Team Anna and Brand Promotion

Before I start, this piece is not about corruption in India or my joining the anti-corruption crusade. Not that I am for corruption. Since I don’t have the opportunity to make money through corruption, I am against it! Never mind that…

I am talking here about Team Anna’s campaign. Since it is being termed a campaign and is seeing a ground swell of support, I like to explore it through the prism of marketing to gauge its impact and glean some learning.

The campaign, anti-corruption, is a strong product, yes. But that alone doesn’t explain its success. The marketplace of this country is littered with good products floundering and failing due to bad marketing. But Team Anna’s hasn’t and is flourishing and flowering. And therein lie a few lessons for us marketers. Simple lessons fundamental in nature but then that’s what marketing is, has been and always should be.

First, the target audience of the campaign; the single most stunning reason for its spectacular success: the middle class of India. You see, the rich of this country are few in numbers and don’t open their mouths. And the poor though large in size don’t have a voice. The middle class - the tax-paying public, the law abiding citizens of this country who have put up with this corrupt system for way too long – they represent a huge segment. Team Anna got their segmentation right. Targeting, bang on. And positioning, picture perfect!

Economics-wise, there was pent up demand among this segment and a growing need for an anti-corruption product. Team Anna provided it. The product was accepted by the target with glee and latched up with joy.

The next key is the product’s distribution strategy. Team Anna chose the perfect market to launch their product – New Delhi; in the heart of the country amidst the citadels of power; giving it ample scope to be covered by media – from New Delhi to Navi Mumbai, from Patna to Pudukottai. The product took off in its launch market, and with growing demand elsewhere, it moved seamlessly to the nooks and corners of this country. Word of mouth helped; public relations supported it; and the target audience became the product’s distribution channel as well. Putting even brands like Amway and Tupperware to shame!

As is the case with any other brand, Team Anna now just has to make sure the audience stays with the campaign. In other words, make the audience stay brand loyal. Here, promotion will play a crucial part. And that’s been impeccable so far. Not advertisements; but powerful public relations and a fantastic ground-level initiative – Team Anna’s ‘Fast unto death’. That was a masterstroke. This country supports the meek and stands behind the weak. Fasting was the equivalent of a finely-conducted marketing event or a well-orchestrated sponsorship. Team Anna’s fasting act not only got it ground-level encouragement but media-led support too. Add to it the creative collaterals like Team Anna T-shirts, caps, banners and the grand Indian flag as backdrop have all ensured the success of this promotion campaign.

With a clear STP, comprehensive 4Ps all the campaign now needs is innovative ideas to keep the flame alive. The programme needs legs, as would any brand promotion. If Team Anna could ensure that…….this campaign, apart from its resounding success, would result in something after all to this great nation.

Now, are there any other marketing lessons here? One more, among many. It’s the danger and diabolically twin-edged sword called ‘comparative advertising’. Team Anna’s chief competitor – the Congress Government – had been doing its best to make this campaign a success. By belittling them; by releasing ads against the Jan Lokpal propagated by Team Anna; by discrediting the brand and through it the product, this Government has made sure they shot themselves in the foot and given this campaign a shot in its arm. Just like Rin found out when it tried to screw Tide with comparative advertising and ended up only promoting Tide!

Now, enough of all this marketing talk. As a simple Indian, who do you think will win? This campaign? Team Anna? A strong Lokpal?

I wish it is India!

Brand India!

The world’s business press is going gaga on a success story called India; how we have grown in the last decade; how we could get to be the top 3 economies of the world soon and so on. I am proud and all that, as much as you are.

Yet, as a marketer, graciously allow me to claim so please, I was always worried about how as a nation we had a bigger problem to confront. Our economy has been largely demand-led. It’s the internal consumption economy of ours that has been driving our growth; nothing wrong with that. But for us to grow in stature and lead the world we need to grow strongly through exports and, more importantly, we need to conquer world markets with Made-in-India brands.

Put simply, we need Indian brands, in more than a few categories, rule the world. I always wondered if I would ever get to see in my lifetime, Made-in-India brands dotting the top sellers list across the world

Unfortunately, to start making world-beating brands we had to correct years of a deprived image that India has had; a third-world country with third rated facilities that had rotten and could stand up only to raise a begging bowl at the World Bank or the IMF.

Students of International Marketing would know the term, Country-of-origin effect. COE is any influence that the country of manufacture, assembly or design has on a consumer’s positive or negative perception of a product. A company competing in global markets today manufactures products worldwide; when the customer becomes aware of the country of origin, there is the possibility that the place of manufacture will affect product or brand image. Consumers tend to have stereotypes about products and countries that have been formed by experience, hearsay and myth; English tea, French perfume, Chinese silk, Italian leather, German beer, Russian vodka, Jamaican rum to name a few.

Given this, and with an image like what we had, I used to think what we should do to make Indian brands big in world markets.  I wondered how, if at all, we could rectify this image crisis.

Now, I see the seeds of change being sown; slowly yet surely. Not through an advertising campaign to change world’s view about us; not by a Public Relations initiative to rectify fallen image; but from an unexpected source. Human trafficking!

Don’t get me wrong. I am not talking about flesh fetish here as much as export of the gray kind: Indian talent and intellect!

MasterCard, Pepsi, Citibank, Reckitt Benckiser, Motorola, Deutsche Bank, Vodafone and McKinsey….Do you know all these MNCs are or were headed by Indians?

Do you know, ever since Kraft bought Cadbury’s, it has picked 21 top crew from Cadbury’s India operations and has sent them to head its different divisions across the world?

Time magazine says CEOs are India’s leading export!

And therein lays a trickle that is waiting to grow into a torrent. Indian talent is now global property. Indian intellect is leading giant corporations. Added to it our, the now clichéd, software prowess, India would begin to be seen hi-tech, talent rich and intelligence endowed. In other words, the perfect launching pad for the world to see us in a different light.

Hopefully, in the near future, just as Swiss cheese, German engineering, Japanese miniaturization….it would be time to add a new Country-of-origin effect: Indian intellect!

Now is the time for Indian manufacturers to enter categories that require intellect and talent: packaged software, publishing, education, low-cost engineering, pharmaceuticals, R&D, space exploration and the works. Now is the time to build Made-in-India brands. I know our companies will. And I also know the world will begin to accept them with glee.

I am confident, now more than ever, I will see Indian brands rule the world…in my lifetime.

And die a proud Indian!