The Hindu Business Line : Being responsible vicariously

CSR and marketing: Actress Ramya Krishnan with Parikrama children at the launch of Surf Excel 10/10, a donation drive to raise funds for the education of disadvantaged children in Bangalore.

Corporate social responsibility seems to be emerging as the new marketing tool. What’s with it?

- Rohit Balakumar, Delhi

Rohit, CSR is a strategic marketing tool for sure. Let’s take the highly visible soft-drink category as an example. It works this way. In the early days of marketing, the USP is essentially physical. It is all about the taste, the colour, the clarity of the liquid, the refreshing ability, the fizz and such other sundry product features. In mid-marketing years, the functional USPs are over-done. Every marketer in the space has used some or all of it, at different points of time. The consumer has, for the most part, tired of it all as well.

There is a degree of consumer cynicism that sets in on these functional USPs. The USP has got commoditised. Therefore, in comes the emotional USP. Here, it is all about focusing on the arena of product benefit, what the consumption of the product leads to. These benefits could again be functional or emotional. For instance, in a toothpaste, it could be whiter teeth and in a cola it could be the ability to quench thirst. Further still, the emotional USP could be about the toothpaste getting people into Close-Up situations and in the cola category, the ability of the brand to actually help people make friends. “Food, friends and Thums Up,” for instance!

The emotional USPs can descend from the sublime to the ridiculous. In such situations, brands advertise even crazy situations! Quite like the toothpaste with oxygen that was attempted! When consumers tire of the emotional USP as well, we enter the later marketing era. Here, the consumer is rather cynical of the functional and emotional USPs altogether.

The marketer notices this. In a bid to capture mindshare, he resorts to some degree of self-criticism of the category and its advertising on the whole as well. Quite like what Sprite did with its “Baaki sab bakwas, sirf Sprite bujhaye pyaas” campaign with shots of bathing in soft drink even as the dominant visual.

In even later marketing years, in comes the role of the CSR USP. Here, consumers of the category have climbed Maslowe’s hierarchy of needs and are cynical about basic product and emotional USPs of every kind; have even tired of the device of ridicule as USP. In comes CSR as USP. CSR appeals to consumers sitting atop Maslowe’s hierarchy of needs.

These are the self-actualising consumers who like to think that the product they drink is politically correct and that their contributions to the brand actually help contribute at large to the society they live in. This is vicarious Individual Social Responsibility (what I call ISR activity). Indirect social responsibility activity, even! This is quite like indirect taxation.

When you buy a product, you actually fork out a sales tax which is a form of indirect tax. This is in addition to the direct taxes you pay. This is indirect CSR. Makes you feel happy, provided you are at that state of self-actualisation. Vicarious CSR. A good tool to use in tired market categories such as cola and tea. Therefore you see a Pepsi with its water conservation campaign and Coke with its “Little drops of joy” and Tata Tea with “Jaago re!” versus plain old “Utho!”

College youth festivals seem to be attracting mega-bucks. Why? What is the rationale here?

- Monica P. Tiwari, New Delhi

Monica, college cultural and sports festivals are seen to be low-cost marketing options by some sets of corporate houses. Festivals are occasions of on-campus frenzy. Further still, apart from the actual students attending the festival, there is some degree of media coverage that helps brands in the overall context.

Brands are willing to invest money for one other reason. Youngsters on campus are at a reasonably impressionable age. Catch them young is certainly the principle here. One other reason as well: The alma mater influence. Most monies that come in as sponsorship come in from senior managers and CEOs within brand organisations who are alumni as well.

There is a benign contribution angle too. Festivals are, on the whole, positive occasions when a lot of upbeat consumer sentiment can be harvested to the benefit of the brand. Irrationality rules high during festivals, and the marketer loves to harvest irrationality.

A lot of money moves into festival marketing of the Ganesh Utsav and Puja kind in the country. Dandiya attracts a sizeable amount of money as well. The college festival is another such festive avenue.

Do the logos of private sector banks stand out more than those of public sector banks? If so why?

- Pavithra Ramana, Chennai

Pavithra, not always true.

This is true largely in the bigger cities of India. In the smaller towns, and we have plenty of these in our country, the traditional old logos of public sector banks still hold water. Public sector banks are still respected by the bulk of the country.

The keyhole of an SBI, and the icon of Vijaya Bank, and the memory of the Pygmy collector of Syndicate Bank are still fresh in the minds of people who stay in what I call real India. Virtual India lives in the bigger cities. This part of India is more besotted with the big names like a Citi and a Stanchart.

And even in the big cities, there are a host of people who read the fine print of the banking sector carefully and still appreciate the value-for-money services afforded by the public sector banks in the country.

More Stories on : Strategy | Society & Development | Ask Harish Bijoor

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Being responsible vicariously

Disconnected in a connected world

Playing its cards right

The Haier order

The inside story

Horse sense can only come by walking the markets