The Hindu Business Line : Innovation is it!

Anti-Marie Bureau, with the absolutely delicious-looking (remember, the language is biscuit-language) Kajol in a catsuit is a great way of waking up a nation of consumers from the slumber of over-marketed somnolence.

Consumers today are pretty fed up with claims and counter-claims that are made in the staid old way. The dominant feeling is the key thought as to how one biscuit can be different from another. Claims of marketers are at best seen for what they are: mere claims.

The consumer switches off from advertising and communication that is claim-oriented in the dull old way. So in comes claim-based advertising in an all new-avatar.

Anti-Marie Bureau is the Parle way of waking up consumers. Kajol does it beautifully! There is a lot of action and a lot of noise. In the bargain, the poor old ordinary Marie is re-positioned altogether. If you are an ordinary Marie seller, you must be pathetic! And if you eat ordinary Marie, you must be a loser!

The multi-media teaser campaign run with high-decibel spends had a nation of consumers sitting up and taking note. The awareness scores look excellent. The interest-stoking scores in the category look good as well. The desire-cues for Marie are handled well. The action of purchase has been hot, I hear.

The campaign is a true-blue success. Never mind if a whole lot of marketing people in the country thought it corny and trite. What counts is what a campaign does to the top-line volume of the brand on tout.

What's a truly global Indian brand? How does it happen? Does it happen or is it made?

- Prasad Shenoy, Mumbai

Prasad, my definition of a brand is a simple one. I define the brand as a simple thought. "The brand is a thought. A thought that lives in a person's mind." Brands live in the soft-space of human minds. Brands are, therefore, thoughts that can be moulded. Thoughts that occupy key positions in consumer and non-consumer minds alike.

A truly global Indian brand? It is a thought that is distinctly Indian. A thought that can stand out amidst a clutter of dissimilar thoughts that every nation spews forth in the international market. The true-blue Indian brand will not be about clonal offerings packaged clonally by the brand manager. It will not be a me-too thought that swims in the mind space of commercial folk all over the world. The true blue Indian brand is the brand that is created from the gut of India. A brand that represents the distinction that is India. To an extent, this brand will be an offering from the rustic and the rural. Yoga, in many ways, is one. Ayurveda can be one. Indian organic practice could have been one as well. Gandhi is certainly one.

The true-blue Indian brand will be one that is built bottom-up, and not top-down. The one brand that is built quite like Gandhiji. Gandhiji never took full page ads screaming "Gandhi Shining." Gandhi the brand came about through an amalgam of vision, hard work, grassroots action and a deep and abiding passion for positive action. The one commercial brand out of India that attempts this will be the true-blue Indian global brand. At this point of time, I do not see this happening. I see brands and brand-folk wanting to ape the best practices of branding brought in from the West. These are old, contextually wrong and second-hand. We need a wake-up call. Building the India brand is an exercise that will be unique and differently done. Has to happen bottom-up. Not top-down!

Harish, I am in the business of outdoor in Mumbai. What is the future of this industry? There are so many illegal hoardings around and honest folk can't make a decent living. Give me suggestions to rectify this business.

- Shreyans Mehta, Mumbai

Shreyans, of all the hoardings you find in a big city, as many as 30 per cent could be illegal. These hoardings undercut the price in the market but do not offer reliability to the user of the medium. The medium has the reputation of being a cottage industry and not an industry at large as the print, television and radio media are largely seen.

The industry is also largely Mumbai-fixated. Of the total Rs 800 crore generated every year, Rs 360 crore comes from Mumbai alone. Overall, the size of the advertising business in the world is $363 billion. India contributes a pittance of $3.5 billion to this. India, therefore, is a small player in the advertising game of the world.

We are growing faster, though. While world ad spends grew by 8.1 per cent last year, Indian advertising grew at 22.7 per cent. My vision for the industry at large:

This industry is Mumbai-besotted as of now. There is a lot to be reaped in the rest of the country.

Outdoor does not mean hoardings alone. Street furniture and the rest of outdoor needs attention. Newer and innovative formats need exploitation and discovery. Innovation is the name of the game.

The biggest spenders in the advertising pie are the FMCG companies. They do not use the outdoor medium enough. The biggest users of outdoor currently are the telecom, media and entertainment, financial products, and automotive products sectors, in that order. The outdoor industry must keenly focus on getting FMCG money into outdoor. This is possible only with adequate substantive data and, of course, innovation that has genuine stand-out value in the outdoors.

Outdoor as an industry is pretty disorganised. It needs a close-knit body that functions at the apex level with evangelism and gusto. The industry needs to tackle social issues of visual pollution carefully and become consumer-sensitive.