The Hindu Business Line : Brands and bling

The economy set the pace for everything, and what a scorcher of a pace it was! Indian industry went into overdrive and came up with a series of quarterly results that threw the stock exchanges into a tizzy. Urban wealth soared due in tandem with the Sensex and rural wealth took on a new meaning thanks to spiralling land prices. Consumption accelerated, and due to the unique Indian psyche, savings did not get left behind too far.

BRAND INDIA — BOLDER, BIGGER: Ad man Santosh Desai was snapped up by a mega retail firm

Let's take a macro view first. This time, I would use just two words: Brands and bling.

The bigger the brand, the wider the vision. Retail seemed to be the mantra of the year. Reliance Industries took its much anticipated leap into the frothing waters of the retail sector. Though 2006 just saw a soft launch of its activity in Hyderabad, it really outlined the shape of things to come. Kishore Biyani outlined a broad canvas and took the industry by surprise when he snapped up Santosh Desai, the thinking and planning powerhouse behind McCann Erickson and put him in charge of a new company called Future Brands. To me this showed the importance that people were now placing in the worth of brands.

Lakshmi Mittal added Arcelor to his kitty

Brand Mittal took one more swaggering step forward in its relentless trek towards global supremacy when it added a respected European name to its already impressive list of acquisitions. Arcelor Mittal was a great win for L. N. Mittal and it seemed to inspire Indian industry to dream even bigger and stronger.

Brand IT, which has done more for Brand India that anything else, continued its seemingly unstoppable march forward. The higher you thought Infosys, TCS, Wipro and the like could reach, the higher they seemed to be heading. Riding on the back of these worthies was Brand India that continued to be perceived as a nation poised on the cutting edge of high technology.

The international Indian too did much for the image of India. Indra Nooyi took over at Pepsi's headquarters and Harish Manwani continued to make great news in his role as Chairman - Asia and Africa at Unilever. Nearer home, Cadbury's Bharat Puri and Unilever's Arun Adhikari left to assume larger regional roles in Asia.

Telecom contimued to ring in sweet music everywhere. Anil Ambani managed to put Reliance Infocom on a steady growth path and Hutch became the company everyone wanted to buy. Everyone who could afford it, I mean. And Sunil Bharti Mittal announced plans for his mega retail venture with none other than the biggie from Bentonville, Wal-Mart, as a partner. Tata Steel set its sights on acquiring Corus and whether it does or does not manage to actually buy the company, it positioned itself in a fantastic manner as an Indian company that was aiming for nothing less than the best.

It was raining brands in the hospitality sector with every major player in the world from the super exclusive Ritz Carlton and Armani to all the other payers planning to drop anchor and cater to the burgeoning demand for good hotel rooms in the country. I might add a little word of caution here. The way room rents have been soaring in popular tourist destinations like Goa could eventually result in India pricing itself out of the holiday destination market. Other quality beach destinations in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia offer equally good accommodation at far lower rates these days, and the Indian tourist who is packing his bags for these destinations is ignored at one's own peril.

Nokia launched its super-premium Vertu range

Bling carved a place for itself in the Indian lexicon. Nokia launched its Vertu Constellation range with prices that were, well, astronomical. Rolls Royce inaugurated a showroom in Mumbai. A slew of top-of-the-range fashion names checked into India. Many more are identifying suitable real estate to sell their exclusive wares. Gucci, Salvatore Ferragamo and Louis Vuitton would now be officially available in India. Realtors began marketing "villas in the sky" with car parking and swimming pools on every floor. More corporate jets were sold than ever before.

For the micro view, how has the marketing and advertising industry performed? In financial terms, brilliantly. The all-round growth has left marketers and advertisers with very few challenges, and the complacency is already beginning to show. With a very few exceptions, the quality of advertising in the year that was has left much to be desired. Sure, we will still pick up some metal for our much-touted, seldom seen public service campaigns and a few brands. Yet, there was not much to inspire laurels on the whole and that is something to be seriously worried about. With Prasoon Joshi taking over the reins of a large advertising agency, it would make him the second "creative" person at the helm (after Piyush Pandey) and one hopes it would bring the spotlight on creativity back into sharper focus all round.

Our industry associations rattled their sabres about the national award functions this year but better sense seems to be prevailing and everyone seems to have accepted that there is room for the other. The readership surveys were not without their embarrassing moments but the overall verdict seems to be that the print medium is growing at a smart clip thank you.

Indra Nooyi took over the top job at Pepsi

Reality ruled the airwaves and TV channels raked in the big bucks pretty consistently. The Zee network got its act into reasonable shape and seemed to be getting accepted as the No. 2 channel, but Star's deal with Shah Rukh Khan for its KBC show would put a very large spanner into its efforts to aim for the No.1 spot.

The "power of one" was never felt more graphically that with the enormous success of YouTube. Its aggressive valuation and Time Magazine's awarding of the single citizen as its prestigious "person of the year" gave individual democracy and the power of the single human denomination a great shot in the arm. My personal view, however, is that user-generated content can never really replace professional content that comes from planning and deep understanding of consumer behaviour and needs. Advertising agencies would be doing their clients a great disservice, and possibly drowning themselves by remaining silent as everyone seems to be hailing user-generated-content as the next big wave.

Superstar Shah Rukh is replacing the Big B on Kaun Banega Crorepati

So what does that leave me with? Well, if I had to choose the sector that used marketing to its best advantage in 2006, my vote would go to Bollywood. It used every trick in the marketer's book and came up with a smart mix that helped boost the fortunes of a string of mega hits.

And my personal choice of the mega brand of 2006 is Balaji. I certainly do not mean the machine that churns out syrupy soap operas. I mean the Lord of Tirupathi. Think about it. You always knew that lakhs of devout pilgrims made the long and arduous trek to have a glimpse of the divinity atop Tirumala. Now you have recurring images in the media of the king of good times ferrying every shining new fly-by-wire Airbus aircraft his airline buys to Tirupati before it is inducted into formal service. And the dying days of 2006 saw Anil Ambani dashing there, apparently to get a divine nod for a proposed mega telecom deal. As they say, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Have a healthy and peaceful 2007. Or as the ancient Arabs would say, may you live in exciting times!

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