question hour

Brewing a coffee heritage

What’s with Bengaluru and coffee?

Bengaluru

Mohita, Bengaluru has emerged as the modern coffee capital of India. If Madras (as it was called then) was to coffee what it was in the Sixties, Bengaluru is to coffee what it is today in 2016. The city has established for itself the imagery of being the coffee capital of India in terms of coffee appreciation, nudging its way into the coffee psyche of the nation at large, one precious cup at a time.

If one is to rewind, Bengaluru was the de jure coffee capital of India by the very fact that the Coffee Board of India was headquartered in Bengaluru, for a start. Incorporated in 1942, the Coffee Board became the voice of governance of this industry at large. Add to it the fact that Karnataka grows 53 per cent of the Indian coffee crop today, and the fact that Kodagu and Chikmagalur form a valuable part of Karnataka, with its political capital in Bengaluru. A frothy early reality that made Bengaluru the coffee capital of India, long before the consumption pattern of this brew changed to what it is today.

Karnataka bears a rich coffee heritage right from the days of Baba Budan, the 16th century religious man who is said to have brought coffee beans to India from Yemen. Cosmopolitan Bengaluru added allure to the British coffee planters equally, who came down to the city to entertain themselves. Bengaluru, to that extent, became a city to run to when the ennui of coffee got to them.

And today, the city boasts of the largest numbers of cafes in India. And so, Bengaluru belongs to IT as much as Bengaluru belongs to coffee. Drink to that!

Mumbai

Madhukar, I agree. Signing on is not enough. Staying alive on Twitter is important. Not enough for the new-age CEO to be online for titular Twitter’s sake. It is important to pour your heart and soul into the medium to get your social media presence going. If not, it there will be no heart or soul. The problem lies in the fact that many CEOs outsource their Twitter handle to their PR agencies or their internal corporate image-management team. My advice to the CEO: Don’t let anyone else manage your Twitter handle. Handle it yourself. Show your follies and foibles on it. Only then are you being real. The digital gen loves real people. Not Twitter handles run by your PR person, and your Facebook account managed by your ad agency.

Packaging seems to keep pace with modern times. How come brands don’t freeze packaging formats forever, as they do to brand names?

New Delhi

Rohit, that’s a very good question. Essentially, for a start, the packaging format is also a part of the key identity cues that brands issue. To that extent, it is as important as a brand name is. A Coca-Cola bottle’s shape is, therefore, a very important part of its brand identity. However, even in the case of Coke, there have been slow but sure changes in packaging format that have resulted in the contemporary Coke look of today.

Packaging is a key differentiator. If you see the trends in glass bottles, squat bottles have given way to sleeker ones. The idea is to look trim and thin. The way your packaging looks will dictate the subliminal messaging of fat and fit. Glass will remain in markets which demand visual cues that are more solid, and PET will dominate functional markets. The markets will be divided into the cosmetic and the functional. Between these two will emerge packaging that's trendy and functional, a la Paper Boat.

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