The Hindu Business Line : The <I>raasta </I> ahead

2006 seems to be a frighteningly different year. The only way to survive it is by thinking out of the box all the time. A sneak peek into what's in store.

2006 is here! The marketing year ahead is tricky for sure. As I peek into a rather fuzzy crystal ball, here are trends I believe will have the marketing man frothing at his face.

Five trends then for marketing year 2006. Maybe even a few trends to grab by the tail and make your brand happen in 2006. Remember, this promises to be a frighteningly different year. A year that will be capitalised upon only if one thinks different, acts different, and then again acts even more different all over again.

Encourage brand promiscuity

Chapter 2 of David Aaker's seminal work, Managing Brand Equity is titled `Brand Loyalty'. Chapter 7 of my book is all about `brand promiscuity'. I do believe brand loyalty is dead. The consumer of 2006 is more promiscuous than she was in 2005. Loyalty is old hat. The thinking consumer's new cap is a promiscuous one.

There is a new society out there in the marketplace. This society was loyal in the days gone by, or at least it had us believe it was. As society faces newer and newer challenges, and as society gets more and more variety-oriented, the marketer has been offering an array of choice.

This choice array is befuddling. It offers a big incentive for the consumer to move from brand to brand with no qualms at all. No guilt for sure.

In 2006 then, it just might be good brand strategy not to wait passively for your consumer to get promiscuous.

Might as well get proactive and get her to shuffle with brands. Might be a great thing for the Taj Group of Hotels to offer a `free stay' to some of its most loyal guests at a Welcomgroup hotel next time round. Or for that matter offer a `couple stay' at a competing hotel chain.

The concept is simple. When you are sure you are the best in the category (you better be sure of that before you try this!), you might want to stop staying traditional and wait for your consumer to get promiscuous at the beck and call of competition. Instead, engineer promiscuity, and make it clear that you want your consumer to experience the competition.

Bring integrity into your brand plan. Showcase it. Your consumer, once having tried the competition, after years of fond affiliation for your property is bound to feel dissonance in the new experience. She will rush back to you the next time round. At least that is the fond strategic hope.

A consumer is really loyal to your offering only when she has tried out what the competition offers. If she comes back to you, she will stay longer. And that is real loyalty ... if it exists at all.

New retail

Big retail will continue to grow. This growth is more hype and less real than real. As businesses aggregate, there will be several models at play. The model being unleashed by the big retail players in the domestic market is a David v/s Goliath format. This has not yet reached the small retailer population of over 12 million in the country.

Big retail is just about plucking the low-hanging fruit. The real battle has not yet begun. The real retail battle will be fought in the bread-and-butter category of food and beverage retailing.

As the biggies try hard to break in here with the aid of FDI and much else, and as Indian chains, hitherto not in this category at all, plan forays, it is time for the `corporate mom & pop shop' to happen.

I believe that the `small is beautiful' format is the most suited for a market such as India. This format will work not only in the urban areas, but in the vast area of the rural market as well.

This is a small outlet, all of 500 sq ft, in the neighbourhood, run on a common brand format.

Will a Reliance want to come in and buy out or offer a franchise arrangement? Will your cornerstore sell out and brand his `kirana' a `Reliance Corner'? Only to protect and ensure his future. Remember, he and his family which has run this outlet for the past 50 years will continue to run it for the next 50 for sure ... but under the overall brand umbrella of a Reliance?

As big retail struggles on, tapping into the value at the top of the pyramid, this model will want to unleash the real potential of real India. Rural India. The place where real Indians live.

Sensitive and personalised retail

Modern format retail will get sensitive as well. It needs to. I am Indian. I love the personalisation that my small outlet offers me. When I walk into a shop to buy my toothpaste, Shetty uncle (my shopkeeper) asks me how my brother is. And whether he writes in frequently from the US?

When I walk into a modern format retail outlet, nobody gives a damn. No one is concerned about what I do out there.

The only concern comes from the security cameras that watch if I steal, and, of course, the final concern comes at the checkout counter when my Citibank credit card refuses to do the swipe gracefully.

Modern format retailers will fill in the vacuum of lack of personalisation in their outlets. The friendly hostess will enter the picture. Sales-persons are out. Friends are in. Shopping assistants will be more of assistants and less of jargon touting sales-people.

Challenging the boring

What was good is bad and what was bad is good. This is going to be a big one. The marketer has done the USP to death. In the beginning, we took the functional USP of every variety to distinguish our products and services on tout. We took colour, taste, flavour, shape and what not. And then we ran out. We moved from the functional to the emotional. Even here, we did every emotion to death. We took pathos, laughter, humour, anger ...

Time to re-invent then. When we have nothing to re-invent, you take the negative you hammered over all these years into a positive. And then you take a positive you eulogised all these years and hammer it in as a negative.

Surf leads the way with its `Daag' campaign. The brand till now fought daag as enemy number one for half-a-century. Today, that very daag is good! Benign daag if you will! The line comes at the end of a brother-sister commercial in which the good brother beats up daag when sister soils herself in it.

And then comes the happy portrait of little sister happy and walking with little brother. The line, Daag lagne se kucch achha hota hai, toh daag achha hain na?

Many more will tread this path, particularly those in the oldest marketed categories of them all. Watch out 2006!

From B2C to C2B

The marketing direction will change. From Business-to-consumer to Consumer-to-Business. Internet and e-commerce will be the prime harbingers of this movement.

There is a quiet revolution out there as more and more Indians get hooked onto broadband. The biggest telcos will spur this movement by offering connectivity anywhere and anytime.

As the population of the net-enabled booms, e-commerce will rear its head once again. The top-of-the-pyramid market is going in for this convenience in a big way.

The days ahead for this market is all about the consumer ferreting out the marketer as opposed to the marketer ferreting out the consumer in the old days. 2006 is a spur year for this. Cheers to an exciting marketing year ahead then!

(The writer is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.)