Marketers are no angels. They create problems for society as well, don’t they? If you agree, what is the biggest marketing problem ahead?

- P. P. Kapasi, Hyderabad

Kapasi gaaru , I agree with you wholeheartedly. Marketers do create problems.

From a completely personal perspective, I do believe garbage is the biggest problem of the millennium ahead. If we do not sort it now, we have a disaster ahead.

The point I make is a simple one: Do not transfer garbage from its source to any place outside a radius of 1 km. Transporting garbage is expensive. And more importantly, we in every city and town need to take responsibility for what we create. If a home produces two kilos of garbage every day, it needs to find ways to reduce its garbage generation. One of the things on my wish list is to build “garbage guilt” in every city and town dweller’s heart and hearth. We need to think before we buy. We need to think before we consume. We need to think before we generate the garbage that needs to be handled. When you outsource its disposal, one doesn't give a darn. But when you are responsible to dispose of it, you will think twice, if not thrice.

My wish list then is to see homes manage their own garbage. Wet waste into compost pits within a 1-km radius, which we will pay for ourselves, and dry waste to recycling units, again for which we need to pay.

I read an answer of yours on government-owned financial bodies advertising aggressively. I have a query about that. How do you see this space moving?

- Arindam Sinha, New Delhi

Arindam, this space is set to boom. Hitherto, government and quasi-government bodies stayed shy of too much of such effort. As consumer movements grow, and as consumer participation in the economy grows, more and more such bodies will come out and tout their wares, as much as their ethos and mission statements. SEBI will aspire to be less of an imposing abbreviation than it is today, just as an RBI will climb off the pedestal of top-down communication to a more peer-to-peer communication bit. Expect a lot of action in this space.

In most cases, financial communication has been oriented to the fine print. Financial advertising has remained oblique, and understood only by a few. This has actually made it an ambiguous niche.

The times are now, however, changing. Financial advertising has also believed that it advertises and appeals more to institutional investors rather than retail investors. The tide is, however, changing. Expect our governmental financial bodies to learn from the kind of work that private sector banks and private sector insurance majors have done in India to capture the mindshare they have.

Are big corporate brand names the future of jewellery retail in India?

- Medha Mishra, Kolkata

Medha, they need not at all be. Reliability and a big brand name that is as reliable as Tata or Reliance or Gitanjali can be created from scratch by family-owned jewellery businesses.

I do believe there are good examples in India as well. The Bangalore–based Ganjam is one, just as the Mumbai-based TBZ (Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri) is another. It is, however, important for the traditional jeweller to invest in brand-think. This is changing. Take some data on this. The old family name jeweller is coming out of the closet today, and he wants his brand present in the Indian market, in bigger ways than we have seen in the past.

Everyone with money, patience, the ability and propensity to invest and most importantly, everyone who believes in brands can be a Gitanjali or a Tanishq.

Is Indian CSR actually a subterfuge for brand building communication that is soft?

- Nandini Narayan Kumar, Chennai

Nandini, crisp question. Crisp point. Not all, but some.

This is a sad fact. CSR sadly has been perennially linked to brand building. In many ways, corporate boards have viewed CSR activities as subliminal ways of brand building. Many do not discuss this openly, as this is a politically correct subject, but the fact remains that covert and at times overt brand building seeps into CSR activities.

Most firms do believe that CSR activities provide the firm an opportunity to experiment with the soft and non-revenue-generation side of their company psyches. Most companies try to relate their CSR activities to activities that are close to the company either in terms of geography of operations, or the type of business one is in.

(Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc).

>askharishbijoor@gmail.com

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