chaar Boondon Waala. And you have the category expanding to Rs. 300cr. With Ujala commanding a 70% share of this expanded pool. A rare example of an Indian company showing an MNC the way to market.

The second example, that most of us are familiar with- Scooters. Long after Bajaj gave up on Scooters, Honda launches Activa and sells over a million scooters in 4 years. Couldn’t Bajaj have exploited this potential almost ten years ago had it not chosen to be wedded to its archaic Chetak brand of scooter-making?

The moment a marketer gets into a complaint about its business, rather than feeling passionately for it, it is the beginning of the end. When we become less involved in the business, it becomes low involvement for the consumer, when we stop innovating and improving the delivery of the benefit our product embodies, it stops growing, the day we conclude that just because an experiment failed in the past, it will never work in the future, we have limited the potential of our impact. Most FMCG marketers and even some in durables are caught in this vicious cycle of inaction due to a complaint and that inaction perpetuating the situation for the marketer to turn back and say, I told you so.

Now, will the real marketer please stand up!

Reliable Service vs. Breathtaking Experience

We in India have been particularly used to such customer abuse from the likes of Railways or Indian Airlines as well as a Reliance Mobile or a PSU bank, that when a brand like Jet Airways happened in our midst almost 10 years ago, most couldn’t believe that Indians could have pulled off something as world-class as that. Probably it was the only truly world-class act out of India in a long-long time (actually, can’t think of anything at all).

But then a Kingfisher comes along and takes service to the new level of an experience. With its passion red colors, sensuously decked up flight crew, in-flight entertainment, the reading-material etc. Kingfisher seems to have repositioned Jet as a reliable but boring, devoid of personality, kind of brand. Jet, which for years, looked unassailable seems to have been outdone by a player who had no prior experience in running a service business and from day one has got its act right with hardly any lose ends. Moreover, they have taken customer care to new heights with staff walking around with printers that generate the boarding pass, a person at the arrival guiding you to the right conveyor belt, and now we hear of a helicopter service to take you to the Airport directly from the office district.

This is a wake up call for all the emerging service businesses like banking, retail, cinemas etc where delivering reliable service itself is a challenge and once they get it, it’s almost like climbing mount-Everest and their imagination stops working. So you have a host of me-too banks (ICICI and HDFC look like clones of each other), every mall which is a replica of the other, and all our lovely low cost airlines which are still struggling to get the basics right.

And yet if there is one thing to be learnt from a Kingfisher it is this. Even of you are taking on a competitor as venerable as Jet, there are massive chinks in the armor that can be exploited and almost overnight, thought leadership be snatched away. New service businesses have no option but to conceptualize their offering as an experience from day one and give it that unique character beyond just dependable service. They have to embody rich and textured personalities (not just almost robotic delivery of service) and it have the *&^% to even offend a few sensibilities. Only then can we create truly memorable experiences like a Disney, Virgin or a Starbucks in our midst. So will the ITCs, Oberois, Leelas of the world take a cue!

Yashraj Films-truly a banner brand

The first true banner brand in the hindi film industry has emerged in the form of Yashraj. A brand which subsumes under it every director, music director or actor brands there were. Nobody remembers who directed Salaam Namaste or even Bunty aur Bubli (except the hardcore Bollywood buffs. All they care about is that when it is Yashraj you can expect some lovely feel-good, progressive, rich and happy fair.

Besides the obvious commercial success, there are a couple of things that are worth celebrating about the Yashraj way. Number one- it is probably the only production house in India which has consistently pushed the boundaries without totally abandoning the shores when it comes to female portrayals.

It has with every film shown us a female portrayal that the Indian woman could identify with and yet it stayed a couple of steps ahead of the times by showing them 7the possibility of what they could be at their best- whether it is Rani in B&B, or PZ in Veer Zaara or in Salaam Namastey, or Aishwarya in D2. Even going back in time Silisila, Chandni, Vijay, Trishul, Deewar- almost all Yash Chopra films have done justice to the myriad facets of the Indian woman without resorting to stereo types.

The other incredible dimension of this success has been the total blackout of media that the production house has stuck to. Aditya Chopra’s was last captured on film about 10 years ago. Nobody knows what the guy looks like. Moreover, no one is allowed to cover Yashraj Studios from inside. The brand has been built through the most substantial way of all i.e. by delivering actual BO results. For those accusing them of peddling the personality ethic through the shiny happy people in their movies, I feel there is more character to Yashraj than the likes of an RGV or Vishesh filkms.

The Moral of the World Cup Story

India's debacle in the world cup did not come as a total suprise to most astute readers of the game. The story before we thrashed West Indies in India, was much the same. Our South Africa tour was a testimony to the ever widening gap between what we call cricket and what the likes of SA and Australia play. However, in a larger context, the cricketing India could serve as a metaphor for what lies in store for the so called econonomic power-house India, which everyone seems to be celebrating. We are waiting for a day not too soon when one defining moment or event (like the Bangaladesh match) will expose how superficial growth story is. It will open up for us the shallow foundations on which we have been celebrating the coming of age of the Indian economy. We do not seem to realize how small we are in terms of size and more importantly in terms of standards, which the developed economies and the likes of China are setting for themselves. It may be worthwhile to stop the posturing and the celebrations and put our heads down and get back to work and not look up for a few years till the outside world starts acknowledging that the stuff coming out of India is for real and it is built on sustainable foundations. Otherwise, we may have a few stars (with a lot of world-records) but fall woefully short of getting the cup once again.