How about adding some colour to tyres?

All of a sudden there is renewed energy in tyre advertising. Why? What are the challenges here?

- Mark Pinto, Mumbai

Mark, tyres are a tiring category for the advertiser, the marketer and the consumer at large. There is not too much you can say. And everything that needs to be said has been said by someone or the other. Tyres are also not a sexy category, even though some advertisers have tried to drape one over a sexy model even, to make it forcefully sexy. Tyres are boring. Tyres are just too functional a category to be brought into everyday conversation. Everyone takes their tyres for granted, really.

And that, possibly, is the opportunity at hand. Just don't take your tyres for granted. The advertising opportunity is, therefore, safety-led. The monsoon with wet roads is possibly a big opportunity that advertisers have always exploited. MRF used to predict the date of the monsoon break in ‘ amchi ’ Mumbai through its hoardings. Others have even used the outdoor medium of the billboards to suspend rafts and more, to sell the language of heavy rains and the need for good tyres to ride on.

The challenge really lies in the fact that we are a country that believes in extracting ultimate value from our tyres. A country that believes in re-treading tyres to death and beyond is also a challenge for the industry at large. Indians do not replace tyres as often as Westerners do. There is a strong correlation between the way we stay married to our tyres and the way we stay married itself!

In such an environment the category requires product USPs to sell itself. Quality, grip, longevity and safety of tyres are properties beaten to death. What one needs in this category for now is colour. Why should a tyre be black all the while? Where are the yellow tyres for the young, and the pink tyres for the woman on the go? And what about eco-friendly tyres? It's time for the new product to happen and storm the imagination of the Indian on the roads.

With Cannes just completed, let me ask the simple question: What’s in an advertising award? Why all the clamour?

- Aditi Khanna, New Delhi

Aditi, you are so right. From a client’s perspective awards mean nothing. The true-blue award that is cherished by a client is one that goes not for his advertising, but one that goes straight to her brand topline and bottomline. Sales, repeat sales, more sales and more and more sales is it. It is the ultimate reward for good advertising.

Awards do not drive businesses. Awards help shape the image of the advertising guy, the filmmaker and other attendant folk. But that's it. That's where it stops! And that's where it must stop as well. We must not read too deep into the awards mindset of some agencies and their very creative folk.

Yes, at times when a client is making a decision to hire an agency, it does matter. This is where it counts. Good advertising executions are always appreciated. I, however, do believe that there is much more to advertising than mere good execution.

The strategy behind the execution is that much more important. I wish there were more awards that focused on strategy rather than the creative output.

Is CSR wolf in sheep’s clothing?

- Malathi D. Menon, Hyderabad

Malathi, how much more crisp could a question get? Nice one!

From a brand perspective, I think, one should build umbilical connect and links with who they are in every CSR (corporate social responsibility) activity. This will help shed wolf’s clothing as an attitude.

In CSR, be true to what lies in the DNA of your brand ethos. One should not go too far out and try to look like something else, because that would be like wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Consumers are savvy people. They look and see through everything in nanoseconds, and they will expose everything in totality, if they suspect something. One must take small steps into this.

When brands indulge in CSR activities, they should be transparent with people and share why they are doing it. They shouldn’t say, “We want to do service to society”, because no one will believe that. Instead, they should go out and say, I’m doing this for so and so reason. Transparency needs to be the first adaptation, and one can gradually deepen that transparency.

Gone are days where consumers were morons. Today, the consumer is the most intelligent entity. They need to be dealt with intelligently. At this point of time, brands take consumers’ intelligence for granted. They think that their actions are not going to be seen through. But the consumer happens to be savviest link in it all, and brands should wake up to that realisation.

(Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. askharishbijoor@gmail.com )

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