The Hindu Business Line : An honest brand

Why are software programmers advised not to read shampoo instructions? Because if they read "Lather, Rinse, Repeat" they would go into an infinite loop till the bottle was emptied. (Internet joke)

A FEW years ago, my little son passed one essential rite of passage into adulthood - he began brushing his teeth on his own. One of the first questions he asked me was: if you need only that much toothpaste to brush properly (I had shown him that one fat bead was about enough for this purpose) then why do all the ads show a long cylinder of paste overhanging the bristles?

Why, indeed?

The obvious answer is that the ads want to persuade all of us to squeeze out more toothpaste, more than necessary, so as to increase depth of consumption. It's an old, old strategy.

Look at the shampoo trick. Legend has it that manufacturers of shampoo instantly doubled their sales after WWII by adding those insidious little lines. Considering that we are now using nth generation shampoos, supposed to be phenomenally effective, why don't they do a good job the first time? After all, no soap tells us to bathe twice "for best results."

Everywhere around you, manufacturers are waging subtle campaigns to get consumers to buy more than they need. The goal: to make you rush out to buy more, more, more.

There are so many other ways in which manufacturers subtly, and not so subtly, influence the way in which we consume. Blister packs of medicines that the doc tells you to take 2X4 days but you have to buy a pack of ten, and waste two. Larger and larger bread packets for increasingly nuclear families resulting in half the slices going stale. Blue strips on razors, or fading bristles on toothbrushes, that helpfully signal their replacement time. A cold cream jar re-engineered to look larger - when you reach the bottom you find that it is a "double boiler" design, so that the inside contains far less than the outside seduces you into believing.

Sometime ago I was in a workshop for new product development: they were conceptualising a therapeutic cosmetic and the discussion revolved around how much of the active ingredient would result in actually providing the desired benefit, and the related cost implications. One new executive, bristling with go-getism suggested - let's just add 1 per cent of the herbal active for claim-value, then we can call it a herbal product. His idea was squashed by the organisation, one which believes in ethical marketing, but it got me wondering how many of those `herbal,' `natural' products out there are merely tinkered with for "claim-value."

The argument from the industry side is simple: in a maturing market, you've got to create new ways to increase consumption. Double the throwaway rate, double sales. Create claim-value.

Are marketers just taking consumers for a ride? Are they exploiting the inattentive? And is this really such a smart strategy? Or would a more up-front approach work better?

Let's leave aside the debate on whether advertising should promote consumption or not. Instead, let's think about whether all these methods aimed at influencing consumer behaviour really work? Or is there, in fact, an opportunity for creating a brand/service that will offer that truly unique differentiator: honesty. A wysiwyg brand, if you will (for the jargon-challenged, wysiwyg is: what you see is what you get).

Consumers today are savvier than ever before. Faced with a blitzkrieg of strident claims and a demand for willing suspension of disbelief, they're beginning to react by discounting all claims. Research has shown that the attribute that ranks highest on a consumer wish list is "honest and straightforward.' Which makes me wonder if it isn't time for marketers to try a new approach: something that respects consumer intelligence and demonstrates you have their interests at heart.

My son, a mature consumer at seven, already doubts the veracity of most of the ads he sees. How can the detergent make the shirt glow like that, he asks. He's realised that he doesn't become magically smarter or more athletic after gulping that malted hot drink. And as for a recent light-sabre promotion (for the uninitiated, that's what Jedi knights fight with in Star Wars), the difference between the full size, glowing images he saw in the ad and the three-inch-long plastic toy he actually got completed his conversion into an ad cynic. Like many consumers, he has learnt to filter and ignore most of what he sees.

One disgusted housewife I know has a small museum collection of detergent spoons which documents how it began with a "one spoon magic" claim and slowly inflated to becoming a shovel. When I ask housewives whether they know how much detergent to put in a bucket load of clothes, I find an amazing display of non-compliance. They've stopped following instructions that would result in a vast consumption of suds; instead they toss powder in with what traditional cooking would call "the mind's eye." But this doesn't stop them from feeling irritated. "I wish some good company would tell me the correct amount," said one confused soul, tired of her trial and error experiments.

The fact is, you can't paper over the failure to create real value to the consumer with a veneer of image building or fancy brand architecture.

Do we have here an opportunity for a totally innovative new brand: one which has its goal of really making the consumer's life better, permeated with the authenticity of its formulation, truth in its usage instructions, and credibility in its advertising?

John Moore writes of authenticity and branding: "The humanity has been driven out of most branding programmes, replaced by an ever growing list of clever sounding jargon and `tools' designed to manipulate rather than engage with consumers. It seems to me that the cleverer these tools seem to be, the more trust is compromised and real human value destroyed."

If brands end like politicians, with a cynical populace that doesn't believe a word of what is being said, then you can't blame consumers for being promiscuous with their preference.

(The writer is a Chennai-based management consultant. Karate-gy is the proprietary name for strategic exercises conducted by Paradigm Management Knowhow.)

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