The Hindu Business Line : The Budget as a brand

The Union Budget 2009-10 laid out on the floor of the House on the 6th of July, 2009 by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is distinct in many ways. It is one he presents after a long gap of 25 years as Finance Minister. It is a big one. It is all of Rs 10, 20,838 crore in expenditure intent. In his own words, it is a big contrast to the Rs 193 crore First Union Budget of November, 1947. One other distinction. It is also a big brand today. It has helped many people make a lot of money. The Budget is a brand.

The Budget as a brand is something one cannot ignore. Watch the 21 television news channels of every language and every avatar, and we surely cannot ignore the fact that Budget 2009-10 is a big brand in itself. Just as every election is. Just as every calamity becomes today, be it the tsunami that hit us all or be it the ‘Pink Chaddi’ campaign that was spurred on against an amused Pramod Muthalik for his activities in my quiet old Mangalore.

The brand avatar of the Budget is one that is cobbled and fashioned together by media brands at large. Just after 9/11, we saw the ‘War on Terror’ brand as dubbed by media channels. This became a brand on its own. As have many others over these long years since.

The brand is a thought. A thought that lives in our minds. The Budget in many ways is a thought that comes and goes. Comes mostly in the month of February as everyone hypes up the Budget and dies just after a month or so when everyone has stopped talking about it. To an extent this is a seasonal brand. A brand that helps bring a bit of zing to our otherwise dull and dreary business lives. Quite like Valentine’s Day. 14th February is Valentine’s Day and a fortnight later (in normal non-election years), it is Budget Day on 28th or 29th Feb.

When else does all this ‘tamasha’ happen? When else do the head honchos of every CII, every FICCI and every NASSCOM get to sit around in air-conditioned halls with branded cut-outs behind them in their power-suits commenting on the many nuances of the Budget that is just being disseminated? In front of television cameras.

This surely is brand-activation. A brand must not only be seen and heard; it must be felt. The Budget is really made alive by the horde of television news channels and indeed our many print publications. Thanks for doing this. Thanks for adding zing to an otherwise boring document. A speech that when printed in a newspaper runs across seven columns of small print over 16 big pages. At the end of the day, does the Budget matter to brands at all?

I do believe it does. The Budget is the macro facilitating environment at large. It is the policy plan that lays out what will be spent on what sector. It will also lay out the plan of action of collection. What will be collected as taxes from where? To an extent the Budget is therefore the ultimate facilitating environment that lays out the road-map for the year ahead. The road map of consumption estimates as well, which is critical to brands.

Does it create consumption? This is the one big question that every Budget needs to answer to the brand man. Particularly in these tough times when consumption is down. Though India is not going through a recession, there is what I call a cautionary recession at play in the big urban markets of our country.

Our GDP growth rates at 6.2 per cent indicate a slow-down in growth from the hey-days of 8.3-9 per cent growth. We are, however, not in a recession. Never mind that. Look keenly at the sales volumes of most companies in the realm of durables, automotives and apparel. Our urban markets are in a recession. Consumers are buying less, downgrading to cheaper brands and are definitely postponing purchases. The reason: we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. We don’t know how the next month’s pay-check is going to look like. We don’t even know if there is going to be one. A cautionary recession in urban markets then.

Is the Budget good for this? Does it answer the question on consumption increase? This Budget has been kind to some categories directly. Branded jewellery, LCD TVs, sedans. Indirectly, however, I do believe there is more. This Budget will bring whole masses of people in rural India into the consumption basket for brands in the medium term.

Look at just one scheme. Rs 39, 100 crore for NREGA. NREGA itself will bring a whole host of the rural dispossessed masses into the market for consumption. 100 days of work at Rs 100 per day is all of Rs 10, 000 in the hands of many people who had never ever seen such money. There are categories of brands that will benefit from all this in the medium term. In the short-term, much of this will go into the settling of credit taken from the local money-lender. Once that is done, it will move on to brands of liquor of every kind. It will then settle into food and drink. And finally, there will come a time when some of it will go into savings. Brands of food and drink and liquor and retail banking products will all prosper. In the medium term.

Till then, let’s wait and watch.

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

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