The Hindu Business Line : Branding the Govt of India

Does it matter? How does the reality matter? What matters is the perception among a host of folks who are exposed to the mega multi-crore campaign the Government of India as client is running across media. Every television channel worth its weight in opinion-building is screaming that India is indeed shining. Every newspaper, magazine and hoarding is saying so as well. The creatives are compulsive, the visuals are simple, come in a host of language options and the message is focused. India shining!

Shining, glowing, burnished, or not shining at all is of no significance. And that is a political issue. Perception it is. Rs 500 crore as expenditure can still build a lot of perception in India. Brand India has arrived, at least to the internal audience in the country! Branding the country is an art, science and philosophy on its own. Most of the time it is a bundle of it all together.

The brand is a perception, and the client had a brief. The brief must have been a complicated one. It must have listed a whole set of achievements of the Government of India. It must have spoken extensively of falling interest rates and the high interest regime of yore. It must have spoken of foreign exchange reserves, which were swelling. Of governmental schemes that have confusing names most of the time and seek to take on a Jaiprakash Narain or any of the friendly-to-the-ruling-party netas of yore as name tags to christen the very many yojnas at hand. The brief must not have been brief at all. It must have packed documents and data and gazette notifications of every size and shape as well!

The `Government of India' brand was to be built. The objective was clear. The elections were near. Time to get that rub-off effect from Governmental performance. Time to get the sheen off governmental performance rubbed off in full on to the Bharatiya Janata Party! At the same time, the objective had to be achieved covertly. No overt stuff here. The line of political correctness had to be maintained!

Response to the brief was crisp enough, as we see it today. Expose the big idea in two simple words. Two words that will settle down in the mind of the consumer (the Indian voter, in this case) with ease. Two words which will be recalled with ease as well. Two words that will epitomise the meaning of the campaign and the meaning of what is being said. Two sweet words that will settle in the psyche of the consumer at large. Two words that will brand the campaign in its entirety!

The brand is indeed a thought. The elections are coming close. The India Shining campaign is possibly the ultimate recognition of the fact that the brand as an important leverage mechanism has arrived in India in a big way, displacing many others in its wake.

India has been a late-starter in the game of branding. The first brands that got accepted by the populace of this country were really brands of products that were distinctive in their appeal and far away from the commodity offerings that cluttered the marketplace. In the early '50s, just after Independence, a brand of Basmati rice would not make an impact at all! It would be laughed at. Similarly a brand of sugar would be a crazy Western affectation that would have been thrown out.

The first brands were therefore in categories that were highly value-added. A high degree of product differentiation had to distinguish what was offered in a branded form. The category of detergents with Det, Surf and Sunlight were possibly the first of these. A Milkmaid had a differentiator as well. In most of these early branded categories, competition from the commodity category at large was not fathomable at all. Imagine an Aquafina water doing well in the years of the early '50s! A crazy thought, if at all!

It took many long years for the brand movement to percolate into the psyche of this country of ours. As income standards improved, and as exposure to the rest of the world gained credence, many other categories embraced branding in a big way. Today, even the four basic elements of nature are branded aggressively. Look keenly at water alone. We have an audited 421 brands of `mineral water' (and they have nothing to do with minerals) in this country. And the most popular of these sell at prices more expensive than that of milk itself, litre to litre!

Now that we have our dal, cheeni and chawal categories branded as well, it is time to brand the Government. The India Shining campaign is the ultimate recognition of the utility of the brand. The brand is a thought that can convert a positive thought into a positive action of a vote. The Government of India realises this, and has indeed done extremely well in its branding campaign.

Without making a value judgement on whether it is correct for a Government to brand itself using the tax-payers money just before the elections or not, let us see the process at play and laud it for what it does. The perspective is branding, and not politics!

The process then. In phase one of activity, the India Shining campaign will build at the macro level of a common mnemonic of understanding. This mnemonic will use multiple creatives and visuals to convey in a consumer-friendly manner (without the jargon of economics) the thought that India is doing well. This phase will not refer to the political party in question. This will not use party jingoism in any manner. It is enough to plant this positive thought.

The key thought: Remember, Indian politics has always depended on opinion leadership. The catalysts of opinion leadership in the past have been the statesmen-politicians (may their souls rest in peace) at large, the intelligentsia of urban society, the Press and other reliable (emphasis is on the word `reliable') media, the rural Panchayat heads, teachers, doctors and at times even Government servants in rural societies, religious heads, priests and mullahs, and indeed a whole set of sundry other local opinion leadership catalysts.

Things are, however, changing. With the credibility of most of these opinion leadership vehicles of yore in question, opinion leadership needs to reinvent itself. It needs to be single-minded, focussed, and credible. In comes advertising and the tool of branding! If done properly, both these vehicles of opinion leadership can work! The key task is to do it right. Do it with equity. Do it with sanity. Not overt. Covert! "India Shining" does this! Advertising and branding will be trusted till it maintains this balance carefully.

Phase Two will follow then. The generic campaign of the Government will be overlaid by a specific campaign of the party at large. The best thing to do here is to overlay the current campaign with one that has similar images and follows a similar thought pattern. This time with an overt message that seeks a vote.

If done well, this can work and boost the fortune of the party at play!

The India Shining campaign is a classic case of the use of branding as a potent tool of opinion leadership. Branding, in many ways, has displaced every other form of opinion leadership we have been so used to over the years, it seems!

Dear politician, the brand has robbed your gaddi!

(The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish

Bijoor Consults Inc.)

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