In the corridors of advertising agencies, some phraseology is more common than others. Of course, this too has changed with times. But advertising agencies and marketing departments suffer from the same malaise as everyone else. They follow what is trendy. They claim it is well thought out.
It’s the same with the human race. One human does something simply because another human being also does it or will do it. How else can one explain, the need to smoke a cigarette for example. Imagine the man who was the first to ever put a cigarette in his mouth! He must have rolled some tobacco in a paper and blown smoke in. And coughed after that. What for?
Decades later, we don’t even question the inane-ness in the very act of smoking. Our pre-occupation instead, is with it being ‘harmful’, not stupid! Now why is that? Not because the category makes sense, but because that brands inhabiting it have found acceptance, such that they are embedded deeply in our lives. So much so, that we think they define our personality. Such that they re-position even the way we once saw a category.
Yet marketing and advertising agency corridors are abuzz with the fashionable view that repositioning of anything is very difficult and long drawn! Actually like anything else, it is difficult only for those who don’t know. And easy for those who do.
Let’s come back to the cigarette example.
There once used to be a ‘feminine’ cigarette, yes ‘feminine’. It was targeting women. It even had a lipstick mark tipped on the filter! And what did this brand change to? Marlboro, that’s right Marlboro of the Marlboro man fame. And today it is difficult to visualize a more macho brand! Incidentally the handsome cowboy model died of lung cancer in real life.
Likewise there is another example that comes to mind in the context of advertising and marketing belief stereotypes. Under this trendy notion, all brands of the past and present are assumed to be ‘traditional’ and so their desired goal, their evolution is taken to be ‘modern’. And this is where the trouble starts. (Of course, it is true that there are some brands - MNCs often show the tendency - that court vernacular with an equally illogical passion, that it appears, and is contrived).
Now take a deeper look at the urban Indian consumer and the popular culture that surrounds him or her.
An Indian bahu smokes in office.
An IT professional consults an astrologer.
A fashion guru fasts on Tuesday.
The vacuum cleaner pleads and pleads and tries hard to replace the Indian Ayah, but the Indian Ayah rules unabated. The same doesn’t hold true for the washing machine, a proud possession of the housewife; her gadgety vengeance against the husband!)
And now modern chocolates are gift wrapped for Diwali while the traditional ladoo watches in horror.
The tabeez peeps out uncertainly from under a lycra ganjee.
And on Saturday night, at their western best, young men with drooping trousers and young women with lifted spirits open their armpits to the wind and dance all night to Bhangra Pop.
Yet brands continue to be fond choosing either tradition or modernity, even though the Indian consumer has clearly chosen both.
Let’s look at one more example. An example of how it impacts service philosophy, in this case in the world of airlines.
A young girl who wears salwar kameez on holidays, sculpts blood red western attire around herself while on duty; paints her eye brows and eyelids in a gleaming something; blushes her cheekbones high and looks like a mannequin carved under neon signs while proceeding to serve with tongs, aaloo paranthas in plastic-wrapped pickle, in an accent that is somewhere between American, Italian and Sri Lankan. Just roll the flight announcement on your tongue, in that familiar and distinctive accent that you last heard on flight: “Kursi ki pethhi baaaaand leejiye”.
Yet brands forever ponder about these two worlds of tradition and modernity, the euphemism for which is ‘Indian’ or ‘Western’.
Can there be watertight classifications of brands as modern or traditional? Or is it simply Indian? If it has to be authentic, it doesn’t have to fall into the ‘traditional’ archetype. It must speak the language of its particular and specific catchment. Why must service personnel of ‘big’ brands always speak in English to customers? Or speak Hindi in such an accent that it actually alienates a customer instead of getting him closer.
Why should the customer’s comfort not be the main criteria?
Now a professional working in a metro afterall has a ‘small town soul’. He almost invariably hails from somewhere else even if he is found of saying “basically I am from Delhi”. So we now live in metros, but have our origins elsewhere, from some small town or the other. So whenever the small town manifests itself in our metro paced lives, we respond to it with the same feeling as we do to an old favourite song.
Remember ladies and gentlemen, after the fourth drink, it is Kishore Kumar all the way!
Brands in India have to be rooted in the prevailing popular culture. And India as we know, is much more than a crucible of different cultures simmering in one cauldron. It is in fact the compression of various multi-cultural historical interventions and influences through its long existence as a civilization. That is what gives us our pluralism, which besides including all communities, also blurs the seemingly sharp boundaries between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’.
So have a happy weekend. Shed the tie guys and let the winds of bhangra pop take over!
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