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Harish Bijoor

Modern brand managers need to learn from Indian politicians who are by far the best practitioners of mass marketing.

Politicians can be consummate brand managers

AS the election fever touches a `typhoidic' level, I keep wondering whether the politician on the ground needs to learn from the brand manager or the brand manager in his air-conditioned cubicle needs to learn from the politician.

I do believe brand management can learn many a lesson from the politician at large on the ground. Many valuable lessons that will tell brand management that all it knows today is not necessarily from the market for soap and shampoos alone, but from the market for votes as well.

The politician, in many ways, is the quintessential brand manager. A designation that got invented well nigh with the coinage of the word politics itself. Look keenly at the politician, and let us see who can teach whom. And, who has taught whom over all these years.

The brand is a thought. The politician is the brand. If Laloo Prasad Yadav is the politician we want to discuss in this piece, Laloo is the brand. The brand Laloo is nothing but a thought. A thought that lives in consumers' heads. The brand Laloo is not what Laloo thinks he is, but what the consumer thinks Laloo is all about!

Laloo, the brand then!

Laloo Prasad Yadav, if you please, began in the rustic world of Bihar politics as a rustic man with rustic thoughts. He got it right the first time round. The gent went to town revelling in his rusticity. He did everything right from day one. He kept his cows in his front yard, glamorised the Bihari baniya to the extent that you had ramp models in Bangalore walking in them, he milked his own cows, made the laaltein (lantern) his symbol, chewed on endless Banarasi meetha paans, spat blood-red paan-juice at every street corner and made thook-daans (spittoons, to the uninitiated) regulation fixtures in Government offices and the Secretariat at large.

The cognoscenti in India, that micro-percentage of folks who represent little of this country, laughed at Laloo. Felt embarrassed. And kept wondering why folks of this kind existed in Indian politics at all!

Laloo went through the process of the poll. He won. And when he could not remain a Chief Minister, he made his wife one! Laloo the brand wins!

Laloo read his market right. Bihar is one of the rare Indian States where 90 per cent of the populace is still rural. As the rest of the country passes through a creeping growth phase of urbanisation, Bihar remains a rural oasis of kinds. Laloo the politician reads his market right. He knows what a market of this kind needs. And he gives it all that it needs, with gusto!

To be fair to all the politicians, Laloo is not the first one who has read his market right and delivered what it wants. Every one of them has! V. V. Giri did it in his own way with the labour vote in mind. George Fernandes did it in his heyday with worker-rebellion as a sentiment to read, synthesise, package and re-deliver to the market.

Ms Gandhi! Oops! I need to clarify which one! Indira Gandhi was the shrewdest reader of the market of them all. She read the feminine vote right first time round. She read dynasty and its merits right. She read every nitty-gritty of the branding process rather keenly in her own shrewd way.

She was so good at it that she knew when to dye her hair, how much of it to dye and indeed what to wear for what occasion and to create what impact with even what she wore!

Are our modern day politicians clued on to all this? Yes, they are. Some of them are being coached by brand spin-doctors. Is Pramod Mahajan one? Of course he is. Possibly the best brand manager in the country today. Managing the BJP brand at large. Putting together strategy. Putting together events that talk of `carpet-bombing the market' even! At times there is a slip in the jargon and terminology! At the end of the day, the electorate is a vast market. A market that discerns. A market that watches it all carefully before making that vital decision to cast that really valuable vote!

And some are being groomed by PR agencies. What to wear, what to say, what not to say, when to say. With what `passion' to say. This is high art. If any of you mistake the utterances of the politician on your television screens to be spontaneous reactions and outbursts, you are being naïve. There is a coach behind it all. There is a script behind it all. There is a purpose as well.

Branding and its many tools are being found useful aids by the politician today, as there are not too many large issues that capture the imagination of the masses. We don't have a war. We don't have issues that are so overbearing that the entire mass of people would sit up and listen. Time to therefore create those issues, and depend on the impact these small issues can really cause. In comes PR. In comes Branding. And in comes Drama as well!

Every party name commands an equity that is distinct. The Congress is about independence heritage, the Bharatiya Janata Party is all about Hindutva, the Janata Party is all about the farmer and the list goes on.

Every party symbol is a powerful articulation of the brand and its values. Even the suave Vijay Mallya is capable of acquiring the goodwill from the powerful party symbol of a farmer with a plough! Never mind that he has never ever ploughed a field himself!

What's more, despite the acute shortage of colours prominent national parties seem to swim with for their party hues, every party is able to create a distinct equity for itself with the colours it sports. Look keenly at the saffron, white and green of the Congress versus the saffron and green of the BJP and the saffron and deeper-still green of the Janata Party! Or, at the colours of the DMK and the AIADMK! How much can a black and red give you? Plenty, it seems!

Every concept in contemporary and modern branding is something that you can learn from the efforts of the politician in India. The politician is possibly the best teacher of marketing of them all. Let's learn from them. They are the best barometers of public sentiment we have today. They are the best direct marketers. The best door-to-door canvassers. The best specialists in one-to-one marketing and the best practitioners of mass marketing as well.

May their tribe flourish!

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

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