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Two of the largest telecom companies moved their creative agency.

Airtel moves from Rediffusion to JWT

Reliance moves to Grey

Is there a signal? Some observations:

Problem 1: Both brands have not had a great ‘last few campaigns’. Personally, I think it is because Airtel & Reliance have been trying to say too many things and somewhere down the line, barring the signature tune, there was nothing that connected the many communication pieces that was coming out of these behemoths.

Airtel had a campaign with SRK based on his life story and how he is connected with his friends. Loosely made TV based campaign, which was doing nothing to the brand. Their earlier messages were clear and crisp in terms of communicating the brand objectives / values to the consumer. The SRK commercial didn’t connect well.

Reliance on the other hand brought in Hrithik. I am still unable to make sense out of the TVCs made by Reliance using Hrithik. This proved to be a classic case of lazy communication by bringing in a celebrity. The opening up of the GSM platform for Reliance was a tremendous opportunity, which I think was not utilized properly by the brand team.

Problem 2:  The relationships have either gone sour between the agency and the marketers. With Airtel, the relationship is since inception of the brand. This kind of long relationship would obviously bring some moments where one takes another for granted. It could be from the client’s side or the agency’s side. Either ways, the relationship would obviously suffer. Having been the agency since the beginning is a tremendous advantage for Rediffusion, but alas, it is not meant to continue.

With Reliance the account was with Mudra for a long time (again since inception if I am right) although the brand seems to have flirted with Cartwheel for a short while. But it is better for them to settle down with an agency properly with a long term view else the sufferer will be the brand.

Familiarity breeds contempt seems to have happened in either cases.

Problem 3: I also believe that there has been a churn at the client’s end in both these cases. Chandru alias Chandrasekhar of Airtel quit the telco very recently. And there is very little clarity (at least in media) about the person who has taken over the mandate.

Reliance marketing team also seems to have gone through a churn. I know for a fact that they are in the process of getting their marketing head on board. Internally there has been a churn which seems to have ailed these brands.

Problem 4: Intense competition. Tata Docomo, Idea, Uninor, Videocon, Virgin and many more have started digging deep into their pockets to start communicating. New regulations including Number Portability is not helping the cause and is building immense pressure on all the brands to maintain market share.

Problem 5: Highly fragmented customers. Starting from a Rs.10/- recharge to a VAS customer with an average billing of about INR4000-5000 per month makes it difficult to maintain the consistency. Also, both these brands have tried to communicate more than one message at the same time. Typically the brand ambassadors or the messaging style / guideline for each message is very different thus creating dichotomy. On the other hand, though the brand communicates different kinds of services Vodafone has at least managed to create a property which could be milked for 3 years in a row. And all their messages followed the same route, thus bringing in some consistency with respect to the different kind of customers and the kind of messages sent across.

I sincerely hope that both these brands will correct themselves on these parameters and many more that I may have left out. It is important to get the act right here because continuous errors on this front will expedite the brand’s demise. I wouldn’t want to see either of these brands in the twilight zone. Probably the change of guard is just the first result of a wake-up call.

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I am just unable to think of any advertisements apart from milk products from Aavin or Amul, uniforms by S Kumars or shoes by Bata. Maybe there were more, but can’t think of any more. Even Horlicks and Complan used to advertise to the mother with the message being good health for children.

Somewhere down the line the ‘line’ actually disappeared. Today every product can be targeted at children and they are!

I believe that it started with the retail revolution. We all would have seen the following even unfold in front of our eyes some time or the other.

Dad, mom and a young kid of about 4 to 5 years old visit the supermarket for buying provisions for the month. Generally kids are very inquisitive. But today’s kids are even more because the parents are genuinely unable to spend too much time with the child since both work! The little brat who is in control of neither parent runs around the store and pulls the store down for the big bar of chocolate. He is seen running away from the clutches of the mother and making enough noise to attract the attention of the fellow shoppers and the store attendants. Embarrassed, the mom hands him the chocolate from the counter just to keep the brat quiet.

What the parent calls ‘embarrassment’ is euphemistically referred to by the marketer as ‘Pester Power’.

Recently seven marketing companies (Hindustan Unilever, Coca-Cola India Inc, General Mills India, Kellogg India, Nestle India, Mars International India and PepsiCo India Holdings) have taken a conscious decision to promote a healthy and active lifestyle for children. Cadbury’s India has also committed to join the gang soon. These marketers have gone forward in signing a self regulation in which the main commitment is to not advertise any food and beverage products to children under the age of 12.

It is common sense that advertising unhealthy food products purely on its taste unmindful of the harmful effects that it may have on the child during its later years is not done. For instance excessive chocolate with high caffeine content results in an unhealthy child. So does that change the way these products get consumed going forward?

Children will be children and will continue to be adamant. They will still fight for that chocolate, but by not advertising such products during programmes targeted at children, one would expect that the kid wouldn’t know of it. So far so good! It is true that today’s children have much more opportunities to learn about a lot of things which we as children wouldn’t have heard about. Internet for instance, is a wealthy resource for children to learn anything under the sun.

So is this regulation going to change the world? Maybe not! But I am sure it is a step in the right direction. Few points that come to my mind:

For Kids & Parents

• By not exposing kids below the age of 12 (at least by these seven marketers) to advertising which doesn’t cater to them, it would help in reducing their role as ‘influencers’ in unrelated categories.
• I know of children who would ask for products where the advertisement is more appealing to them, irrespective of their worth. By stopping exposure of such ads to these children, we may reduce these instances
• The ads may not target the children, but even exposure otherwise can be harmful. For instance, it is very unhealthy for kids to get used to soda / Pepsi / Coke. But featuring children in these ads and exposing children to these products at young age would mean lack of health during later years. This may go down in numbers now.

For Marketers

• Products like ‘Happy Meal’ by McDonalds targeted at children may have to stop. However, McDonalds is yet to sign any such self-regulation.
• I am wondering what some product categories like Toothpastes for instance will do. They may have to change some product lines, some brand extensions may go out of the window, and a whole lot of advertising will change.
• Will this force (on a moral front) other marketers to do get into a self regulation? I am just being a devil’s advocate here. These marketers have done all they could to spoil the health of the kid and are now professing self-regulation. At one end it does sound like the USA imposing emission control on countries like India & China.

In any case, pester power may lose its power but will continue to stay.

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To begin with… watch the ad. Then you will know the reason for my first statement.

Here’s what I think about the TVC.

Simple thought which has been executed with absolute finesse. The TVC has humor in abundance and leaves you with a smile if not a laughter. And in the process the TVC’s take away is very simple. Anchor Toothpaste keeps your dental combination strong. Period!

The casting is awesome. Though I don’t know if the couple look good together. I mean, I am not sure if they look cute as a couple etc. But they are brilliant actors. And the guy is just amazing. The tinkling smile even when he is walking towards a grave danger – which is expressed beautifully by the wife – is just damn funny.

The TVC is a creative exaggeration to show the strength that the product gives to your teeth.

Just a look back on what could have happened behind the scene!

Afaqs state that the brief for the campaign was:

Anchor provides consumers with a relatable benefit, namely the proposition that one’s life is a whole lot more convenient and enjoyable, if one’s teeth are taken care of. Evidently, it emphasises the benefits of having good teeth in the context of one’s overall life.

I am sure the discussions between Marketing & the Agency would have revolved around humor as a tool. While the brand has dabbled many other platforms viz., targeting kids, 100% vegetarian and even celebrity endorsement (Kajol, again targeting kids), this time they have decided to ‘grow up’. They claim that their TG is ‘the family’.

In any case, the discussions could have been based on the following factors:

TG: The family (OKAY… This is plagiarism! )
Product: A dental care toothpaste for the entire family
USP: 100% vegetarian
Take away: Anchor Toothpaste gives you strong teeth that it can help you bite into anything without getting hurt. (Sounds very familiar? I have seen a Vicco Vajradanti TVC conveying the same message but in a boring fashion. If you don’t trust me, go to the nearest multiplex. They all play the Vicco Vajradanti ads still… Yes. The same old ones).
Creative thought: The tagline for the campaign is ‘Daant fit toh life fit’.
Potential route: Humor.

Though the pointers above do not constitute the brief for the campaign, I have attempted to just understand the thought process behind the storyline. While many tooth pastes have claimed to result in strong teeth (and many will continue to), it is the story telling that has made the difference thus bringing some kind of freshness to this category.

The TVC shows a good looking new wife trying to get to the man’s heart through his stomach. Another cliché, of the woman of the house trying to woo the man and shows the dependence that she carries with her always. The man – the typical tired hardworking gent who gets back to the house to be with his wife. Importance of family – another cliché. But what makes it memorable is the coming together of all these clichés to make a unforgettable story and that’s where they have scored.

The creative agency is Ogilvy. And they have done what they have done almost for every large and successful brand. They are the specialists of stating the obvious! Some examples: Fevicol Sticks, Sumo is large etc. They have stuck to the formula and have come out tops with a very memorable campaign. The creative mind behind this is Abhijit Avasthi. Mr. Avasthi is walking his predecessor’s footsteps and walking well. Good on you mate! And good one Ogilvy.

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“Nope! I have heard it all the time. Twitter is not just online anymore. I get to read tweets from celebrities on every newspaper”, my boss said looking at me without raising his head.

“Yeah! Almost all newspapers have a twitter beat now”, I said with total abandon. Half the newspapers waste environment by printing SRK’s tweets without realizing that almost all of their readers have already read them online.

“So what is it? How does it work? I am feeling archaic about this Social Networking thingy!” said my boss, now lifting his face.

It was a difficult and awkward moment in one. Probably he was genuinely interested. Or he just wanted to humor me and understand how I work. But none the less, I took the bait.

The discussion started with me trying to explain to him why it was important for our brand to go online and ensure that we ‘listen’ to our customers. I even shared with him a print-out (fml – If you don’t understand what it means, click here of the article by Rameet Arora on Afaqs!

“So, Twitter & Facebook are social networking sites. They are not alone. There are more like Orkut, myspace etc. You can create your profile and get connected with your friends through these sites.”

“How does it help me? I am anyway connected with them otherwise!”

“But boss, your status update or comment will reach all of them at the same time – provided they are also online. You can comment about almost anything under the sun. And that’s where the importance of brands being online comes in.”

“How?”

“See, I will just give you an example. Hippo – a snack food brand from Parle Foods decided to get information about stores where the snack is not available so that they can fill the shelves immediately. They used Twitter as the medium to get the info and went online to commit that they will fill the shelves of all stores where people claim that Hippo wasn’t available. They started receiving responses from people across the country – from more than 25 cities. Hippo got this information free of cost. They outsourced the demand gauging exercise to the customer itself. They crowdsourced it.”

“What? All this online?”

I was just getting excited. Totally warmed up!

“Yeah boss! There are enough cases on how we can use online platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube to further the cause of the brand.”

“How?”

“Twitter for instance is a medium where you air your thoughts within 140 characters, but Facebook, Orkut or Myspace doesn’t have such a restriction and also works differently. You can create fan pages on Facebook to provide and receive information. It has now become a two way communication model. Gone are the days when you just made a creative, carpet bombed it and waited for the best results. We are fast moving towards a period where you will make a product, put it up in the market and get the result of customer acceptance by the next day, if not the same evening. Hippo is just one such case.”

“Wow! Show me a plan on social media. And I like this piece about ‘listening’ to the customer. What did you say is your twitter username?”

“err… Sir…”

There goes my only source for venting! My boss-bashing on Twitter stops with immediate effect!

Note: This is an attempt to use a different format to put my thoughts across. After all, this is a writing attempt and it is only fair that I try different styles. Comments would be very welcome! Note: psst… I generally don’t boss-bash on Twitter. I have other vents

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Earlier this year, there was an announcement that Bajaj Auto would be ‘retiring’ the famed Scooter. Many our age would remember that the scooter was once a prized possession and people would wait for even 6 months after paying the entire amount upfront to get their own. And they were not allowed to choose the colour of their scooters. That of course was the pre-liberalization era. Around the 90s the scooter volumes dipped with the Indian consumer taking to motorcycles (read bikes) like fish to water. And the liberalization era meant pushing to consumer to consume more than (s)he can afford today. We started living today with tomorrow’s money and bikes were a better buy than a scooter which had to be tilted at a particular angle to start sometimes.

There was an article yesterday in afaqs about the Bajaj brand name being dropped from their new-age bikes. It looks like Pulsar and Discover will be the ‘platforms’ on which bikes will be sold from the Bajaj Stable. It looks like the brand name Bajaj will soon become history at least with respect to the two wheelers category.

Little has been discussed as to what they will do to the other brands / products with the Bajaj brand. Their 3-wheeler brand will probably stay as is and so will all the other products. But for now, let us stay with the two wheelers. Do I agree? What could be the pros and cons as Ted Mosby of HIMYM puts it? Just that I am using the computer as against a yellow legal pad that Ted prefers!

What I like?

1. The argument of each brand having its own promise and a target audience is valid. A Pulsar buyer that way is clearly differentiated from a Discover consumer. A quick look at the article in afaqs will show the actual differentiation too – to a large extent. By having such a clear distinction and with features in these products catering to these distinct individuals, Bajaj would have a winner.
2. One brand’s failure will not affect another. For some strange reason if Discover fails, but people continue to like Pulsar, then the negative rub-off from one will not affect another.
3. Bajaj Auto will cease to be two-wheeler makers any more. They will become two-wheeler marketers and brand owners. This is a larger role since the core focus of the corporate office will be the consumer. This way the chances of finding the needs from the consumer would be relatively high rather than guessing from inside.
4. Advertising and communication gets more targeted (location and TG). Even as I was writing this, I figured that I have been exposed to more Pulsar ads than Discover. Their media team seems to be working it right. This is no means to say that I am irreverent, arrogant etc, which Pulsar is supposed to stand for. But I figure that Discover is more the ‘commuting’ solution and hence would be targeted more in Tier 2 & 3 cities and towns. Thus conveniently keeps away from any excessive spillage.
5. Accounting and accountability will become easier with this clear distinction. By having this distinction, it would be like having separate brand managers for each brand who would be accountable for their category. Such categorization will help in having a clear business plan for each product category and will also help in operational efficiencies with a bit of coordination. The factories can work on a clear forecast from each brand owner and hence planning towards better cost and operation efficient workflow can be easier.

What I don’t like?

1. Flip side of point 2 amongst what I like: One’s success will not help another. There is always some goodwill that one brand from a stable that gets carried over to another. There is also a possibility of migration of the consumer from one category to another. This distinction may not help in such migration unless there is a semblance of both brands belonging to the same stable.
2. Legacy of the Bajaj brand will be lost at least with Auto business. No need to add more to this point!
3. This distinction may create various niches which may be difficult to manage in the long run.

But in all, I think the new management team at Bajaj Auto is willing to experiment and stick their necks out by trying new things. This is a commendable effort since the old economy companies were not known for such harsh but required kind of decision making.

Verdict – I support!

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Showing competition is always a relative issue. Unless there is a clear demarcation on why a product is better than another or issued in ‘public interest’ (rather than in the interest of ‘RIN users’), I believe that this kind of brazen communication will only do damage. Almost all cars have done comparisons if not ATL at least on brochures and other BTL campaigns. Almost all financial services do the same. But to take it on national television over a long weekend with a hefty budget is actually stepping over the line. If Darryl Harper was around, he would have ‘no-balled’ RIN out of the playing field.

Comparative advertising has always remained and always will. Leaving professionalism aside, the brand manager’s job is also to find out (almost predict) whether the communication would result in a positive outcome or otherwise.

Not that I am a consumer of the category, but I am yet to figure out who will grow taller – a Horlicks kid OR a Complan Boy. Frankly, I believe in neither now. What happened in the detergents category is yet another saga of Tu Tu Mein Mein.

Having said that, living in these times leaves you with the strange feeling that this could be one more of these publicity stunts. Pretty much like the Shiv Sena Vs SRK types. However, to actually believe that this could be a collusion between HUL and P&G is asking for too much. Do you believe so?

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I witnessed the chopper flying over the (maxi)Mumbai city with a HUGE (I really mean it kind of huge) banner of the Volkswagen (pronounced Folks Wagon) Beetle. Cute car! Meant to be a small car! Big pricing! And a BIG banner! It was a pleasant surprise when a few colleagues yelled out to me just to show this banner carrying chopper!

I took some pictures and also tweeted about it. Here’s proof:

Tweets on VW Beetle

Since the above is a print screen image, you can access the pictures I took from here. I wanted to write about it the same day and become the ‘first person’ to break this news to the blogosphere, but work kept me away. What could have been a coup of sorts for this very rare occurance in India, was broken by traditional online magazines. Read here.

Though this may be a small event, I believe that there are some lessons from this incident:

1. Waiting for the right moment most of the times don’t work. I have experienced this many times with clients belaboring for the ‘best’ output, while the competition is having a field day killing the very ideas that we had carefully hidden till then!
2. This is a slightly controversial lesson. But lesson none-the-less. “Quality is a mind thing“. What we believe is sub-standard quality may be good enough for the receiver of the communication. Just take any of the family planning communication by the Government for instance. The quality of the production is actually abysmal. But the target audience would certainly be able to relate to it. No point in adding jazz when the user is not expecting it!
3. Quick decision making: Many times we may not have all the inputs that are required to take a decision. But as professionals, it is important to exercise our judgement and ensure quick decision and availability in the market. This is a problem which many PSUs and large process-oriented organisations suffer from. HLL vs P&G is a classic example. However, that would require a separate post for itself.
4. Once a decision is taken, it is important to stick to it. I could have posted the article and reached the market using Twitter, Facebook and other such social media. But I didn’t. Well, the blog post has now taken a differnt angle and is not a coup anymore

Some of these may sound very generic, but I believe that these are lessons which are very relevant for most Marketing Professionals. And these are skills that are not available in many Marketing Professionals too.

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