I learnt that the western world views brands very differently from the eastern world. At least till the 80s or even the 90s, the western world indulged in ‘Product Brands’. For them each product was a brand unto itself. So you would find that any related product would only be line extensions. A classic example is Gillette.

Gillette is a product brand. It is so entrenched in ‘shaving’ as a category, that it would be impossible for any human being to consider Gillette as let’s say, a shampoo. The brand just doesn’t seem to fit the bill when it moves out of Men’s Shaving Care area.

Even large business houses which are considered ‘Gods’ of Brand Building like Coke in my argument would be a single product Brand. Other products are all with a different brand name. Consider this, Mazaa, Thums Up, Sprite, Fanta, Limca, Minute Maid, Kinley, Georgia.

But as we move towards the right side of the world map, we find that brands extend beyond a category and get into every possible space of business (products or services) and have been BLOODY successful. A homegrown example is Tata.

The Tata Group is a conglomerate of about 150 companies held by Tata & Sons. The businesses vary from Steel to Software to Salt. Multiple companies operate with the same brand name and the brand gets extended within and outside the line of products that they operate in. Another recent example is Reliance. You would find that all their operations are under the same name (barring Vimal maybe).

Is culture the answer?

The Eastern philosophy of branding endeavors to ‘milk’ the brand’s value to the fullest. It stems from our culture (I presume). The eastern world is more occult and has never run behind materialistic pleasures (until the last couple of decades, maybe). We have limited needs and have never been the gluttonous consumers that the west has always been. To us, we need to get the full value of every paise spent. Thrifty that we are, we end up milking the brand to its last drop of blood.

The West is the consumer. The use & throw world. And brands are treated pretty much the same way. Gillette would spend separately for Mach II, Mach III and shaving gel because each of them is a separate brand. Each has a separate P&L account and hence spends on them would be mutually exclusive. So what if Mach II would be retired or phased out once we put 3 blades in that small space!

The west has to use and throw the brand. The value of the brand would be lost once it gets phased out for whatever reason. However controversial it may sound, I think it is very difficult for any American company to straddle a brand across product categories successfully.

I am sure there are people who think otherwise. Any views?

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My first brush with Rural Marketing was when I was working with Lintas. A colleague of mine used to handle a brand called TAFE (Tractors and Farm Equipments). And as part of the job, this guy used to travel across the country for at least 8 months in a year. His job? Conducting events across the country called Krishi Ratna. I am not sure if TAFE still does these events, but it used to be a brilliant learning experience for my colleague. And in the four months that he was back in Chennai, he used to document the whole event. I happened to learn a lot from him. It was amazing. I just want to share a small run-down on the event.

Krishi Ratna – is a farmers event which was conceived by Lintas for TAFE. The event constituted a three day fair in villages of varying sizes. The fair will have events like Tractor Race, seed sowing competition, harvesting competition etc., which would basically use all equipments manufactured by TAFE. Of course, there will be fun events like astrology, puppet show etc, which would keep the interest for other folks. To me this event was a complete rural activity which bridged the gap between the product and the consumer beautifully.

My early experiences of rural marketing and advertising used to be predominantly outdoor. Painting of walls was the first thing that people would do to promote a product or offering. This actually is a spillover from the painting of walls in cities. Political parties use this well! However, innovation in even such small activities was evident from the stable of HUL many years back.

Painting the walls was a regular affair. But the importance of community building was felt even 15 years back. HUL went around villages and connected with the village heads just to ensure that their rural connect was complete. They offered to lay tiles on the stairs leading to the village pond. The village pond is a community place and having tiles there would make the place look good and clean, hence permissions were never a problem. The only rider is the fact that the tiles will always have some HUL brand or the other featured prominently. Mostly ‘Lifebuoy’. Brilliant strategy and very workable as a rural marketing initiative.

Today, there are companies which specialize in Rural Marketing. One such example (I just stumbled upon them and do not vouch for them in any way) is RC&M. Almost every large agency worth its salt today has a Rural Marketing Division. Linterland, Ogilvy Activation, Anugrah Madison, Mart being a few known names. Starting from launching of a brand to market development, such agencies offer all kinds of marketing services. When it comes to Rural Marketing now, varied tools like digital screens, animation etc are also used. With professional script writers and film makers working on each of these projects, marketing here is a very different ball game.

These agencies work on lead generation, market expansion, sampling, research and many other activities which help promoting a product / service in the hinterlands.

I was surprised to learn that the clientele included some illustrious names like Citi, ICICI, HDFC amongst financial services. Schneider Electric – an organization which I thought would probably not bother with rural India has also conducted events and lead generation programmes. Some usual suspects include all telecom companies including Airtel, Reliance, Tata Indicom and Idea. Another key area of work for Rural Marketing companies is in creating a distribution chain. It is very possible that many firms do not possess the prowess to set up a distribution network for their products. These companies which have operated in these markets for a while, by virtue of knowing them outside in, help set up a distribution network including building a demand for the product by sampling, C&F strength and retail presence.

RMAI stands for Rural Marketing Association of India. The association offers list of events in immediate future, resources like local magicians, script writers, books and reference guides etc. They also provide training programs and offer career guidance in rural marketing initiatives. RMAI Corporate Awards 2010 incidentally would be conducted on November 26, 2010 at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. It is very impressive that they have a very resourceful site. There is a lot more to Rural Marketing than I thought and knew about before embarking on this post. Certainly, there is a lot more that one gets to learn when one attempts to write.

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But here’s taking lazy marketing and riding the celebrity (celebrities in this case) to a ‘brand’ new high! Reliance Life Insurance expects to make a song from the movie ‘3 idiots’ as the brand proposition. Read about it here.

I have great respect for Reliance as a brand and they have actually ‘bought’ brand recall amongst the average Indian consumer. Someone tweeted today and I have a screenshot here:

Don't actually take this as a threat!

Just as much as the tweet states that not watching Avatar demands execution, one can say that Reliance with all their businesses have touched almost every Indian’s life. But does that give them the authority to get lazy? I beg to differ.

How can an entire Marketing team get this lazy? This may just end up having binary results.

If the film performs at the box office… good. What if it doesn’t? Do you ride your entire organisation and its pride on the wise shoulders of Aamir Khan, Sharman Joshi (wowowow!) and Maddy boy?

What if the film fails? My views…

• Reliance Life will be forced to think of executing another set of creatives and unfortunately, ‘all may not be well’ then
• They would be forced to spend further sums of marketing Rupees behind another campaign.
• Not realising that this is around time when the average man on the road wakes up to ’save tax’, this strategy may prove to be scarily wrong. So they will have to run a parallel campaign on tax saving
• However they try to convince that this is not a promotion for the film, they should realise this and I quote myself here…

The average human being is lazy, however very intelligent. (S)He does not have the time to process your message the way you want it. Aamir, Sharman & Maddy not necessarily in that order are more liked and discussed about by them as against any ‘brand’. So, having ‘3 idiots’ as your campaign mainstay would make better promotion for the film than the brand itself.

• If this (All is well!) was a great proposition, then why wasn’t it thought of earlier? Why were we always doing this soppy, emotion stringing, tissue paper wetting commercials that claim that Insurance would take care of your family whether or not you are alive nonsense!

Ain’t we just lazy?

Disclaimer: Many years in financial services has led me to do this! I do not blog about financial services brands as a policy since I work in a financial services organisation (NOT in a Life Insurance company though!). However, this is just an exception. All views are strictly personal and does not reflect the views of my organisation / brand.

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