A BIG IDEA CALLED... DURGA PUJA!!

RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL, COLOURFUL CARNIVAL... OR A BIG, FAT PLATFORM SHOWCASING MA DURGA's BOOGEY-WOOGEY WITH MA LAKSHMI?! 4Ps B&M's CONSULTING EDITOR MONOJIT LAHIRI PROBES A SPACE WHERE THE SPIRIT OF COMMERCE KEEPS SHREWD COMPANY WITH THE CELEBRATORY SOUNDS OF CONCH SHELLS

The Big Idea has always meant different things to different people. In theory, it has been described as a “surprising solution to a marketing problem expressed in a memorable, verbal or graphic way.” It picks up power, force and momentum due to the chutzpah of its startling perspective that can alter a habit, opinion or a point of view. The big idea can originate from a variety of sources... arts, sports, politics, entertainment, popular culture, today's headlines... but the central point is its ability to communicate a clear and compelling message that enlightens and entertains even as it empowers!

What better example than the Durga Puja?!

Few events have served as a more colourful and powerful commentary on contemporary life and times reflecting popular culture in the public space, than the Pujas. At one level it represents the close bonding of the neighbourhood. At another, a wonderful expression reflecting aspirations through the prism of creative pandal decoration. In keeping with the consumerist times, however, has the Puja today become increasingly corporatised? In this setting, have brand marketers shrewdly started capitalising on religious sentiments to ensnare the Puja shopper?

Ujjal Singha – head honcho of the Kolkata-based ad agency Genesis – is spot-on with his take. “There has never been a bigger idea for mass-connect than the Pujas! It's the one time in the year when all Bengalis coime together in a spirit of joyous bonhomie celebration. The result is a gigantic captive audience, in a happy, feel-good frame of mind... carefree, loaded, adventurous, eager and willing to hit the impulse-purchase button!” says Sinha. He points to this matchless challenge-and-opportunity backdrop for all sharp brand custodians to unleash their big idea tapping into the mood and temper of this event, and turn on the receptive, bindaas audience base. Adds the smart adman, “the difference between this captive audience and others at railway stations, airports, sports stadia or concerts is essentially the state of mind. During those Puja Days, they are in a different zone.” By “different”, Sinha is referring to the fact that people have their guards down.

Executive Director of another Kolkata-based ad agency, Response, Sid Ray, adds his own spin to the table. “In the east, the trigger months kick off from July-Aug because of the oncoming festival season. The durables and FMCG companies pull out the stops to identify every possible avenue to push sales. With Pujas being a hi-throng and hi-spend space, all the tricks in the book are deployed to gain the winning edge over competition,” says Ray. From the consumer's perspective too, this is a freak out time. “Right from the Mahalaya – 10 days before the Pujas – till the immersion, the Puja scene is a thrilling blend of carnival, fashion show and food fest! The most significant factor of today's youngistan-driven Puja is that everybody wants to make a statement! So clothes and fashion leap centre-stage. Add to this a 2487 participation of media channels covering events like fashion shows, pandal decorations, entertainment, starry guests, awards for the best dressed couple etc. and you realise what a huge idea the Puja is!” adds Ray.

Purists and oldies are however shocked and disgusted at this blatant commercialisation of the Pujas. They believe that the fun-filled celebration of good times has been hi-jacked by corporations and brands distorting and monetising the spirit of this sacred occasion. Management consultant Abhinav Khanna begs to differ. “Let's face facts. The age of innocence is over and so are those simple, one-dimensional times. We live in a consumerist and consumption-specific age where any and everything – Pujas included – is consumed! It is also an age of fierce competition. In this setting, the sanctity and basic objective of any major event or happening is likely to be compromised on the altar of commercialisation... and it is here that the big idea will be challenged,” Khanna tells 4Ps B&M.

Khanna is right. Disposable incomes, aspirational levels along with a roaring double-income community has dramatically altered the consumption patterns and profile of the middle class. The simple living, in-denial mode and restraint, while considering a purchase of yester-years, has been slung out. It's consumption frenzy and at no time is this better manifested than the Pujas! Beyond consumer durables, fashion, clothes, new films, plays, music launches, Puja-specific annual publications (with hi-profile authors roped in to pen their special Puja contributions) exotic Puja menus, Puja-special trains... it's a virtual tsunami!

A massive arena. A vast target audience. A large team of players all set to flash their special products and services. Which chosen one can peep into the consumer;s soul and convert needs to wants in a manner that entertains and empowers? Well, don't care about the purists – sell on, and sell well.

A BIG IDEA CALLED... DURGA PUJA!!

HAS BRAND ANNA RE-DEFINED THE BIG IDEA?

UNFOLDING A RIVETTING TALE OF AN UNLIKELY HERO WHO TAUGHT OUR MARKETING GURUS A THING OR TWO ABOUT THE ART, SCIENCE AND POWER OF THE BIG IDEA. 4Ps B&M's CONSULTING EDITOR MONOJIT LAHIRI ATTEMPTS A CLOSE-UP OF THIS AMAZING MAN AND HIS IDEA THAT HAS TAKEN THE NATION BY STORM

“A surprising solution to a marketing problem ex-pressed in memorable verbal and/or graphic imagery” is how the Big Idea has been defined and understood. Management and communication gurus however have been quick to spot the learning from Anna Hazare's astonishing example of how a Big Idea can sweep the nation and mesmerise all right thinking people – especially the Indian diaspora – across the globe.

Interestingly, could anyone have ever imagined in his/her wildest dreams (even a year ago) that the next popular leader, who would storm popular imagination, would be far from a young enthusiastic, fresh faced, inspirational leader contemptuously flinging aside the cob-web-ridden ideologies representing the old guard to lead us to a dazzling, glittering, new technology-enabled future, but a largely unknown khadi clad 73 year old with a benign look going by the unlikely name of Kisan Bapat Baburao Hazare? Hardly (if glib analysis were to be believed) a likely candidate for the ambassadorship of Brand India, Incredible India, India Shining?!!

Vijay Govindarajan (Prof. At Tuck School of Business at Darmouth College) believes that it is dangerous to embrace stereotypes or ride on cliches. “Companies, communities and countries can be inspired and empowered by the Big Idea. What better example than Kennedy's Man on the Moon or Gandhiji's non violence? Anna's common trait with the 'Father of the Nation appears to be his path breaking leadership skills which has pulled out middle class India from the cosy confines at their homes to hit the street and make it a true People movement,” says Govindarajan. He believes that it scores big on three points, “Re-enforcing the notion that democracy is alive, well and kicking' that the biggest enemy to economic growith is corruption; and that social justice is critical to a sustained 300m up.”

Leo Burnett's head honcho Arvind Sharma brings his own take to the table. He believes all great brands are great because they serve a human purpose and iconic communicators are those who connect the brand-values powerfully with the select target group. “Anna's Big Idea is not corruption – because that's nothing new. It's the amendments to Lokpal Bill – a strategic device to address this dreaded disease. Giving shape to a solution away from an amorphous context, in a tone & tenor everybody understands. No wonder his Big Idea is getting such big response,” says Sharma.

Bharat Dabolkar disagrees. The theatre-actor ad-man explains that Anna's movement has nothing to do with either branding or the Big Idea. “Come on, both corruption and Lokpal Bill have been around for over four decades; so what? It is Anna's persona – simple, direct, uncomplicated sans glamour or personal vested interest, powered with passion and conviction from the heart that has fired popular imagination. It is not an image created or manufactured by a PR agency, but one that responded spontaneously to the most overriding concern of the day, in an identifiable way, cutting across all strata of society. That's all,” Dabolkar tells 4Ps B&M.

The last words come from renowned ad guru and Chief Consultant, Planman Marcom, Alyque Padamsee. “It's clearly the biggest idea since Gandhiji's movement relating to India's Independence! Anna Hazare has single-handedly converted cocktail party chatter as well as seminar and symposium jabber into an explosive deliverable by merely articulating a USP that was waiting to catch fire: Corruption,” Padamsee tells 4Ps B&M. In fact, let's also not underestimate the power of

television in providing hard close-ups of a reality show that was real! “The defining image of a 73 years old man fearlessly praying at Rajghat (evoking image of Mahatma himself) was brilliant, timely and emotive enough to touch a zillion hearts. Also, his magically reclaiming the pride and passion of the Gandhi topi – commonly perceived as corrupt posturing of politicians – and making it a dynamic statement of truth, is brand building at its best,” adds Padamsee.

Padamsee could well have a point. Behind the charged sentiment of an entire nation and groundswell of an astounding nature, hawk-eyed media strategists supported by solid intelligent, loyal and disciplined back-room boys, were at play. Be it Abhinandan Sekhri (a 35 yeas old former TV professional) or Shazia Ilmi (former Star News anchor) or any of the crack team of 25 youngsters from Delhi who handled the entire mammoth Ramlila show with clockwork precision, it was focussed teamwork in action, with a one point agenda: Project Anna Hazare as the New Mahatma! Team Anna's brilliant connect with eyeballs, the stuningly well-timed news breaks, sound bytes and press conferences could hardly be termed as a coincidence by media-watchers.

So is Brand Anna truly re-difining the Big Idea, as the marketing and cummunication fraternity insist – or is it merely a case of right person, right time, right place, right message with right tone of voice to a totally hundred percent ready, receptive, captive and right audience?

Over to you, dear readers..

HAS BRAND ANNA RE-DEFINED THE BIG IDEA?

CAN THE "CRASH-BURN-DESTROY" SCHOOL OF ADVERTISING, EVER WORK?

4Ps B&M Monojit Lahiri Probes this Bizarre root to consumer connect!

Advertising has often been described as a calling that deals single-mindedly with the business of ideas... ideas that connect with their prime constituency and influence them to leap towards products or services advertised. In this exciting play, several routes, avenues, devices (humour, insecurity, charm, fear, pride, envy, snob-appeal, rebellion) have been successfully developed to seduce the prospective customer, but the one that has bewildered, shocked, intrigued, even provoked several zillion people is the use of “disruption” as bait – that is, in one straight shot, completely change or reinvent the positioning message of the product. Disrupt and destroy the images one might have built up over years – and the devil;s advocacy propagated that that was the way consumers would re-notice your brand. But can disarray, disorder or disruption, as I put it, ever be successful in wooing customers into an affirmative or approval mode? Isn't it unsettling and fundamentally frightening to even the marketing mavericks that a positioning statement that one would have built up after investing millions, even billions of dollars, is played around with to satisfy the test of theory? Can disruptive positioning really be a dynamic, yet positive force?

TBWA's moving spirit Jean-Marie Dru believed it could. The objective of this revolutionary approach (according to the great communication visionary) was: Re-frame the brand in a manner that is so startling that the market begins to look at it differently. De-familiarise or re-complexify it in a way that force consumers to see and notice brand characteristics that they had overlooked earlier. This leads to a fresh renewal of interest in the brand. And there are emphatic success stories to peddle too. Brilliant examples include McDonald's selling fast food to the “snooty” French. PlayStation selling computer games to adults. Most hilarious, the US buying Absolut Vodka thinking it is a Russian drink (it isn't; it's swedish)!

Some companies have made disruptive marketing a habit. Apple's disruptive positioning strategies slung out the time-tasted, sacrosanct notions which pronounced that communicating product features were the key to selling hi-tech products. Apple's maverick visionary leader, Steve Jobs believed that a brand was not solely about “bytes or boxes but values” and proceeded to provide the perfect example of an organisation that knew how to constantly reinvent itself by disrupting the status quo. The introduction of Macintosh is an outstanding model. Its premise rested on challenging the hallowed premise that “people should be computer literate”. Jobs' startling and revolutionary import was “computers should be people literate and designed to work the way people do!” What followed was pure, high decibel marriage of theatrics, showbiz and hard headed selling. For 60 second during the 1980 Super-Bowl (the mother of all major events in USA), he unleashed the (by now legendary) 1984 TV spot which promised everybody a brave new world, free from the de-humanising effects of computer technology.

They words were simple yet cataclysmic... “On January 24, 1984 Apple launches Macintosh. And you will see why 1984 won't be 1984,” (a chilling connect with George Orwell's ominous book). It was reported that the very next day, over 200,000 people stormed showrooms across the US and within six hours, sales reached over $3.5 million! A decade and a half later, Apple disrupted again with its landmark “Think Different” campaign featuring great creators of the 20^th century who were/are not fond of rules and have had no respect for the status quo.

Apple, Jobs announced, was a company that made 'Tools for Creative Minds'. So if the consumer was convinced that Apple was an IT company, Jobs immediately entered the music industry with the iPod and iTunes. The moment one was convinced Apple was an IT and music company, Jobs positioned Apple as a cellular phone innovator. Today, Apple continues its path-breaking disruption mode with its could endeavours.

To celebrate disruptive marketing, creativity has to happen at strategic levels before real creative work begins. The “Big Idea” is the answer is to look to the outside world for cues, guidance, hints, tips, inspiration. Look to the world of history, science, business for ideas that drove dramatic changes in perception. Before Nicolaus Copernicus (for example) the heavens rotated around the earth. Before Louis Pasteur there were no germs and so no immunisation. Before Henry For automobile transportation was relatively expensive indulgence and the privilege of a select few. Disruption changed it all...

Copernicus and Pasteur are said to have had intuitive feeling about theories they went on to prove... and Ford had very definitive ideas about democratising automobile transportation.

Jean-Marie Dru generously offers a simple four-step guideline. One, identify the conventions and unquestioned assumptions that shape and form an organisation's blue print. Two, look at how the different facets of its activity fit together. Three, enter disruption – challenge these conventions to find flaws in its thinking. Four, identify a vision or a projection of the company that represents the future. This vision is much more that a proposition or positioning statement. It's a total culture – a destination again­st which all strategic and marketing decisions are/will be measured.

At the end of the day, disruptive positioning or disruptive marketing is neither a seismic shakeout, dramatically lobbed gimmick nor myopic anarchy. Of course, it works fantastically in industries where it might never have been possible to differentiate your product (carbonated drinks, cellular service providers, fuel) by providing a dynamically new way for the audience to recognize your product. But disruptive marketing also works pretty fantastically in understanding that no creative and unique positioning can remain creative and unique over the long term. One time or the other, the competition will catch up with your so called disruptive positioning – and that's the time you learn to disrupt again. Beyond a mere formal procedure or process, disruptive marketing is a strategically-directed shakeup, a perceptive way of both thinking and looking at that killer opportunity. It's about engaging with the world, with an open and curious mind accepting nothing on face value and taking on odds, fearlessly... The basic point about disruptive marketing is – Disrupt before the world disrupts you! Invent the future instead of being evicted by it.

CAN THE "CRASH-BURN-DESTROY" SCHOOL OF ADVERTISING, EVER WORK?

HOW ARE THESE NON-TRAD CATEGORIES FARING IN AD-LAND?

ADVERTISING HAS ALWAYS BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH FMCGs, RIGHT? SO WHAT ARE THESE NEWBIES, WITH THEIR FAT BUDGETS AND SEARING PRESENCE, DOING HERE? IS THEIR UNDERSTANDING AND CO-RELATION WITH THE PERSUASION INDUSTRY WORKING WITH THEIR SELECT CONSTITUENCIES IN THE MANNER DESIRED? 4Ps B&M ATTEMPTS A CHECKOUT

Think advertising, and to the common man, some usual slogans and visuals leap into focus. Kuch Meetha Ho Jaye, Washing Powder Nirma, Dimag Ki Batti Jala De, Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hi, Chal Meri Luna, Khujli ka Happy Ending, Teda Hai Par Mera Hain … the list is endless. In recent times, however, three new categories have flung their hats into the ring and zoomed in, hot n' heavy: Healthcare, Real Estate and Education. Why? How? And to what effect?

Ujjal Sinha, the dynamic CEO of the Kolkata-based Genesis Advertising, believes that this story really had its birth post '91, when big-time moollah hit Indian shores like never before. Land was always a coveted and profitable proposition and now the sharpies, leapt in. “In this new, shiny, consumer driven environment where consumption and living well are the new mantras and old-fashioned values like austerity, restraint and holding back junked into the bin, lifestyle equations went through a paradigm shift, In this scenario the focus on real estate, healthcare and education advertising was not about brand-building but churning out communication that doled out facts and figures with the sole design of selling at fast n' furious pace, because time is money. Despite indifferent standards of advertising, if these categories are getting away with it, it is because of the demand-supply equation. In a land of a billion people (getting more aspirational every second than ever before!) the desire to live well is reflected in their recognising the value of good, job specific education from a private institution, cosying up in a nice flat and understanding the huge difference in healthcare between a private and a government hospital. Unlike the more sophisticated and evolved FMCG sector, advertising here is not about creating that critical creative differential in a parity market to influence sale or brand-building exercise – but a means to an end,” Sinha tells 4Ps B&M .

Ranjan Bargotra, President, Delhi based Crayons Advertising, offers his own take. His Agency has a dedicated cell to service the healthcare sector and their considered, pro-active thrusts appropriately reflected in their Fortis ads – demonstrate their knowledge and commitment to this category. “It has to be seen in perspective. Once upon a time this terminology – healthcare – didn't exist … just doctors, medicines and recommended hospitals. It was a simple, innocent time, very homely and personalized (cutely appropriated in the Bollywood movies of the sixties and seventies with the demure heroines referring to the medico as Doctor-chacha!), with everything in place. Today, in this complex world, the transformation has been dramatic! For one, the cosy informality and modest fees are a thing of the past as healthcare has become a humorously expensive proposition. Hospital chains, hitting pan-India (following corporate footprints) are a reality offering quality healthcare at a cost. Competition too has blazed in, and with it branding. If the communication quotient, however, is not yet as sophisticated and advanced as, say the FMCG sector, there are reasons. For one, these are early days. Also this category (in comparison with FMCG) is very small and it's both unfair and inaccurate to bunch them together. Remember, its not an everyday consumable item, so both the compulsions and demands of the communication blueprint take on a different trajectory. Besides, strict rules and regulations guide healthcare communication, so caution is the key,” says Bargotra. However, Bargotra belives it's an exciting category that is slowly gathering momentum.

Lloyd Mathias, President, Corporate Monitoring, Tata Teleservices Ltd., agrees as he tells 4Ps B&M, “These really are early days and it's unfair to slam their communication efforts. My belief is that all three areas are poised for stupendous growth and therefore Ad Agencies have a responsibility and should make it their business to understand their special communication needs – very different from FMCG's and create material that will add value. It's not about spouting jargons but sitting with these guys figuring out what kind of communication is required to fulfil what kind of special demand and create the package in an effective manner. I think it's both a magnificent challenge and an outstanding opportunity.”

Kunal Banerjee (President, M35), an old hand in the marketing of real estate, is more circumspect. A hard-core communication professional who started out with Ogilvy in the Far East and later worked with several reputed Ad Agencies across three decades, believes that communication in this sector has not really made much progress, in terms of focus and maturity, that it needs to. “True, the boon is unprecedented as is the response from an aspirational middle class, but has communications really been a catalyst in this movement? Introspection and serious soul-searching is required, along with a drastic change in attitude, mindset and professionalism on the ground,” Banerjee tells 4Ps B&M. Banerjee believes that while the honeymoon lasts, everyone is happy, but once crunch time arrives – competition or slump advertising will be called upon to play a critical part. “That will be the litmus test. It might be a good idea to get started ASAP. After all, better safe than sorry has always been a win-win mantra!” he adds.

Thus, at the end of the day real estate, healthcare and education offer the true-blue practitioners both challenges and opportunities, because the canvas is huge, virgin, exciting and waiting to be put on a trapeze and slung into new heights of excellence.

HOW ARE THESE NON-TRAD CATEGORIES FARING IN AD-LAND?