Societal crossroads with the lens of advertising

In my readings yesterday, I came across two points. First a tweet by Shabana Azmi, being critical of recent Vodafone advertising and second an article on Americanisation of India in New York times opinions. And it set off a chain of thoughts. Culturally, where is our society heading? Is it in the direction that we want it to? And, what is the role of advertising in relation to the society and the changes. I am tempted to say that one’s reality is often determined by one’s perception. Does advertising shape one’s perception, and therefore his or her reality, or is one’s perception simply integrating advertising messages into his or her “own” reality? Eventually advertising is having little or no effect on persuading the viewer?

Is advertising a reflection of society? Some say that advertising does not sell but increases awareness and encourages trial. The idea that advertising somehow forces people to buy things they don’t need is doubtful. Therefore, a good advertiser knows the target audience well, including their hopes, desires and values. Advertisers find their target audience and use their existing perceptions that shape their reality to tailor an advertisement for them. Advertising not only reflects what a society is, but often what it desires to be.

Two recent ads and societal changes: In this context of advertising and social changes I used two ads as mirrors. These ads are a sharp contrast to each other and effectively showcase how the Indian society is at crossroads. How we are traditional to the extent of being parochial and at the same time getting “Americanised”. This leads to an entire generation being continuously torn with these contrasts.

1. Communitymatrimony.com: Have a look:

Are you saying, “parochial”? Wait!! Doesn’t this commercial reflect the reality of our society. Isnt community the strongest reason to fix marriages? To criticise this ad is to turn a blind eye to the time warp that the Indian society is caught into. The advertiser is merely recognising the social issue and capitalising on the same to sell his services. Brilliant. Caste equations are so important even for the politics that the development agenda takes a back seat. Even the National or Right wing parties in our country are playing this game. Honour killings are the reality in our society. A lot of soaps on TV unabashedly portray the caste issues with no qualms.

2. Vodafone: Have a look at the commercial

What is your first reaction? Cute? In this case also, I believe, your first reaction is possibly not the right one. Do you have a ten year old kid? If yes, you would be worried. This commercial is picking up the trend of growing fondness between kids of different sexes at an early age. Is it only picking the trend or going beyond to even encouraging the trend as a “cool thing”? Quite akin to the Americanisation of India kind of stories? Is the commercial doing its job of picking up the societal trend and making the brand endearing. Quite truthfully, the answer to this question is a resounding, “Yes”.

To be at the cross roads is not only the prerogative of an individual, it is also the natural right of a society. The Indian society, with its varied shades of cultural contours, civilization, colours, beliefs, faith, cannot remain immune to the influences that are either indigenous or imported. Earlier, the march of events and their impact on the Indian psyche was slow, but with globalization, satellite television and internet, the changes in the Indian society are highly perceptible.

There are two issue here:

Firstly - what does this mean for us? All of us who were born in the shortage economy as the “middle class” and have been part of liberalisation moving towards, “upper class”! We don’t understand how to deal with this dichotomy because we are alien to both the situations portrayed in these ads. We want India to progress and therefore move beyond the caste issues but cannot fathom pre-teen romance. It is not just me but a large section of urban society at crossroads.

Secondly - as an “ethical” advertiser it hurts to see the commercial “exploitation” of such societal nuances. As members of any society, we know culture and values are matters of identity of a race and civilization and not matters of commerce. As the advertising is based on societal truth and the trends the advertiser is well within his rights to rubbish my thoughts.

For argument sake, the social changes relating to castes may not happen till the time politicians continue to stoke the fire of the community vote bank. And meanwhile should we be expecting the advertiser to behave more responsibly and shun such “insights” into delivering business building advertising? Such calls need to be taken by an individual only!

Please do post your reactions below this blog. You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter

How to kill the Golden hen - the BCCI way

Writing his piece has been on my mind for a long time. I decided to finally pen it after I read this news item

“India to face South Africa in T20”

This is a one-off T20 match to be played on 30th March which is squeezed right in between the Asia cup and the IPL. Why should this match be played? To pay a tribute to a great player, Kallis. Is this a valid enough reason? I think, the real reason is GREED. I am sure you would have read the story of the man who killed the hen to get all the golden eggs in one day. Isn’t BCCI doing the same? Systematically killing the hen that lays golden eggs. Would Cricket go the way Indian hockey went. One because of greed and one because of inept administration.

Sample the stats:

Matches by Country in 2011
	Tests	ODI	T20	Intl cricket days
India	12	34	4	98
Sri Lanka	11	28	4	87
Pakistan	10	32	5	87
West Indies	10	28	5	83
Australia	9	25	6	76
England	8	30	7	77
Bangladesh	5	20	2	47
New Zealand	5	17	2	44
South Africa	5	15	3	43
Zimbabwe	3	17	4	36

So, India played 10-20 days of extra international cricket compared to other countries during the last year. This is without counting IPL and CL which were also played in India with capacity crowd. So, what is the outcome of all of this? Falling crowds at the venues in India for even ODIs and that too against England. A series which was billed as the “revenge series”! Hello, am I dreaming or what? We got more crowd in our stadia than Pak-England test series in Dubai. Srinivasan was quick to correct me. I stand corrected, SIR!

What else is the outcome? We have no time to play side games when we go on tough tours to countries like England and Australia. So, our players don’t get acclimatised and get humped 4-0 two times in a row. The viewership drops. So, is the BCCI going to make more money?

Enough has been said about the overloaded schedule, so let it be! Besides all this is the neglect for building the pipeline for future. Rohit was not played in test matches despite being down 3-0. Manoj Tiwari not being played in the tri-series. We are just basking in the glory of one superb innings from Virat (who incidentally is taking on from his mentor Mr Mallaya on the arrogance bit). Take a little quiz:

Q: Why is Sachin playing in Asia cup?

1. to complete 100th 100!

2. prepare for IPL!

3. Bangladesh has good family vacation spots!

This quiz tells us the state of affairs at the BCCI. And the chairman of selection committee flairs up when asked about Sehwag’s absence from the tourney.

But Guys IPL V is back. And things will be in shape. Didn’t I say that in my blog last year “looking forward to IPL 5”. The BCCI arrogance will make sure that IPL 5 will fail and that too miserably. With economy slowing down there are already signs of sponsor withdrawal. IPL 4 doing badly was accurately predicted by me last year!

Am I not a good businessman? Am I missing the larger picture somewhere? The satraps at BCCI can’t be such idiots not to be able to analyse what I am doing. Just less than a year back we won the World cup and the cricket team was the toast of the nation.

That exactly is my point. We can’t be moving from peaks to troughs so quickly. I guess it is about the short term vs the long term. I am a long term player! So I am happy with one golden egg a day and will not kill the hen for more.

My Story - Yuvraj Singh.

(This is the author’s work of fiction and has no claim of being spoken to or being written on behalf of Yuvraj. As this is pure fiction, author apologises for any factual errors that may be there.)

Dear Readers,

I have been wanting to write this letter to all of you ever since the controversy broke out relating to my sponsors Birla Sunlife. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has a point of view on advertising, celebrity and cricket even if they don’t understand any of them. This is a great conversation topic over cocktail and coffee vending machine in the office. All the moral gurus and the pundits can debate for hours. But has someone really thought about me or my point of view?

After we won the Cricket World Cup the whole country was rejoicing and I was the toast of the nation as the “player of the tournament”. I was rejoicing as well because I was getting extra attention from the fairer sex and you know my love life has not been the best. But the bigger reason is because I started counting the dollars for all the endorsement deals that I was hoping for at some astronomical prices. I was in no hurry to sign these deals as my agents advised that I need to be slow to ensure that I get the best deals possible.

All of a sudden, I got some bad news on my health front. I had to skip some tournaments citing health reasons. As I was not playing, the line of potential sponsors started to thin and eventually disappear. All the dollars that I had started counting were just not there. One of the “health capsule” brand even stopped talking to me. Maybe rightly so! Don’t I need money guys? Then comes the insurance company. They have been running this commercial talking about the “uncertainties of life”. They were picking up my expenses as part of insurance besides paying my endorsement fee. I felt more and more convinced about the benefits of insurance. Insurance is not for savings but for bad times like these. Most of us believe that bad things happen to others and not us. I offered them to dub a line which will make the message clearer and stronger. That is the truth and the real truth.

I just don’t understand what is this hullabaloo about? Isn’t our country grossly underinsured? Aren’t there a a few social messages being run on benefits of insurance. Do you want to see meaningless commercials with Sachin talking about child education and insurance. Or you want to understand the real story of me getting benefitted through insurance. You decide real story or a happy go lucky one? But for God’s sake, I am an educated adult and I am not getting exploited. Now go discuss Rahul and Akhilesh over cocktails. But only after you have called in your insurance agent.

Sd/

(Yuvraj Singh)

The real author of this letter is a passionate marketing person and an insurance evangelist known by the name Sanjeev Agrawal. Your comments are welcome on Twitter, Linkedin or facebook. If you have the details email or bbm is as good as it can get.

What’s this Lallantop, ji?

This word lallantop is just not leaving my head. I am getting confused like hell. After studying all my life in Hindi heartland (Kaashi Hindu Vishwavidyala aka BHU was the icing on the cake) I thought I was an expert on all Hindi slang including the ones they use in the parliament. But alas this is not to be. When confused, who do you turn to these days (not God). Google. In both Hindi and English, Google was of no help at all. And when Google refused to help, I decided to share my frustration with you all this blog which goes beyond randomness.

So, for all of you who don’t watch enough of idiot box the word lallantop entered my lexicon thru an ad of a product called body warmer. I have not been able to understand this word and the ad either. Someone rightly tweeted, “I think admen have much higher IQ as I don’t understand what they want to communicate.” The ad is somewhat like this. There is a sick old man on the bed. Some people are rushing to his room. They come in and very apologetically want to do something evil. They take his wooden bed outside and burn it to keep themselves warm for the night. If they had this brand of body warmer then they wouldn’t need to burn wood and that is the lallantop idea! Pardon me for simplifying the ad. I couldn’t find the link for the ad on youtube, else I would have posted it.

It seems that I am not the target audience for body warmer as I live in Mumbai which is hotter in December than in Monsoon. Does that mean people in North (the brand’s TG) have a better sense of humour or higher IQ than me? What say you?

Maybe I am being hyper about some mass humour. Maybe I have become too much of a lifestyle person. Just because I don’t find the product being the hero I should not be critical of advertising. This is old school thinking. The grey in my hair is a problem. If the grey were to be cells instead of hair I think I would have been better off.

So, should we be against humour in advertising? Though most marketing guys, like me don’t like humour. If I don’t have a sense of humour, I believe people like me are in majority. So, you can rule out my entire ilk from your target audience. And like beauty humour lies in the “eye” of the beholder. So everyone doesn’t understand the joke in the same spirit. There are quite a few recent examples of advertising which beat my senses hollow. Have you seen one for a website where a teenager’s father is spewing cash and walking around like a zombie whilst the teenager is happily shopping? Or the one where a certain Nawab (star) wins a race easily because he is wearing the innerwear of the advertised brand. Or he finds the murderer due to the same reason.

I am not convinced that these ads build business. Even if they cut thru the clutter and are interesting. They can get you the awareness, but interest leading to desire and finally action are serious question marks. And they will be questions as the brand benefit is not even remotely clear. The link between the brand benefit and the advertised situation is tenuous, if any. Often, the advertiser and the adman are excited about the idea because they love the idea and not the consumer.

There are exceptions and exceptions prove the rule. Fevicol is one such brand where the situations are humorous but the brand and the brand benefit is central to the advertising. Or is it that they are not necessarily funny ads but just bring a smile to your face.

Nonetheless, it is still worthy to say can we have more of Fevicol kind of advertising.

Meanwhile, just sing-along with me, “what’s this Lallantop, ji....................”

You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter

Diwali and Pavlovian theory

Diwali is the biggest festival for most part of India. Do we really celebrate Diwali with as much gusto as the western part of the hemisphere? it is only 5 weeks to go for Diwali and I see only 2 ads that have Diwali orientation? Are we working on firing the consumption engine? Are we doing enough as marketers?

I decided to refer to a gentleman known as Ivan Pavlov. He has done some good work in relation to psychology and conditioning. He used another mammal (dog) to develop his theories. I am saying that all mammals are the same.

What did Mr. Pavlov do (or say)? The typical procedure for inducing classical conditioning involves presentations of a neutral stimulus along with a stimulus of some significance, the "unconditional stimulus." The neutral stimulus could be any event that does not result in an overt behavioral response from the organism under investigation. Conversely, presentation of the significant stimulus necessarily evokes an innate, often reflexive, response. Pavlov called these the unconditional stimulus (US) and unconditional response (UR), respectively. If the neutral stimulus is presented along with the unconditional stimulus, it would become a conditional stimulus (CS). Pavlov used the term conditional because he wanted to emphasize that learning required a dependent or conditional relationship between CS and US. If the CS and US always occur together and never alone, this perfect dependent relationship or pairing, causes the two stimuli to become associated and the organism produces a behavioral response to the CS. Pavlov called this the conditional response (CR).

Let me now try and translate this complex theory from Mr. Pavlov into simple marketing concept. The customers (or consumers) go and shop when Diwali is around, which is unconditional response (UR). However, we want them to shop early. Which is conditional response (CR) we want to generate. When do our customers begin to shop? When the Diwali date is nearby. Could be 2-3 weeks from the date of Diwali. So, the conditional stimulus (CS) is provided by the calendar in this case. Question is how do we provide the unconditional stimulus (US)? Diwali is associated with crackers and lights. Wouldn’t the customers start believing that Diwali is around the corner when the lights are lit and crackers start firing? So, can we marketers do that? In any case most of our Diwali advertising campaigns show lights and crackers. Just that if we all started our advertising campaign 2 weeks before last year with lights and crackers (US), the customers will start believing that Diwali is around the corner and rush to shop!!

A Pavlovian response or too simplistic and naive theory on my part? Will wait for your feedback. To help the cause, in my housing society I have suggested that the Diwali lights should be up by 1st October. Will you also light up your house early and signal Diwali?

At the same time do remember that the media clutter goes up when you are closer to Diwali. So, aren’t you better off beating the clutter by advertising earlier and getting a larger share of mind (or shall I say heart)?

Next time you plan your campaign think, “Diwali aa rahi hai”!

Shubh Diwali

You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter